Stardust

“Just so you know, that’s all,” said the star, and she leaned forward.

They kissed for the first time then in the cold spring rain, though neither one of them now knew that it was raining. Tristran’s heart pounded in his chest as if it were not big enough to contain all the joy that it held. He opened his eyes as he kissed the star. Her sky-blue eyes stared back into his, and in her eyes he could see no parting from her.

The silver chain was now nothing but smoke and vapor. For a heartbeat it hung on the air, then a sharp gust of wind and rain blew it out into nothing at all.

“There,” said the woman with the dark, curling hair, stretching like a cat, and smiling. “The terms of my servitude are fulfilled, and now you and I are done with each other.”

The old woman looked at her helplessly. “But what shall I do? I am old. I ca

“Your problems are of no concern to me,” said her former slave, “but I shall never again be called a slattern, or a slave, or anything else that is not my own name. I am Lady Una, firstborn and only daughter of the eighty-first Lord of Stormhold, and the spells and terms you bound me with are over and done. Now, you will apologize to me, and you will call me by my right name, or I will—with enormous pleasure—devote the rest of my life to hunting you down and destroying every thing that you care for and every thing that you are.”

They looked at each other, then, and it was the old woman who looked away first.

“Then I must apologize for having called you a slattern, Lady Una,” she said, as if each word of it were bitter sawdust that she spat from her mouth.

Lady Una nodded. “Good. And I believe that you owe me payment for my services, now my time with you is done,” she said. For these things have their rules. All things have rules.

The rain was still falling in gusts, then not falling for just long enough to lure people out from underneath their makeshift shelters, then raining on them once more. Tristran and Yvaine sat, damp and happy, beside a campfire, in the company of a motley assortment of creatures and people.

Tristran had asked if any of them knew the little hairy man he had met upon his travels, and had described him as well as he could. Several people acknowledged that they had met him in the past, although none had seen him at this market.

He found his hands twining, almost of their own volition, into the star’s wet hair. He wondered how it could have taken him so long to realize how much he cared for her, and he told her so, and she called him an idiot, and he declared that it was the finest thing that ever a man had been called.

“So, where are we going once the market is done?” Tristran asked the star.

“I do not know,” she said. “But I have one obligation still to discharge.”

“You do?”

“Yes,” she said. “The topaz thing I showed you. I have to give it to the right person. The last time the right person came along, that i

A woman’s voice at his shoulder said, “Ask her for what she carries, Tristran Thorn.”

He turned, and stared into eyes the color of meadow-violets. “You were the bird in the witch’s caravan,” he told the woman.

“When you were the dormouse, my son,” said the woman. “I was the bird. But now I have my own form again, and my time of servitude is over. Ask Yvaine for what she carries. You have the right.”

He turned back to the star. “Yvaine?”

She nodded, waiting.

“Yvaine, will you give me what you are carrying?”

She looked puzzled; then she reached inside her robe, fumbled discreetly, and produced a large topaz stone on a broken silver chain.

“It was your grandfather’s,” said the woman to Tristran. “You are the last male of the line of Stormhold. Put it about your neck.”

Tristran did so; as he touched the ends of the silver chain together they knit and mended as if they had never been broken. “It’s very nice,” said Tristran, dubiously.

“It is the Power of Stormhold,” said his mother. “There’s no one can argue with that. You are of the blood, and all of your uncles are dead and gone. You will make a fine Lord of Stormhold.”

Tristran stared at her in honest puzzlement. “But I have no wish to be a lord of anywhere,” he told her, “or of anything, except perhaps my lady’s heart.” And he took the star’s hand in his, and he pressed it to his breast, and smiled.

The woman flicked her ears impatiently. “In almost eighteen years, Tristran Thorn, I have not demanded one single thing of you. And now, the first simple little request that I make—the tiniest favor that I ask of you—you say me no. Now, I ask of you, Tristran, is that any way to treat your mother?”

“No, Mother,” said Tristran.

“Well,” she continued, slightly mollified, “and I think it will do you young people good to have a home of your own, and for you to have an occupation. And if it does not suit you, you may leave, you know. There is no silver chain that will be holding you to the throne of Stormhold.”

And Tristran found this quite reassuring. Yvaine was less impressed, for she knew that silver chains come in all shapes and sizes; but she knew also that it would not be wise to begin her life with Tristran by arguing with his mother.

“Might I have the honor of knowing what you are called?” asked Yvaine, wondering if she was laying it on a bit thickly. Tristran’s mother preened, and Yvaine knew that she was not. “I am the Lady Una of Stormhold,” she said. Then she reached into a small bag, which hung from her side, and produced a rose made of glass, of a red so dark that it was almost black in the flickering firelight. “It was my payment,” she said. “For more than sixty years of servitude. It galled her to give it to me, but rules are rules, and she would have lost her magic and more if she had not settled up. Now, I plan to barter it for a palanquin to take us back to the Stormhold, for we must arrive in style. Oh, I have missed the Stormhold so badly. We must have bearers, and outriders, and perhaps an elephant– they are so imposing, nothing says ‘Get out of the way’ quite like an elephant in the front…” “No,” said Tristran. “No?” said his mother.

“No,” repeated Tristran. “You may travel by palanquin, and elephant, and camel and all that, if you wish to, Mother. But Yvaine and I will make our own way there, and travel at our own speed.”

The Lady Una took a deep breath, and Yvaine decided that this argument was one that she would rather be somewhere else for, so she stood up, and told them that she would be back soon, that she needed a walk, and that she would not go wandering too far. Tristran looked at her with pleading eyes, but Yvaine shook her head: this was his fight to win, and he would fight it better if she were not there.

She limped through the darkening market, pausing beside a tent from which music and applause could be heard, and from which light spilled like warm, golden honey. She listened to the music, and she thought her own thoughts. It was there that a bent, white-haired old woman, glaucous-blind in one eye, hobbled over to the star, and bade her to stop a while and talk.

“About what?” asked the star.

The old woman, shrunk by age and time to little bigger than a child, held onto a stick as tall and bent as herself with palsied and swollen-knuckled hands. She stared up at the star with her good eye and her blue-milk eye, and she said, “I came to fetch your heart back with me.”

“Is that so?” asked the star.

“Aye,” said the old woman. “I nearly had it, at that, up in the mountain pass.” She cackled at the back of her throat at the memory. “D’ye remember?” She had a large pack that sat like a hump on her back. A spiral ivory horn protruded from the pack, and Yvaine knew where she had seen that horn before.