Neil Gaiman - Stardust

“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 Mus-kish’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.”

At 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 Septimus. 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 Baragundian 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.

She wore a one-piece white chemise, and curtsied to him as he opened the door, and smiled, shyly. She held a bottle of wine in her hand.