blue, her hair as golden-white, and—as the free citizens of the Stormhold would have occasional
cause to discover—her temper as quick to flare as on the day that Tristran first encountered her in
the glade beside the pool.
She walks with a limp to this day, although no one in the Stormhold would ever remark upon it,
any more than they dare remark upon the way she glitters and shines, upon occasion, in the
darkness.
They say that each night, when the duties of state permit, she climbs, on foot, and limps,
alone, to the highest peak of the palace, where she stands for hour after hour, seeming not to
notice the cold peak winds. She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and
watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, my thanks to Charles Vess. He is the nearest thing we have today to the
great Victorian fairy painters, and without his art as an inspiration none of these words would
exist. Every time I finished a chapter I phoned him up and read it to him, and he listened patiently
and he chuckled in all the right places.
My thanks to Jenny Lee, Karen Berger, Paul Levitz, Mer-rilee Heifetz, Lou Aronica, Jennifer
Hershey and Tia Maggini: each of them helped make this book a reality.
I owe an enormous debt to Hope Mirrlees, Lord Dunsany, James Branch Cabell and C.S. Lewis,
wherever they may currently be, for showing me that fairy stories were for adults too.
Tori lent me a house, and I wrote the first chapter in it, and all she asked in exchange was that
I make her a tree.
There were people who read it as it was being written, and who told me what I was doing right
and what I was doing wrong. It’s not their fault if I didn’t listen. My thanks in particular to Amy
Horsting, Lisa Henson, Diana Wynne Jones, Chris Bell and Susanna Clarke.
My wife Mary and my assistant Lorraine did more than their share of work on this book, for they
typed the first few chapters from my handwritten draft, and I cannot thank them enough.
The kids, to be frank, were absolutely no help at all, and I truly don’t think I’d ever have it any
other way.
Neil Gaiman, June 1998
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