When I first put pen to paper to jot down an idea I had while watching the movie one afternoon that wanted to be written about, I was thinking that I would penning another drabble, a slightly longer one, 200 words minimum, but a micro-story nonetheless. Six hours, six and half pages and over 2400 words later, (Jareth wouldn't bloody well shut up) I found myself with the rough draft of this. I have since been mulling it over, looking at it then avoiding it for days and even weeks at a time. While I've grown fairly confident that I can do interesting things with 100-500 words, I still have no confidence whatsoever in my longer rambling stuff. I would like to get some feedback before I really embark upon the much longer plotlines rolling around in my head. This is still a one shot at this point, but with some minor modification it could well serve as a prologue or first chapter for a couple of different stories that have been rattling about in my head.
The Broken Dream
The Labyrinth was quiet in the soft predawn light, many of the inhabitants resting in the aftermath of the previous day's excitement. There had been a runner. A handful of its denizens were only just returning from a vaguely treasonous celebration at the home of said runner, now Champion of the Labyrinth, and were now largely in the process of slinking off to various bolt holes in hopes in hopes of avoiding potential retribution from their vanquished sovereign.
Not that they could know, but they really needn't have bothered. The king had other concerns that morning.
He had flown from her window, the sounds of revelry ringing in his ear. Crossing the veil between her world and his own had been more difficult than he could remember it having ever been before and he landed silently on a branch in the forest between the Bog and the Junkyard. He spread his wings to drop from the branch and landed on booted feet at the base of the tree. It had been here that she had eaten the peach and it had been here that he had sent the dream to find her.
Even a single bite of the spelled fruit should have rendered her insensate for hours beyond her deadline, and he'd nearly crowed with pleasure when he felt the spell take hold. Upon calling a scrying crystal to look in on her he had discovered that the idiot dwarf was less familiar with this part of the Labyrinth than he'd thought, because the forest where he'd left her was actually one of the more quietly dangerous places within his domain. Hidden among the stately old growth trees were imposters, carnivorous plants that were no threat to creatures that kept moving but that would bind any that should happen to be careless enough to rest within reach of their roots and branches. The unfortunate creature would be dragged below the soil where a feast would be made of it's blood and dreams. The girl's state of induced torpor would have seen her lost to the roots of the very tree she had fallen against in under an hour's time. He did not trust the fox or beast to know enough to move her, and he found that despite his earlier fit of pique in the tunnels, he had no desire to see her truly harmed. She intrigued him, drew him, in a way he did not quite understand and could not help but resent. He had watched her for quite some time now, lead her to his labyrinth, drawn her into the game and she had risen to the challenge, learning quickly and growing as he watched.
He had been almost disappointed when she had taken the peach so readily. But it meant that he had won, and with that knowledge it became much simpler to rationalize his odd desire to protect her as simply being gracious in his victory. She would wake in the morning, alone in her bed and neither she nor any other human on earth would remember that she had ever had a baby brother, the only remnant of her ill conceived wish a vague impression of something missing, and he would be free to go about the business of comfortably forgetting her.
And so he had sent the crystals to her. Four of them, bound together within the motions of his hand. The first was a complex dream plucked direct from the fertile grounds of her imagination, the next a transportation spell to bodily remove her from the danger and send her floating to the room he'd had prepared. He'd crafted a memory charm that would turn her adventure as well as her brother into the shadow of a dream, and the last crystal… the last crystal was a conceit. It was a piece of his power, a fragment of himself to observe her in her dream. It would give him something to keep of her, a tangible piece of her memory that he would be able to go back and watch at his leisure should he ever choose to do so. He'd been fairly certain that he would never really have much cause to do so, she would be nothing more than a vague memory soon enough after all, but it would make his victory that much sweeter, and he couldn't see any reason not to.
It was that fragment that he was searching for now. If he could find the remains of her dream he should also find the fragment of himself and perhaps finally be able to answer the questions that has been rattling in and out of his head and since the Goblin Guard had burst in and announced that 'the girl who ate the peach and forgot everything' was here, past the city gates any moments from the castle moments from throwing defeat into the jaws of his victory.
How had she broken the enchantment? How had she managed to wake up hours before the spell should have released her? He could not decide how he should feel about her escape because he did not know how she had done it. There had been an unwilling, wanted sense of admiration, and somewhere deep within himself, a burgeoning feeling of panic that he hadn't quite been able to write off as being more about losing the game than about losing her.
He had been thrown entirely off balance and there had been no time left to compose himself. He knew that the chance of the goblin guard actually being able to stop her from entering the castle in light the companions she had gained was slim to none - particularly since the goblins were forbidden by the rules of the game from actually intentionally causing physical harm. (He was not quite certain that he would have been able to give the order had they not been so bound, and even less certain they could manage to keep from harming her unintentionally.) He found himself so discomposed as he took the child into the impossible room that he had panicked and slowed time.
By the rules of the game she would win as soon as she crossed the threshold of the castle. She would go home with her brother as soon as the clock hit 13 regardless of anything he might or might not do.
By all rights she should have given up. He had dearly wanted for her to give up early, to abandon her brother for selfish pursuits so that he could safely forget about her, be allowed to write her off as just another foolish little human child and no longer have to deal with the gnawing sense of loneliness that her presence somehow managed to make him acutely aware of. But she hadn't. She had persevered, solving puzzles and winning allies - an unprecedented move was undoubtedly the key to her unprecedented victory.
He'd known then that if she hadn't woken from the peach dream he would never have let her go. He would have rationalized and procrastinated and prevaricate it to himself about it, and to anyone else who might have dared to question his actions, but he would have found reasons to keep her. It was undeniable by then because the game was over and he was still torn by a sense of growing dread at the thought of her leaving the underground, leaving him behind, forgetting him. He needed more time. Time to somehow find a way to get her to choose to stay of her own free will.
He'd sung to her as she had run up and down the stairs of the impossible room, or perhaps he'd sung at her. His confusion and anger at his inability to control or understand what he was feeling and why had bled into the song and that had frightened her more than anything else. When she had once again solved the riddle and jumped after the child his control slipped, and when he had sent the boy home without her, his power faltered and the impossible room lost its form.
Exhausted and desperate, he made one final plea. But she did not hear him, still believing the game to be in play she pressed on, reciting the words that would keep him out of her life forever or until she knowingly invited him back into it, whichever came first. At this point he rather suspected forever was more likely.
And so here he was, his introspection having taken long enough for him to trace the crystal bubbles path from the forest to the junkyard, where it had for some reason shattered scarcely twenty feet from the recreation of her room that had been its final destination. The room had been as thoroughly destroyed as the crystal, a sign that she had denounced the value of many of the material possessions she had so long held in such high regard. That, for the moment, was beside the point. He was here for something else.
He found the fragment of his power near the cast off remnants of the memory charm, buried under the rubble covering her desk. The doll had suffered in the wreckage- legs broken away from the base at the ankle, cape shattered, face cracked, but the tiny glass ball still sat in the outstretched hand, and it was here that the shard of his soul had taken refuge.
His hands trembled as he collected it, exhaustion riding him hard. As it reincorporated with the rest of him he felt a surge of warmth and let out a slow breath as it spread through him. He'd put more of his power into it than he thought, and its return allowed the trembling to subside. He used a portion of that reclaimed power to transport himself to his chambers before looking inward, preparing a crystal for long term preservation of the memory and dropping into the meditative state that would allow him to access the memories his spell had acquired and store them safely in the crystal he held loosely between his now bare palms. As useful as his gloves were in helping shield his sensitive hands from feeling every errant pulse of magic and in maintaining control during spell casting, in this instance they might well interfere with the accurate transference of memory. No matter what the memory showed him he needed it to be perfect, for it would be the only thing he would ever have of her. He was barred now from any action that might initiate contact in any traitorous wretches she called friends would be about to see her and he would be unable even to ask them how she was. He would forego punishing them for their betrayal, however, because he did not wish to earn her further enmity. Perhaps one day if there were any reason to believe that causing her outrage might get her to summon him to her, or if the passing of time saw the flame of her mortal life burn out, but for now he would avoid her ire. As his breathing slowed and his mind calmed, memories begin to filter in and he closed his eyes that he might focus on them wholly.
As the transport spell had scooped her up, the dream had dressed her in silver and white, a frothy, life-sized version of the dress worn by the princess in her music box. The dream had taken the form of a masquerade ball, and there she was shining like a star in midst of it. His heart gave a strange squeeze to see her looking more beautiful than ever, as well as several years older and more mature. She met his eyes across the ballroom and he could see recognition and an awareness in them that he'd never seen before from her. This wasn't right. The power he had left should never have manifested as anything more than an invisible, intangible observer, but he could see himself even now in the mirror wearing a midnight blue velvet jacket that sparkled even more than she did in the shining silver dress, his lithe form slipping effortlessly among the dancers on and around the floor. The courtiers too, were not as they should have been. They were frightening her, mocking her instead of making her feel like the belle of the ball. Something had gone very wrong. Somehow the fragment of his soul had been drawn actively into the dream, whether by his or her unspoken desire he could not say, but it had happened and his presence there had distorted the dream. The whole tone of the ball had shifted becoming something that was beyond her experience filled with undertones and interactions that were more sordid and cynical than her mind would have produced on its own. Even as her unease grew visibly with each encounter she kept moving through the crowd searching for him. At first his shadow kept its distance - letting her chase him, watching her from behind fans and columns and over the mocking laughter of the dancers. Finally she came face to face with him as he was being fawned over by two women in dresses cut low enough to make her blush. Their eyes met again and he stepped up to her. The lost look in her eyes at that moment had been unbearable.
He could not decide if it was heaven or hell, this memory of dancing with her. The feeling of holding her close in his arms the way she was looking at his shadow, at him. He could feel the fragment's sense of power over her and its smug satisfaction that she would lose the game soon and then be with him forever. Apparently he had put enough of himself into it for to have his desire and possessiveness for her, and not enough for it to be able to lie to itself about those things. The fragment had no illusions about passing infatuation or letting her go. It knew perfectly well it wanted to keep her and before long that smug knowledge showed through on its face and manifested in the dancers surrounding them. It could not hide it from her and she became frightened anew. Then, from the far side of the room came the chiming of a clock. He had certainly not put that in the dream. Somehow her mind had been strong enough to create a reminder within his trap. As the clock counted out twelve hours, she tore herself from his grasp. The mirror was inexorable, plainly reflecting loss and confusion on his face as he watched her run to the shell of the transport crystal, lift a chair and smash the spell apart. The memory charm had followed her out, but he had bound it in with the dream and the transit spells and it had suffered from their destruction to the point that it would take very little additional stress before breaking.
Jareth opened his eyes as the memory faded out on a vision of the walls of 'her room' crashing down as the memory charm crumbled.
"…'Will as strong' indeed." The words rolled bitterly off his tongue, but he could not deny the burgeoning sense of respect he felt for her right now. She had manifested a clock within the dreamscape. It was entirely possible that with that strength of will she might well have escaped even without the interference of the creation of his conceit. For though he had no doubt that by the inclusion of his will within the spells he'd meant to trap as much as protect her, he had ultimately weakened the hold those spells had on her. But she had been the one responsible for the clock, and so it was entirely possible that she would have won free regardless of any interference or lack thereof on his part. It was truly the dream that had been his undoing. Had he left her in a dreamless sleep there would have been no clock to wake her. But he could not have left her to die. It was clearer now than ever, she was remarkable. And she was gone. This dream was all he would ever have of her. He did not foresee her ever initiating contact with him willingly and with full awareness. He had frightened her too well, both intentionally and not.
His life would continue as it had before he'd ever noticed her. The King would be the King and he would see to it that none would be aware of this lapse in sense. But he would keep this memory close, this dream where he could hold her, and dance with her. And when he could find time away from curious eyes and idiot minions he would relive those few precious moments within the dream when she had looked up at him and the look in her eyes had been enough to let him hope.
I hate begging for reviews because I am not as consistent at reviewing the works of others as I should be, but Please, for the love of Pants, I need feedback on this. Was it good, was it terrible, if it was terrible is it at least worth messing with until it's not? Seriously, if I don't hear anything I will likely assume that it's worthless and you will never see anything longer than 500 words out of me ever again. I love you all.