Stardust

Then she took up its head, and she carried it with her up to the driver’s seat. She placed it beside her, picked up the reins and whipped the restive horses into a tired trot.

Tristran sat at the top of the spire of cloud and wondered why none of the heroes of the penny dreadfuls he used to read so avidly were ever hungry. His stomach rumbled, and his hand hurt him so.

Adventures are all very well in their place, he thought, but there’s a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.

Still, he was alive, and the wind was in his hair, and the cloud was scudding through the sky like a galleon at full sail. Looking out over the world from above, he could never remember feeling so alive as he did at that moment. There was a skyness to the sky and a nowness to the world that he had never seen or felt or realized before.

He understood that he was, in some way, above his problems, just as he was above the world.

The pain in his hand was a long way away. He thought about his actions and his adventures, and about the journey ahead of him, and it seemed to Tristran that the whole business was suddenly very small and very straightforward. He stood up on the cloud spire and called “Halloo!” several times, as loudly as he could. He even waved his tunic over his head, feeling a little foolish as he did so. Then he clambered down the spire; ten feet from the bottom he missed his footing and fell into the misty softness of the cloud.

“What were you shouting about?” asked Yvaine.

“To let people know we were here,”Tristran told her.

“What people?”

“You never know,” he told her. “Better I should call to people who aren’t there than that people who are there should miss us because I didn’t say anything.”She said nothing in reply to this.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Tristran. “And what I’ve been thinking is this. After we’re done with what I need — got you back to Wall, given you to Victoria Forester — perhaps we could do what you need.”

“What I need?”

“Well, you want to go back, don’t you? Up into the sky.

To shine again at night. So we can sort that out.”She looked up at him and shook her head. “That doesn’t happen,” she explained. “Stars fall. They don’t go back up again.”

“You could be the first,” he told her. “You have to believe. Otherwise it will never happen.”

“It will never happen,” she told him. “No more than your shouting is going to attract anyone up here where there isn’t anyone. It doesn’t matter if I believe it or not, that’s just the way things are. How’s your hand?”He shrugged. “Hurts,” he said. “How’s your leg?”

“Hurts,” she said. “But not as badly as it did before.”

“Ahoy!” came a voice from far above them. “Ahoy down there! Parties in need of assistance?”Glinting golden in the sunlight was a small ship, its sails billowing, and a ruddy, mustachioed face looked down at them from over the side. “Was that you, young feller-me-lad, a-leaping and cavorting just now?”

“It was,” said Tristran. “And I think we are in need of assistance, yes.”

“Right-ho,” said the man. “Get ready to grab the ladder, then.”

“I’m afraid my friend has a broken leg,” he called, “and I’ve hurt my hand. I don’t think either of us can climb a ladder.”

“Not a problem. We can pull you up.” And with that the man tumbled a long rope ladder over the side of the ship. Tristran caught at it with his good hand, and he held it steady while Yvaine pulled herself onto it, then he climbed on below her. The face vanished from the side of the ship as Tristran and Yvaine dangled awkwardly on the end of the rope ladder.

The wind caught the sky-ship, causing the ladder to pull up from the cloud and Tristran and Yvaine to spin, slowly, in the air.

“Now, haul!” shouted several voices in unison, and Tristran felt them being hauled up several feet. “Haul! Haul! Haul!” Each shout signaled them being pulled higher. The cloud upon which they had been sitting was now no longer below them; instead there was a drop of what Tristran supposed must be a mile or more. He held on tightly to the rope, hooking the elbow of his burned hand about the rope ladder.

Another jerk upwards and Yvaine was level with the top of the ship’s railing. Someone lifted her with care and placed her upon the deck. Tristran clambered over the railing himself and tumbled down onto the oaken deck.

The ruddy-faced man extended a hand. “Welcome aboard,” he said. “This is the Free Ship Perdita, bound on a lightning-hunting expedition. Captain Johannes Alberic, at your service.” He coughed, deep in his chest. And then, before Tristran could say a word in reply, the captain spied Tristran’s left hand and called “Meggot! Meggot! Blast you, where are you? Over here! Passengers in need of attention. There lad, Meggot’ll see to your hand. We eat at six bells. You shall sit at my table.”Soon a nervous-looking woman with an explosive mop of carrot-red hair — Meggot — was escorting him belowdecks and smearing a thick, green ointment onto his hand, which cooled it and eased the pain. And then he was being led into the mess, which was a small dining room next to the kitchen (which he was delighted to discover they referred to as the galley, just as in the sea stories he had read).

Tristran did indeed get to eat at the captain’s table, although there was in fact no other table in the mess. In addition to the captain and Meggot there were five other members of the crew, a disparate bunch who seemed content to let Captain Alberic do all the talking, which he did, with his ale-pot in one hand, and the other hand alternately concerned with holding his stubby pipe and conveying food into his mouth.

The food was a thick soup of vegetables, beans and barley, and it filled Tristran and contented him. To drink, there was the clearest, coldest water Tristran had ever tasted.

The captain asked them no questions about how they came to find themselves high on a cloud, and they volunteered no answers. Tristran was given a berth with Oddness, the first mate, a quiet gentleman with large wings and a bad stammer, while Yvaine berthed in Meggot’s cabin, and Meggot herself moved into a hammock.

Tristran often found himself looking back on his time on the Perdita, during the rest of his journey through Faerie, as one of the happiest periods of his life. The crew let him help with the sails, and even gave him a turn at the wheel from time to time. Sometimes the ship would sail above dark storm clouds, as big as mountains, and the crew would fish for lightning bolts with a small copper chest. The rain and the wind would wash the deck of the ship, and he often would find himself laughing with exhilaration, while the rain ran down his face, and gripping the rope railing with his good hand to keep from being tumbled over the side by the storm.