Stardust

“There is a village on the other side of that hill,” said Tristran. “I expect that we can find something to eat when we get there.” He patted the unicorn’s flanks with his free hand.

The beast began to walk. Tristran moved his hand to the star’s waist, to steady himself. He could feel the silken texture of her thin dress, and beneath that, the thick chain of the topaz about her waist.

Riding a unicorn was not like riding a horse: it did not move like a horse; it was a wilder ride, and a stranger one. The unicorn waited until Tristran and the star were comfortable upon its back, and then, slowly and easily, it began to put on speed.

The trees surged and leapt past them.

The star leaned forward, her fingers tangled into the unicorn’s mane;Tristran — his hunger forgotten in his fear — gripped the sides of the unicorn with his knees and simply prayed that he would not be knocked to the ground by a stray branch. Soon he found he was beginning to enjoy the experience. There is something about riding a unicorn, for those people who still can, which is unlike any other experience: exhilarating and intoxicating and fine.

The sun was setting when they reached the outskirts of the village. In a rolling meadow, beneath an oak tree, the unicorn came to a skittish halt and would go no further. Tristran dismounted, and landed with a bump on the grass of the meadow. His rump felt sore, but, with the star looking down at him, uncomplaining, he dared not rub it.

“Are you hungry?” he asked the star.

She said nothing.

“Look,” he said, “I’m starving. Perfectly famished. I don’t know if you — if stars — eat, or what they eat. But I won’t have you starving yourself.” He looked up at her, questioning. She stared down at him, first impassively, then, in a trice, her blue eyes filled with tears. She raised a hand to her face and wiped away the tears, leaving a smudge of mud on her cheeks.

“We eat only darkness,” she said, “and we drink only light. So I’m nuh-not hungry. I’m lonely and scared and cold and muh-miserable and cuh-captured but I’m nuh-not hungry.”

“Don’t cry,” said Tristran. “Look, I’ll go into the village and get some food. You just wait here. The unicorn will protect you, if anyone comes.” He reached up and gently lifted her down from the unicorn’s back. The unicorn shook its mane, then began to crop the grass of the meadow contentedly.

The star sniffed, “Wait here?” she asked, holding up the chain that joined them.

“Oh,” said Tristran. “Give me your hand.”She reached her hand out to him. He fumbled with the chain to undo it, but it would not undo. “Hmm,” said Tristran. He tugged at the chain around his own wrist, but it, too, held fast. “It looks,” he said, “as if I’m as tied to you as you are to me.”The star threw her hair back, closed her eyes, and sighed deeply. And then, opening her eyes, once again self-possessed, she said, “Perhaps there’s a magic word or something.”

“I don’t know any magic words,” said Tristran. He held the chain up. It glittered red and purple in the light of the setting sun. “Please?” he said. There was a ripple in the fabric of the chain, and he slid his hand out of it.

“Here you go,” he said, passing the star the other end of the chain that had bound her. “I’ll try not to be too long. And if any of the fair folk sing their silly songs at you, for heaven’s sake, don’t throw your crutch at them. They’ll only steal it.”

“I won’t,” she said.

“I’ll have to trust you, on your honor as a star, not to run away,” he said.

She touched her splinted leg. “I will do no running for quite some time,” she said, pointedly. And with that Tristran had to content himself.

He walked the last half a mile into the village. It had no inn, being far off the beaten track for travelers, but the portly old woman who explained this to him then insisted he accompany her to her cottage, where she pressed upon him a wooden bowlful of barley porridge with carrots in it, and a mug of small beer. He exchanged his cambric handkerchief for a bottle of elderflower cordial, a round of green cheese and a number of unfamiliar fruits: they were soft and fuzzy, like apricots, but were the purple-blue of grapes, and they smelled a little like ripe pears; also the woman gave him a small bale of hay, for the unicorn.

He walked back to the meadow where he had left them, munching on a piece of the fruit, which was juicy, and chewy and quite sweet. He wondered if the star would like to try one, whether she would like it if she did. He hoped that she would be pleased with what he had brought her.

At first, Tristran thought that he must have made a mistake, and that he had lost his way in the moonlight. No: that was the same oak tree, the one beneath which the star had been sitting.

“Hello?” he called. Glow-worms and fireflies glittered green and yellow in the hedgerows and in the branches of trees.

There came no reply, and Tristran felt a sick, stupid feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Hello?” he called. He stopped calling, then, because there was no one to answer.

He dropped the bale of hay, and then he kicked it.

She was to the southwest of him, moving faster than he could walk. He followed after her in the bright moonlight. Inside, he felt numbed and foolish, stung by a pang of guilt and shame and regret. He should not have loosed her chain, he should have tied it to a tree; he should have forced the star to go with him into the village. This went through his head as he walked; but another voice spoke to him also, pointing out that if he had not unchained her then, he would have done it sometime soon, and she would have run from him then.

He wondered if he would ever see the star again, and he stumbled over roots as the way led him between old trees into the deep woods. The moonlight slowly vanished beneath the thick canopy of leaves, and after stumbling vainly in the dark for a short while, he laid himself down beneath a tree, rested his head on his bag, and closed his eyes, and felt sorry for himself until he fell asleep.

On a rocky mountain pass, on the southernmost slopes of Mount Belly, the witch-queen reined in her goat-drawn chariot and stopped and sniffed the chilly air.

The myriad stars hung cold in the sky above her.

Her red, red lips curved up into a smile of such beauty, such brilliance, such pure and perfect happiness that it would have frozen your blood in your veins to have seen it. “There,” she said. “She is coming to me.”And the wind of the mountain pass howled about her triumphantly, as if in answer.