Stardust (8 page)

“Now that you mention it, I am a bit cold, yes.”

“Look around you. Can you see a path?” Tristran blinked. The grey wood soaked up light and color and distance. He had thought they were following a path, but now that he tried to see the path, it shimmered, and vanished, like an optical illusion. He had taken
that
tree, and
that
tree, and
that
rock as markers of the path . . . but there was no path, only the mirk, and the twilight, and the pale trees. “Now we’re for it,” said the hairy man, in a small voice.

“Should we run?” Tristran removed his bowler hat, and held it in front of him.

The little man shook his head. “Not much point,” he said. “We’ve walked into the trap, and we’ll still be in it even if we runs.”

He walked over to the nearest tree, a tall, pale, birchlike tree trunk, and kicked it, hard. Some dry leaves fell, and then something white tumbled from the branches to the earth with a dry, whispering sound.

Tristran walked over to it and looked down; it was the skeleton of a bird, clean and white and dry.

The little man shivered. “I could castle,” he told Tristran, “but there’s no one I could castle with’d be any better off here than we are.... There’s no escape by flying, not judgin’ by
that
thing.” He nudged the skeleton with one pawlike foot. “And your sort of people never could learn to burrow—not that that’d do us much good....”

“Perhaps we could arm ourselves,” said Tristran.

“Arm ourselves?”

“Before they come.”

“Before they
come?
Why—they’re
here
, you puddenhead. It’s the trees themselves.We’re in a serewood.”

“Serewood?”

“It’s me own fault—I should’ve been paying more attention to where we was goin’. Now you’ll never get your star, and I’ll never get my merchandise. One day some other poor bugger lost in the wood’ll find our skellingtons picked clean as whistles and that’ll be that.”

Tristran stared about him. In the gloom it seemed that the trees were crowding about more thickly, although he had seen nothing actually move. He wondered if the little man were being foolish, or imagining things.

Something stung his left hand. He slapped at it, expecting to see an insect. He looked down to see a pale yellow leaf. It fell to the ground with a rustle. On the back of his hand, a veining of red, wet blood welled up. The wood whispered about them.

“Is there anything we can do?”Tristran asked.

“Nothing I can think of. If only we knew where the true path was . . . even a serewood couldn’t destroy the true path. Just hide it from us, lure us off of it....” The little man shrugged, and sighed.

Tristran reached his hand up and rubbed his forehead.

“I . . . I
do
know where the path is,” he said. He pointed. “It’s down that way.”

The little man’s bead-black eyes glittered. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir. Through that copse and up a little way to the right. That’s where the path is.”

“How do you know?” asked the man.

“I
know
,” replied Tristran.

“Right. Come on!” And the little man took his burden and ran, slowly enough that Tristran, his leather bag swinging and banging against his legs, his heart pounding, his breath coming in gasps, was able to keep up.

“No! Not that way. Over to the left!” shouted Tristran. Branches and thorns ripped and tore at his clothes. They ran on in silence.

The trees seemed to have arranged themselves into a wall. Leaves fell around them in flurries, stinging and smarting when they touched Tristran’s skin, cutting and slicing at his clothes. He clambered up the hill, swiping at the leaves with his free hand, swatting at the twigs and branches with his bag.

The silence was broken by something wailing. It was the little hairy man. He had stopped dead where he stood, and, his head thrown back, had begun to howl at the sky.

“Buck up,” said Tristran. “We’re nearly there.” He grasped the little hairy man’s free hand in his own larger hand and pulled him forward.

And then they were standing on the true path: a swath of green sward running through the grey wood. “Are we safe here?” asked Tristran, panting, and looking about apprehensively.

“We’re safe, as long as we stay on the path,” said the little hairy man, and he put down his burden, sat down on the grass of the path and stared at the trees about them.

The pale trees shook, although no wind blew, and it seemed to Tristran that they shook in anger.

His companion had begun to shudder, his hairy fingers raking and stroking the green grass. Then he looked up at Tristran. “I don’t suppose you have such a thing as a bottle of something spirituous upon you? Or perchance a pot of hot, sweet tea?”

“No,” said Tristran, “ ’fraid not.”

The little man sniffed and fumbled at the lock of his huge package. “Turn round,” he said to Tristran. “No peekin’.”

Tristran turned away.

There was a rummaging, scuffling noise. Then the sound of a lock clicking shut, and then, “You can turn around, if you like.” The little man was holding an enamel bottle. He was tugging, vainly, at the stopper.

“Um. Would you like me to help you with that?” Tristran hoped the little hairy man would not be offended by his request. He should not have worried; his companion thrust the bottle into his hands.

“Here go,” he said. “You’ve got the fingers for it.”

Tristran tugged and pulled out the stopper of the bottle.

He could smell something intoxicating, like honey mixed with wood smoke and cloves. He passed the bottle back to the little man.

“It’s a crime to drink something as rare and good as this out of the bottle,” said the little hairy man. He untied the little wooden cup from his belt and, trembling, poured a small amount of an amber-colored liquid into it. He sniffed it, then sipped it, then he smiled, with small, sharp teeth.

“Aaaahhhh.That’s better.”

He passed the cup to Tristran.

“Sip it slowly,” he said. “It’s worth a king’s ransom, this bottle. It cost me two large blue-white diamonds, a mechanical bluebird which sang, and a dragon’s scale.”

Tristran sipped the drink. It warmed him down to his toes and made him feel like his head was filled with tiny bubbles.

“Good, eh?”

Tristran nodded.

“Too good for the likes of you and me, I’m afraid. Still. It hits the spot in times of trouble, of which this is certainly one. Let’s get out of this wood,” said the little hairy man. “Which way, though....?”

“That way,” said Tristran, pointing to their left.

The little man stoppered and pocketed the little bottle, shouldered his pack, and the two of them walked together down the green path through the grey wood.

After several hours, the white trees began to thin, and then they were through the serewood and walking between two low rough-stone walls, along a high bank. When Tristran looked back the way they had come there was no sign of any wood at all; the way behind them was purple-headed, heathery hills.

“We can stop here,” said his companion. “There’s stuff we needs to talk about. Sit down.”

He put down his enormous bag and climbed on top of it, so he was looking down at Tristran, who sat on a rock beside the road. “There’s something here I’m not properly gettin’. Now, tell me.Where are you from?”

“Wall,” said Tristran. “I
told
you.”

“Who’s your father and mother?”

“My father’s name is Dunstan Thorn. My mother is Daisy Thorn.”

“Mmm. Dunstan Thorn . . . Mm. I met your father once. He put me up for the night. Not a bad chap, although he doesn’t half go on a bit while a fellow’s trying to get a little kip.” He scratched his muzzle. “Still doesn’t explain . . . there isn’t anythin’
unusual
in your family, is there?”

“My sister, Louisa, can wiggle her ears.” The little hairy man wiggled his own large, hairy ears, dismissively. “No, that’s not it,” he said. “I was thinkin’ more of a grandmother who was a famous enchantress, or an uncle who was a prominent warlock, or a brace of fairies somewhere in the family tree.”

“None that I know of,” admitted Tristran.

The little man changed his tack. “Where’s the village of Wall?” he asked. Tristran pointed. “Where are the Debatable Hills?” Tristran pointed once more, without hesitation. “Where’s the Catavarian Isles?”Tristran pointed to the southwest. He had not known there
were
Debatable Hills, or Catavarian Isles until the little man had mentioned them, but he was as certain in himself of their location as he was of the whereabouts of his own left foot or the nose on his face.

“Hmm. Now thens. Do you know where His Vastness the Freemartin Muskish is?”

Tristran shook his head.

“D’you know where His Vastness the Freemartin Muskish’s Transluminary Citadel is?”

Tristran pointed, with certainty.

“And what of Paris? The one in France?”

Tristran thought for a moment. “Well, if Wall’s over there, I suppose that Paris must be sort of in the same sort of direction, mustn’t it.”

“Let’s see,” said the little hairy man, talking to himself as much as to Tristran. “You can find places in Faerie, but not in your world, save for Wall, and that’s a boundary.You can’t find people . . . but . . . tell me, lad, can you find this star you’re lookin’ for?”

Tristran pointed, immediately. “It’s that way,” he said.

“Hmm. That’s good. But it still doesn’t explain nuffink. You hungry?”

“A bit. And I’m tattered and torn,” said Tristran, fingering the huge holes in his trousers, and in his coat, where the branches and the thorns had seized at him, and the leaves had cut at him as he ran. “And look at my boots . . .”

“What’s in your bag?”

Tristran opened his Gladstone bag. “Apples. Cheese. Half a cottage loaf. And a pot of fishpaste. My penknife. I’ve got a change of underwear, and a couple of pairs of woolen socks. I suppose I should have brought more clothes....”

“Keep the fishpaste,” said his traveling companion, and he rapidly divided the remaining food into two equal piles.

“You done me a good turn,” he said, munching a crisp apple, “and I doesn’t forget something like that. First we’ll get your clothes took care of, and then we’ll send you off after your star.Yus?”

“That’s extremely kind of you,” said Tristran, nervously, slicing his cheese onto his crust of bread.

“Right,” said the little hairy man. “Let’s find you a blanket.”

A
t dawn three lords of Stormhold rode down the craggy mountain road in a coach pulled by six black horses.The horses wore bobbing black plumes, the coach was fresh painted in black, and each of the lords of Stormhold was dressed in mourning.

In the case of Primus, this took the shape of a long, black, monkish robe; Tertius was dressed in the sober costume of a merchant in mourning, while Septimus wore a black doublet and hose, a black hat with a black feather in it, and looked for all the world like a foppish assassin from a minor Elizabethan historical play.

The lords of Stormhold eyed each other, one cautious, one wary, one blank. They said nothing: had alliances been possible, Tertius might have sided with Primus against Septi-mus. But there were no alliances that could be made.

The carriage clattered and shook.

Once, it stopped, for each of the three lords to relieve himself. Then it clattered on down the hilly road. Together, the three lords of Stormhold had placed their father’s remains in the Hall of Ancestors. Their dead brothers had watched them from the doors of the hall, but had said nothing.

Toward evening, the coachman called out, “Nottaway!” and he reined his team outside a tumbledown inn, built against what resembled the ruins of a giant’s cottage.

The three lords of Stormhold got out of the coach and stretched their cramped legs. Faces peered at them through the bottle-glass windows of the inn.

The innkeeper, who was a choleric gnome of poor disposition, looked out of the door. “We’ll need beds aired and a pot of mutton stew on the fire,” he called.

“How many beds to be aired?” asked Letitia the chambermaid, from the stairwell.

“Three,” said the gnome. “I’ll wager they’ll have their coachman sleep with the horses.”

“Three indeed,” whispered Tilly, the pot-girl, to Lacey, the ostler, “when anyone could see a full seven of those fine gentlemen standing in the road.”

But when the lords of Stormhold entered there were but three of them, and they announced that their coachman would sleep in the stables.

Dinner was mutton stew, and bread loaves so hot and fresh they exhaled steam as they were cracked open, and each of the lords took an unopened bottle of the finest Baragun-dian wine (for none of the lords would share a bottle with his fellows, nor even permit the wine to be poured from the bottle into a goblet).This scandalized the gnome, who was of the opinion—
not
, however, uttered in the hearing of his guests—that the wine should be permitted to breathe.

Their coachman ate his bowl of stew, and drank two pots of ale, and went to sleep in the stables. The three brothers went to their respective rooms and barred the doors.

Tertius had slipped a silver coin to Letitia the chambermaid when she had brought him the warming-pan for his bed, so he was not surprised at all when, shortly before midnight, there came a tap-tapping on his door.