Disclaimer: I don't own any of the places in this tale, or Jareth, (sigh, alas for this). He and the Underground belong to Jim Henson and Co., and we live what I call the Overworld, so it doesn't really belong to anyone. However, the Queen Trarrissima and various other unnamed characters do belong to me, so sue me not.
Chapter One
1600 A.D.
The Goblin queen had a taste for adventure and deception, and she knew no better fools to prey upon than her own subjects. It was a habit of hers to be a two-faced ruler: on one hand a stern, stony empress, supreme ruler of all the Underground and making no contact with her lowly subjects; but on night like this one, she was an unknown villager, a peasant who laughed and drank with the rest of the goblins, almost coarse in her lack of inhibitions and often out drinking until late at night in her long, dirty brown cloak. People mistook her for a common goblin wench, no richer than the rest of them, and just as easy to mess about with.
She did, however, take care to always carry her sceptre about with her, just in case things got too rowdy.
Oftentimes she would step over to the border between the Underground and the realm of men and beasts, called the Overworld, with which the goblins had a shaky alliance. It was in this realm that the queen's hypocrisy became almost painfully clear to her, and she often wondered why the goblins could not befriend such folk as she joined in their merry festivals. "It is the way," she told herself sternly every time. "It is the way it must be, and it is the way it has always been, and always will be. The subjects wish to have some distance, and so they have it."
She knew in her heart that it was partly her own lazy fear of change that separated her subjects from humans, but would not let herself admit this.
"I do not like these humans," she thought as she danced among them. "They are cruel to my people. I do not like them. I just use them for entertainment."
With that thought, she resolved to forget such trivialities and enjoy herself. "This is not my regal conscience' time for speaking," she thought to herself. "It may jabber as much as it wishes to later on."
And with that, she joined in their merry dancing.
The Coming of Spring was being celebrated among the humans, and in the glade where the queen stood, this was at its most obvious. The trees were strung with colorful ribbons which laced from limb to limb like the streaking flights of birds, paper lanterns dangling from their stomachs, and beneath, stretched out pantherlike in the moonlight, were a large quantity of equally bright and vibrant tents, hungrily encircling a great bonfire that shot out from the middle of the glade like fury. About this fire danced many men and women, their half-naked bodies writhing and twisting ecstatically around the busy flames, to some distant music which seemed to flood the glade.
The queen let loose to the wonderful beat, waving her arms in the air. A snatch of momentum caught her cloak and slid it down off her forearm, so that her dark goblin skin was shown to the world. Many men stopped dancing and stared at this new discovery, confused by the near blackness of her skin in comparison to the paleness of all the others'. Whispers hissed back and forth in a tangled web that closed around Trarrissima. "She is not human! She is something strange!"
Trarrissima glanced about her and slowed her dancing, once again hiding her arms beneath her cloak. She could barely understand their language, but knew Her cowl slipped away from her face a little bit, exposing her black chin and her long yellow goblin teeth. She tugged her hood back about her face when she saw their looks of disgust, and they shrunk away from her as she danced.
Trarrissima stopped dancing and wondered if she should leave, but she wondered even more at the people's prejudice. They were such a motley crowd themselves, consisting of the old and the young, the tall and the short, the thin and the fat, all mixing together. Why should not she too be allowed to mingle with them? Was this the reason or the result of the Underground's separation from this realm?
As she surveyed the crowd, marking their differences, a certain young man caught her eye. He was of middling height, and outstanding beauty, every inch of his lithe, muscular form vibrating with vigorous life. He seemed to Trarrissima the very model of a human male, his curly brown hair and rich brown eyes warming his milky skin. He shone amidst his friends with a youthful energy the Goblin queen found irresistible.
She felt herself being drawn to him, as an autumn leaf is guided from a tree by the wind. Slowly, almost stealthily, she crept towards him.
Their eyes met and he smiled encouragingly, starting towards her. He was shivering visibly in anticipation, and Queen Trarrissima liked the feeling of power he gave her. She smiled at him, drawing back her hood slightly to display her rows of sharp teeth. They met in the middle of things, face to face, a rush of confusion about them creating a vacuum in which they might communicate.
The man pointed at himself with a stubby finger. "Fratz," he grunted, in a deep, husky voice that the queen associated with the felling of trees and the grinding of stones.
She smiled. "Good," she responded silkily, in the common goblin tongue.*
The man could not understand her; nevertheless he took her hand. They danced slowly, erotically to the lilting tune, unnoticed by the crowd. Then they sped up and began to twirl. People stopped and stared, moving far out of their way as Trarrissima, senseless in the dizzying moment, tossed back her lovely head and let her hood fall from it, her long pale hair swept off of her dark face, making a whirlwind of ecstasy about them as she stared at the spinning roulette of stars and laughed. At one point her entire cloak fell from her person, and she was dancing in her dark dragonskin gown, her cares lost in the jungle of Fratz' brown eyes.
They spun away, amidst the crowd of staring faces, into the seclusion of the woods, and Fratz grabbed the Goblin queen's hand and led her away to a quiet grove full of ferns and lilacs. The full moon shone down clearly upon them and a little stream trickled by their feet. Fratz seemed dazed and confused, so Trarrissima grabbed his hand and tugged him down to the ground, where she lay on top of him and kissed him gently. "Love….love…" breathed Trarrissima softly, nibbling Fratz' ear. This ignited him and he began kissing her all over her body….
They consummated their love beneath the lilac trees, and as the young man lay there sleeping, Trarrissima conjured another cloak for herself and slipped back into the woods, unnoticed by passing men who were on their way to bed. As she stepped over the border between the Underground and the Overworld, the moon setting behind the buildings of the goblin city, she recalled to herself the events of the evening and laughed with joy. Little did she know what she had brought back with her.