Stardust

“My heart?” It was a strange question, but the woman seemed genuinely concerned. “It feels happier. More easy. Less troubled.”

“Good. That’s good. Let us get it burning high and hot within you, eh? Burning bright inside you.”

“I am sure that under your care my heart shall blaze and burn with happiness,” said the star.

The i

There were good people on this benighted world, the star decided, warmed and contented. Outside the rain and the wind pattered and howled through the mountain pass, but in the i

Eventually the i

“Now my sweet,” said the i

Outside there was a gust of wind, and the fire flared up green and blue and white. Then a deep voice boomed from outside the i

Billy the i

“I appreciate your hospitality more than I can say,” said the star, simply and with feeling.

“Of course you do,” said the woman in the red dress, and her fidgeting fingers brushed the black knives impatiently, as if there were something she could not wait to be doing. “Plenty of time when these nuisances have gone, eh?”

The light of the i

He knew—somewhere in the odd place inside him that knew directions and distances of things he had never seen and the places he had never been—that the star was close at hand, and this comforted him, and made him nervous. He knew that the horses were more exhausted and more hungry than he was. His di

The tall man rested his huge hand on Tristran’s shoulder. “Good lad. I’ll send a pot-boy out with some burnt ale for you.”

Tristran thought about the star as he brushed down the horses and picked out their hooves. What would he say? What would she say? He was brushing the last of the horses when a blank-looking pot-girl came out to him with a tankard of steaming wine.

“Put it down over there,” he told her. “I’ll drink it with goodwill as soon as my hands are free.” She put it down on the top of a tack box, and went out, without saying anything. It was then that the horse in the end stall got to its feet and began to kick against the door.

“Settle down, there,” called Tristran, “settle down, fellow, and I’ll see if I ca

His ruminations were interrupted by an enormous clattering, as a huge white horse—but, he realized immediately, it was not a horse—kicked down the door of its stall, and came charging, desperately, toward him, its horn lowered.

Tristran threw himself onto the straw on the stable floor, his arms about his head.

Moments passed. He raised his head. The unicorn had stopped in front of the tankard, was lowering its horn into the mulled wine.

Awkwardly, Tristran got to his feet. The wine was steaming and bubbling, and it came to Tristran then—the information surfacing from some long-forgotten fairy tale or piece of children’s lore—that a unicorn’s horn was proof against… “Poison?” he whispered, and the unicorn raised its head, and stared into Tristran’s eyes, and Tristran knew that it was the truth. His heart was pounding hard in his chest. Around the i

“Wine, milord?” asked the middle-aged woman in the long red dress, when Primus had entered the i

“I am afraid not,” he said. “I have a personal superstition that, until the day I see my brother’s corpse cold on the ground before me, I shall drink only my own wine, and eat only food I have obtained and prepared myself. This I shall do here, if you have no objection. I shall, of course, pay you as if it were your own wine I was drinking. If I might trouble you to put this bottle of mine near the fire to take the chill from it? Now, I have a companion on my journey, a young man who is attending to the horses; he has sworn no such oath, and I am sure that if you could send him a mug of burnt ale it would help take the chill from his bones… ?”

The pot-maid bobbed a curtsey, and she scuttled back to the kitchens.

“So, mine host,” said Primus to the white-bearded i

The i

Primus removed his dripping black robe and hung it by the fire, beside the star’s still-damp blue dress. Then he turned, and saw the young lady sitting at the table. “Another guest?” he said. “Well-met, milady, in this noxious weather.” At that, there was a loud clattering from the stable next door. “Something must have disturbed the horses,” said Primus, concerned.

“Perhaps the thunder,” said the i