Stardust

An old woman stepped into his view. She looked like the woman who had inhabited the wooden hut, but older, so much older. Septimus tried to blink, to clear his tearing eyes, but he had forgotten how to blink, and his eyes would not close.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” said the woman. “Attempting arson and violence upon the person of a poor old lady living upon her own, who would be entirely at the mercy of every passing vagabond, were it not for the kindness of her little friends.” And she picked something up from the chalky ground and placed it about her wrist, then she walked back into the hut, which was miraculously unburned, or restored, Septimus did not know which and did not care.

His heart juddered and syncopated inside his chest, and if he could have screamed, he would. It was dawn before the pain ended and, in six voices, his older brothers welcomed Septimus to their ranks.

Septimus looked down, one last time, on the twisted, still-warm form he had once inhabited, and at the expression in its eyes. Then he turned away.

“There are no brothers left to take revenge on her,” he said, in the voice of the morning curlews, “and it is none of us will ever be Lord of Stormhold. Let us move on.” And after he had said that, there were not even ghosts in that place.

The sun was high in the sky that day when Madame Semele’s caravan came lumbering through the chalk cut of Diggory’s Dyke.

Madame Semele noticed the soot-blackened wooden hovel beside the road and, as she approached closer, the bent old woman in her faded scarlet dress, who waved at her from beside the path. The woman’s hair was white as snow, her skin was wrinkled, and one eye was blind.

“Good day, sister. What happened to your house?” asked Madame Semele.

“Young people today. One of them thought it would be good sport to fire the house of a poor old woman who has never harmed a soul. Well, he learned his lesson soon enough.”

“Aye,” said Madame Semele. “They always learn. And are never grateful to us for the lesson.”

“There’s truth for you,” said the woman in the faded scarlet dress. “Now, tell me, dear. Who rides with you this day?”

“That,” said Madame Semele, haughtily, “is none of your never-mind, and I shall thank you to keep yourself to yourself.”

“Who rides with you? Tell me truly, or I shall set harpies to tear you limb from limb and hang your remains from a hook deep beneath the world.”

“And who would you be, to threaten me so?”The old woman stared up at Madame Semele with one good eye and one milky eye. “I know you, Ditchwater Sal. None of your damned lip. Who travels with you?Madame Semele felt the words being torn from her mouth, whether she would say them or no. “There are the two mules who pull my caravan, myself, a maid-servant I keep in the form of a large bird, and a young man in the form of a dormouse.”

“Anyone else? Anything else?”

“No one and nothing. I swear it upon the Sisterhood.”The woman at the side of the road pursed her lips. “Then get away with you, and get along with you,” she said.

Madame Semele clucked and shook the reins and the mules began to amble on.

In her borrowed bed in the dark interior of the caravan the star slept on, unaware how close she had come to her doom, nor by how slim a margin she had escaped it.

When they were out of sight of the stick-house and the deathly whiteness of Diggory’s Dyke, the exotic bird flapped up onto its perch, threw back its head and whooped and crowed and sang, until Madame Semele told it that she would wring its foolish neck if it would not be quiet. And even then, in the quiet darkness inside the caravan, the pretty bird chuckled and twittered and trilled, and, once, it even hooted like a little owl.

The sun was already low in the western sky as they approached the town of Wall. The sun shone in their eyes, half blinding them and turning their world to liquid gold. The sky, the trees, the bushes, even the path itself was golden in the light of the setting sun.

Madame Semele reined in her mules in the meadow, where her stall would be. She unhitched the two mules and led them to the stream, where she hitched them to a tree. They drank deeply and eagerly.

There were other market-folk and visitors setting up their stalls all over the meadow, putting up tents and hanging draperies from trees. There was an air of expectation that touched everyone and everything, like the golden light of the westering sun.

Madame Semele went into the inside of the caravan and unhooked the cage from its chain. She carried it out into the meadow and put it down on a hillock of grass. She opened the cage door, and picked out the sleeping dormouse with bony fingers. “Out you come,” she said. The dormouse rubbed its liquid black eyes with its forepaws and blinked at the fading daylight.

The witch reached into her apron and produced a glass daffodil. With it she touched Tristran’s head.

Tristran blinked sleepily, and then he yawned. He ran a hand through his unruly brown hair and looked down at the witch with fierce anger in his eyes. “Why, you evil old crone —” he began.

“Hush your silly mouth,” said Madame Semele, sharply. “I got you here, safely and soundly, and in the same condition I found you. I gave you board and I gave you lodging — and if neither of them were to your liking or expectation, well, what is it to me? Now, be off with you, before I change you into a wiggling worm and bite off your head, if it is not your tail. Go! Shoo! Shoo!” Tristran counted to ten, and then, ungraciously, walked away. He stopped a dozen yards away beside a copse and waited for the star, who limped down the side of the caravan steps and came over to him.

“Are you all right?” he asked, genuinely concerned, as she approached.

“Yes, thank you,” said the star. “She did not ill-use me. Indeed, I do not believe that she ever knew that I was there at all. Is that not peculiar?” Madame Semele had the bird in front of her now. She touched its plumed head with her glass flower, and it flowed and shifted and became a young woman, in appearance not too much older than Tristran himself, with dark, curling hair and furred, catlike ears. She darted a glance at Tristran, and there was something about those violet eyes that Tristran found utterly familiar, although he could not recall where he had seen them before.

“So, that is the bird’s true form,” said Yvaine. “She was a good companion on the road.” And then the star realized that the silver chain that had kept the bird a captive was still there, now that the bird had become a woman, for it glinted upon her wrist and ankle, and Yvaine pointed this out to Tristran.