It had not taken long for it to become apparent to Sarah that once forged, links to the Underground were not so easily severed.
It had started with coincidences so subtle that she was at first unsure if she had imagined them.
Her reflection moving a fraction too late when she brushed out her hair in her dressing room mirror, for example.
Glitter falling from her clothes with no apparent source.
Words like 'Labyrinth,' 'Underground,' 'Power' and 'King', 'appearing with alarming regularity whenever she glanced at the word-search in her Dad's Sunday paper.
She resolutely ignored it.
As though tired of her mulish pretence that all was well, the reminders of her jaunt underground became less subtle and more kick-in-the-face from a Goblin steed obvious.
Soon, it was fairies tugging at her hair as she walked hand in hand with Toby, now six, who gasped and giggled at the pretty orbs 'playing' with his sister's hair.
Average, everyday Earthworms, emerging from the soil of the park she had so often played in, began to wish her a friendly 'Good Morning' and proffer invitations for her to pop down for a 'bracing cuppa tea!' She invariably politely refused, but from thenceforth walked much more carefully, lest she accidentally step on one.
On Christmas Eve she had answered the door to a group of wizened Christmas carollers. She had particularly noticed one strikingly tall figure in a long, dusty coat that smelled of cough inducingly pungent ale. Sarah couldn't help but note, on reflection, that 'he' had looked suspiciously like three goblins piled precariously on one another's shoulders. She had slammed the door shut in shock, not even stopping to thank them for their wishes of a 'smelly Christmas and a bog filled New Year.' 'Good tidings we bring, from we and our king', she had thought wryly, a manic sort of amusement taking grip of her.
It did not stop there.
The musical assault continued when Sarah discovered that whenever she would play her 7inch single of 'Hungry Like The Wolf,' a chorus of yowling banshees would harmonise outside her window. Karen thought the hideous screeching came from stray cats fighting. Sarah knew better, and put the record away for safekeeping.
By the next summer the King's goblins had taken residency in her sock draw.
She had seen the magical, the wonderous, the Seelie and the Unseelie. She had met and wondered at the denizens of the Underground, and they had sure as hell spotted her.
Sarah Williams was ever the dreamer. She had left a part of her soul in the Labyrinth, unwilling as she was admitting it, and it seemed that the Underground was not so keen to relinquish the power it held over her either. These magical sightings and occurrences, a small voice in the back of her head told her smugly, "were not gifts for an ordinary girl."
Not that bearing witness, one memorable afternoon, to the goblins using her socks as 'horn warmers', hankies and makeshift breeches had felt like a particularly welcome reward for her triumph over the Labyrinth.
It wasn't as though she hadn't tried to take some precautions against the magical vortex that seemed determined to envelop her since her run of the Labyrinth. She was Sarah Williams, after all. She had taken to wearing an iron necklace, leaving milk on Karen and her father's porch 'for the hedgehogs', in order to appease the fairies, and had carved a protective rune on her wardrobe in the hopes of warding off prying, sticky goblin hands. All of these attempts, whilst making her feel temporarily productive, were to no avail.
She called on her friends, on Hoggle, on Ludo, on Didymus – they offered their condolences - Ludo's mainly conveyed in understanding grunts - and sympathies about the fate of Sarah's socks. They were, she thought resignedly, seemingly forever destined to be odd. Didymus offered helpful suggestions about drowning out the banshee with a 'rousing chorus of the old ballads!' but they were little help on the actual source of these otherworldly visitations. They swore blind they had no idea why or how these Underground inhabitants had become a permanent fixture in Sarah's life. The one piece of luck, thought Sarah, was that Karen and her father were totally oblivious. They merely thought her eccentric, and prone to talking in her sleep.
But still there was no sign of him. No matter how much goblin mischief, how much glitter, how much magic induced mayhem, Jareth did not appear. Not with a biting remark, a scathing reprimand of her failure to control his subjects. Not even in owl form, hooting mournfully outside her window. Not that she wanted him there, per se. Obviously.
Now that the goblins seemed to be treating Sarah's bedroom as some kind of all inclusive vacation resort, however, Sarah was at the end of her tether. She had no rest. No retreat. And she longed for a time when she'd had no chickens.
Sarah put her head in her hands and sunk onto the bed.
"I need you to listen..." she addressed the horde currently wreaking havoc in the confines of her cream painted bedroom. They ignored her. Louder, grudgingly, disbelieving her own gall and of the pure idiocy of what she was about to say, she continued. "I SAID I NEED YOU," they paused, and Sarah cleared her throat, suddenly embarrassed.
"Ahem. I uh, need you to listen. This has gone on long enough. I need you to go and get the Goblin King. I know he's sending you. I know he's sending all of you. The hags, the washer woman, the banshee, the fairies pulling my hair. I know it's him. So ask him. If he'll come. Now. Please."
The Goblins had been busy. Worked to the bone. This morning alone they had thoroughly and diligently tested the 'springiness' of Sarah's new mattress, after an exhausting hour of unadulterated mayhem which had included but had not been limited to an itinerary of upending the washing basket in order to smell and thereafter order it's contents in degrees of 'yukiness' (Toby's snot strained school jumper won), using Karen's eyeshadow pallette as a medium of creative expression on Sarah's bedroom wall and sneaking downstairs to raid the cookie jar.
They stopped and appeared to ponder Sarah's words.
All was eerily silent. She could almost smell their brains frying.
"You wants us…" asked one, which Sarah recongised as Twiggle (he was long, thin and runtish, for a goblin), 'like a sticky twig on an ugly tree in winter,' one of his companions had explained, helpfully, "to tell the Kingy to come here. Now."
"…Yes," said Sarah, doubtfully, trying to convince herself as much as anybody else.
"You wants him here. With you. In here?" asked Squeeble, doubtfully.
"It's the only way to stop this madness," said Sarah, tiliting her chin definantly. "What's the worst that can happen?"
'HA!' her brain screamed, 'yeah what's the worst that can happen? Not like he's a royally pissed off fae Lord with every right to despise you! Oh wait..."
Sarah looked at the pure carnage around her. She took in the washing strewn over the floor, the muddy goblin prints up the wall. She noted the beheaded Barbie doll, a remnant of a simpler time. She looked at the scribbles in her ancient book of Nursery Rhymes. Someone had drawn goblin ears and added a chicken to the illustration of Humpty Dumpty.
It was oddly haunting.
Sarah's mind was made up.
"Send him," she demanded, surprising herself with the regality in her voice.
"Your funeral, lady," muttered a goblin in a red cap.
With a crack, they disappeared.
In the sudden silence, Sarah heard her clock tick loudly.
She counted thirteen, loud, agonising ticks.
Then the Goblin King appeared.
There was the customary cloud of glitter. It seemed a moot point to complain about the mess it would make on the carpet.
She gazed at him, speechless.
"Hello," she said, stupidly.
"Hello, Sarah," he replied, her name a caress. She suppressed a shudder. A smirk played across his perfect, otherworldly face as he noted her discomfort.
"Seems to be quite the party you've been having, Sarah. I would assume that my invite were lost in the post, had it not been made blatantly obvious that I never am on the guestlist," he drawled, rich voice dripping with sarcasm.
"You came," she muttered. She longed to stare at him, to properly take in the sight of him. She had dreamed of him so often, she half wondered if she were asleep.
Whether he would be a dream or a nightmare today was another matter entirely.
"Obviously," he stated, mismatched eyes boring into her.
"I cannot say, however, that your request did not come as a surprise. Why have you sought my presence, Sarah? I am a busy man. Was your…summons through the conduit of my…" his gaze drifted lazily across the room… "devoted subjects merely pure whimsy or did you have an actual thought in that pretty little head other than to waste my time?"
She had called him before, in sleep, and once, daringly, half drunk on the champagne her father had poured liberally one cold New Years Eve night. He had not answered. It had hurt her more than she cared to admit.
Snapping back to the present moment, Sarah recoiled at the venom in his tone. She responded to his vitriol in the only way she knew how. Offence, she felt, was usually the best defence.
"Funnily enough, Goblin King," she began acid spiking her tone, "I did have a reason. I know you've sent your damn subjects on a mission to…hound my every move! I can't live a normal life! It's not f-" halting midsentence, she stopped herself from voicing the familiar complaint just in time.
He knew what she had just refrained from saying, and smirked infuriatingly.
Jareth brushed an imaginary speck of lint from a leather jacket so black it seemed to eat up the light. "My heart bleeds for you, dear one," he replied sardonically. "I know how you have always so craved a normal life."
"It's not funny!" she spat out, suddenly furious. "I won! I beat the Labyrinth and I beat you." The words spewing out of her like vomit, she could not stop, drunk on adrenaline. He was here. "I beat you," she contributed, "and you just can't accept it, so you've sent your subjects to ruin my life and wreak mayhem out of pure…spite and..and…" she was running out of steam.
The Goblin King's face was terrifyingly blank.
"PETTINESS," she shouted, after floundering for a few painful moments. "Pure pettiness," she muttered, more quietly, staring at the marble visage of opposite her.
He raised one arched, perfect eyebrow condescendingly. Sarah looked up at him, eerily seeing the scornful, ageless self-assurance of the owl in the man. Sarah swallowed, her throat suddenly Saharian levels of dry. Yes, thought Sarah, with a sudden, terror induced desire to giggle. He, the owl. She, the mouse. Perhaps she had better scurry before she was eaten.
Then the dangerous look passed, replaced by a mask of perfect boredom.
"Oh I am ever the villain, Sarah. But you flatter yourself," intoned Jareth, monotone. "It has naught to do with me, on that you have my oath. The Labyrinth has magic of its own, and eager as you were to leave it behind, once forged, bonds between the victor and the conquered remain."
He did not bother to disguise the bitterness is his voice. "How lightly these heavy words are thrown, only to be swiftly brushed aside. I have no power over you, remember, as you so unambiguously asserted."
Sarah blushed despite herself, then felt embarrassment and a twinge of sharp, gut wrenching regret. Quickly however, she felt these odd, painful feelings be replaced by an emotion she felt more comfortable when faced with the Goblin King…good, old-fashioned, self-righteous anger.
"Well," she snapped, before the words had even formulated in her brain, "Forgive me, oh all-ruling, wronged Goblin King, but I don't think your 'oaths', or whatever, mean a whole lot! And as for my 'unambiguity'…I guess I'm sorry I'm so blunt, but seeing as your whole 'love me, fear me,' spiel was about as clear as bog mud, I thought a bit of unambiguity maybe wouldn't go amiss!"
The Goblin King drew himself up to his full, considerable height. Sarah swore she felt the wind whip around her feet, and that she could hear the toll of a bell somewhere in the distance. It was 11am in mid-July, but around the glitter loving, terrifying sovereign of the Goblin Kingdom she had learnt it was sometimes necessary to suspend customary laws of belief. She took a precautionary step backwards.
And then, to Sarah's horror, he appeared to crumble.
The Goblin King leaned against her white painted doorframe, looking entirely at odds with the girlish surroundings of Sarah's childhood bedroom. He shut his eyes, his face a mask of injured indignance.
A trio of benignly smiling fairies, looking quite unlike their rather toothier Labyrtinthian counterparts, hung from the door frame on a string of felt. They were one of the remnants of her childhood Sarah's sentimental heart had not quite let her discard. One sequinned fairy hung just low enough to tickle Jareth's ear, while another just grazed his leather clad shoulder. The whole effect lent him the saintly air of a martyr being shrouded by angels.
After a few long seconds, he glared at her from under long, unfairly long, thought Sarah, confusedly, eyelashes.
"Must you always fight me, Sarah?" He asked quietly, his tone jarringly sombre.
Sarah paused for a moment, torn by a desire to match his seeming earnestness with her own and a pressing need to alleviate the suddenly suffocatingly thick tension which hung between them. She wanted to say something to distract herself from the unmasked pain in those mismatched eyes. To say something to make herself forget that she was the cause of that pain.
"I don't know what to say," she murmured, making no effort to disguise the sadness plain in her voice.
"You could tell me that you're sorry," he suggested pleasantly, eyes still firmly shut.
There was a pause.
"…I can never remember that line," muttered Sarah. "I'm not sorry for what I did. Can't you understand? I had to. I had to get Toby back. You know I did. You understand, really."
"Oh do I?" Jareth demurred. He paused. Sarah could almost swear she heard him sigh. "Such a shame. That's the magic word, you know. Or did your charming step-mother never bother to tell you that?" muttered Jareth, drily.
"What about…'please'?" asked Sarah, deciding to throw caution to the wind.
He remained silent.
"I uh…I need you, Jareth. I mean...I need your help. With the goblins. Even if it's really not you that's sending them. I need you to stop the makeup trashing, and the gel pen eating, and the banshee screaming whenever I play Duran Duran. I'm asking for you to help me."
Jareth's mismatched eyes flew open. Alert and... something else. Some other emotion that Sarah could not name.
"And those...are your right ones," he replied smoothly. "I accept your request for my help, Sarah. By fae law I am now bound to it. I will need to make regular visits Aboveground and to this abode, naturally, in order to monitor both the Seelie and Unseelie activities around you and the house. I would need to be allowed to hear you again, if you called upon me, as that right was rescinded when you left my Labyrinth."
He hadn't ignored her call. He had not heard. He had not been able to hear her.
Sarah felt lighter than air.
"Naturally," said Sarah, fighting back an odd desire to laugh in exhilaration, her heart singing.
His odd, crystalline eyes bored into her green ones, as though trying to see through to her very soul.
"Do you give me that power?" he asked seriously and quietly, so quietly in fact, that it took her a heartbeat before she realised that he was waiting for an answer. Not that she'd been distracted by gazing into his eyes, or anything.
She paused.
The tension in the room was so thick that she could almost taste it. The electric in the air before the storm.
Sarah was tired of the pretence. She had had her fill of acting, for now. Perhaps Jareth was tired of playing the villain just as she knew she no longer desired to cast him as one.
She began, hesitantly. "I…I….give you the power to visit me, Jareth. I'd um, I'd like that. And I give you the power to answer my call. Which I'm guessing I just do by…saying your name, as I'm guessing you don't have a cell."
Jareth kept his voice steady, but Sarah's heart skipped at the light in his eyes, the slight upturn of his sensuous mouth. How could an ageless face, she wondered, look younger?
"On the contrary," he answered, cutting her musing short. "I have many cells. The castle and the Labyrinth itself are peppered with dungeons and oubliettes, as I thought you might have remembered due to your fortuitously brief stint in one of them."
"No…what I meant was a cell like a…"
Sarah paused midsentence, wondering if it was worth pursuing the matter. She decided against it. Another miscommunication to clear up…another time. She was suddenly starting to feel that she and the Goblin King they had plenty of it.
Jareth raised an eyebrow questioningly, waiting for her to go on.
"What I meant was…thankyou. Thanks Jareth, for uh…being there."
He looked at her intently, appraisingly, and closed the small distance between them until she was forced to look up at him to maintain eye contact. His proximity was intoxicating. He smelled of peaches, and something muskier, heavier. She ached with the need to kiss him.
"I have always been there, Sarah," he murmured. "I will always be there. Forever. As long as you will have me, I will be by your side."
She nodded, throat too tight to speak.
He assessed her wonderingly, hungrily, no longer bothering to hide his desire, his possessiveness. There would be no going back. She did not wish to.
"I never thought to see you speechless, Precious," he remarked, his voice deceptively conversational, at odds with the scorching intensity of the look in his eyes. "I wonder if perhaps this too, is some enchantment, for surely my lady cannot be at a loss of insults, barbs, protests or-"
She kissed him.
It was a dry, hesitant kiss, soft as summer rain, chaste almost. It set her heart on fire. They parted, a moment, a day an infinity later (who knew?), Jareth frozen.
Sarah's heart was in her mouth. She could hear the blood pounding in her ears.
Why wouldn't he MOVE, goddammit.
A bee sting of rejection began to needle its way up her skin, unwelcomingly replacing the fire the contact with his lips had ignited.
She had thought…
"I'm…sorry?" she muttered, wishing that the goblins, perhaps, would kindly come and take her away right now, put her out of her misery, find her a very large pit and leave her in it to die of shame and embarrassment for all eternity. "I didn't mean to upse-"
Before she could finish the Goblin King had once more closed the distance between them and enveloped her in a crushing kiss, his mouth seeking hers, incessantly, desperately, leaving her gasping for air, wondering if she would drown in the intensity of it and, oh, God, if this was how she went, if she died kissing Jareth then it was maybe not such a bad way to go…
He released her, cradling her face in a leather gloved hand as though he could not quite believe she were real, as though she were the fairydust made flesh, likely to disintegrate if not handled with infinite care. She had the desire to laugh…here was Jareth, The Goblin King, the storybook figure of her dreams and her nightmares, staring down at her as if she were the one that might be an illusion.
Years ago, she had cast him as her villain, her Prince Charming, her trickster. He was all those things. He was so much more. And she was fairly certain that she would spend a lifetime figuring him out. Good thing she'd always enjoyed puzzles.
"You said something about forever?" she asked, still embarrassingly breathy.
Jareth traced her jaw, as though trying to commit every detail of her face to memory.
"Not long at all, dearest Sarah," he murmured, drawing his lips to hers once more.
Underground, in a throne room not so serene, chaos was ensuing. The goblins had been watching the tête-à-tête between the ruler of the Labyrinth and its champion (with short sanity breaks for chicken racing and ale chugging in between), in Live-Action in the King's crystal ball since Sarah had requested them summon their beloved sovereign.
"SOOOOO…" asked a Goblin to a horned compatriot, "does this mean the Kingy don't want us to go to the Lady's house on 'pest-control missions' no more?"
"I don't think so," replied Stig, sadly.
"No cookies," said Squeeble.
"No more lip paint."
"No more special drawer."
"King never told me to go in a special drawer."
"He definitely told me to go into the special drawer."
"No more socks hats."
"No more spongy hammocks."
"I think the lady called that a bra."
"Oh. Spongy."
The Goblins stopped to ponder at their immeasurable loss. For three pained seconds.
"Hey," said Squeeble, one of the brighter of the horde (by comparison),
"King told lady Sarah it weren't nothing to do with him. But he told us. He says. All clear. Go to lady, you horrible lot, and annoy her. Yous are on pest control missions. And I says, well Kingy what does you mean. So he calls me a numbnut and all that and says, well yous is pests. So you go to Sarah and you annoys her. Ceaselessly. Or leaflessly. Or beeflessly. Until she begs me for clemency, he says. Or something lemony. Yes that's exactly what he says, or something."
The Goblins paused again, wondering at the indecipherable wisdom or their beloved ruler.
"Dunno," said Wilk, finally. "But look!" he exclaimed, fishing in his armoured chest. I still has this flag!" he proudly produced a pair of Sarah's favourite lacy red underwear. Let's use it for the chicken race."
The Goblins wholeheartedly felt this A Good Idea.
Above, Sarah was blissfully unaware that her underwear had become an integral component of the grand finale of the chicken grand prix.
She was quite content, in the arms of her Goblin King. After all, some messes were more easily cleaned up than others.
Please leave a contribution in the little box! This is the first thing I have written in a very long time. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.