The third time someone small, brown and lumpy popped out from under the driver's seat of her old Toyota, with a squeaky cry of "vive la resistance!", Sarah Williams gave up on the week being anything but weird. After all, it was only Tuesday, and she had thought she'd settled the "vive la resistance!" issue, whatever ithat/i was about (goblins, while forthcoming, seldom proved terribly articulate) back in July after they'd given themselves flour camouflage and stolen half her underwear for flags. But no, they'd forgotten about July, or decided the statute of limitations had run out, or something.
She pursed her lips. She narrowed her eyes. She sighed, wearily, and pinched the bridge of her nose. The little goblin whose torso protruded from under her upholstery, gnarled claws valiantly brandishing a pair of red satin underwear at the end of a long stick, pursed its lips, narrowed its eyes, sighed, and pinched the bridge of its nose right back at her. The imitation would have met with more success had the goblin not poked itself in the eye.
"Gahhh! Eyeses! Vive la resistance!" it cried, falling flailing out from under the seat, while Sarah picked up the stick and regarded it thoughtfully. She'd wondered where those underwear got to. With a wry smile, she removed them from said stick, put them in the glove compartment, and scooped up the goblin, which peered up at her with a look that aimed for worried innocence and landed squarely on guilt.
"You are a troublemaker."
"No'm not. 'm just a trouble ihelper/i." Worry shifted sharply into indignation; the goblin folded its knobby little arms and glared at her. She couldn't help laughing.
"Well, troublemaker or troublehelper, you need to stop stealing my things and popping out of things unexpectedly. That could be really dangerous, okay?"
"Dangerous?"
She peered down at its serious little face, screwed up in concentration, and fought back an affectionate smile. "Yeah, like playing hopscotch across the bog." The goblin gasped in horror. "Except that I'd get hurt too." Its eyes widened in horror. "And you'd never, ever get to see your chicken again."
"Oh no, Lady!" it wailed, hiding its face in its hands and peering at her in abject horror between its fingers. "Can't have that, oh no! I be good. I promise."
"You swear?"
"Yes, Lady."
"Cross your heart and hope to die?"
Whimpering, it nodded. "Cross my liver'n hope to die."
"…Close enough. Now, what's this resistance thing about?" It gave her the I'm Not Telling look – jaw jutting stubbornly, eyes narrowed in suspicion, feet planted, arms folded, head turned sharply aside to glare at some point in front of the toes; she'd seen it on her daughter more times than she could count – and mumbled unintelligibly into its shoulder.
"Hm? I'm afraid I didn't catch that."
"Said 'm not s'posed t'tell."
"Not even for a cookie?" The goblin glanced up at her, traitorous hope stirring in its eyes. "And a square of bubble wrap?"
Oh, glee! Oh, joy! Oh, terrible lack of any semblance of self-discipline! No goblin could resist the temptation of bubble wrap. To be fair, this one put up a valiant effort, for all of five seconds, by far the best she had seen after the reflexive reaction of clasped hands and bouncing up and down in excitement. At last, though, it sighed, clambered up her shoulder, and tugged her hair to bring her ear down to its mouth. Someday, she'd manage to teach them to iask/i about these things, but for now, she went along with it. Maybe it would give her the missing piece requisite to figuring out the damn bewildering resistance thing.
"We're not 'lowed t'have chickens in the castle no more!" She winced because goblins have no concept of whispering. The goblin nodded mournfully, eyes swimming with unshed tears, because it thought she winced in sympathy. "Not in the stairs room, not in the kitchen, not even in the throne room!"
"Because of the rebuilding?"
"No, no, that was iages/i ago, that was! Because kingy says so!"
"All right," she answered, thoughtfully, and ruffled its hair. It scowled up at her, its dignity offended.
"C'n I go now, Lady?"
"Don't you want your cookie and your bubble wrap?"
"Later. I don't like the metal bug." And with that, it vanished, leaving behind only a quiet ipop/i and a puff of glitter. Sarah sighed, turning the key in the ignition and pulling out of her parking space for the drive home. The goblin was a smart one, for a goblin, and it was right – the castle had been rebuilt twenty-five years ago, a decent span of time even by human standards, and eons by the standard of someone with the attention span of a cracked-out ferret.
Maybe Jareth had finally just snapped, not that she could blame him. She found herself wondering what had been the final straw. Maybe a chicken had shat in his hair.
The thing everyone forgot about barn owls – or maybe just liked to ignore, like the fact that dolphins murder baby porpoises and a bald eagle sounds sort of like a frog with something stuck in its throat – is that they don't make a nice, melodious "hoo, hoo." They don't go "hoo" at all. They make a sound roughly akin to that of the Wicked Witch of the West getting hit by a bus, a fact with which Sarah had become infinitely aware, thanks to the pair that roosted behind her house every spring.
This didn't keep it from startling her so badly she shot milk out her nose and all over the counter by the window. She squawked indignantly, hurriedly clapping a napkin to her face, and hastily went about mopping up the milk. A glance at the clock showed the time as five thirty in the afternoon, on a sunny September day – far too early for them to be up and about. Some long-buried root of unease furrowed about deep in her gut. Goblins and barn owls, oh my…
Chaos chose that moment to ensue. Sarah flailed back from the window as a torrent of black feathers whirled past, a wrathful blur of white hot on its heels. She leaned out the window, hands braced on either side of the kitchen sink, to watch as the crows escaped the narrow chasm between her house and her neighbour's and scattered to every point of the compass, leaving the poor dim-witted owl to flounder uncertainly after the nearest. In less time than it took her to count to thirteen, the birds had vanished into Portland's multitudinous trees.
She shook her head slowly and retreated back into the orderly chaos of her yellow-countered kitchen. Sooner or later, she'd figure out something to do about the crows, egg-thieves that they were. And the counters. Really, who the hell puts yellow linoleum counters in a Victorian home? Grumbling good-humouredly under her breath, she rinsed the glass out and put it in the dishwasher. Seven years ago anyone telling her that in the year 2010, she'd drink a glass of milk every day after work, would have won a gale of laughter. Jocelyn's pre-school years had changed that in a hurry; she'd spent a full year and a half refusing to do anything she didn't see Sarah do first. Fortunately, she'd had practice with goblins.
Goblins. She owed that one – Squawk? Squelch? Squeamish? – a cookie and bubble wrap, and where one came, more would soon follow. Soft on stocking-feet, she padded over to the fridge and peered inside, then frowned into the nigh-emptiness. Mustard was inot/i a viable substitute for cookies, even according to goblin tastes.
Well, she'd planned on running errands the next day – Saturday was grocery day, and Sunday laundry day – but, she supposed, she could get that over with early and have tomorrow to herself. A plan began to form, luminous and self-indulgent , at the back of her mind. She hurried back across the kitchen and once more reached out the window, earning an odd look from Mr. Phelps next door as she flailed her arm about. Grinning, she turned the flail into a wave, then ran to the foyer to put her shoes on, grab her keys, and all but skip out the front door, locking it behind her.
A moment later, she returned to pick up a cloth bag full of other cloth bags. If she was going to spoil herself with a trip to Whole Foods in the place of something more reasonably-priced, damned if she wasn't going to do it in proper style.
By the time she emerged, beaming and bearing one bag of deliciousness and three more of ingredients for more of the same, the magnificent day had transformed into a glorious evening, the deep blue Northwest sky radiant with a gibbous moon and high, thin clouds, foreshadowing the rainy winter. The summer had been a hot one; the pavement held the day's heat and, after a few blocks' walk and a moment's consideration, Sarah darted a glance in each direction, then slipped her sandals off her feet and into one of the bags. They could keep the canned tomatoes company. She wanted to feel the earth under her feet.
Her toes, tanned from a summer of sandals and still tipped in scraps of battered red polish from her last evening with Jocelyn in January, hugged the pavement as she walked. The rest of her all but floated. She took a deep breath of air and let it out on a laugh which carried her with it, skipping, heedless of her bags, the short ends of her red pixie cut tickling her ears, spinning at street-corners and, fleetingly, wishing she'd thought to wear a skirt.
Though she mostly circumvented the bit of downtown between the closest Whole Foods and her house, it spilled over a bit, complete with the requisite hipsters, drunks, and homeless folk. Reluctantly, she tugged her shoes back on. As cities went, Portland was safe, but stepping on broken glass sucks spectacularly no matter iwhere/i one does it, and besides, the streets thronged with college students indulging in a last fit of depravity before classes resumed, and she didn't fancy being trodden on.
Or bumped into. She caught her balance with an indignant "Excuse me!" – no, she would inot/i apologize for having grocery bags, not when the girl had blundered into her without looking anywhere save at her cell phone – and took a step back. Her foot met something soft, and she hurriedly lifted her foot and glanced down at the pale hand she'd almost crushed.
She let out a ragged sigh. Damn, she'd thought that might be it, and now she felt obliged to see if the – she glanced at the hand again – man was in trouble, or just passed out drunk. She set her bags down by the side of the walkway and knelt, peering under the bushes in which he had, apparently, taken shelter. From her vantage point, she couldn't tell much, save his exceedingly shabby state of dress. Probably homeless, then.
"Damn, damn, and damn…please don't be dead." She felt a bit ill, suddenly, and plopped unceremoniously onto her bum as her knees went to jelly. God dammit, what do you do if you find a corpse? Her mind raced. Call the police? What if they thought she did it? Why hadn't anyone else noticed him? His hand was right out there…
A breath she hadn't realized she'd held tore its ragged way out of her as her fingers found a pulse in his wrist. She sat for a moment, staring blindly at her fingertips on the pale flesh, letting her breathing return to normal as she concentrated on sensation. His heartbeat under her hand, too faint to be healthy. His thin skin, almost searing hot. His bones, thin as a bird's, defining the width of a wrist with little to it isave/i for skin and bone.
She took another deep, steadying breath and closed her eyes for a moment. So, not dead, thankfully, but ill or hurt. Well, she'd take what she could get. She let the breath out carefully and opened her eyes, which fell on his hand.
Evidently she had been the only one to almost step on him, the key word being 'almost.' Apparently, everyone else had just gone ahead and done so. His little finger lay at a sickening angle and his palm was a stigmata of bruises and blood and the white edges of bone. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, feeling more than a bit ill. Portlanders were usually more considerate than that. Come to think of it, nobody had even paused to ask what she was doing.
Suddenly angry, she snagged the arm of a passing businessman.
"Hey! There's a man under here unconscious. Help me help him!"
The man blinked at her, too astonished for anger, and then tugged his arm sharply out of her hand. He didn't leave, though; good man, she thought, relaxing a little as he leaned down and looked under the bushes. Her stomach fell when he stared back at her, brow creased and mouth a bracket of disapproval.
"Don't you think it's a bit early to be that drunk, lady?"
"I'm not drunk." Temper, Sarah, she chided herself. Snapping at him won't help anyone. "Can't you see him?"
Some amalgam of astonishment, irritation, and pity crossed the man's face. "No, ma'am, I can't say I do." And, just like that, he walked off. Sarah bit down on her lower lip and a mouthful of profanity, bile pressed against the back of her throat and eyes stinging with angry tears. She reached out a hand to touch the man's arm and cursed viciously under her breath as the hand shook. His coat lay stiff and sticky under her hand. She resolutely didn't think about that as she took a firm handful of it and tugged him closer until she could get her other hand on his other shoulder and, carefully, roll him onto his back.
It proved remarkably easy. He weighed next to nothing; she'd had more difficulty budging Jocelyn when she fell asleep on the couch. She resolved to delay thinking about that, too. For now, she had him to take care of.
A tooth broke the skin on her lip as she rolled him, staring hard at her white-knuckled grip on his jacket as she started the motion, and registering a pale, bloodied blur of face as she transferred her other hand to cup the base of his skull, keeping him from knocking his head against the sidewalk. Blood crusted against her fingertips, under tangled hair of an indistinguishable colour.
She extricated her hand carefully and, absently, wiped it against her jeans. An irrelevant thought crossed her mind; thank god she ihadn't/i worn a skirt. She let out a shivering laugh, ignoring the odd look a passerby gave her, and looked down at her foundling.
For the second time that day, she went still for a long moment. This time, she broke the pause with a wry smile as anxiety settled into something like disappointment.
"Should have known it was you…" Her voice sounded a bit distant to her. She shook her head slowly. One of her hands had reached out, of its own accord, to graze the sharp angle of a familiar cheekbone. "Damn. Oh well. Nothing for it."
Evidently, in the last five minutes, she'd forgotten how light he was; she almost overbalanced, compensating for weight that wasn't there, as she stood up cradling him against her chest like a sleeping child. He stirred a bit, tucking his face into her shoulder, and she pulled a face. This was going to be interesting. At least his lightness meant she could, however awkwardly, crouch down to pick up her bags, four handles in each hand, one hand under his knees and the other around his shoulders. She probably looked like an utter lunatic, a professional turned bag lady, Agnes with a thing for half-dead vagrants.
The last stoplight before her house turned red just as she approached. She cursed again, not even under her breath. Cursing seemed to be the order of the night, and "light, for a human(ish) being" did not equate to "easy to carry for a mile and a half."
She glared disgruntledly down at him, then blinked as her brain, finally rebooting, fired a thought at her.
"If you're here," she muttered, one eye narrowing, "who the hell is keeping them from letting chickens in the Escher room?" And then the light changed, and she hurried across the street, groceries whacking awkwardly against her hips.