Stardust

“Only half mortal, actually,” said Tristran, helpfully. “Everything I ever thought about myself — who I was, what I am — was a lie. Or sort of. You have no idea how astonishingly liberating that feels.”

“Whatever you are,” she said, “I just wanted to point out that we can probably never have children. That’s all.”Tristran looked at the star, then, and he began to smile, and he said nothing at all. His hands were on her upper arms. He was standing in front of her, and looking down at her.

“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 cannot manage this stall by myself.

You are an evil, foolish slattern, so to desert me like this.”

“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, first-born 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 innkeeper woman cut his throat, so I have it still. But I wish it were gone.”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 . . .”