The little creature hurried back down the path. “Some-thin’ wrong?” he asked.
“I cannot keep up,” confessed Tristran. “You walk so confoundedly fast.”
The little hairy man slowed his pace. “Beg your puddin’,” he said, as Tristran stumbled after
him. “Bein’ on me own so much, I gets used to settin’ me own pace.”
They walked side by side, in the golden-green light of the sun through the newly opened leaves.
It was a quality of light Tristran had observed, unique to springtime. He wondered if they had left
summer as far behind as October. From time to time Tristran would remark on a flash of color in a
tree or bush, and the little hairy man would say something like, “Kingfisher. Mr. Halcyon they used
to call him. Pretty bird,” or “Purple hummingbird. Drinks nectar from flowers. Hovers,” or
“Redcap. They’ll keep their distance, but don’t you go scrutinizin’ ‘em or looking for trouble, ‘cos
you’ll find it with those buggers.”
They sat beside a brook to eat their lunch. Tristran produced the cottage loaf, the ripe, red
apples, and round of cheese—hard, tart and crumbly—that his mother had given him. And although
the little man eyed them both suspiciously, he wolfed them down and licked the crumbs of bread
and cheese from his fingers, and munched noisily on the apple. Then he filled a kettle from the
brook, and boiled it up for tea.
“Suppose you tell me what you’re about?” said the little hairy man as they sat on the ground
and drank their tea.
Tristran thought for some moments, and then he said, “I come from the village of Wall, where
there lives a young lady named Victoria Forester, who is without peer among women, and it is to
her, and to her alone, that I have given my heart. Her face is—”
“Usual complement of bits?” asked the little creature. “Eyes? Nose? Teeth? All the usual?”
“Of course.”
“Well then, you can skip that stuff,” said the little hairy man. “We’ll take it all as said. So what
damn-fool silly thing has this young lady got you a-doin’ of?”
Tristran put down his wooden cup of tea, and stood up, offended.
“What,” he asked, in what he was certain were lofty and scornful tones, “would possibly make
you imagine that my lady-love would have sent me on some foolish errand?”
The little man stared up at him with eyes like beads of jet. “Because that’s the only reason a
lad like you would be stupid enough to cross the border into Faerie. The only ones who ever come
here from your lands are the minstrels, and the lovers, and the mad. And you don’t look like much
of a minstrel, and you’re—pardon me saying so, lad, but it’s true— ordinary as cheese-crumbs. So
it’s love, if you ask me.”
“Because,” announced Tristran, “every lover is in his heart a madman, and in his head a
minstrel.”
“Really?” said the little man, doubtfully. “I’d never noticed. So there’s some young lady. Has
she sent you here to seek your fortune? That used to be very popular. You’d get young fellers
wanderin’ all over, looking for the hoard of gold that some poor wyrm or ogre had taken absolute
centuries to accumulate.”
“No. Not my fortune. It was more of a promise I made to this lady I mentioned. I... we were
talking, and I was promising her things, and we saw this falling star, and I promised to bring it to
her. And it fell...” he waved an arm toward a mountain range somewhere in the general direction
of the sunrise “... over there.”
The little hairy man scratched his chin. Or his muzzle; it might well have been his muzzle. “You
know what I would do?”
“No,” said Tristran, hope rising within him, “what?”
The little man wiped his nose. “I’d tell her to go shove her face in the pig pen, and go out and
find another one who’ll kiss you without askin’ for the earth. You’re bound to find one. You can
hardly throw half a brick back in the lands you come from without hittin’ one.”
“There are no other girls,” said Tristran confidently.
The little man sniffed, and they packed up their things and walked on together.
“Did you mean it?” said the little man. “About the fallen star?”
“Yes,” said Tristran.
“Well, I’d not mention it about if I were you,” said the little man. “There’s those as would be
unhealthily interested in such information. Better keep mum. But never lie.”
“So what should I say?”
“Well,” he said, “f’r example, if they ask where you’ve come from, you could say ‘Behind me,’
and if they asked where you’re going, you’d say ‘In front of me.’ “
“I see,” said Tristran.
The path they were walking became harder to discern. A cold breeze ruffled Tristran’s hair, and
he shivered. The path led them into a grey wood of thin, pale birch trees.
“Do you think it will be far?” asked Tristran. “To the star?”
“How many miles to Babylon?” said the little man rhetorically. “This wood wasn’t here, last
time I was by this way,” he added.
“How Many Miles to Babylon,” recited Tristran, to himself, as they walked through the grey
wood.
“Three score miles and ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
Yes, and back again.
Yes, if your feet are nimble and light,
You can get there by candlelight.”
“That’s the one,” said the little hairy man, his head questing from side to side as if he were
preoccupied, or a little nervous.
“It’s only a nursery rhyme,” said Tristran.
“Only a nursery... ? Bless me, there’s some on this side of the wall would give seven years’ hard
toil for that little cantrip. And back where you come from you mutter ‘em to babes alongside of a
‘Rock-a-Bye-Baby’ or a ‘Rub-a-Dub-Dub,’ without a second thought... Are you chilled, lad?”
“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?”
