Free The Star Plume by Kae Bell Page A

‘round here.”
    She politely took his offered hand. “Hello.
Thank you for coming to help. I’m Princess Cressida. I live, well,
quite far from here actually.” She gestured into the darkness.
    “Ahhh.”Zav nodded knowingly. “I’ve sure heard
about you.” Wrangler Zav grinned. “Stars talk, you know. Word gets
around about visitors. You do good work.”
    “Why thank you. If you please, what is a Star
Wrangler?” Princess Cressida asked. She didn’t want to seem
ignorant, but she had no idea.
    Wrangler Zav stuck his thumbs in the belt
loops of his silver trousers and furrowed his brow. Stardust dotted
the stubble on his chin.
    “Well, out here on the far edges of the sky,
it’s mighty unruly. The stars are wild, untamed, not part of any
constellations known to you and me. So they act up, get into star
scuffs. The old stars argue with the new stars that want to change
things. It’s just the way. The new stars try to outshine everyone
else. And of course there’s the black holes trying to gobble
everyone up. Takes a lot to keeps things in order, everyone in
their place. I keep ‘em in line. Plus, all kinds of star creatures
out here on the edges, some you've never even seen in the sky.
Gotta watch out for some of them.”
    Princess Cressida looked skeptical, staring
at the vast sky all around them. “Seems like a big job for just one
person.”
    “Oh, I’ve got a bunch of folks work for
me.”
    Wrangler Zav scratched his chin, thinking.
“Let’s see now.”
    “I got a Star Tuner…So the stars sing in
tune. I heard them singing to you, so you know about that.”
    Princess Cressida nodded. She’d loved the
song.
    Wrangler Zav continued. “And a Star Shiner…so
they look all sparkly and such.” He patted the blue dwarf on which
they sat.
    “A Star Mender…cause sometimes they get
broke. He patches them up, good as new.”
    “And of course there’s a Star Stables….for
all the baby stars.”
    “And last, the Star Chaser…”
    “The Star Chaser?” Princess Cressida
asked.
    “Sure, sometimes you get a star that wants to
roam free in the sky, so they go missing. So where there ought to
be light, there's darkness. That’s where the Star Chaser comes in.
My back up team.”
    Wrangler Zav looked into the dark distance,
as if searching for something lost.
    A loud ‘moo’, then a large black and white
belted cow came flying through the air to land gracefully by Zav.
She too was bedecked in silver and wore a sparkly silver cowbell.
Princess Cressida stared. The cow had the longest eyelashes
Princess Cressida had ever seen. The cows ears twitched back and
forth as she studied the Princess warily. She did not like
strangers.
    Wrangler Zav smiled and patted the cow’s
head. “This here is Blaise. She’s my best Star Chaser. She catches
those rascals and puts them back into place.”
    Wrangler Zav stopped to listen to Blaise, who
was lowing anxiously at him.
    “Uh oh. Sounds like we’ve got a problem. A
band of young stars runbling in the distance, planning to star
jump.”
    Princess Cressida leaned forward to peer into
the distance but she did not see any big groups of stars on the
horizon. “Star jump?” she asked.
    “Yes, they fly fast through the sky, one
after another, falling from a great height, each going faster than
the last. Puts on quite a light show. It’s usually the youngins’,
they have no fear. It’s against Senti regulations, disrupts star
traffic, and creates all kinds of debris and such. You need a
permit for such things.”
    Wrangler Zav turned into the wind, his nose
twitching. “Listen, Princess, you can wait here or you can join us.
But there’s a star storm moving in and the stardust tends to be
pretty thick. It’s not pleasant. I’d suggest you come along.”
    He’d hopped onto Blaise’s sleek back and held
out his hand.
    Princess Cressida looked around. She was lost
and far from home. She knew she couldn’t find her way back without
Wrangler Zav’s help.