“Did they, indeed?” The little hairy man was laying a variety of clothes out upon the grass. Even
in the moonlight, Tristran 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 stuffs
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 daw-dlin’ 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 brook: 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
