Stardust

Mistress Semele got to her feet and made her way into the interior of the caravan, emerging with two painted wooden bowls, two wooden-handled knives, and a small pot of herbs, dried and flaked to a green powder. "I was going to be eating with fingers on a plate of fresh leaves," she said, handing a bowl to the lady in the scarlet kirtle. The bowl had a sunflower painted upon it, under a layer of dust. "But I thought, well, how often does I get such fine company? So nothing but the best. Heads or tails?"

"Let it be your choice," said her guest.

"Head, then, for you, with the luscious eyes and brains, and the crispy-crunchy ears of him. And I'll have the rump, with nothing but dull meat to nibble." She lifted the spit off the fire as she spoke, and, using both knives so fast they seemed little more than a glitter of blades, she parted the carcass and sliced the meat from the bones, and dealt it out, fairly equitably, into each bowl. She passed the pot of herbs to her guest. "There's no salt, my dear, but if you shake this on it will do the trick. A little basil, a little mountain thyme—my own receipt."

The witch-queen took her portion of roasted hare, and one of the knives, and sprinkled a little of the herbs onto the dish. She speared a bite on the point of the knife and ate it with relish, while her hostess toyed with her own portion, then blew on it fastidiously, steam coming from the crisp brown meat.

"How is it?" asked the old woman.

"Perfectly palatable," said her guest, honestly.

"It is the herbs make it so fine," explained the harridan.

"I can taste the basil and the thyme," said the guest, "but there is another taste I find harder to place."

"Ah," said Madame Semele, and she nibbled a sliver of the meat.

"It is certainly a most uncommon taste."

"That it is. It's a herb that grows only in Garamond, on an island in the midst of a wide lake. It is most pleasant with all manner of meats and fishes, and it reminds me in flavor a little of the leaves of fennel, with but a hint of nutmeg. The flowers of it are a most attractive shade of orange. It is good for wind and the ague, and it is, in addition, a gentle soporific, which has the curious property of causing one who tastes of it to speak nothing but the truth for several hours."

The lady in the scarlet kirtle dropped her wooden bowl onto the ground. "Limbus grass?" she said. "You dared to feed me limbus grass."

"That's how it would seem, dearie," and the old woman cackled and hooted with delight. "So, tell me now, Mistress Morwanneg, if that's your name, where are you a-going-of, in your fine chariot? And why do you remind me so of someone I knew once...? And Madame Semele forgets nothing and no one."

"I am on my way to find a star," said the witch-queen, "which fell in the great woods on the other side of Mount Belly. And when I find her, I shall take my great knife and cut out her heart, while she lives, and while her heart is her own. For the heart of a living star is a sovereign remedy against all the snares of age and time. My sisters wait for me to return."

Madame Semele hooted and hugged herself, swaying back and forth, bony fingers clutching her sides. "The heart of a star, is it? Hee! Hee! Such a prize it will make for me. I shall taste enough of it that my youth will come back, and my hair turn from grey to golden, and my dugs swell and soften and become firm and high. Then I shall take all the heart that's left to the Great Market at Wall. Hee!"

"You shall not do this thing," said her guest, very quietly. "No? You are my guest, my dear. You swore your oath. You've tasted of my food. According to the laws of our sisterhood, there is nothing you can do to harm me."

"Oh, there are so many things I could do to harm you, Ditchwater Sal, but I shall simply point out that one who has eaten limbus grass can speak nothing but the truth for several hours afterward; and one more thing..." Distant lightning flickered in her words as she spoke, and the forest was hushed, as if every leaf and every tree were listening intently to what she said. "This I say: you have stolen knowledge you did not earn, but it shall not profit you. For you shall be unable to see the star, unable to perceive it, unable to touch it, to taste it, to find it, to kill it. Even if another were to cut out its heart and give it to you, you would not know it, never know what you had in your hand. This I say. These are my words, and they are a true-speaking. And know this also: I swore, by the compact of the Sisterhood, that I would do you no harm. Had I not so sworn I would change you into a black-beetle, and I would pull your legs off, one by one, and leave you for the birds to find, for putting me to this indignity."

Madame Semele's eyes opened wide with fright, and she stared over the flames of the fire at her guest. "Who are you?" she said.

"When you knew me last," said the woman in the scarlet kirtle, "I ruled with my sisters in Carnadine, before it was lost."

"Vow? But you are dead, long dead."