my true love. I am certain you would do a remarkable job of keeping off the rain, were it to rain,
but it is not, at present, raining...”
The tree rustled. “Why don’t you tell me your story so far,” said the tree, “and let me be the
best judge of whether or not I can be of help.”
Tristran began to protest. He could feel the star moving further and further away from him, at
the speed of a cantering unicorn, and if there was one thing he did not have time for, it was the
recitation of the adventures of his life to date. But then it occurred to him that any progress he
had made on his quest so far he had made by accepting the help that had been offered to him. So
he sat on the woodland floor and he told the copper beech everything he could think of: about his
love, pure and true, for Victoria Forester; his promise to bring her a fallen star—not any fallen star,
but the one they had seen, together, from the top of Dyties Hill; and of his journey into Faerie. He
told the tree of his journeyings, of the little hairy man and of the small fair folk who stole his
bowler hat; he told her of the magic candle, and his walk across the leagues to the star’s side in
the glade, and of the lion and the unicorn, and of how he had lost the star.
He finished his story, and there was silence. The copper leaves on the tree shivered, softly, as if
in a gentle wind, and then harder, as if a storm were coming. And then the leaves formed a fierce,
low voice, which said, “If you had kept her chained, and she had escaped her chains, then there is
no power on earth or sky could ever make me help you, not if Great Pan or Lady Sylvia herself were
to plead or implore me. But you unchained her, and for that I will help you.”
“Thank you,” said Tristran.
“I will tell you three true things. Two of them I will tell you now, and the last is for when you
need it most. You will have to judge for yourself when that will be.
“First, the star is in great danger. What occurs in the midst of a wood is soon known at its
furthest borders, and the trees talk to the wind, and the wind passes the word along to the next
wood it comes to. There are forces that mean her harm, and worse than harm. You must find her,
and protect her.
“Secondly, there is a path through the forest, off past that fir tree (and I could tell you things
about that fir tree that would make a boulder blush), and in a few minutes a carriage will be
coming down that path. Hurry, and you will not miss it.
“And thirdly, hold out your hands.”
Tristran held out his hands. From high above him a copper-colored leaf came falling slowly,
spinning and gliding and tumbling down. It landed neatly in the palm of his right hand.
“There,” said the tree. “Keep it safe. And listen to it, when you need it most. Now,” she told
him, “the coach is nearly here. Run! Run!”
Tristran picked up his bag and he ran, fumbling the leaf into the pocket of his tunic as he did
so. He could hear hoof-beats through the glade, coming closer and closer. He knew that he could
not reach it in time, despaired of reaching it, but still he ran faster, until all he could hear was his
heart pounding in his chest and his ears, and the hiss of air as he pulled it into his lungs. He
scrambled and dashed through the bracken and made it to the path as the carriage came down the
track.
It was a black coach drawn by four night-black horses, driven by a pale fellow in a long black
robe. It was twenty paces from Tristran. He stood there, gulping breath, and then he tried to call
out, but his throat was dry, and his wind was gone, and his voice came from him in a dry sort of
croaking whisper. He tried to shout, and simply wheezed.
The carriage passed him by without slowing.
Tristran sat on the ground and caught his breath. Then, afraid for the star, he got back to his
feet and walked, as fast as he could manage, along the forest path. He had not walked for more
than ten minutes when he came upon the black coach. A huge branch, itself as big as some trees,
had fallen from an oak tree onto the path directly in front of the horses, and the driver, who was
also the coach’s sole occupant, was endeavoring to lift it out of the way.
“Damnedest thing,” said the coachman, who wore a long black robe and who Tristran estimated
to be in his late forties, “there was no wind, no storm. It simply fell. Terrified the horses.” His
voice was deep and booming.
Tristran and the driver unhitched the horses, and roped them to the oak branch. Then the two
men pushed, and the STAR; four horses pulled, and together they dragged the branch to the side of
the track. Tristran said a silent thank you to the oak tree whose branch had fallen, to the copper
beech and to Pan of the forests, and then he asked the driver if he would give him a ride through
the forest.
“I do not take passengers,” said the driver, rubbing his bearded chin.
“Of course,” said Tristran. “But without me you would still be stuck here. Surely Providence
sent you to me, just as Providence sent me to you. I will not take you out of your path, and there
may again come a time when you are glad of another pair of hands.”
The coach driver looked Tristran over from his head to his feet. Then he reached into the velvet
bag that hung from his belt, and removed a handful of square red granite tiles.
“Pick one,” he said to Tristran.
Tristran picked a stone tile, and showed the symbol carved upon it to the man. “Hmm,” was all
the driver said. “Now pick another.” Tristran did so. “And another.” The man rubbed his chin once
more. “Yes, you can come with me,” he said. “The runes seem certain of that. Although there will
be danger. But perhaps there will be more fallen branches to move. You can sit up front, if you
wish, on the driver’s seat beside me, and keep me company.”
It was a peculiar thing, observed Tristran as he climbed up into the driver’s seat, but the first
time he had glanced into the interior of the coach he had fancied that he saw five pale gentlemen,
all in grey, staring sadly out at him. But the next time he had looked inside, nobody had been there
at all.
The carriage rattled and pounded over the grassy track beneath a golden-green canopy of
leaves. Tristran worried about the star. She might be ill-tempered, he thought, but it was with a
certain amount of justification, after all. He hoped that she could stay out of trouble until he
caught up with her.
It was sometimes said that the grey-and-black mountain range which ran like a spine north to
south down that part of Faerie had once been a giant, who grew so huge and so heavy that, one
day, worn out from the sheer effort of moving and living, he had stretched out on the plain and
fallen into a sleep so profound that centuries passed between heartbeats. This would have been a
long time ago, if it ever happened, in the First Age of the world, when all was stone and fire, water
and wind, and there were few left alive to put the lie to it if it was not true. Still, true or not, they
called the four great mountains of the range Mount Head, Mount Shoulder, Mount Belly and Mount
Knees, and the foothills to the south were known as the Feet. There were passes through the
mountains, one between the head and the shoulders, where the neck would have been, and one
immediately to the south of Mount Belly.
They were wild mountains, inhabited by wild creatures: slate-colored trolls, hairy wild-men,
strayed wodwos, mountain goats and mining gnomes, hermits and exiles and the occasional peak-
witch. This was not one of the really high mountain ranges of Faerie, such as Mount Huon, on the
top of which is the Stormhold. But it was a hard range for lone travelers to cross nonetheless.
The witch-queen had crossed the pass south of Mount Belly in a couple of days, and now waited
at the opening of the pass. Her goats were tethered to a thorn bush, which they chewed without
enthusiasm. She sat on the side of the unhitched chariot and sharpened her knives with a whet-
stone.
The knives were old things: the hilts were made of bone, while the blades were chipped,
volcanic glass, black as jet, with white snowflake-shapes frozen forever into the obsidian. There
were two knives: the smaller, a hatchet-bladed cleaver, heavy and hard, for cutting through the rib
cage, for jointing and segmenting; the other a long, daggerlike blade, for cutting out the heart.
When the knives were so sharp that she could have drawn either blade across your throat, and you
would never have felt more than the touch of the lightest hair, as the spreading warmth of your
life’s blood made a quiet escape, the witch-queen put them away and commenced her prepa-
rations.
She walked over to the goats and whispered a word of power to each of them.
Where the goats had been stood a man with a white chin-beard, and a boyish, dull-eyed young
woman. They said nothing.
She crouched beside her chariot, and whispered several words to it. The chariot did nothing,
and the witch-woman stamped her foot on the rock.
“I am getting old,” she said to her two servants. They said nothing in reply, gave no indication
that they even understood her. “Things inanimate have always been more difficult to change than
things animate. Their souls are older and stupider and harder to persuade. If I but had my true
youth again... why, in the dawn of the world I could transform mountains into seas and clouds into
palaces. I could populate cities with the pebbles on the shingle. If I were young again ...”
She sighed and raised a hand: a blue flame flickered about her fingers for a moment, and then,
as she lowered her hand and bent down to touch her chariot, the fire vanished.
She stood up straight. There were streaks of grey now in her raven-black hair, and dark pouches
beneath her eyes; but the chariot was gone, and she stood in front of a small inn at the edge of the
mountain pass.
Far away the thunder rumbled, quietly, and lightning flickered in the distance.
The inn sign swung and creaked in the wind. There was a picture of a chariot painted upon it.
“You two,” said the witch-woman, “inside. She is riding this way, and she will have to come
through this pass. Now I simply have to ensure that she will come inside. You,” she said to the man
with the white chin-beard, “are Billy, the owner of this tavern. I shall be your wife, and this,”
pointing to the dull-eyed girl, who had once been Brevis, “is our daughter, the pot-maid.”
Another crash of thunder echoed down from the mountain peaks, louder than before.
“It will rain soon,” said the witch-woman. “Let us prepare the fire.”
Tristran could feel the star ahead of them, moving steadily onward. He felt as if he were
gaining ground upon her.
And, to his relief, the black carriage continued to follow the star’s path. Once, when the road
diverged, Tristran was concerned that they might take the wrong fork. He was ready to leave the
coach and travel on alone, if that should happen.
His companion reined in the horses, clambered down from the driver’s seat, and took out his
runes. Then, his consultation complete, he climbed back up, and took the carriage down the left-
hand fork.
“If it is not too forward of me to enquire,” said Tristran, “might I ask what it is that you are in
search of?”
“My destiny,” said the man, after a short pause. “My right to rule. And you?”
“There’s a young lady that I have offended with my behavior,” said Tristran. “I wish to make
amends.” As he said it, he knew it to be true.
The driver grunted.
The forest canopy was thinning rapidly. Trees became sparser, and Tristran stared up at the
mountains in front of them, and he gasped. “Such mountains!” he said.
“When you are older,” said his companion, “you must visit my citadel, high on the crags of
Mount Huon. Now that is a mountain, and from there we can look down upon mountains next to
which these” and he gestured toward the heights of Mount Belly, ahead of them, “are the merest
foothills.”
“Truth to tell,” said Tristran, “I hope to spend the rest of my life as a sheep farmer in the
village of Wall, for I have now had as much excitement as any man could rightly need, what with
candles and trees and the young lady and the unicorn. But I take the invitation in the spirit in
which it was given, and thank you for it. If ever you visit Wall then you must come to my house,
and I shall give you woolen clothes and sheep-cheese, and all the mutton stew you can eat.”
“You are far too kind,” said the driver. The path was easier now, made of crushed gravel and
graded rocks, and he cracked his whip to urge the four black stallions on faster. “You saw a
unicorn, you say?”
Tristran was about to tell his companion all about the encounter with the unicorn, but he
thought better of it, and simply said, “He was a most noble beast.”
“The unicorns are the moon’s creatures,” said the driver. “I have never seen one. But it is said
that they serve the moon and do her bidding. We shall reach the mountains by tomorrow evening. I
shall call a halt at sunset tonight. If you wish, you may sleep inside the coach; I, myself, shall sleep
beside the fire.” There was no change in his tone of voice, but Tristran knew, with a certainty that
was both sudden and shocking in its intensity, that the man was scared of something, frightened to
the depths of his soul.
Lightning flickered on the mountaintops that night. Tristran slept on the leather seat of the
coach, his head on a sack of oats; he dreamed of ghosts, and of the moon and stars.
The rain began at dawn, abruptly, as if the sky had turned to water. Low, grey clouds hid the
mountains from sight. In the driving rain Tristran and the coach driver hitched the horses to the
carriage and set off. It was all uphill, now, and the horses went no faster than a walk.
“You could go inside,” said the driver. “No point in us both getting wet.” They had put on one-
piece oilskins they had found beneath the driver’s seat.
“It would be hard for me to be wetter,” said Tristran, “without my first leaping into a river. I
shall stay here. Two pairs of eyes and two pairs of hands may well be the saving of us.”
