Stardust

By the time Tristran and the little woman were done and the stall was set out for the morrow, they were working by lamplight. The woman insisted on feeding them; Yvaine barely managed to convince her that she was not hungry, but Tristran ate everything he was offered with enthusiasm and, unusual for him, he drank the greater part of a carafe of sweet canary wine, insisting that it tasted no stronger than freshly squeezed grape juice and that it had no effect upon him of any kind. Even so, when the stout little woman offered them the clearing behind her cart to sleep in, Tristran was sleeping drunkenly in moments.

It was a clear, cold night. The star sat beside the sleeping man, who had once been her captor and had become her companion on the road, and she wondered where her hatred had gone. She was not sleepy.

There was a rustle in the grass behind her. A dark-haired woman stood next to her, and together they stared down at Tristran.

“There is something of the dormouse in him still,” said the dark-haired woman. Her ears were pointed and catlike, and she looked little older than Tristran himself. “Sometimes I wonder if she transforms people into animals, or whether she finds the beast inside us, and frees it. Perhaps there is something about me that is, by nature, a brightly colored bird. It is something to which I have given much thought, but about which I have come to no conclusions.”Tristran muttered something unintelligible and stirred in his sleep. Then he began, gently, to snore.

The woman walked around Tristran and sat down beside him. “He seems good-hearted,” she said.

“Yes,” admitted the star. “I suppose that he is.”

“I should warn you,” said the woman, “that if you leave these lands for . . . over there . . .” and she gestured toward the village of Wall with one slim arm, from the wrist of which a silver chain glittered, “. . . then you will be, as I understand it, transformed into what you would be in that world: a cold, dead thing, sky-fallen.”The star shivered, but she said nothing. Instead, she reached across Tristran’s sleeping form to touch the silver chain which circled the woman’s wrist and ankle and led off into the bushes and beyond.

“You become used to it, in time,” said the woman. “Do you? Really?” Violet eyes stared into blue eyes, and then looked away. “No.”The star let go of the chain. “He once caught me with a chain much like yours. Then he freed me, and I ran from him. But he found me and bound me with an obligation, which binds my kind more securely than any chain ever could.”An April breeze ran across the meadow, stirring the bushes and the trees in one long chilly sigh. The cat-eared woman tossed her curly hair back from her face, and said,“You are under a prior obligation, are you not? You have something that does not belong to you, which you must deliver to its rightful owner.”The star’s lips tightened. “Who are you?” she asked.

“I told you. I was the bird in the caravan,” said the woman. “I know what you are, and I know why the witch-woman never knew that you were there. I know who seeks you and why she needs you. Also, I know the provenance of the topaz stone you wear upon a silver chain about your waist. Knowing this, and what manner of thing you are, I know the obligation you must be under.” She leaned down, and, with delicate fingers, she tenderly pushed the hair from Tristran’s face. The sleeping youth neither stirred nor responded.

“I do not think that I believe you, or trust you,” said the star. A night bird cried in a tree above them. It sounded very lonely in the darkness.

“I saw the topaz about your waist when I was a bird,” said the woman, standing up once more. “I watched, when you bathed in the river, and recognized it for what it was.”

“How?” asked the star. “How did you recognize it?”But the dark-haired woman only shook her head and walked back the way that she had come, sparing but one last glance for the sleeping youth upon the grass. And then she was taken by the night.

Tristran’s hair had, obstinately, fallen across his face once more. The star leaned down and gently pushed it to one side, letting her fingers dwell upon his cheek as she did so. He slept on.

Tristran was woken a little after sunrise by a large badger walking upon its hind legs and wearing a threadbare heliotrope silk dressing-gown, who snuffled into his ear until Tristran sleepily opened his eyes, and then said, self-importantly, “Party name of Thorn? Tristran of that set?”

“Mm?” said Tristran. There was a foul taste in his mouth, which felt dry and furred. He could have slept for another several hours.

“They’ve been asking about you,” said the badger. “Down by the gap. Seems there’s a young lady wants to have a word with you.”Tristran sat up and grinned widely. He touched the sleeping star on her shoulder. She opened her sleepy blue eyes and said, “What?”

“Good news,” he told her. “Do you remember Victoria Forester? I might have mentioned her name once or twice on our travels.”

“Yes,” she said. “You might have.”

“Well,” he said, “I’m off to see her. She’s down by the gap.” He paused. “Look. Well. Probably best if you stay here. I wouldn’t want to confuse her or anything.”The star rolled over and covered her head with her arm and said nothing else. Tristran decided that she must have gone back to sleep. He pulled on his boots, washed his face and rinsed out his mouth in the meadow stream, and then ran pell-mell through the meadow, toward the village.

The guards on the wall this morning were the Reverend Myles, the vicar of Wall, and Mr. Bromios, the innkeeper. Standing between them was a young lady with her back to the meadow. “Victoria!” called Tristran in delight; but then the young lady turned, and he saw that it was notVictoria Forester (who, he remembered suddenly, and with delight in the knowing, had grey eyes. That was what they were: grey. How could he ever have allowed himself to forget?). But who this young lady could have been in her fine bonnet and shawl, Tristran could not say, although her eyes flooded with tears at the sight of him.

“Tristran!” she said. “It is you! They said it was! Oh Tristran! How could you? Oh, how could you?” and he realized who the young lady reproaching him must be.

“Louisa?” he said to his sister. And then, “You have certainly grown while I was away, from a chit of a girl into a fine young lady.”She sniffed and blew her nose into a lace-edged linen handkerchief, which she pulled from her sleeve. “And you,” she told him, dabbing at her cheeks with the handkerchief, “have turned into a mop-haired raggle-taggle gypsy on your journeyings. But I suppose you look well, and that is a good thing. Come on, now,” and she motioned, impatiently, for him to walk through the gap in the wall, and come to her.