Choices

In the quiet English village of Wall, life is bound by a simple rule: no one crosses the ancient stone barrier for which the town is named. Through the single gap, guarded day and night, lies a meadow, and beyond that, the realm of Faerie. It is a place of myth, from which a Faerie Market spills into the meadow once every nine years. On such a market day, a practical young man named Dunstan Thorn trades a kiss for a glass snowdrop with a beautiful, violet-eyed slave girl whose ears are like a cat's, and whose wrist is bound by a silver chain. Under stars that glitter with an unfamiliar light, he attains his Heart's Desire, and then returns to his sensible life in Wall.

Nine months later, a wicker basket is pushed through the space in the wall, containing an infant named Tristran Thorn. The boy grows into a gangling, awkward youth, composed chiefly of elbows and daydreams, and hopelessly in love with the village beauty, Victoria Forester. He is as ordinary as they come, save for a pair of slightly mismatched ears and a strange longing that comes upon him when the wind blows from the East. He knows nothing of his origins, only that his heart belongs to a girl as cold and distant as the stars in the autumn sky.

On a crisp October evening, as Tristran walks with Victoria, he makes a rash and heartfelt promise. A star flashes across the heavens and falls to earth far to the East, beyond the wall. “For a kiss, and the pledge of your hand,” he says, grandiloquently, “I would bring you that fallen star.” Amused, Victoria agrees, never imagining he could be serious. But Tristran, his heart ablaze, returns home, says his farewells, and with a cryptic blessing from his father - and the very same glass snowdrop from eighteen years before - he steps through the gap in the wall and passes beyond the fields we know, into Faerie.

Tristran is not the only one who saw the star fall. High in the granite citadel of Stormhold, the eighty-first Lord lies dying. To decide his successor, he takes the Power of Stormhold - a great topaz on a silver chain - and flings it into the sky, where it strikes a star from its course. To whichever of his three living sons - Primus, Tertius, or Septimus - can retrieve the stone will go the throne. It is a deadly race, for the brothers have already murdered their four other siblings, whose grey, ghostly forms watch the proceedings in silent judgment. Far away, in a forest cottage that smells of smoked meats and old magic, three ancient crones, the Lilim, read the future in the entrails of a stoat. A fallen star, they see, promises the return of their youth. The eldest of them consumes the last of a star's captured heart, becomes a beautiful woman with red, red lips and hair as black as night, and sets out in a chariot to find the new star and cut its living heart from its chest.

With the help of a small, hairy man of a gloomy disposition, Tristran begins his journey. He survives a trek through a serewood where the pale trees themselves are the predators, and is given a magical candle-stub for his courage. “How many miles to Babylon?” the little man recites. “Can I get there by candlelight? Yes, and back again.” Lighting the candle, Tristran walks, and with each step the world changes around him - from mountain to desert, from cave to cloud - until the candle brings him to a quiet glen. There, in a crater of impacted earth, he finds not a rock or a jewel, but a young woman with hair so fair it is almost white, a broken leg, and a furious temper. She is the star. Before the last of the candle gutters out, Tristran binds her to him with an unbreakable silver chain, stranding them both, six months' hard travel from Wall.

Their journey is a slow, bickering misery. The star, who calls herself Yvaine, despises her captor and does all she can to thwart him. Yet in a sun-dappled clearing, Tristran's character shows a surprising depth when they encounter a great lion and a unicorn locked in a bloody battle for a golden crown. Remembering a nursery rhyme, he steps between the beasts and, with a strange calm, places the crown upon the lion's head. The lion, its prize won, departs, leaving the wounded unicorn, which, in its gratitude, follows the star and allows her to ride upon its back.

The travelers, now three, are driven by a supernatural storm into a lonely inn at a mountain pass. The innkeeper is a woman of unsettling kindness, who offers Yvaine a hot bath and a warm bed. But the inn is a trap, for the woman is the witch-queen, and her knives of obsidian glass are ready. The timely arrival of Lord Primus, also seeking the star and the topaz she wears, brings the confrontation to a head. In a flash of violence, Primus's throat is cut, and the witch turns on the unicorn, killing the noble beast as it tries to defend Yvaine. In a final, desperate act, Tristran thrusts the last of the candle wax into the fire. The flame catches, burning his hand terribly, and as the witch lunges for them, he and the star take one agonizing step and vanish from the inn.

They find themselves stranded on a cloud high above the world. There, a sky-ship called the *Perdita* comes to their rescue, its crew fishing for lightning in the storms below. For weeks they sail the skies, and in the peace and safety of the voyage, Tristran and Yvaine's wounds begin to heal. His hand scars over, and her leg mends. Their animosity softens into a grudging respect, then a quiet friendship. They are left on the edge of a forest, and their journey continues on foot, and then in the caravan of an old witch named Madame Semele, who transforms Tristran into a dormouse for the journey, leaving Yvaine to care for him, unseen and unheard by the old woman.

Finally, they arrive at the meadow outside Wall on the day of the Faerie Market. Tristran, restored to his own form, crosses the wall to find Victoria Forester. He finds her not waiting for him, but in love with another man, and he feels not heartbreak, but relief. He graciously releases her from her promise, desiring only her happiness. It is only then that he learns the truth from his father: he is the son of Dunstan Thorn and the faerie slave girl, the Lady Una of Stormhold.

He returns to the meadow, his heart finally clear. He finds Yvaine, and in the cold spring rain, he realizes it is her he has come to love. They kiss, and her heart, which she had thought her own, is now his. His mother, the Lady Una, her own long servitude finally over, appears and reveals the final truth: Tristran, as the last male of his line, is the rightful Lord of Stormhold. But the throne can wait. He and Yvaine turn their backs on the lights of Wall and walk hand-in-hand toward the East, to wander the world together. They rule Stormhold for many long and happy years, until at last Tristran's time comes to an end. Yvaine, who does not age, rules on alone. And on clear nights, she climbs to the highest tower of the citadel, where she stares up at the sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow, silent dance of her sisters.