The Goblin King stared out at the twisting, inimical landscape before him, and felt his heart sink in his body. The noise, the clamour… the horrid inhabitants of this strange and awful place… he had never felt so daunted.
"Welcome to the happiest place on Earth," Sarah said, grinning, and clapped a terrible hat down on his head.
"Disney," he murmured, shuddering in his bones.
"Isn't it wonderful?" Sarah said, and tucked his arm under hers.
He took off his hat. It was black, and had plastic ears. His name was stitched on the back in gold thread. "I'm not wearing this," he grumbled.
"Oh yes you are," Sarah hissed, taking it from his hands and putting it back on for him. "It matches your shorts." The shorts were Bermuda, and the t-shirt was cotton, and the labels were emblazoned with the anthropomorphic mouse who was god-emperor of this tiny kingdom. "You lost the coin toss, so just deal with it, Your Majesty." She grinned at him, wearing her own stupid hat. Somehow it looked adorable on her.
"None of this is acceptable. There will be a reckoning for this, Sarah. Doubt it not." He stared at feet. Sandals, with socks, also with the mouse cheerfully prancing upon them.
"The idea is to blend," Sarah said, remarkably comfortable-looking in her own t-shirt and shorts. "Oooh, look, let's go on the carousel!"
"Blend," he said doubtfully, dragged along with her. There were several children in the park—the park was crawling with a feast of children—and they waited in line to climb aboard the false horses with their plastic tack and spin around and around in circles.
Jareth narrowed his eyes and turned several of the horses into different creatures—chimera, laughing crocodiles, even a very phallic satyr—and was dismayed that no one seemed to notice the difference. Still, it was an improvement.
After the ride, they walked past a sword stuck in a stone and an anvil. "Whosoever pullet this sword is rightwise King of England," Jareth muttered. Several children and adults attempted to pull the sword, but it was only a prop, he saw, set on a hinge that kept it from being drawn free. He flicked one hand casually at the stone and a young girl pulled the sword loose so suddenly that she landed on her butt on the pavement and began to cry.
"Oh dear," said Jareth, not at all sorry. After all, majesty was a painful quality, best learned soon.
"Here," Sarah said, offering him a wand of cotton candy. Jareth stared at it, and took a careful bite.
"Nice?" she asked, as they waited in line for the Dumbo ride.
"Sticky," he replied.
"Well, then," she said, attempting to take it away from him, but he fought her off one-handed.
"Mine!" he said.
They climbed aboard the fiberglass elephants. Jareth gave the other riders dubious looks. "Why are Americans so corpulent? Do you think this ride might break?" He sounded slightly pleased by the idea of mayhem and disaster.
"Nope," Sarah said. The motor engaged and she spun the controls gleefully, taking them high up in the air. He liked this rather better than the carousel, even if Sarah refused to share the wheel. Typical Sarah.
"It's all very fluffy," Jareth observed, once they disembarked.
"It doesn't have to be," she said in a voice most sinister, trying to cheer him up. "Disneyland's just packed with poorly behaving children... isn't it? What a pity if they were to disappear."
"There are limits," Jareth grumbled. "Half of them are on leashes or strapped into strollers. The other half are too fat to be lifted. Look at that one!" He pointed at a particularly bulbous child devouring an ice-cream cone. "Children are one thing, but these are all some species of pig." The child wailed as his ice-cream dropped to the cement, and was instantly handed a new cone. "Yes. Pigs." His eyes gleamed with sudden inspiration. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Sarah?"
"No," she said with malice. "Unless you're thinking about barbecue."
"Heavens, no," said Jareth. "At least not directly. However, pork products are always welcome in the Underground. Goblins absolutely adore bacon."
"Jareth," Sarah said, a little nervously. "I was kidding. You can't really abduct hundreds of children from Disneyland and turn them to pigs."
"Oh, now Sarah," he grinned maliciously under the loathsome mouse ear hat. "What's said is said."
"See, this is why we can't have a fun time. I just play around a little and the next thing I know I'm responsible for a... a Circe-type situation." Sarah frowned and crossed her arms, tapping her foot in a way that Jareth found both expressive and fetching.
"Just a few pigs for the butcher?" Jareth wheedled. Sarah shook her head. "Just three?" he asked more hopefully.
"No!" Sarah said. "Or no sex for you for a week. Turn even one child into a pig and it's no porking for you, buster."
"That would hurt you far more than it would me." He twiddled his fingers in midair, looking around at the domesticated children. "May I suggest a compromise?"
"If any child gets butchered, the answer is no."
"Does that mean if no children are butchered the answer is yes?" Jareth looked hopeful.
"Depends."
"Good. For the next seven hours, all the children in this park will go... hog-wild." Jareth snapped his fingers. "This will be fun!"
Sarah watched with dawning horror as the child with the ice-cream cone got a very strange look in his eyes. He threw his sugar-treat to the pavement and bit the hand of his mother, which began gushing blood in a surprising and excellent red torrent. The mother screamed, the father shouted... and the sounds of parental dismay increased as their leashed, latched, contained, complacent children began to run amok in the park.
And a group of them looked over at Sarah, who instinctively folded herself into Jareth's arms.
"What have you done?" she squeaked.
"Oopsie," Jareth said, sounding bored. But as the crowd of toddlers, infants, adolescents and gradeschoolers began to focus on the adults, his tone became less secure. Even... nervous. "Oh... bugger. And here I thought the day was going to be boring."
For a pristine moment, all was still as the change registered on the crowd of adults and the herd of piglets, shoats and half-grown porkers. The kiddie-pigs eyed the adults. The adults stared in horror and disbelief at their implausibly porcine progeny.
When the stampede started, the adults nearly trampled each other in their terror. Mouse hats flew into the air as the grownups scrambled for cover. Most of the injuries sustained were self-inflicted or were the result of mob frenzy as bodies slammed into each other. Toes were stomped, ribs were cracked, pants were wet and necks were nearly wrung by camera straps.
Many participants in the retreating horde were grievously injured by the crowd when they paused to snap selfies with their smart-phones, needing photos to send with their frantic tweets to friends. "OMG kids r pigs WTF #disneypigs"
The pigs caught the scent of hot fat and sugar wafting on the breeze. They descended on the snack vendors with vicious intent, slavering jaws gaping and squealing. The terrified high school and college students abandoned their posts and ran for their lives. A few foolish staff members tried to defend the sanctity of the food stands and nearly paid with their lives. A terrible chewing and smacking sound filled the air.
Ow. Ow!" Sarah shouted, as the little piggies passing by nibbled at her shins. Jareth swooped her up into his arms, kicking at the assaults on his own person. He lifted one socked, be-sandled foot and fended off the inimical herd as best he could.
"This would be easier if you'd have let me wear boots," he said. "OW!" he cried, when one little boar gave him a good gnashing on his naked, Bermuda-short-clad calf.
"This would have been easier if you could have just enjoyed a nice, quiet day at the Happiest Place on Earth!" Sarah snapped. "But oooooh, no. You just HAD to make it interesting! Can't you undo this?"
"What's said is saaaaaid!" Jareth wailed, carrying Sarah through the milling throng of viciously playful porkers, toward the nearest shelter to hand... the Small World ride.
He could hear nothing but Sarah shrieking in his ears as he galloped into the elaborately decorated attraction. He was glad to see very few people and pigs inside. He ran down what seemed to be miles of ramps, vaulted a couple of railings and bore down on the gates where empty boats serenely drifted past. Apparently the ride's operators had wisely abandoned their posts and the patrons had scattered.
He paused for a moment to judge the distance and then leapt into a passing boat. He fudged the landing and they sprawled in an ungainly heap in the bottom of the boat. The boat shimmied and tossed up some waves, but quickly settled.
The landing knocked the wind out of Sarah and she abruptly quit screaming. "Why the heck didn't you just poof us out of there?"
"Too much iron," he growled. "This whole place is iron and concrete."
"Didn't stop you from changing a bunch of kids into pigs!"
"You don't understand magic, Sarah!" he snapped, "or narrative convenience, either. In fact..."
A loud splash behind them, caught their attention. Then several more splashes.
"Can pigs swim?" he asked nervously.
"I'll bet they can swim. They can certainly FLY, since I said they would before I would date YOU." Sarah glared at him, then flinched when she heard more splashing sounds and a hoard of squealers appeared, charging down the docking ramp.
"This place smells like the Bog," Jareth noted, flicking his fingers at the control mechanism and releasing the landing clamps. Their little boat began to move serenely down the guided water-track, deeper into the bowls of a singing doll hellscape.
As the ringing in Jareth's ears subsided, he became aware of a bouncy little tune riding the air.
"Say," he said. "That's kind of catchy."
Sarah glared at him for a moment and then a tiny, evil smile crept onto her face.
"Yes, it's lovely," she said and grinned in a most hideous manner. "You should teach it to the goblins and let them sing it for you." Sarah wobbled to her feet and rubbed her sore posterior, and kept her eyes peeled for errant swimming or flying pigs. Jareth draped himself elegantly over three seats and stretched his legs out over the prow, looking entirely pleased with himself. "Join me?" he asked, patting his lap with a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows. Sarah took the seat next to him and slapped his hand when it tried to creep up over her knee.
"No muffin for you, Goblin King. The muffin shop is CLOSED." She closed her knees with an audible snap.
"Now now," he said. "It could be worse. It could be raining."
"It IS raining," Sarah muttered. "It's raining pigs."
"And glitter," Jareth observed, looking up at the ceiling where cascades of gold and blue began to drift on to the boats and dolls below.
"That's not glitter," Sarah said, clutching him frantically. "Those are sparks." She shook him bodily by his novelty Nightmare Before Christmas t-shirt. "The electrical system is overloading. Why did I even leave the house today? Why me? I'm going to die here in this stinky boat with you surrounded by ten thousand pigs! FIX it, Jareth! Fix it!"
"Oh, calm down, Sarah," Jareth sighed, sounding very South London. "Even if the pigs can swim, I doubt they can get into the boat. Why don't we just enjoy the ride?" He began humming along with the brightly colored dolls of many lands.
Sarah looked at him with a certain amount of awe. He really did seem to be perfectly happy at the moment, humming and enjoying the horrible, brain-destroying little song despite the pigs and electrical sparks. She tried to remember if she had liked the song the first time she had heard it. She had probably been about six years old, but she was sure she had disliked it even then. A tiny voice inside her inquired if she was hanging out with a moron. Another tiny voice insisted that she was the queen moron.
"Do you smell smoke?" he asked. "Oh, look! South America is on fire."
The shower of sparks had set more than just South America on fire. The entire tunnel behind them was lighting up. The good news was that the pigs were frantically swimming back the way they had come. The bad news was that the entire tunnel behind them was lighting up. They were staring in horror at the inferno approaching when the lights went out and the music and the boat abruptly stopped.
"Oh, good," said Jareth.
"What do you mean, GOOD?" screamed Sarah. "We're gonna die!"
"Sarah, for heaven's sake," he said with exasperation, "With the pigs gone and the electricity off, we can walk out. It'll be a bit damp, of course, but we aren't going to die." He smiled brightly. "And with everything on fire, we can see where we're going."
"We'll die of smoke inhalation," she declared.
"No, we won't. Look," he said, pointing upward. The ventilation fans had shut down, but the smoke was moving up through the shafts as in a chimney. "We should hurry, before the smoke gets too intense, but we'll be just fine," he said airily.
Sarah wanted to punch him very hard, for reasons that were unclear to her.
He stood up and stepped to the edge of the boat. He hopped down into the waist deep water.
Sarah screamed when his eyes suddenly bulged out, and he began to jitter in place, gurgling in his throat and moaning. He was being electrocuted right in front of her!
He stopped jittering and grinned at her.
"Just kidding."
Outside was mayhem and madness. Smoke was rising through the gratings, along with showers of electric sparks, and the ground was shaking with the malfunctioning mechanisms of what seemed like every ride in the park. It was surreal. More surreal, the floats for the noon parade had embarked from their trolleys without any costumed performers on them. The audio system seemed tied into the mechanical floats, and were farting and blaring out the musical numbers which the riders would have lip-synched to. Foam snowflakes spat from the gabled arches and flower-baskets along the parade route. Some of the pigs were idly eating the slops tumbled from concession stands. Others were raptly gazing up at the ghost parade, wanting to see a performance that would never be put on.
Jareth grabbed the handrail of the nearest float as it passed by, and offered his hand to Sarah.
"Do you trust me?" he drawled ironically.
It was the float from Aladdin. Sarah rolled her eyes and climbed onboard.
"I have to wonder about you, sometimes. Sarah." Jareth sat cross-legged on the bouncing bobbing floating carpet, with his mouse-ears and dork clothing looking like the world's most underrated swami.
"Why is that?" she asked, a sudden lurch in the float mechanism bringing her to her knees before him.
"Worried about permission, safety, consequences. My little girl, my precious thing, she would never have counted the cost. She would have enjoyed this far, far more than this crabbed old woman begging at my feet. Why aren't you enjoying yourself?"
"I can show you the world," Sarah sighed. "Shining, shimmering, splendid?"
"Yes!" Jareth said. "Yes, exactly that! What changed? Don't you enjoy magic?"
"Well, this is the Magic Kingdom," Sarah said. Despite his garb and the rambling chaos around them, Jareth seemed more magical to her than he had in years. Unrestrained, dangerous. Not tepid, not safe. Frightening, gleeful, in his element.
"Magic Kingdom my left cobble!" Jareth said sternly. "It's tame. It's banal. Not that there's no magic in the dreams and fantasies of children, but for you... it's ironic. You don't even enjoy it for what it is. You enjoy its negation. So I ask you again, Sarah." He pointed one taloned finger at her. "What happened to you? And if you say you 'grew up,' I'll turn you into a pig as well. Where's my Sarah? Where's my wild Sarah? What happened to her?"
She stared at him for a moment, seriously considering his question.
"Do you think I'm boring?" she finally asked.
"No, no," he said. Whatever his opinion on her lack of spontaneity might be, he still had a healthy respect for her temper. "I just…," he sighed. "You haven't really had fun all day, have you?"
"I was having fun until you threatened to butcher children," she muttered.
"Were you?" he said.
She thought about that for a while. The float continued to lurch down the street, as pigs wandered back and forth snuffling and rooting at overturned trash cans.
The pigs seemed much calmer now, almost jovial, in fact. A small drift of piglets scampered across the street and ran into an open patio area. They were pushing and shoving each other, squealing in piggy delight. They appeared to be having a great time. They weren't afraid, now, she suddenly realized. They were just being, well, pigs.
She wondered where the adults were and spied a few peering out shop windows with fear and consternation. They were fearfully talking into cell phones, wringing hands, and walking back and forth in agitation. They were being adults, it seemed.
The pigs were having a much better time than the adults.
She crawled up onto his scruffy magic carpet and settled between his knees. He wrapped his arms around her and began to toy with the neckline of her bedraggled Minnie Mouse t-shirt.
"You know what," she said. "Maybe I should let you turn me into a pig. They seem to be having the most fun of anyone here."
"One of those pigs bit my leg," he said darkly.
"At least you aren't dead," she said. "Those people at the food stands…"
"Give me a little credit," he said, annoyed. "I reordered time for them, and only them, I might add. Every last one of them overslept this morning." He smiled. "They'll probably be fired."
"Beats being dead, I guess," she said.
"You were worried about those people," he said. "You were worried about Toby the first time I met you. Worry, worry."
"There's nothing wrong with taking other people into consideration," she replied, turning to look at him. "Jareth, you don't like me because I'm wild. You like me because I'm responsible. You like me because I'm a constant temptation to you."
"You, tempt ME?" Jareth looked incredulous. "Tempt me to do what?"
"To do right."
"Pffft!"
"I'm the string of your kite," she said. "I ground you so you can fly without getting lost or broken. You just reordered time because it was the right thing to do instead of the most advantageous thing to do."
He looked startled.
"Face it, Jareth, you're a better person because of me," she said, "whether you want to admit it or not. You like not having to be the villain all the time. I'm your reason and excuse for behaving yourself."
"Well," he said, sounding aggrieved. "Are you going to admit you're a better person because of me?"
"Of course," she said.
He sat for a moment with his mouth open, ready to spout a rebuttal that wasn't required.
She leaned back against him as the float bumped slowly along, and they watched the pigs wander about, playing, eating, and basking happily in the sunlight. Sounds of conversational grunting and the occasional excited squeal drifted across the park. Smoke drifted lazily in the air, while electrical sparks glittered from junction boxes. He gently scratched the back of her neck and shoulders with his talon tipped fingers. She felt like purring.
"I suppose you want me to reorder time for everyone else, too?" he said, nuzzling her ear.
"Nope," she said. "Those kids are having way more fun as pigs than they were having as kids."
He grinned. "What about the adults?" he said and played with a strand of her hair.
She smiled. Then she grinned. Then she giggled. Then she burst into loud guffaws that echoed down the street.
"No, don't," she said. "I wanna see what they'll tell CNN about this."
Jareth laughed with her. "Do you know what would be terribly irresponsible? Leaving this park and making violent love to each other inside the walls of my castle."
"Darling, darling Jareth," Sarah said cruelly. "We're going to stay right here and pig-sit until the spell wears off. And then…" she stroked his face, ran her hands teasingly down the collar of his tee-shirt. "And then…"
"Yes? And then?"
"And then you…" she kissed his neck, "Are sleeping on the couch for a week."