Fallen Star [Ziall]

Chapter 1

A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because were human?" Pointless really. Do stars gaze back?

Our story begins many years ago. Queen Victoria was on the throne of England, but she was not yet the black-clad widow of Windsor; newly crowned as Queen, she had apples in her cheeks and a spring in her step, and Lord Melbourne often had cause to ubraid, gently the young Queen for her fightiness. She was, as yet unmarried, although she was very much in love with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Mr. Charles Dickens was serializing his novel Oliver Twist; Mr. Draper had just taken the first photograph of the moon, freezing his pale face on cold paper; Mr. Morse had recently announced a way of transmitting messages down metal wires.

Had you mentioned magic or Faerie to any of them, they would have smiled at you disdainfully, except, perhaps for Mr. Dickens, at the time a young man, and beardless. He would have looked at you wistfully.

At the Royal Academy of Science in London, England. A letter arrived, containing a very strange inquiry. It had come from a country boy and the scientist who read it thought it might be a practical joke of some kind. But he duly wrote a reply, politely explaining that the query was nonsense. And posted it to the boy who lived in a village called Wall. So named, the boy had said, for the wall that ran alongside it. A wall according to local folklore hid an extraordinary secret.

The village of Wall stands today as it has stood for hundreds of years, on a high jut of granite amidst a small forest woodland. The houses of Wall are square and old, built of grey stone, with dark slate roofs and high chimneys; taking advantage of every inch of space of the rock, the houses lean into each other, are built one upon the next, with here and there a bush or a tree growing out of the side of a building. There is one road from Wall, a winding track rising sharply up forest, where it is lined with rocks and small stones. Followed far enough South, out of the forest, the track becomes a real road paved with asphalt; followed furthur, the road gets larger, its packed with coaches and trucks rushing from city to city, eventually the road takes you to London, but London is a whole nights drive from Wall.

The inhabitants of Wall are a taciturn breed, falling into two distinct types; the native Wall folk, as grey and tall and stocky as the granite outcrop their town was built upon; and the others, who have made Wall their home over the years, and their decendants. Below Wall on the West is the forest; to the South is a treacherously placid lake served by the streams that drop from the hills. Behind Wall to the North, there are fields upon the hills, on which sheep graze. To the East is more woodland. Immediately to the East of the Wall is a high grey rock wall, from which the town takes its name. This wall is old, built of rough, square lumps of hewn granite, and it comes from the woods and goes back to the woods once more.

There is only one break in the wall, an opening about six feet in width, a little to the North of the village. Through the gap in the wall can be seen a large green meadow, a stream; beyond the streams there are trees. From time to time shapes and figures can be seen amongst the trees in the distance. Huge and odd shapes and small glimmering things which flash and glitter and are gone. Although it is perfectly meadow land, non of the villagers has ever grazed animals on the meadow on the other side of the wall. Nor have they used it for growing crops. Instead for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, they have posted guards on each side of the opening on the wall, and done their best to put it out of their minds.

Even today, two townsmen stand on either side of the opening, night and day, taking eight-hour shifts. They carry hefty wooden cudgels. The flank the opening on the town side. Their main function is to prevent the towns children from going through the opening, into the meadow and beyond. Occasionally they are called upon to discourage a solitary rambler, or one of the few visitors to the town, from going through the gateway.