Disclaimer: I own none of these delightful characters. The Faerie Queen is the only one I lay claim to, and it is a tenuous claim at best.
Dedicated to my friends from the Masquerade Ball
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Watching him had become the Faerie Queen's chief obsession during her spare moments. In the little time ruling Faerie afforded her, she would evoke a prism, and if she turned it just so and looked into it, it displayed her desires. Her eyes would take in the vision of him, and her breathing would become shallow so as not to fog the prism she held so close to her face. He had become the spectrum of her desires.
The Faerie Queen had first noticed him because of his wild mane of golden hair. She noticed he wore it in several lengths, and it gave him the majestic and dangerous appearance of a lion. The Faerie Queen watched him from the shadows, her pale hands against her lips as if she was in silent prayer that she not be discovered. Her Fae eyes followed him, wondering what it would be like to wrap those long golden locks around her fingers. The Faerie Queen decided to go in for a closer look at him.
Winking into invisibility, the Faerie Queen approached him cautiously. Quietly, quietly, she stole up to him to look him over. He was tall and lean, and he moved with a manly elegance. The Faerie Queen moved closer, admiring his well-sculpted face. He was attractive...no, he was beautiful. The Queen was delighted with his looks. Any Fae woman would want to possess such as him, she thought approvingly. It was then that she looked into his eyes...
...and a strange enchantment took hold of her, one she could feel, but did not understand...
His eyes were mismatched and mesmerizing. The right eye was as blue as a summer day, but the left eye was of a hazel green hue, and the pupil was perpetually wide. The Fairy Queen swallowed hard. The Queen was glad he was not aware of her presence, and wasn't gazing into her own exquisite eyes. He would have power over her if he never took his eyes off her. That was one of the Faerie Queen's greatest vulnerabilities. The Queen stepped away from him in quiet haste, back to the shadows.
As the Fairy Queen crouched in the shadows biting her knuckles to remember not to make any noise, he began to sing to himself. His rich baritone felt like a gentle caress to her ears, causing her to sigh audibly. He heard the soft sigh, and stopped abruptly, his up-swept brows knit together in a frown. "Who's there?" he demanded suspiciously. The Queen became still as a frightened mouse, and uttered not a sound till at last he was relaxed, satisfied he was alone. In time, the Fairy Queen grew bolder, though due to her magic she remained unseen by him. She would come behind him and lovingly touch a spiky lock of his hair, then quickly withdraw her hand till the look of surprise would pass from his face.
Growing bolder still, the Faerie Queen began to stand mere inches in front of him just to look into his face and catch a glimpse of his extraordinary eyes. Once, he seemed to smile and close his eyes and take in her fragrance. Another time, the Queen was over-confident, and stood too close to him for too long. He snatched in the air for her. The Queen was too swift for him, but he had been close. That time, in the safety of the shadows she shivered with the thrill of how close he had come in succeeding to catch her.
The Faerie Queen began to wonder what it would be like to be in those long, lean arms of his. She began to wonder what it would be like to have her cheeks stroked by the fingers of the dark leather gloves he always seemed to wear, and to hear him sing in her elfin ear while they danced together under the stars.
The Faerie Queen's servants saw the strange, dreamy look in her eyes, and her soft, silly smiles whenever she peered at her prisms. They nudged and winked at each other. Their Queen was lovesick. Word spread through the Queen's realm faster than a fairy in flight. To the Faerie Queen's great anger, she learned there was a mortal beauty who had been poisoning her beloved's mind for quite a while. This mortal woman had been to the Underground before, and all due to her beloved. The Faerie Queen began spying on the dark-haired, green-eyed beauty through her prisms, thinking it best to know what threat, if any, this mortal posed to her visits to him.
One day, the Faerie Queen saw the dark-haired woman sitting before the mirror at her vanity. Three creatures appeared in the mirror--a dwarf, a fox dressed as a courtier, and a huge hairy beast with gentle eyes. Concern was written on their faces, warnings flashed in their eyes. When they spoke, they warned the woman about the Faerie Queen! In a fit of fury, the Faerie Queen smashed the prism against the wall of her chambers. Shards scattered everywhere before they sparkled and dissolved.
The Faerie Queen paced the floors of her chambers, chewing on the nail of her thumb. This wouldn't do! This wouldn't do! This mortal woman would tell him she had her eyes on him. The mortal woman would tell him of her spying, and he would be on his guard. He would think the worst when all she wanted was ...
What was it she wanted, anyway?
I want HIM! the Faerie Queen answered herself. How could she get him to notice her? Ideas began to percolate in the Faerie Queen's mind. If she were to bring the mortal woman back to the Underground, would he try to find her? The Faerie Queen thought this probable, considering the history the two shared. She grinned. The mortal woman would be brought back to the Underground, then! What fun! There hadn't been a good game in the Underground for over twenty years!
The Faerie Queen waited patiently for her opportunity to begin the game. She peered into her prisms incessantly, and waited for the mortal woman to call to her friends from the Underground once again. One night, the dark-haired woman sat at her vanity calling for her friends to appear to her. Soon the dwarf, the knightly fox and the great beast showed in her mirror. The Faerie Queen vanished from her chambers and reappeared as a fifth image in the vanity's mirror. The mortal woman, the dwarf, the fox and the beast all gazed at the Faerie Queen in shock and terror.
"Do you miss your friends from the Underground so, Sarah? Well, I've come to bring you back for a visit!" the Faerie Queen said to the trembling woman. The Faerie Queen evoked a prism, and threw it toward Sarah. The prism shattered on it's impact with the top of the vanity. What seemed like ribbons of rainbows wrapped themselves around the mortal woman and pulled her from the reality of the Aboveground realm and into the fantasy realm of the Underground.
Sarah's three friends were enraged and demanded to know where the Faerie Queen had taken her.
"You know very well where she is" the Faerie Queen laughed. The game had begun well!
"Sawwah!!", bellowed the furry beast mournfully.
" Please bring her back. Please ", begged the fox.
The Faerie Queen ignored the fox's plea, and conjured one of her prisms. " I've brought you a gift", she announced to the three.
" What is it? " asked the dwarf, suspicious.
" It's a prism, nothing more; but if you turn it this way and look into it, it will display your desires ". replied the Faerie Queen, " But this isn't a gift for a dwarf, a talking fox, and a beast who gossip about me to a tattling mortal woman. It's for ' him ' . Take it to ' him ' . The Faerie Queen held out the prism for one of Sarah's three friends to take.
" We can't ", the fox said tersely. " We want Lady Sarah back. She must be scared. "
" Don't defy me, " the Fairy Queen warned, " You're no match for me ".
" Don't you understand, we can't? " the dwarf shouted.
" She's there in my palace " the Faerie Queen said, turning her prism to show Sarah to her friends. Sarah lie on a dais in a small torch-lit room furnished with full length mirrors with ornately carved, gilded frames. By all appearances Sarah was deep in an enchanted sleep. The Faerie Queen withdrew the prism after she was sure all three had got a good look at Sarah.
"And you don't even want to try to look for him. What a pity ", the Faerie Queen said with feigned indifference.
" Sawwah friend! " howled the beast piteously.
" Time is short ", the Faerie Queen continued, showing the three friends an enormous clock whose face showed the thirteen hours as kept by the denizens of the Underground, " You three have thirteen hours in which to find him and give him my gift before your darling Sarah remains in a deep sleep...forever!" The Faerie Queen tossed the prism to the three. It was caught by the dwarf.
" Such a pity! " The Faerie Queen stepped back and disappeared.
" I thought she did nice things like granting wishes ", said the fox in a small voice.
" Shows what you know, don't it? " the dwarf responded bitterly.
As luck would have it, the three friends wasted precious time learning how to focus on the prism before they found him in the display of their desires. Streams of rainbows shot out of the prism and pulled him out from wherever he had been, away from whatever he had been doing. He appeared before them stunned, clearly surprised at the three creatures before him, and at his new surroundings.
" You're them, aren't you? You're Sarah's friends ", he asked after the initial shock wore off. His mismatched eyes fell on one after the other as he spoke their names. " Hoggle the dwarf, Sir Didymus the fox, and Ludo the beast".
The three surrounded him and the dwarf and the fox spilled everything out to him in a great rush while the beast simply bellowed Sarah's name in a lament. They told how the Faerie Queen had spied on him for such a long time and had become smitten with him, how they'd tried to warn Sarah so as to warn him, and how the Faerie Queen had stolen Sarah and had her under some foul sleeping spell in her palace.
" And the Faerie Queen said this is for you ", finished the dwarf, holding the prism out for him. " She said it was a gift. It displays your desires ".
He took the prism from the dwarf gingerly. Rainbows danced across his face as his mismatched eyes peered into the prism. " What I desire right now is for all of us to be in Faerie Land , rescuing Sarah! " he said grimly.
The very air around the four became charged with magic. Ribbons of rainbows shot out of the prism, and melted their surroundings. When the prism's magic was spent, it dissolved with a hiss. The four found themselves in a maze of mirrors. Not yet acclimated to the situation, they walked into the walls of their own seemingly endless reflections, and bounced back against each other in their confusion. The image of a clock that kept the thirteen hours of the Underground appeared in the mirrors, indicating how very little time was left.
After over an hour of irritatingly slow progress, he'd finally had enough of the Faerie Queen's childish maze.
" To hell with THIS!! ", he snarled, and put a leather-gloved fist through the mirror he'd just walked in to. The glass shattered around the closed fist, and the broken pieces tinkled as they shattered against the flagstone floor.
" Brother Ludo, call your rock friends! Have then help smash the mirrors! " the fox shouted to the beast.
Ludo the beast sang a deep bass note, and rocks came skipping and rolling to him. With the next bass intonation, the beast ordered the rocks to help the wild-haired man to smash the mirrors. The rocks seemed to enjoy the task set before them, as they hurled themselves into the mirrors, only to pick themselves up off the ground and smash the next. The sounds of smashing, cracking, shattering, tinkling glass filled the air. Soon there was a sea of reflective glass behind the four.
Just as he was about to beat down the last of the mirrors with his boots and leather-clad fists, he caught the Faerie Queen's reflected image standing behind his own. They were alone. The dwarf, the fox, and the beast were gone. He whirled around quickly, and found that his surroundings changed for the third time that day, for he was in darkness save for the brightness that emanated from the glamour-lit Faerie Queen.
She was clothed in all her most feminine faerie finery, and her long star- white hair hung loose to her waist. The look on the Faerie Queen's face was gentle, and her eyes gleamed like a woman besotted. He didn't care. He had made it this far for one reason, and he would not allow her to distract him with her charms.
.
" Give me my sister ", Toby commanded .
The Faerie Queen giggled uneasily. He seemed terribly angry. " Toby..."
. " I know it's been you that's been watching me. Beware. I can be cruel ". Toby warned.
" I wish to be generous..." began the Faerie Queen, but Toby cut her off with a dismissive gesture.
" Generous? What has your kind ever done to my sister and me that's been generous? Everything that you've wanted, you've taken! " Toby spat.
The Fairy Queen cowered before Toby. He WAS frightening. " I have reordered time. I have turned the world upside-down, and I have done it all for you! " she revealed to him, expecting him to be pleased.
" Isn't. That. Generous? " Toby sneered, while the Faerie Queen winced. "Am I not living up to your expectations of me? " he asked sarcastically, as the Faerie Queen seemed confused by Toby's attitude. " I'm exhausted! For the past twenty years your kind have put my sister and me through dangers untold, and hardships unnumbered! I fought my way here to your palace in Faerie-Land for my sister, and my will is as strong as hers! "
The Faerie Queen began to feel panicked. Why was he so angry when he had won the game? This was not at all what she had hoped for. The Faerie Queen knew she had to speak and act quickly to placate Toby before everything was ruined.
" Stop! " the Faerie Queen exclaimed in alarm, " Wait! " The Faerie Queen seemed to pluck a prism from out of the air. She smiled her most alluring smile, looking straight into Toby's unusual eyes. His eyes were hard.
" Look, Toby! Look what I' m offering you---your desires! " The Faerie Queen said in a seductive tone. She held out the prism to Toby, certain he would take it from her. Toby took a step back instead.
" I ask for so little ", The Fairy Queen said gently while she gave him a pretty pout and batted her eyelashes at him." I will let you rule me, and you can have everything that you want!"
Toby took another step back, and looked at the ethereal beauty before him as if she were a bridge troll.
" Y-you fear me? " The Faerie Queen asked in dismay, incredulous that Toby retreated from her. But still she moved to join Toby, and still she offered the prism.
" I love you! " The Faerie Queen cried and fell on her knees in front of Toby, and held the prism out before her. The prism refracted the light of the Faerie Queen's glamour and rainbows danced about the two. She softly pleaded with Toby, " Do as I say, and I will be your slave! "
Toby took firm hold of the Faerie Queen's forearm and hauled her up to her feet. Her eyes half-closed , and she parted her lips for what she expected would be her first kiss from Toby. " I want no power over you! " he hissed.
In that instant, the clock chimed the thirteenth hour and three magical things were broken: The spell that held Sarah as the Faerie Queen's captive ; a prism meant to display one's heart's desires that shattered on the flagstone floor of the Faerie Queen's palace ; and the Faerie Queen's heart, which broke into a thousand pain-filled pieces as Toby and his sister disappeared from the palace and returned to their home Aboveground.
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The Goblin King filled his mouth with brandy and held it there while he breathed through his nose to savor the scent and the flavor of the intoxicating liquid. His other two companions, Fae monarchs from neighboring lands, took swallows from their drinks and came to a final agreement with the Goblin King and with each other on establishing new trade routes. Business having been concluded, the men sat and made small talk and drank before returning to the ball outside the Elf King's salon.
" Have you seen the Faerie Queen tonight? " the Elf King asked the other two.
" Yes. She is so withdrawn since being rejected by that mortal man " observed the Dragon Lord " Not like her usual self at all. Her Majesty is usually the most vivacious woman at our Fae functions "
" Aye, the Queen has become quite the wallflower ", agreed the Elf King. " Jareth, did you know the Faerie Queen had become infatuated with the younger brother of that mortal girl that ran through your Labyrinth and defeated you some twenty years ago? "
The Goblin King nearly sprayed the brandy he had taken in his mouth. Instead, he was able to swallow, though the brandy went down the wrong way.
" What was that? " The Goblin King managed to choke out. His two companions cheerfully pounded on his back to help him cough while they explained how the Faerie Queen had kidnapped the woman Sarah Williams in order to bring her younger brother Toby the Underground.
" You'd think the woman would have better sense than to follow in your footsteps, Jareth! " Elf King chuckled. The Goblin King didn't see the humor in the Elf King's remark at all.
The Dragon Lord clucked his tongue. " I've never seen a happy pairing of a Human and a Fae. Oh, I don't mean to say Human and Fae pairings don't happen---it's just that I've never seen any happiness come from it! We are well advised to stick with our own kind, my friends! "
The Dragon Lord and the Elf King left to re-join the ball . The Goblin King was left in the salon to collect himself a bit after he began to breathe a little more freely.
Instead of returning directly to the ball, The Goblin King took the brandy decanter and two clean balloon glasses through the door leading to the Elf King's long veranda. The Goblin King placed the decanter and the two balloon glasses underneath a marble seat, then walked the length of the veranda till he came to the ballroom doors that were left open so the dancers could retreat to the veranda to rest. The Goblin King went inside and searched among the Fae aristocracy till his eyes lighted on the Faerie Queen. The Queen sat alone in a corner staring at her slippers.
" Good evening, Your Majesty ", The Goblin King said, and bowed to the Faerie Queen. "May I have this dance? " he held a white gloved hand out to the Queen, and smiled pleasantly. The Queen looked up at the offered hand, without looking at the Goblin King. She nodded and rose, then meekly accepted his hand.
The two danced in silence and the Faerie Queen never lifted her eyes higher than the ruffles of her partner's shirt. Since Toby defeated the Faerie Queen, she had trouble meeting the gaze of other Fae, thinking they held her in quiet contempt.
After they had danced for some moments, the Goblin King cleared his throat and spoke . " I understand we have something in common , Your Majesty ", he began " We both have had dealings with Sarah and Toby Williams from Aboveground " .
The Faerie Queen's feet froze to the floor and her mouth dropped open as she looked up at her partner, stunned. Her knees began to buckle a bit, but the Goblin King had anticipated her reaction, and held her against him firmly till she snapped back into awareness from the shock of the Goblin King's words.
" Perhaps we should go out on the veranda and get some fresh air, Your Majesty? " the Goblin King suggested. The Faerie Queen nodded dumbly, and allowed the Goblin King to guide her away from the other guests, some of whom, the Queen noted to her great embarrassment, sneered at her and snickered.
The Goblin King walked with the Faerie Queen the length of the veranda, away from others who'd come outside to catch a night breeze before the next dance or escape the din of the ballroom. He led her to the marble seat where he'd hidden the decanter and the balloon glasses and bade her to sit.
" My apologies, Your Majesty, but I...well, I thought we could speak together about Sarah and Toby. Long ago I had the girl Sarah run through my Labyrinth for Toby's return. The girl defeated me ". The Goblin King made a wry face. " I was quite smitten with Sarah ", he admitted.
" Toby..." began the Faerie Queen, and then blushed crimson, " I wanted..." The Queen broke off, too ashamed to continue.
" I understand completely, Your Majesty " the Goblin King said soothingly.
The Faerie Queen made a mewling noise and burst into tears. The Goblin King sat beside the Queen and held her while she wept. His own eyes moistened, but he shed no tears for the mortal Sarah. The Goblin King dried her tears with the lace-edged handkerchief he had stuffed in his sleeve once she had sobbed her last. He brought the brandy out from under the marble seat and poured for both of them.
" Just take it in one gulp, Your Majesty. It will take the edge off your distress ". The Faerie Queen obeyed him and swallowed the burning liquid. She thought she tasted the flavor of peaches.
" So young Master Toby has become an adult ". The Goblin King mused. " Do you know, Your Majesty, that while Sarah ran through my Labyrinth, I actually considered keeping him to rear myself? He was a lively little chap. I thought of re-naming him Jareth. He's got my eyes, you know ".
The Faerie Queen looked into the Goblin Kings eyes for the first time and gasped. Toby's eyes!
"My crystals show one's dreams ", the Goblin King said, and produced a crystal, eager for the Faerie Queen to see Sarah Williams in her youth. " This is how Sarah Williams appeared twenty years ago ".
" My prisms display one's desires " , said the Faerie Queen, and evoked a prism. "This is Toby now ". She looked away as the Goblin King gazed at Toby's image, and blushed deeply.
The Goblin King seemed to study Toby's image for quite a while before he laughed heartily, " I seem to have made an indelible impression on the fellow! ".
The Faerie Queen looked at the image of Toby displayed in her prism then to the Goblin King who sat beside her. The corners of her mouth turned up, and her eyes crinkled as she suppressed the urge to giggle by covering her mouth with her free hand. She nodded her agreement. Toby had unconsciously aped the Goblin King's style, no doubt about it!
" Well, laugh! " the Goblin King instructed the Faerie Queen.
The Faerie Queen laughed, till tears came again. It was all so absurd! The Goblin King joined in her laughter.
The Goblin King took the prism from the Faerie Queen with his free hand. He narrowed his eyes and concentrated on the crystal and the prism till they reduced in size, then he dropped them both into the decanter of brandy. Instantly, the liquor fizzed and lit up with magic and glamour. When the liquid ceased it's effervescence, and the mingled magic simply swirled about in the decanter, the Goblin King poured another drink out for the both of them.
" I propose a toast! ", The Goblin King announced. The Faerie Queen held up her glass. " To OUR dreams and desires, eh? "
The Faerie Queen laughed and nodded in agreement. The Goblin King and Faerie Queen clinked their glasses together and drank, then returned to the ball arm in arm and danced together the remainder of the night.
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