Music in Your Voice by Betty Bokor
Jareth/Sarah. Sarah is starting a new life when she hears something unexpected.
Spoilers: The movie and the book.
Disclaimer: The Labyrinth original characters belong to The Jim Henson Company and Lucasfilms Ltd. This was written strictly for the purpose of entertainment. No attempt at copyright infringement has been made.
Music in Your Voice
Chapter 1
Sarah looked at her image in the mirror one more time and smiled. She was ready. The best party of the year was about to start downstairs and she couldn't wait. It would signal the end of a hectic year in her life, but it had been a great year and she was grateful that everything had gone so well.
Her friend Carrie was still getting ready in the next room and Sarah would not leave her behind. They have shared most of the events of the last five years and this was probably the last one they would get to enjoy together.
She carefully sat by the fireplace, working to avoid ruining her dress, and tried to imagine what would come next. She had no idea. She had just gotten her degree and now it was time to find a job and settle down… Or start moving in that direction.
She was not sure what had pushed her into a career in the music arts, but she had loved every minute of her education. She liked to sing and dance and she had even composed a few songs of her own by now.
It was during the first year in college that she had met her roommate, Carrie, and they had soon become best friends. Though Carrie's passion was dancing, they complemented each other perfectly well.
Now Carrie was a month short of getting married and moving to Brazil.
Sarah had nothing planned…
During her college years, She had lived frugally and worked several jobs to be able to complement the income from her scholarships and save money at the same time. She had meticulously planned an ambitious trip around the world to collect data for her final thesis. Soon she had persuaded Carrie to accompany her and, after finishing all their courses, Sarah and Carrie had spent almost a year traveling around the world, collecting sounds and images from different cultures.
Sarah's paper studied how gender influenced the roles in music composition and performance around the world. Her curiosity about the topic had started while going to concerts and musical plays with her mother, when she had noticed that almost every single conductor was a man. She had wondered if that happened in other areas related to music and the trip had helped her find many examples to prove her point. Her thesis had been well received by her professors and now she was done.
-"I'm almost there," Carrie said from the other room.
Sarah smiled. They had needed a lot of help with their hairdos…
Since their trip had started, close to fifteen months before then, Sarah and Carrie had come home roughly every three months. In every occasion, their friends had organized a party focused on a different historical period and its music to welcome them. Their first party had been all about disco music, the second had been a revival of the "Roaring Twenties", and the third had been about Elvis and rock and roll. Three months ago they had celebrated for the last time with contemporary music and a live group, but Carrie's imminent marriage and departure had prompted the group to organize one more party.
This time it was centered in the last decades of the 1850s and the beginning of 1860s. The main dance of the night would be the waltz. Sarah loved the idea, especially because it had given her the chance to wear a dress she had dreamt about wearing for the longest time.
Ever since a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston when she was 17, Sarah had longed to wear a dress she had seen in one of the exhibits. She had procured a photo of the dress ‒1860s dress worn by Jessie Benton Fremont with a royal purple moiré faille, boned evening bodice with tulle, lace, and periwinkle trim‒ and she had set out to find the right fabric. The royal purple moiré had proven impossible to get, so she had settled for a deep forest green instead. One of her mother's seamstresses had done a marvelous job recreating the dress.
She stood up and looked at herself in the mirror. It was breathtaking, but it would be a miracle if she managed to walk all the way down the stairs in it without tripping and rolling down the rest of the way.
"Ready?" Carrie said right behind her.
"Ready!"
They laughed a little with anticipation and they walked out the door.
The party had already started and many of their friends were there. Carrie's fiancé, Rolf, approached them.
"Ah… Two enchanting ladies!" he complimented them as he took Carrie's hand in his. "Perhaps we should go into the garden for a minute and practice this waltz thing. I don't want to step on your feet," he suggested with a little smile.
Carrie nodded sympathetically and they walked toward a side door leaving Sarah behind. She smiled with a little sadness; she ought to get used to being on her own. That would be the new normal from then on.
She walked around the room, greeted friends, and chatted about trivial matters. She was about to get a glass of champagne when she heard a voice that made her hair stand on end.
It was not a frightening voice; on the contrary, as soon as she heard it, she felt a sense of relief, but, at the same time, it shocked her that such voice truly existed. For some reason she could not explain, she had been searching for that voice all her life… Well, perhaps not all her life, but surely since the day after the dream.
The dream was something she never spoke about with anyone. It had happened one night during her teenage years when her father and his second wife had left her in charge of her stepbrother, Toby. Tired and upset, she had not been very kind to the child. That night, she had dreamt that she had asked for Toby to be taken away by goblins, only to feel horribly guilty about it and embark in a quest against an evil king to save him.
Many things have changed that night, or, actually, the morning after. She had become nicer to her brother and to her stepmom. She had deepened her relationship with her father and stopped taking only her mother's side on every argument. And she had become more confident in her own abilities.
It was also the time when she had started dreaming about wearing hoops and crinolines under her dress, but not all the effects of the dream had to be helpful, did they?
She smiled for a second and then sighed. For some unexplainable reason, she had matured more in one night that in all the years before.
And that voice had had something to do with it. Every time she felt her courage wane, a few words with that foreign accent would get he back to the right place. Sometimes it was "I do believe in you… Yes, I do…", but most of the time it was something more like "Go back to your room and play with your toys and your costumes"… That infuriated her and it made her all the more determined to accomplish her goal, whatever that goal was at that time.
For years she had listened carefully for that voice, searching for it, willing herself to hear it, but it had been in vain. Not even during all her travels she had ever heard anything like it.
Now, the man who owned the voice was here. Close to her.
She looked around; she could not see anyone she didn't recognize. Those were her friends. She knew them well.
The party's host, Mary, was only a few meters away from her. She would have to know all the guests. Sarah only needed to ask her and the mystery would be solved.
As she resolutely walked toward Mary, she felt her pulse race. She had never been this close. If only she could remember the face of the man in her dream… Or was he the king? She was not sure. Most of the dream had quickly vanished from her memory and she had been left with just a few details and many assumptions.
Mary was almost within her reach when a gloved hand softly took a hold of hers and an elegant man dressed in a period uniform invited her to the dance floor with a simple movement of his head and an intense look from his eyes.
And now she was definitely breathless.