Neil Gaiman - Stardust

“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.”

His companion grunted. He wiped the rain from his eyes and mouth with a cold wet hand, and then he said, “You’re a fool, boy. But I appreciate it.” He transferred the reins to his left hand, and extended his right hand. “I am known as Primus. The Lord Primus.”

“Tristran. Tristran Thorn,” he said, feeling that the man had, somehow, earned the right to know his true name.

They shook hands. The rain fell harder. The horses slowed to the slowest walk as the path became a stream, and the heavy rain cut off all vision as effectively as the thickest fog.

“There is a man,” said the Lord Primus, shouting to be heard now over the rain, the wind whipping the words from his lips. “He is tall, looks a little like me, but thinner, more crowlike. His eyes seem innocent and dull, but there is death in them. He is called Septimus, for he was the seventh boy-child our father spawned. If ever you see him, run and hide. His business is with me. But he will not hesitate to kill you if you stand in his way, or, perhaps, to make you his instrument with which to kill me.”

A wild gust of wind drove a tankardful of rainwater down Tristran’s neck.

“He sounds a most dangerous man,” said Tristran.

“He is the most dangerous man you will ever meet.”

Tristran peered silently into the rain, and the gathering darkness. It was becoming harder to see the road. Primus spoke again, saying, “If you ask me, there is something unnatural about this storm.”

“Unnatural?”

“Or more-than-natural; super-natural, if you will. I hope there is an inn along the way. The horses need a rest, and I could do with a dry bed and a warm fire. And a good meal.”

Tristran shouted his agreement. They sat together, getting wetter. Tristran thought about the star and the unicorn. She would be cold by now, and wet. He worried about her broken leg, and thought about how saddle sore she must be. It was all his fault. He felt wretched.

“I am the most miserable person who ever lived,” he said to the Lord Primus, when they stopped to feed the horses feedbags of damp oats.

“You are young, and in love,” said Primus. “Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.”

Tristran wondered how Lord Primus could have divined the existence of Victoria Forester. He imagined himself recounting his adventures to her, back at Wall, in front of a blazing parlor fire; but somehow all of his tales seemed a little flat.

Dusk seemed to have started at dawn that day, and now the sky was almost black. Their path continued to climb. The rain would let up for moments, and then redouble, falling harder than ever.

“Is that a light over there?” asked Tristran.

“I cannot see anything. Maybe it was fool’s fire, or lightning …” said Primus. And then they gained a bend in the road, and he said, “I was wrong. That is a light. Well-spotted, young ‘un. But there are bad things in these mountains. We must only hope that they are friendly.”

The horses put on a fresh burst of speed, now that their destination was in sight. A flash of lightning revealed the mountains, rising steeply up on either side of them.

“We’re in luck!” said Primus, his bass voice booming like thunder. “It’s an inn!”

The star had been soaked to the skin when she arrived at the pass, sad and shivering. She was worried about the unicorn; they had found no food for it on the last day’s journey, as the grasses and ferns of the forest had been replaced by grey rocks and stunted thorn bushes. The unicorn’s unshod hooves were not meant for the rocky road, nor was its back meant to carry riders, and its pace became slower and slower.

As they traveled, the star cursed the day she had fallen to this wet, unfriendly world. It had seemed so gentle and welcoming when seen from high in the sky. That was before. Now, she hated everything about it, except the unicorn; and, saddle sore and uncomfortable, she would have even happily spent time away from the unicorn.

After a day of pelting rain, the lights of the inn were the most welcoming sight she had seen in her time on the Earth. “Watch your step, watch your step,” pattered the raindrops on the stone. The unicorn stopped, fifty yards from the inn, and would approach no closer. The door to the inn was opened, flooding the grey world with warm yellow light.

“Hello there, dearie,” called a welcoming voice from the open doorway.

The star stroked the unicorn’s wet neck and spoke softly to the animal, but it made no move, stood there frozen in the light of the inn like a pale ghost.

“Will you be coming in, dearie? Or will you be stopping out there in the rain?” The woman’s friendly voice warmed the star, soothed her: just the right mixture of practicality and concern. “We can get you food, if it’s food you’re after. There’s a fire blazing in the hearth, and enough hot water for a tub that’ll melt the chill from your bones.”

“I… I will need help coming in…” said the star. “My leg…”

“Ach, poor mite,” said the woman. “I’ll have my husband Billy carry you inside. There’s hay and fresh water in the stables, for your beast.”

The unicorn looked about wildly as the woman approached. “There, there, dearie. I won’t be coming too close. After all, it’s been many a long year since I was maiden enough to touch a unicorn, and many a long year since such a one was seen in these parts …”

Nervously, the unicorn followed the woman into the stables, keeping its distance from her. It walked along the stable to the furthest stall, where it lay down in the dry straw, and the star scrambled off its back, dripping and miserable.

Billy turned out to be a white-bearded, gruff sort of fellow. He said little, but carried the star into the inn, and put her down on a three-legged stool in front of a crackling log fire.

“Poor dear,” said the innkeeper’s wife, who had followed them inside. “Look at you, wet as a water-nixie, look at the puddle under you, and your lovely dress, oh the state of it, you must be soaked to the bone…” And, sending her husband away, she helped the star remove her dripping wet dress, which she placed on a hook near the fire, where each drip hissed and fizzed when it fell to the hot bricks of the hearth.