ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a history of the witch; or of the witches, because plurality is of the essence of the witch; or of witchcraft. Child, adolescent, adult: the witch, it may increasingly seem, occupies a role in mediating, or perhaps sometimes challenging, these boundaries – or in pointing up the way in which, and the extent to which, such boundaries are themselves socially constructed. The force of the witch in Stardust derives from antiquity, but also from the weakness always inherent in the search for immortality, for eternal life. The witch-queen, eldest of the three sisters, sets out to replenish her sorority's supply of youth, but her story intersects with others: principally with a tale about succession – which of seven brothers is to become the anointed ruler of the realm of Stormhold – and with a different tale of a young man, Tristran, who is charged by his beloved with finding for her a 'fallen star'.
