Stardust: Chapters 5–6

In the morning's bright light the young lady seemed more human and less ethereal.

He took his knife and cut a fallen treebranch into a Y-shaped crutch while she sat beneath a sycamore tree and glared at him and glowered at him and scowled at him from her place on the ground.

They had had no breakfast yet, and Tristran was ravenous; his stomach rumbled as he worked.

Then again, she had done nothing at all but look at him, first reproachfully, and then with undisguised hatred.

The girl broke her silence with a snort of derision.

He tugged on the chain and, reluctantly, the star began to get to her feet, leaning first against Tristran, and then, as if proximity to him disgusted her, on the crutch.

It was a lion, but it looked little enough like the lion Tristran had seen at a fair in the next village, which had been a mangy, toothless, rheumy thing.

The scent of the lion was deep, animal, terrifying, and Tristran was close enough to see the beseeching expression in the unicorn's black eyes....

His fingers touched the chain that bound them: cold as snow it was, and tenuous as moonlight on a millpond or the glint of light on a trout's silver scales as it rises at dusk to feed.

The harridan screwed her eyes to slits and looked the lady in the red kirtle up and down.

"I swear," said the lady in the scarlet kirtle, "that, by the rules and constraints of the Sisterhood to which you and I belong, by the puissance of the Lilim...that I mean you no harm and shall treat you as if you were my own guest."

The witch-queen inclined her head and smiled modestly.

She lifted the spit off the fire as she spoke, and, using both knives so fast they seemed little more than a glitter of blades, she parted the carcass and sliced the meat from the bones, and dealt it out, fairly equitably, into each bowl.

She speared a bite on the point of the knife and ate it with relish, while her hostess toyed with her own portion, then blew on it fastidiously, steam coming from the crisp brown meat.

"Perfectly palatable," said her guest, honestly.

"Ah," said Madame Semele, and she nibbled a sliver of the meat.

"That it is. It's a herb that grows only in Garamond, on an island in the midst of a wide lake. It is most pleasant with all manner of meats and fishes, and it reminds me in flavor a little of the leaves of fennel, with but a hint of nutmeg. The flowers of it are a most attractive shade of orange. It is good for wind and the ague, and it is, in addition, a gentle soporific, which has the curious property of causing one who tastes of it to speak nothing but the truth for several hours."

"Did you not hear me? A moment after I leave, you shall forget that ever you saw me. You shall forget all of this, even my curse, although the knowledge of it shall vex and irritate you, like an itch in a limb long since amputated. And may you treat your guests with more grace and respect in the future."

His was the topmost room in the Seaman's Rest, a high and spindly building built on a rocky outcrop to facilitate smuggling.

"Well, you know what they say," whispered Quintus, in the wistful tones of the dead, which sounded, on that day, like the lapping of distant waves upon the shingle, "a man who is tired of looking over his shoulder for Septimus is tired of life."

Soon the gossips of Scaithe's Ebb (and there were many) had the gist and juice of it all: the bearded gentleman was to be taking ship to the East.

"Good master!" said a street urchin to Lord Primus. "There's a man in town, come by land. He lodges with Mistress Pettier. He is thin and crowlike, and I saw him in the Ocean's Roar, buying grog for every man in the room. He says he is a distressed seafaring man, seeking a berth."

"Good master!" said a street urchin to Lord Primus. "There's a man in town, come by land. He lodges with Mistress Pettier. He is thin and crowlike, and I saw him in the Ocean's Roar, buying grog for every man in the room. He says he is a distressed seafaring man, seeking a berth."

The day before the Heart of a Dream was to set sail, Primus was seen to sell his coach and four horses to the stableman on Wardle Street, after which he walked down to the quay, dispensing small coins to the urchins.

That evening an unfortunate accident befell an able seaman who had crewed the rigging on the Heart of a Dream.

After all, the unicorn had been ambling hugely behind them for most of the morning, occasionally nudging the star's shoulder with its big forehead.

On the one hand, Tristran felt there was something almost sacrilegious about the idea of riding the unicorn: it was not a horse, did not subscribe to any of the ancient pacts between Man and Horse.

On the other hand, Tristran had begun to feel, in a way that he could not articulate, that the unicorn cared about the star and wished to help her.

It was like climbing a sheer wall, and as fruitless.

There is something about riding a unicorn, for those people who still can, which is unlike any other experience: exhilarating and intoxicating and fine.

She stared down at him, first impassively, then, in a trice, her blue eyes filled with tears.

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 ate his breakfast meticulously, spitting the tiny bones into the fire circle once he had chewed the meat from them.

Once he had eaten, he wiped his hands upon his robe and then he cast the runes to find the topaz stone which conferred the lordship of the crag towns and the vast estates of the Stormhold.

Once he had eaten, he wiped his hands upon his robe and then he cast the runes to find the topaz stone which conferred the lordship of the crag towns and the vast estates of the Stormhold.

The girl held tight to the unicorn's neck as it tumbled headlong through the dark forest.

And the moon would have told him more, and perhaps she did, but the moon became the glimmer of moonlight on water far below him, and then he became aware of a small spider walking across his face, and of a crick in his neck, and he raised a hand and brushed the spider carefully from his cheek, and the morning sun was in his eyes and the world was gold and green.

"Pan. If you were the Lord of the Forest, you wouldn't give a job to someone, tell them to give all possible aid and succor, unless you liked them, would you?"

"Well...” said Tristran, but before he had decided on the politic answer, the tree had already said, "A nymph. I was a wood-nymph. But I got pursued by a prince, not a nice prince, the other kind, and, well, you'd think a prince, even the wrong kind, would understand about boundaries, wouldn't you?"

"Exactly what I think. But he didn't, so I did a bit of invoking while I was running, and—ba-boom!—tree. What do you think?"

"I was pretty cute as a nymph, too," she admitted, coyly.

He could feel the star moving further and further away from him, at the speed of a cantering unicorn, and if there was one thing he did not have time for, it was the recitation of the adventures of his life to date.

"There's a young lady that I have offended with my behavior," said Tristran. "I wish to make amends." As he said it, he knew it to be true.

Trees became sparser, and Tristran stared up at the mountains in front of them, and he gasped.

"When you are older," said his companion, "you must visit my citadel, high on the crags of Mount Huon. Now that is a mountain, and from there we can look down upon mountains next to which these," and he gestured toward the heights of Mount Belly, ahead of them, "are the merest foothills."