Stardust by Neil Gaiman Read Free Book Online Page A

two of them together would overpower the guards. Perhaps his father would create some kind of distraction and allow him to slip through . . . perhaps . . .
    By the time they walked through the village and arrived at the gap in the wall, Tristran had imagined every possibility, except the one which occurred.
    On wall duty that evening were Harold Crutchbeck and Mr. Bromios. Harold Crutchbeck was a husky young man several years older than Tristran, the miller’s son. Mr. Bromios’s hair was black, and curled, and his eyes were green, and his smile was white, and he smelled of grapes and of grape juice, of barley and of hops.
    Dunstan Thorn walked up to Mr. Bromios and stood in front of him. He stamped his feet against the evening chill.
    “Evening, Mister Bromios. Evening, Harold,” said Dunstan.
    “Evening, Mister Thorn,” said Harold Crutchbeck.
    “Good evening, Dunstan,” said Mr. Bromios. “I trust you are well.”
    Dunstan allowed as that he was; and they spoke of the weather and agreed that it would be bad for the farmers and that, from the quantity of holly berries and yew berries already apparent, it would be a cold, hard winter.
    As he listened to them talking,Tristran was ready to burst with irritation and frustration, but he bit his tongue and said nothing.
    Finally, his father said, “Mister Bromios, Harold, I believe you both know my son Tristran?” Tristran raised his bowler hat to them, nervously.
    And then his father said something he did not understand.
    “I suppose you both know about where he came from,” said Dunstan Thorn.
    Mr. Bromios nodded, without speaking.
    Harold Crutchbeck said he had heard tales, although you never should mind the half of what you hear.
    “Well, it’s true,” said Dunstan. “And now it’s time for him to go back.”
    “There’s a star . . .” Tristran began to explain, but his father hushed him to silence.
    Mr. Bromios rubbed his chin and ran a hand through his thatch of black curls. “Very well,” he said. He turned and spoke to Harold in a low voice, saying things Tristran could not hear.
    His father pressed something cold into his hand.
    “Go on with you, boy. Go, and bring back your star, and may God and all His angels go with you.”
    And Mr. Bromios and Harold Crutchbeck, the guards on the gate, stood aside to let him pass.
    Tristran walked through the gap, with the stone wall on each side of him, into the meadow on the other side of the wall.
    Turning, he looked back at the three men, framed in the gap, and wondered why they had allowed him through.
    Then, his bag swinging in one hand, the object his father had pushed into his hand in the other, Tristran Thorn set off up the gentle hill, toward the woods.
    *  *  *
    A s he walked, the chill of the night grew less, and once in the woods at the top of the hill Tristran was surprised to realize the moon was shining brightly down on him through a gap in the trees. He was surprised because the moon had set an hour before; and doubly surprised, because the moon that had set had been a slim, sharp silver crescent, and the moon that shone down on him now was a huge, golden harvest moon, full, and glowing, and deeply colored.
    The cold thing in his hand chimed once: a crystalline tinkling like the bells of a tiny glass cathedral. He opened his hand and held it up to the moonlight.
    It was a snowdrop, made all of glass.
    A warm wind stroked Tristran’s face: it smelled like peppermint, and blackcurrant leaves, and red, ripe plums; and the enormity of what he had done descended on Tristran Thorn. He was walking into Faerie, in search of a fallen star, with no idea how he would find the star, nor how to keep himself safe and whole as he tried. He looked back and fancied that he could see the lights of Wall behind him, wavering and glimmering as if in a heat-haze, but still inviting.
    And he knew that if he turned around and went back, no one would think any less of him for it—not his father, nor his mother; and