“Then it’s a good thing that we’ve found a new one, isn’t it?” said the oldest, tartly, and with that she thrust a clawed hand into the box. Something golden tried to avoid her hand, but she caught it, wiggling and glimmering, opened her mouth, and popped it inside.
(In the mirror, three women stared out.
)There was a shivering and a shuddering at the center of all things.
(Now, two women stared from the black mirror.
)In the cottage, two old women stared, envy and hope mixing in their faces, at a tall, handsome woman with black hair and dark eyes and red, red lips.
“My,” she said, “but this place is filthy.” She strode to the bed. Beside it was a large wooden chest, covered by a faded tapestry. She twitched off the tapestry and opened the chest, rummaging inside.
“Here we go,” she said, holding up a scarlet kirtle. She tossed it onto the bed, and pulled off the rags and tatters she had worn as an old woman.
Her two sisters stared across at her na**d body hungrily.
“When I return with her heart, there will be years aplenty for all of us,” she said, eying her sisters’ hairy chins and hollow eyes with disfavor. She slipped a scarlet bracelet onto her wrist, in the shape of a small snake with its tail between its jaws.
“A star,” said one of her sisters.
“A star,” echoed the second.
“Exactly,” said the witch-queen, putting a circlet of silver upon her head. “The first in two hundred years. And I’ll bring it back to us.” She licked her scarlet lips with a deep red tongue.
“A fallen star,” she said. It was night in the glade by the pool and the sky was bespattered with stars beyond counting.
Fireflies glittered in the leaves of the elm trees and in the ferns and in the hazel bushes, flickering on and off like the lights of a strange and distant city. An otter splashed in the brook that fed the pool. A family of stoats wove and wound their way to the water to drink. A fieldmouse found a fallen hazelnut and began to bite into the hard shell of the nut with its sharp, ever-growing front teeth, not because it was hungry, but because it was a prince under an enchantment who could not regain his outer form until he chewed the Nut of Wisdom. But its excitement made it careless, and only the shadow that blotted out the moonlight warned it of the descent of a huge grey owl, who caught the mouse in its sharp talons and rose again into the night.
The mouse dropped the nut, which fell into the brook and was carried away, to be swallowed by a salmon.
The owl swallowed the mouse in just a couple of gulps, leaving just its tail trailing from her mouth, like a length of bootlace. Something snuffled and grunted as it pushed through the thicket — a badger, thought the owl (herself under a curse, and only able to resume her rightful shape if she consumed a mouse who had eaten the Nut of Wisdom), or perhaps a small bear.
Leaves rustled, water rilled, and then the glade became filled with light shining down from above, a pure white light which grew brighter and brighter. The owl saw it reflected in the pool, a blazing, glaring thing of pure light, so bright that she took to the wing and flew to another part of the forest. The wild things looked about them in terror.
First the light in the sky was no bigger than the moon, then it seemed larger, infinitely larger, and the whole grove trembled and quivered and every creature held its breath and the fireflies glowed brighter than they had ever glowed in their lives, each one convinced that this at last was love, but to no avail And then — There was a cracking sound, sharp as a shot, and the light that had filled the grove was gone.
Or almost gone. There was a dim glow pulsing from the middle of the hazel thicket, as if a tiny cloud of stars were glimmering there.
And there was a voice, a high clear, female voice which said, “Ow,” and then, very quietly, it said “Fuck,” and then it said “Ow,” once more.
And then it said nothing at all, and there was silence in the glade.
Chapter Four
“Can I Get There by Candlelight?”
October moved further away with every step Tristran took; he felt as if he were walking into summer. There was a path through the woods, with a high hedgerow to one side, and he followed the path. High above him the stars glittered and gleamed, and the harvest moon shone golden yellow, the color of ripe corn. In the moonlight he could see briar-roses in the hedge.
He was becoming sleepy now. For a time he fought to stay awake, and then he took off his overcoat, and put down his bag — a large leather bag of the kind that, in twenty years’ time, would become known as a Gladstone bag — and he laid his head on his bag, and covered himself with his coat.
He stared up at the stars: and it seemed to him then that they were dancers, stately and graceful, performing a dance almost infinite in its complexity. He imagined he could see the very faces of the stars; pale, they were, and smiling gently, as if they had spent so much time above the world, watching the scrambling and the joy and the pain of the people below them, that they could not help being amused every time another little human believed itself the center of its world, as each of us does.
And then it came to Tristran that he was dreaming, and he walked into his bedroom, which was also the schoolroom of the village of Wall: and Mrs. Cherry tapped the blackboard and bade them all be silent, and Tristran looked down at his slate to see what the lesson would be about, but he could not read what he had written there. Then Mrs. Cherry, who resembled his mother so much that Tristran found himself astonished he had never before realized that they were the same person, called upon Tristran to tell the class the dates of all the kings and queens of England....