by Neil Gaiman
“Be off with you, you silly things,” said Tristran, his face burning, and, having nothing else to hand, he threw his bowler hat at them.
Thus it was, that when the little hairy man arrived back from the village of Revelry (although why it was so called no man alive could say, for it was a gloomy, somber place, and had been for time out of mind) he found Tristran sitting glumly beside a hawthorn bush, wrapped in a blanket, and bewailing the loss of his hat.
“They said cruel things about my true love,” said Tristran. “Miss Victoria Forester. How dare they?”
“The little folk dare anything,” said his friend. “And they talks a lot of nonsense. But they talks an awful lot of sense, as well. You listen to ’em at your peril, and you ignore ’em at your peril, too.”
“They said I was soon to face my true love’s scorn.”
“Did they, indeed?”The little hairy man was laying a variety of clothes out upon the grass. Even in the moonlight,Tris-tran could see that the clothes he was laying out bore no manner of resemblance to the clothes that Tristran had removed earlier in the day.
In the village of Wall, men wore brown, and grey, and black; and even the reddest neckerchief worn by the ruddiest of farmers was soon faded by the sun and the rain to a more mannerly color. Tristran looked at the crimson and canary and russet cloth, at clothes which looked more like the costumes of traveling players or the contents of his cousin Joan’s charades chest, and said, “My clothes?”
“These are your clothes now,” said the little hairy man, proudly. “I traded ’em. This stuff’s better quality—see, it won’t rip and tear as easy—and it’s neither tattered nor torn, and withal, you’ll not stick out so much as a stranger. This is what people wears hereabouts, y’see.”
Tristran contemplated making the rest of his quest wrapped in a blanket, like a savage aboriginal from one of his schoolbooks. Then, with a sigh, he took off his boots, and let the blanket fall to the grass, and, with the little hairy man as his guide (“No, no, laddie, those go over that. Mercy, what do they teach them nowadays?”) he was soon dressed in his fine new clothes.
The new boots fit him better than the old ones ever had.
They certainly were fine new clothes. While clothes do not, as the saying would sometimes have it, make the man, and fine feathers do not make fine birds, sometimes they can add a certain spice to a recipe. And Tristran Thorn in crimson and canary was not the same man that Tristran Thorn in his overcoat and Sunday suit had been. There was a swagger to his steps, a jauntiness to his movements, that had not been there before. His chin went up instead of down, and there was a glint in his eye that he had not possessed when he had worn a bowler hat.
By the time they had eaten the meal the little hairy man had brought back with him from Revelry—which consisted of smoked trout, a bowl of fresh shelled peas, several small raisin-cakes, and a bottle of small beer—Tristran felt quite at home with his new garb.
“Now then,” said the little hairy man. “You’ve saved my life, laddie, back there in the serewood, and your father, he done me a good turn back before you was born, and let it never be said that I’m a cove what doesn’t pay his debts—” Tristran began to mutter something about how his friend had already done more than enough for him, but the little hairy man ignored him and continued. “—so I was a-ponderin’: you know where your star is, don’t you?”
Tristran pointed, without hesitation, to the dark horizon.
“Now then, how far is it, to your star? D’you know that?”
Tristran had not given the matter any thought, hitherto, but he found himself saying, “A man could walk, only stopping to sleep, while the moon waxed and waned above him a half a dozen times, crossing treacherous mountains and burning deserts, before he reached the place where the star has fallen.”
It did not sound like the kind of thing that he would say at all, and he blinked with surprise.
“As I thought,” said the little hairy man, approaching his burden and bending over it, so Tristran could not see how it unlocked. “And it’s not like you’re the only one’ll be lookin’ for it.You remember what I told you before?”
“About digging a hole to bury my dung in?”
“Not that.”
“About telling no one my true name, nor my destination?”
“Nor yet that.”
“Then what?”
“How many miles to Babylon?” recited the man.
“Oh.Yes.That.”
“Can I get there by candlelight? There and back again. Only it’s the candle-wax, you see. Most candles won’t do it. This one took a lot of findin’.” And he pulled out a candle-stub the size of a crabapple and handed it to Tristran.
Tristran could see nothing in any way out of the ordinary about the candle-stub. It was a wax candle, not tallow, and it was much used and melted. The wick was charred and black.
“What do I do with it?” he asked.
“All in good time,” said the little hairy man, and took something else from his pack. “Take this, too.You’ll need it.”
It glittered in the moonlight. Tristran took it; the little man’s gift seemed to be a thin silver chain, with a loop at each end. It was cold and slippery to the touch. “What is it?”
“The usual. Cat’s breath and fish-scales and moonlight on a mill-pond, melted and smithied and forged by the dwarfs. You’ll be needin’ it to bring your star back with you.”
“I will?”
“Oh, yes.” Tristran let the chain fall into his palm: it felt like quicksilver. “Where do I keep it? I have no pockets in these confounded clothes.”
“Wrap it around your wrist until you need it. Like that. There you go. But you’ve a pocket in your tunic, under there, see?”
Tristran found the concealed pocket. Above it there was a small buttonhole, and in the buttonhole he placed the snowdrop, the glass flower that his father had given him as a luck token when he had left Wall. He wondered whether it was in fact bringing him luck, and if it were, was it good luck or bad?
Tristran stood up. He held his leather bag tightly in his hand.
“Now then,” said the little hairy man. “This is what you got to do.Take up the candle in your right hand; I’ll light it for you. And then, walk to your star.You’ll use the chain to bring it back here. There’s not much wick left on the candle, so you’d best be snappy about it, and step lively—any dawdlin’ and you’ll regret it. Feet be nimble and light, yes?”
“I. . . I suppose so, yes,” said Tristran.
He stood expectantly. The little hairy man passed a hand over the candle, which lit with a flame yellow above and blue below.There was a gust of wind, but the flame did not flicker even the slightest bit.
Tristran took the candle in his hand, and he began to walk forward.The candlelight illuminated the world: every tree and bush and blade of grass.
With Tristran’s next step he was standing beside a lake, and the candlelight shone brightly on the water; and then he was walking through the mountains, through lonely crags, where the candlelight was reflected in the eyes of the creatures of the high snows; and then he was walking through the clouds, which, while not entirely substantial, still supported his weight in comfort; and then, holding tightly to his candle, he was underground, and the candlelight glinted back at him from the wet cave walls; now he was in the mountains once more; and then he was on a road through wild forest, and he glimpsed a chariot being pulled by two goats, being driven by a woman in a red dress who looked, for the glimpse he got of her, the way Boadicea was drawn in his history books; and another step and he was in a leafy glen, and he could hear the chuckle of water as it splashed and sang its way into a small brook.
He took another step, but he was still in the glen. There were high ferns, and elm trees, and foxgloves in abundance, and the moon had set in the sky. He held up the candle, looking for a fallen star, a rock, perhaps, or a jewel, but he saw nothing.
He heard something, though, under the babbling of the bro
ok: a sniffling, and a swallowing. The sound of someone trying not to cry.
“Hello?” said Tristran.
The sniffling stopped. But Tristran was certain he could see a light beneath a hazel tree, and he walked toward it.
“Excuse me,” he said, hoping to pacify whoever was sitting beneath the hazel tree, and praying that it was not more of the little people who had stolen his hat. “I’m looking for a star.”
In reply, a clod of wet earth flew out from under the tree, hitting Tristran on the side of the face. It stung a little, and fragments of earth fell down his collar and under his clothes.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said, loudly.
This time, as another clod of earth came hurtling toward him, he ducked out of the way, and it smashed into an elm tree behind him. He walked forward.
“Go away,” said a voice, all raw and gulping, as if it had just been crying, “just go away and leave me alone.”
She was sprawled, awkwardly, beneath the hazel tree, and she gazed up at Tristran with a scowl of complete unfriendliness. She hefted another clod of mud at him, menacingly, but did not throw it.
Her eyes were red and raw. Her hair was so fair it was almost white, her dress was of blue silk which shimmered in the candlelight. She glittered as she sat there. “Please don’t throw any more mud at me,” pleaded Tristran. “Look. I didn’t mean to disturb you. It’s just there’s a star fallen somewhere around here, and I have to get it back before the candle burns out.”
“I broke my leg,” said the young lady.
“I’m sorry, of course,” said Tristran. “But the star.”
“I broke my leg,” she told him sadly, “when I fell.” And with that, she heaved her lump of mud at him. Glittering dust fell from her arm, as it moved.
The clod of mud hit Tristran in the chest.
“Go away,” she sobbed, burying her face in her arms. “Go away and leave me alone.”
“You’re the star,” said Tristran, comprehension dawning.
“And you’re a clodpoll,” said the girl, bitterly, “and a ninny, a numbskull, a lackwit and a coxcomb!”
“Yes,” said Tristran. “I suppose I am at that.” And with that he unwound one end of the silver chain and slipped it around the girl’s slim wrist. He felt the loop of the chain tighten about his own.
She stared up at him, bitterly. “What,” she asked, in a voice that was suddenly beyond outrage, beyond hate, “do you think you are doing?”
“Taking you home with me,” said Tristran. “I made an oath.”
And at that the candle-stub guttered, violently, the last of the wick afloat in the pool of wax. For a moment the candle flame flared high, illuminating the glen, and the girl, and the chain, unbreakable, that ran from her wrist to his.
Then the candle went out.
Tristran stared at the star—at the girl—and, with all his might, managed to say nothing at all.
Can I get there by candlelight? he thought. There, and back again. But the candlelight was gone, and the village of Wall was six months’ hard travel from here.
“I just want you to know,” said the girl, coldly, “that whoever you are, and whatever you intend with me, I shall give you no aid of any kind, nor shall I assist you, and I shall do whatever is in my power to frustrate your plans and devices.” And then she added, with feeling, “Idiot.”
“Mm,” said Tristran. “Can you walk?”
“No,” she said. “My leg’s broken. Are you deaf, as well as stupid?”
“Do your kind sleep?” he asked her.
“Of course. But not at night. At night, we shine.”
“Well,” he said, “I’m going to try to get some sleep. I can’t think of anything else to do. It’s been a long day for me, what with everything. And maybe you should try to sleep, too. We’ve got a long way to go.”
The sky was beginning to lighten. Tristran put his head on his leather bag in the glen and did his best to ignore the insults and imprecations that came his way from the girl in the blue dress at the end of the chain.
He wondered what the little hairy man would do when Tristran did not return.
He wondered what Victoria Forester was doing at the moment and decided that she was probably asleep, in her bed, in her bedroom, in her father’s farmhouse.
He wondered whether six months was a long walk, and what they would eat on the way.
He wondered what stars ate
And then he was asleep.
“Dunderhead. Bumpkin. Dolt,” said the star.
And then she sighed and made herself as comfortable as she could under the circumstances.The pain from her leg was dull but continual. She tested the chain about her wrist, but it was tight and fast, and she could neither slip from it nor break it. “Cretinous, verminous oaf,” she muttered.
And then she, too, slept.
Chapter Five
In Which There is Much Fighting for the Crown
In the morning’s bright light the young lady seemed more human and less ethereal. She had said nothing since Tristran had woken.
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. He peeled the bark from a green branch and wound it around the upper fork of the Y.
They had had no breakfast yet, and Tristran was ravenous; his stomach rumbled as he worked. The star had said nothing about being hungry. Then again, she had done nothing at all but look at him, first reproachfully, and then with undisguised hatred.
He pulled the bark tight, then looped it under itself and tugged on it once more. “This is honestly nothing personal,” he said, to the woman and to the grove .With the full sunlight shining down she scarcely glittered at all, save for where the darkest shadows touched her.
The star ran one pale forefinger up and down the silver chain that went between them, tracing the line of it about her slim wrist, and made no reply.
“I did it for love,” he continued. “And you really are my only hope. Her name—that is, the name of my love—is Victoria. Victoria Forester. And she is the prettiest, wisest, sweetest girl in the whole wide world.” The girl broke her silence with a snort of derision. “And this wise, sweet creature sent you here to torture me?” she said.
“Well, not exactly. You see, she promised me anything I desired—be it her hand in marriage or her lips to kiss—were I to bring her the star that we saw fall the night before last. I had thought,” he confessed, “that a fallen star would probably look like a diamond or a rock. I certainly wasn’t expecting a lady.”
“So, having found a lady, could you not have come to her aid, or left her alone? Why drag her into your foolishness?”
“Love,” he explained.
She looked at him with eyes the blue of the sky. “I hope you choke on it,” she said, flatly.
“I won’t,” said Tristran, with more confidence and good cheer than he actually felt. “Here. Try this.” He passed her the crutch and, reaching down, tried to help her to her feet. His hands tingled, not unpleasantly, where his skin touched hers. She sat on the ground like a tree stump, making no effort to get up.
“I told you,” she said, “that I would do everything in my power to frustrate your plans and devices.” She looked around the grove. “How very bland this world does look by day. And how dull.”
“Just put your weight on me, and the rest on the crutch,” he said. “You’ll have to move sometime.” 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.
She gasped, then, in a hard intake of breath, and tumbled to the grass, where she lay with her face contorted, making small noises of pain. Tristran knelt down beside her. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Her blue eyes flashed, but they were swimming with tears. “My leg. I can’t stand on it. It must really be broken.” Her skin had gone as w
hite as a cloud, and she was shivering.
“I’m sorry,” said Tristran, uselessly. “I can make you a splint. I’ve done it for sheep. It’ll be all right.” He squeezed her hand, and then he went to the brook and dipped his handkerchief in it and gave it to the star to wipe her forehead.
He split more fallen wood with his knife. Then he removed his jerkin, and took off his shirt, which he proceeded to tear into strips which he used to bind the sticks, as firmly as he could, about her injured leg. The star made no sounds while he did this, although, when he pulled the last knot tight, he thought he heard her whimper to herself.
“Really,” he told her, “we ought to get you to a proper doctor. I’m not a surgeon or anything.”
“No?” she said dryly. “You astonish me.”
He let her rest for a little, in the sun. And then he said, “Better try again, I suppose,” and he raised her to her feet.
They left the glade at a hobble, the star leaning heavily on her crutch and on Tristran’s arm, wincing at every step. And every time she winced or flinched Tristran felt guilty and awkward, but he calmed himself by thinking of Victoria Forester’s grey eyes. They followed a deer path through the hazel-wood, while Tristran—who had decided that the right thing to do was to make conversation with the star—asked how long she had been a star, whether it was enjoyable to be a star and whether all stars were women, and informed her that he had always supposed stars to be, as Mrs. Cherry had taught them, flaming balls of burning gas many hundreds of miles across, just like the sun only further away.
To all of these questions and statements she made no answer.
“So why did you fall?” he asked. “Did you trip over something?”
She stopped moving, and turned, and stared at him, as if she were examining something quite unpleasant a very long way away.
“I did not trip,” she said at length. “I was hit. By this.” She reached into her dress and pulled out a large yellowish stone, which dangled from two lengths of silver chain. “There’s a bruise on my side where it hit me and knocked me from the sky. And now I am obligated to carry it about with me.”