Prologue - Moon and Stars

The day of the funeral was warm, bright and windy. She could feel her hair blowing and tangling behind her as, flanked by the two adults, she walked across the green grass towards the two open graves. Reverend Jackman, splendid and solemn in his billowing black robe, shook her hand.

"Hello, my dear," he said. "We haven't met for such a long time, have we? But I've never forgotten you." His eyes strayed to that extra-ordinary hair, waist length now and billowing out behind her in long pink streamers. "It's - Sophie, isn't it?"

"Stephanie," she corrected him gently. "But it's very nice to see you again, sir."

"Ah yes, of course…so sorry. Stephanie. Forgive me. And you, sir, you're the…brother?"

"Ah, cousin, actually," her uncle replied apologetically. "My mother and his father were brother and sister. I'm Meanswell, Milford Meanswell. And this is Miss Busybody."

"Pleased to meet you, Mr Meanswell, Miss Busybody. I'm sorry it had to be in these tragic circumstances. And will there be anyone else - ?"

"No," said Bessie quickly.

"Well, in that case, maybe we should begin." He cleared his throat. "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to uproot. A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance."

Stephanie stood between the comforting presences of her uncle and Bessie and let the words wash over her. She had known as soon as she saw the look on her uncle's face, that day in the kitchen, that he had something terrible to tell her, and she had run forward and clutched at his hands, silently begging him to tell her who it was. Is it Trixie? Ziggy? Is it - is it Sportacus…?

"Oh, my dear," he said, holding her hands between his own and looking into her eyes. "Oh, my dearest girl. I'm so, so sorry to have to tell you this. My dearest, it's your parents…there was an accident…" and he folded his arms around her as she buried her face against his shoulder, not crying, but shivering helplessly from head to foot. Quivering with sorrow, and also, shockingly, relief: it wasn't him. Of all the people I love, it was the ones I could best spare… she buried her face in the familiar softness of his awful beige suit, feeling the shame burn into her bones: thank you, thank you, for not letting it be anyone else.

"A time to kill and a time to heal," intoned Reverend Jackman, glancing curiously at the trio over the top of his spectacles. "A time to tear down and a time to build." He could still remember Stephanie's christening, sixteen years ago now but vivid in his memory, as so many long-past days were as he grew older. Like the funeral today, there had been just two adults and this one little girl, now almost a woman, pale and sad today as was only to be expected, but so beautiful. As he had poured the water over her forehead, the tightly fitted little white cap had come off, disclosing a shock of raspberry pink fuzz covering her scalp, and she had howled angrily as the water trickled down the back of her neck. He had glanced involuntarily at their faces, amazed and deeply shocked: surely they hadn't coloured it - ? A baby only a few months old? - and had found Stephanie's mother gazing defiantly back at him. "It's just how it grows out of her head," she said, taking her baby back out of his arms and rocking her, and they had none of them, ever, referred to it again.

"We gather here today to lay to rest these bodies, knowing that we commit to the earth only that which is of the earth…"

Milford coughed and glanced sideways at Stephanie, standing composed and silent beside him. In his mind she was still the breathlessly enthusiastic eight-year-old who had romped into town and straight into his heart eight years ago, and it came as a daily surprise to realise she was now almost as tall as he was. She was being so brave, he thought tenderly, standing so still and steadfast on this terrible occasion. He hoped it would not be long before she was laughing and joyful once again. She was growing up, and now he was all she had: he was terribly afraid he would not be enough. It was time he finally overcame his diffidence and asked Bessie the question he had never quite dared to put to her. She needed a mother…

Bessie longed to put her arm around Stephanie and give her a comforting squeeze, but decided at the last second that it was not really her place. All that touchy-feely business had never really been her forte, she thought ruefully. But now was no time to be weak, no time to hesitate. It was time to accept the offer that she knew Milford would shortly lay at her feet, after years of waiting and wondering and finally not quite daring. They both needed her now.

"…in Jesus' name, amen." Reverend Jackman closed his book and nodded at Stephanie. "My dear, if you're ready…?"

Stephanie walked forward to the raw black edge of the graves, and looked down at the two coffins for a moment before dropping a long-stemmed pink rose onto each of the shining wooden lids.

"Goodbye, mum," she said softly. "Goodbye, dad."

The train journey back to Lazytown seemed to go on for ever, the slow rocking rhythm of the train soothing her into a trance of boredom. On the seats opposite, her uncle and Bessie discreetly held hands under the table. "Stephanie, dear," Milford had said to her at the station as they queued for tickets, "I just want you to know that you won't ever be on your own. You're all the family I've got, and I'll take care of you from now on. And, and - I hope you don't think this is a bad time to tell you this, but - I'm very pleased to say that Miss Busybody - that Bessie - that I have asked her to do me the honour of being my wife, and she has accepted." In spite of the queue of impatient customers and the endless tannoy announcements of train arrivals and departures, his happiness was shining out of him like sunshine and lighting up the platform. "So we'll do our very best to give you a proper family home, my dear."

She hugged him, longing to tell him but you've always given me a proper family home, but afraid he would take it as disapproval. "That's wonderful news, Uncle Milford," she said instead, smiling as cheerfully as she could manage, trying to persuade the worried look off his face. "I'm so pleased. Bessie, Uncle Milford says you're engaged! That's so exciting."

"We thought we'd have the ceremony as soon as possible," her uncle said, taking Bessie's hand and squeezing it. "There's a train that goes to Smallville tomorrow morning at ten o'clock. We can go before the Mayor at eleven o'clock and be back in Lazytown for lunch."

"But, Bessie, don't you want - ?" Stephanie hesitated. "It's such an important day for you both, are you sure you don't want something a little bit…bigger?" Her uncle looked stricken, but Bessie had shaken her head and said firmly, "No, Stephanie dear; we wouldn't feel right planning a big wedding so soon after your parents' deaths. And really, at our age, and after all this time…we'd be much happier with just a simple ceremony before the Mayor of Smallville. And, dearest, if you feel up to it - we'd be so thrilled if you would be one of our witnesses…and I do hope you'll feel able to call me Auntie Bessie." She touched Stephanie's cheek gently, then bent and kissed her: an awkward peck that didn't quite make contact, but the intention was loving.

Stephanie found it touching and strangely comforting to watch them, sitting quietly on the train and holding hands as if it was something faintly naughty they were getting away with. It was good that something so absolutely right and happy was going to come out of the pointless, tragic accident that had taken her parents' lives.

The train swayed and rattled, on and on, taking her away from the city she had always referred to as home, back towards the place that had truly been home from the moment she had first arrived there.

Bessie came home with them and cooked them all dinner, bustling and rattling and muttering round the kitchen, flapping off Milford's offers of help but smiling gratefully when Stephanie silently handed her the things she needed. "See?" she whispered in the girl's ear. "We're already a team." And Stephanie smiled back, determined that she would do all she could to make Bessie feel welcome in her new home. Finally, after the dishes had been washed and stacked and Bessie and Milford were sitting, upright and uneasy looking, on the very edge of the sofa, she said tentatively, "If you don't mind, I think I'll go to bed? Goodnight Uncle Milford…goodnight - Aunt Bessie," and made her escape.

Finally alone in her room, Stephanie felt her body go limp with relief. She could hear Bessie and her uncle talking on the porch outside, but not what they were saying - presumably they were finalising the arrangements for the wedding tomorrow. Then there was a little pause as they kissed, and "Goodnight, Bessie," "Goodnight, Milford," floated out into the warm summer night.

Stephanie lay on her bed, then got up again, numb with exhaustion but unable to sleep. She had not slept properly since the day she heard the news. Her chest was tight and painful with the tears she had been unable to shed. Across the street, Trixie's light was still on, and Stephanie wondered whether to flash her their old signal - three short blinks of the torch, can you come over so we can talk? - but decided against it. Instead, she slid open her window, climbed through and landed softly in the flowerbed below.

At this time of night, this part of Lazytown was hers entirely. The new families who were moving into the town almost weekly hadn't changed its fundamentally placid nature. People still left their doors unlocked and went to bed early; in all the years they had been climbing through each other's bedroom windows for secret girly conversations, Trixie and Stephanie had never been caught. She wandered down the street to their old treehouse, faded and weathered now but still safe as long as you didn't move around too much, and on an impulse climbed up the ladder and ducked inside…

She knew he was there even before he said, tentatively, "Stephanie?" He had always known when she was in trouble, always knew exactly what she needed. He slid gracefully in through the low entrance of the treehouse and sat down next to her without speaking. And, because he hadn't asked that same terrible question everyone had been asking her since the moment her uncle broke the news, she was able to turn to him, and say, "Oh, Sportacus - it was awful - " and then finally, sobbing and shuddering, she burst into tears and hid her face against his broad chest.

He held her firmly against him while she cried and cried and cried, waiting until the storm passed. Finally she lifted her head and said, shakily, "Sportacus, I'm so sorry - "

He hushed her with one finger over her lips. "Stephanie, you have absolutely nothing to be sorry about."

She loved the way he said her name, that distinctive accent caressing each separate syllable. And again, because he hadn't asked, she was suddenly able to tell him the feelings that had been haunting her.

"I feel awful because I don't feel worse," she said. "I mean, they were my parents, I loved them, but I've hardly seen them except just for holidays the last eight years. When Uncle Milford told me he had something terrible to tell me, I was so afraid it was going to be someone else, someone from Lazytown, and then when it was them I was so relieved…when I was little, I sometimes used to pretend that this really was my home and I was going to live here forever and never have to go back to the city." She hesitated. "I just hope that - that they knew I did love them - and I'd never, ever have wished that if I'd thought about what would have to happen for it to be true…" her voice wobbled again.

Without hesitation, as if she were still eight years old, he put an arm around her shoulder and looked into her face, his blue eyes earnest and glowing. "You know," he said gently, "your parents chose for you to come and live here. I never met them, but I know they must have loved you very much, and wanted you to be happy. Do you think maybe they might have chosen this place for you to live because they knew how happy you'd be here?" He smiled. "Sometimes our home is not necessarily the place we start out from."

His smile was so beautiful that she couldn't help smiling back. "Oh, guess what? Uncle Milford asked Bessie to marry him, and she said yes. They're taking the train over to Smallville tomorrow to get married. They asked me to be a witness."

"He asked her? Fantastic! He told me he was going to." He glanced down at her. "You are pleased?"

"I'm glad they're both so happy," she replied slowly. "It just seems strange, after all this time…somehow I never thought they'd actually get together, you know?"

"Sometimes relationships take time," he replied. The words hung on the air, taking on an unexpected significance that stretched over the silence between them. She glanced shyly up at him through her lashes, and caught the tail end of a look that melted her down to her toes, before he hastily looked away again, leaving her wondering if she had imagined it.

To cover her embarrassment, she said, "You know, you've never really talked about your home."

He laughed. "Well, my home I would actually say is here…but where I started from…" he gazed out across the darkness of Lazytown Park. "It's very different from Lazytown, but so beautiful. Over there at this time of year, the sun stays up almost until midnight, and you can see wild ponies playing in the sunshine. They kick up their heels like little girls and boys, and run for miles, just for the joy of it. But I think it's most beautiful in winter, when there's snow on the ground three feet thick. Then the sun doesn't come up until nearly noon, and when it rises, it stays low in the sky, so all the snow around you looks like frozen gold." He sighed. "And when the sun goes down again, and the moon rises, the stars are so cold and bright in the sky - they are different there, but some of them are the same - the Big Dipper, except we call it The Plough, and the North Star, and the belt of Orion. Some nights near to Christmas you can see the Northern Lights - I don't think you have them here, but they hang in the sky in great sheets of light, dancing and flickering…"

The sound of his voice was hypnotic and comforting. She leaned drowsily against him, while he continued talking.

"The house I was born in is near the sea, by a black, pebbled beach that looks out onto the Atlantic. The sea is dark and cold and wonderful, and it crashes against the shore day and night. In my country you're never far from the sea, not even in the great city that your people built to live in…"

She wanted to ask him what he meant by your people, but she was so warm and comfortable she couldn't find the energy. After days of sleeplessness, she finally felt herself drifting, drifting, sliding softly beneath dark waves of water that washed up on a cold and rocky shore…

His arms were around her, and he was kissing her, slowly but firmly. His tongue parted her lips and slid exquisitely into her mouth, setting her senses on fire. She kissed him back, pressing her body close to him, feeling every part of his taut, muscled body hard and insistent against hers. With one hand, he stroked her hair back from her face and she moaned with joy, hardly daring to believe it was finally happening. "Oh, Stephanie darling," he groaned. "Stephanie…"

"Stephanie?" Suddenly, she was completely awake. She was lying in the tree-house, with her head pillowed in Sportacus's lap, chilly except where her body rested against his. He was gently stroking her face, trying to wake her up. The sun was rising over the castle on the hill.

"I didn't want to disturb you," he said, looking embarrassed. "You fell asleep in my arms, and you looked so tired that I hadn't got the heart to move you. I hope you're not too cold…"

Oh, no, not cold, never with you to keep me warm. She smiled and shook her head, hoping he hadn't been able to guess what she was dreaming about. "I'm fine."

"Come on. I think I need to get you home safely." Not quite daring to look at each other, they climbed down the ladder. Then he took her chilly hand in his big, broad, warm one and they sprinted across the park, through the dewy grass and over the beds of half-opened roses, and back to her still-open window. He lifted her up to the windowsill, his hands on her waist feeling strange for the first time as they looked at each other shyly, unsure of what to say.

"I'll see you at the wedding," he said at last, and then he was away, flipping and tumbling across the streets of the slumbering town towards his air-ship, parked just above the park.

Later, when they met at the wedding and smiled at each other as Bessie and Milford took their vows, neither of them mentioned it.

Sometimes, relationships take time…