Drawing Down the Sun
by Tichfield
many thanks to yodeladyhoo for her thorough and helpful editing
Labyrinth characters and situations property of the Jim Henson company, and not mine.
"...I will be your slave."
And will you call for him in Springtime, twenty years from now? He comes; the air is fresh, the sky is blue. You stand upon a verdant field, your feet are bare and chilled by dew-topped grass.
His wings block out the sun; you're blinded as you chase his silhouette with eyes - a moving 'V' that melts into a man.
Tall he stands, and proud, and angry to be summoned to this place with no retainers, walls or symbols of his office.
Upon your sides, you feel the wind. Your skin is raised and though you wish to wrap your hands about your arms, you leave them at your sides and shiver.
His shape blocks all that's cold, with the exception of his eyes. They are enough. Your front is warm from facing him. Here is an animal that you have forced to heel. Here is the wilding you have leashed by bonds of his own making. Here the king that has become a servant through his own decree.
His dress is elegant, and shadowed. A leather vest with matching folded boots, hose the colour and consistency most similar to smoke, a ruffled shirt, all white, whose neck is open with the practiced carelessness that takes an hour or more of planning.
His hair is just as you remember it - cannot be otherwise until you wish it so. Three times since you first bound him has he tried to cut his locks. Three times he was rebuffed, his hands turned back and scissors grudgingly replaced by his compulsion.
"Why have you called?" He'll ask, and shake three feathers from his hair, fair remnants of his transformation.
Why do you ever call?
A hand may rise to touch his arm; lightly, on the side, a single line traced softly by a finger.
Wind will never touch a Goblin King. He walks through winter warm. Torrential rain will leave him dry.
Your touch, your softest brush, will bring his skin to yours, despite his conscious will.
This discipline he has a-plenty, studied and impassive. Upon his muscles; tension. The line of jaw suggests a struggle and containment.
A question: once you know, and you are satisfied your power is as it has always been... what will you do with certitude?
His might is in his magic, and his virtue is to craft the world to suit your ends, your wishes.
Shall you ask him to?
Transform the field into a glade, turn day to sunset, fill the breeze with peaches and the music needed for the dance?
To this he must comply.
A nod, too stiff, and all about you rises forest. Earth projects her fingers, reaching for him, wishing (and how could she not?) to touch, to have, to hold... but he is yours. The branches stop well short of where you stand, and sprout fair leaves in beckoning and envy.
He lifts his hand, enveloped in a mole-skin glove. One breath, and on his covered palm a bubble forms. You feel his exhalation as it wafts and dissipates. Warm, moist and with a scent of bitter honey.
There is a power in it. Can't you tell? That is what runs along your spine, that warms your belly and that lifts your fingers to his hair.
A flick. The bubble rises 'til it traps the sun, and then it falls.
The star is on the ground. It's sunset, and your fingers are enveloped in a web more golden than the sky.
What now?
Author's note:
A standalone, likely not to be continued. I thought it was a pretty enough ficlet to put up (if only to reassure readers that I'm still alive).
It was intended as the introduction to a longer tale, setting up Agnes (yes, Agnes the scavenger) as Jareth's mother. The 'and would you' format would mask the fact that Agnes is vicariously telling the story of her own courtship of a former goblin king (hence 'a goblin king'). They had a son, Jareth, but having the elder king as her slave turned into an addiction, and the rest of the world was erased for Agnes... she stopped caring for herself, and about herself - he'd come to her anyway, wouldn't he? Eventually, in the malleable world of which the Labyrinth is a part, this resulted in her present goblin form. See if you can detect the revulsion in Jareth's father in the snippet above. Having to come back to her whenever an increasingly out-of-touch and narrow-minded Agnes asked for him took its toll on the elder king, as well. Eventually he died, and all that he had built turned to rubble... including the simulacrum of Agnes's home town, which became the scrapyard in the movie. As to why Sarah's room is there... that's Sarah's initial connection to the Labyrinth. Agnes is her long-lost aunt, mentioned in whispers by her mother. The aunt was keeping track first of Sarah's mother, but then of her sister's daughter, when the daughter grew to look very much as she once had. Adds extra creepiness to the Jareth/Sarah movie thing. Sarah's presence in the Labyrinth rebuilds that room and stirs it back to life exactly as she left it. Agnes hopes that Sarah stays, and hopes that by doing so her former city (and glory, and youth) will be rebuilt.
At the same time, she does not want Sarah to make the same mistakes she made... when the tale starts, we're at the movie's end. Agnes is still 'there', somewhere, because she's used to living in ruin and, besides, comes from Sarah's world, herself. I picture her staring into a bubble - something she has a right to do, as queen consort of the goblin kingdom - and prays that Sarah will not give in to her son's promises and entreaties. Not because he will break these promises... she knows he won't... but because she knows the consequences of enslaving a free spirit (or two).
The final words of the tale would have been:
"...you have no power over me." Good girl. Wise girl, to doom my son.