Seventeen.
I am seventeen, Sarah thinks as her father sternly reprimands her for even bringing up the concept of them looking after their own child and not use her as a babysitter.
Seventeen years of age – she can't even drink, yet she's expected to look after a baby, barely eighteen months old? Sarah protested before…before wishing her brother away, four months ago when she was still only sixteen and not seventeen. Sarah still protests now, but Sarah knows she's doing it differently, differently enough that her parents – that her father and step-mother – both take notice.
"Are you even listening to anything your father is saying?" her step-mother cuts into her thoughts. "You need to get your head out of the clouds, Sarah. This is life. We don't have time to look after Toby-"
"Lie," Sarah says, without thinking, recognising her words for what they are. "That's a lie," she says, staying sat in her chair at the dining table as her father leans over his plate at the end.
Her father glares. "Don't speak to Karen like that. Apologise, Sarah."
"No," Sarah refuses. "You do have time to look after Toby, you just spend it doing something else. You go to parties and dinners. You aren't even paying me."
"Why would we pay you?" Karen laughs, shaking her head. "Toby's your brother, you don't need to be paid."
"If you leave him with me again, I'm phoning the police," Sarah delivers her ultimatum. There's a moments silence, before her father slams down his dinner-fork, the glasses and plates clattering and vibrating.
"Go to your room, right now. You're grounded for a week."
"Fine," Sarah says, standing and leaving. Why does righteousness feel so bitter on her tongue? Toby. Toby is an innocent soul in all of this. Toby shouldn't have to bear the brunt of Sarah's dive for independence, recognition that she is a person.
Sarah goes to her room. She locks the door and leans against it, looking into her cluttered space and seeing relics of her childhood – toys, doll houses and costumes.
Well, she thinks again as she looks at the wardrobe of period dresses and small trunk of shoes, they aren't so childish, not really. Drama, theatre and performance are obsessions of hers. I could get rid of my toys though, from when I was younger. Give them to Toby or put them in the attack.
The rest of the week passes by and she boxes what seems like half her room up, giving her stuffed fox to Toby and using gloves to pick up some nails that have fallen from somewhere and give her a bad feeling like she'll be hurt, that her hands will burn.
Of course, Sarah's so-called grounding just gives her parents another reason to leave her alone with Toby; but she swore she would phone the police if they did and Sarah will keep her word.
"And you gave them fair warning?" the officer questions, more serious than Sarah expected them to be when they arrive and she explains the situation.
"I told them no, many times. I refused to be used." It doesn't sit right in her. It never did, but now more than ever, Sarah can't stomach the thought, let alone the reality that someone has power over her.
Maybe it was a dream. Sarah thinks of the Labyrinth, closes her eyes and sees the sandy walls and stones, the talking doors and the Fireys dancing and singing around their campfire.
Her friends – who visited her through her mirror, who never came back through again or who maybe weren't ever there at all – plot their usual course; Hoggle to his gardening, Sir Didymus to his patrols and Ludo to his gentle life, occasionally batting unruly goblin interlopers.
The Goblin King sits forlorn in a tower window, overlooking the impossible maze, but his gaze shifts, meeting hers, still so intoxicating even in her head.
You have no power over me, she thinks at the spectre and he shuts his eyes as if in pain.
"…if the Goblin King cannot use me, no-one can," Sarah later murmurs in her bed after her parents have been ordered home by the authorities and lectured on employing Sarah as an unpaid child minder.
She wonders if she could have gone a different route – if she could have resolved their stagnant conflict with compromise or by faking some form of mental breakdown from the stress. Is this way better or worse?
"You're just like your mother," her father proclaimed bitterly, after the officer left. "All the attention and the drama-"
The only way my mother and I are the same is how neither of us say what we don't mean. Sarah silently replies to his accusation in her head, after hours of replaying the conversation in her head, finally coming up with her perfect counter.
Sarah rearranges her room. Her bed goes in the corner and her other pieces of furniture are either rearranged along the walls or put to the attic, unneeded now she has less material possessions. She's left with a space in the middle of her room, full of carpet and softness, perfect for lying down on and thinking.
Sometimes, Sarah stares at her cracked ceiling for hours, tracing lines and seeing double, the Labyrinth a beautiful, volatile picture in her mind. It's like the Labyrinth is right in front of her and sometimes, she feels as though she's able to touch it, should she just reach out her hand, stretch…
When she was younger, she asked her father for a guitar. She learnt to play it as well as she could at twelve, before finding love in novels and plays. Charity shops, yard sales and car-boot markets were her friends. The obscure always caught her eye – but she was like those goblins who hoarded junk and her things filled the space around her until she was blinded.
The guitar lies up against the wall, now and she can see clearly.
Picking it up again is strange. Sarah plucks a string and nearly shivers in fright at how out of tune the guitar is. The Labyrinth always in her sight, she seeks out the Goblin King who would know and whispers to him, questioning.
Would you sing for me, please? Help me tune my guitar.
Jareth looks so startled at her voice, so oddly surprised – but an exuberant smile soon lights up his face and he laughs, before singing a simple ditty. Sarah doesn't take long to tune her guitar with it and her fingers remember most of the notes she knew as a child, so when he becomes less rigid, stringing together a more complex song of sound – with no words, for Sarah does not think she could replicate that beautiful sound – Sarah plays along.
Her guitar sees more use than it had when she was twelve after that. Sarah is alone, yet never alone whenever she picks it up after school, playing along silently to Jareth's voice. He usually sings happy songs, but every once in a while, a sad epic will lay waste to her and she abandons her guitar to lie back down on her round carpet to listen.
"You've changed a lot," someone at school says. Samantha, Sarah recalls her name with clarity, the name tied to her friend like caramel taffee but shining grey.
"People change," Sarah replies, not thinking much of it – but it makes her notice the true changes that suddenly stick out like fire in the dark.
Her close friends in the drama club at school have drawn away from her, half the time seeming to forget she exists. Samantha had said she'd changed with a startled tone to her voice, like she'd just realised Sarah was there – and more often than not, teachers do roll-call and drift over her name like it isn't even there.
In truth, Sarah hadn't even noticed. She hasn't cared enough to notice. Solitude is a boon, her fantasy of Jareth and the Labyrinth a constant, warm companion in her head. They're both all there – Jareth, always wandering and the Labyrinth, full of twists, turns and tumbles, ups and downs, flats and walls, spiral through her head – and only Toby, young, baby Toby, provides her true, human connection.
But still.
Why are people leaving me? Sarah asks Jareth on a slow day for song, nearly a year from the day she wished Toby away. He frowns in the middle of his delicate dance across the room, glancing at where she sees him from on his throne.
"I think you already know, my Queen."
His reply sends her shooting straight into the real world and she gasps, jolting into the physical world. For once, he disappears from her head and the Labyrinth dulls to a tiny, miniscule brightness in the back of her mind.
"Queen," Sarah whispers in fear, clutching the neck of her guitar and practically flinging it away when the strings all snap under her fingers, startled and surprised. The guitar makes all sorts of wrong noises, the strings curling up at either end as the guitar settles on the ground, last echoes ringing through it from a bump against her bookcase.
I am Jareth's Queen.
"No," she whispers as, all at once, she realises her mistake. "No, no, no…"
My will is as strong as yours and my kingdom as great
"No, no, no, no, no-"
You have no power over me!
Sarah clutches at her head, eyes wide and chest pounding.
"What have I done? Words have power and I- and I said- oh no!"
My will is as strong as yours and my kingdom as great. You have no power over me!
"What kingdom did I have?" Sarah buries her face in her hands, leaning down into her crossed legs. "I had none, yet I said my kingdom as great! He must not have had a queen! I took the empty space and made his kingdom mine."
Sarah doesn't know what to do. I am a Queen. I am Jareth's Queen. He is my King and the Labyrinth…the Labyrinth is ours. But oh, doesn't the thought of sharing the Labyrinth send a thrill through her chest? Adrenaline pumping through her veins, her heart beating in her chest. The drop of warmth in her mind pulses that strange, unique, familiar song of the Underground and Sarah reaches for it.
Once more, the Labyrinth overlays her mind. Without meaning to, Sarah automatically seeks out Jareth, but this time instead of murmuring to him, she imagines herself there, in front of him.
The Goblin King watches her with unblinking eyes, but he offers his hand and Sarah takes it after only a moment's pause. It's cold in her grip but undeniably solid.
"Jareth," she breathes his name and he shivers before Sarah hears a knock on her bedroom door, like she's still there, in the Above.
"Sarah, is it okay to leave Toby with you tonight if I give you some pocket-money? Santina is at her nephews birthday party in Oklahoma."
Sarah tries to keep the connection on both sides running, but as she focuses on the Above, her hand in Jareth's in the Underground dematerialises.
"Sarah? Are you in there?" her dad questions, sounding wary.
"…yeah, I'm in here," Sarah says, voice delayed as she tries to orientate herself. "Will it be overnight?"
"I will call if it turns into that, but no, I shouldn't think so," her dad replies and Sarah, for once, feels safe in trusting him on this. She shuts her eyes, nodding, giving him a verbal affirmative before listening to his footsteps as they fade out.
Then, Sarah goes over to her guitar, inspecting it and gently ignoring Jareth's whisper of her name, over and over. Sarah, Sarah, come back, Sarah. Nearest to my heart, my Sarah, my Queen, Sarah. Sarah remembers something he said to her when she ran the Labyrinth.
Your eyes can be so cruel, just as I can be so cruel.
"Cruelty," Sarah murmurs, standing with her guitar and going to a drawer where she keeps spare strings. "Eyes cannot be cruel. I am cruel, just as he is. For our wills are equal, just as our kingdom is great…"
Sarah restrings her guitar. The afternoon passes and then the evening. When her parents come home, relieving Sarah from duty, she kisses Toby goodnight again as she goes past her parents' room before returning to the sanctuary of her own.
Then, Sarah shuts her eyes and dreams of the Goblin King.