2.
She knew breaking the news to Dad and Karen wouldn't go well, and for once, her gut instinct didn't disappoint. She waited until the next visit home, and quietly told them over dinner when Toby was out of the house.
Karen looked sad and disappointed, but her father was furious. "Drop out?" he demanded. "Absolutely not. Don't be ridiculous."
"Dad," she said patiently, "I know it's a big change, but-"
"This is not up for discussion!" he thundered. "A college education is the only thing they can never take away from you. Your mother and I gave you enough leeway when we agreed you could major in mythology. Mythology! Now you're telling me you want to piss it all away? And for what? Running away to San Francisco?"
Her voice was polite but firm, and for a moment, she was reminded of the command she'd levied at Jareth years earlier. "It's an amazing opportunity, Dad. A once in a lifetime opportunity. The startup has investors and $10 million to play with, and they need a marketing director. They asked me."
"I don't understand why a company is asking a college student to head their marketing."
"They need a storyteller," she said quietly. "I already wrote stuff for them that they loved. The CEO said she doesn't want anyone else. I can spend another two years in school, get a degree, and then spend a decade trying to get a job this good, and it may never happen! If I leave now, I have a great job and a two year headstart on my classmates. It doesn't make sense to wait for a piece of paper when I can accomplish what I need to without it."
"I would have killed for that 'piece of paper' when I was your age," her father said. "You're the first person in this family to go to college. I can't believe you're being this selfish, after all we've done for you."
Sarah dropped her napkin onto the table and stood up. "I'm going out."
"Sit down, young lady-!"
"You can't tell me what to do! I don't live here anymore!" she snapped, then reined herself in. "I'm sorry. Look, my flight's in two weeks. I made my decision."
She ran out of the house before they could stop her.
Her hometown was a dying little place on the outskirts of civilization, hours from the nearest metropolis and ten miles from the nearest post office. Hampstead had been a bustling suburb once, with a mall and a town center and a thriving industry. Then in the 1970s, the local factory had gone under and taken everything else with it. Growing up meant scouring grocery store shelves for non-brand names, and riding the bus 40 minutes each way to another district's school because the one in town shut down.
Sarah had made do. Her imagination helped, along with the otherworldly friends who had a habit of popping out of her bedroom mirror for an impromptu party.
When she came home to visit, she still ran into old schoolmates sometimes, kids she'd grown up with who never escaped and were destined to spend their lives hanging out on the same street corner. Hampstead seemed rougher around the edges. More storefronts had shut down in her absence, and you were more likely to hear police sirens than crickets lately, during the cooling autumn nights.
San Francisco was a whole new world. It meant stability, safety, comfort. I can have a life, Sarah thought. Maybe Toby can come live with me when he graduates. Give him a solid foundation. He won't get it here.
There was a surprising number of people on the street tonight. Sarah wondered if it was a protest - just the other week, the paper had talked about another gang shooting - but people were far too joyful for a protest. They carried children on their shoulders, not placards, and they ate cotton candy from paper cones.
Halloween was only a week away. Was it a festival? She tucked her hands into her pockets and followed the crowd toward the center of town.
There wasn't much of a town center nowadays, just the library and the grocery store, the police station and the clinic where Doc Bridges treated your cuts and scrapes. If you had a real emergency, you had to go to Saint Joe's fifteen miles up route ninety. But the clinic was good for flu and dispensing medication to recovering addicts. Heroin was big in town. The clinic stood next to the guts of a movie theater that showed Hollywood blockbusters during the day and pornos after 11pm.
She heard the party before she saw it. Even so, when she turned the corner of the library, Sarah stopped in her tracks at the flood of people who laughed, and ate, and played with firecrackers. On the village green, tents towered over the delapidated buildings, and artificial light cast long and lurid shadows on the pavement.
"A carnival?" Sarah whispered.
"Hey Williams," said a familiar voice. Officer James. He'd once pulled Karen's car out of a ditch, and had led DARE programs at the YMCA (for all the good that had done). He walked up to Sarah holding a soft pretzel. "You home from school?"
"Yeah," she said. "Uh, I didn't know carnivals ever came to Hampstead."
He shrugged. "I didn't either. Grab a pretzel, they're good."
"I'll do that," she said, but she wasn't really listening. A thunderclap interrupted them both, and a streak of light exploded overhead. Fireworks. The crowd cheered, and a car alarm went off and was quickly silenced.
Suddenly, something in the darkness moved, too organic and alive to be a shadow, and then a dragon reared up over the carnival. It was a balloon, like the kind you saw on TV parading down Fifth Avenue at Thanksgiving, but it moved. It gnashed its teeth and blew a puff of smoke over the partygoers, and the crowd cheered again.
Officer James whistled. "Those're some special effects."
"They sure are, alright," she agreed, but her voice was soft and uncertain, and she moved quickly across the street to get a closer look. Dead leaves and ticket stubs crunched under her feet. A throng of people packed the entrance, but she got to the front of the line very quickly.
Black iron gates flanked the front of the tents, with stars shaped into the arch over the entrance. The whole effect was very whimsical, which made it strange. Whimsy just didn't happen in her town.
"Step right up, ladies and gents!" called a barker at the entrance. "Right this way! Tickets out, please, tickets out."
"Where do I get a ticket?" Sarah asked. There wasn't a ticket booth in sight.
"And what's your name, miss?" said the barker. He was a small man with finely fitted clothes and a mask that just covered his eyes, which was unexpected. Sarah hadn't been to a carnival since she was very little, and Dad had taken her to a place outside Pittsburgh when they'd gone to visit Uncle Jack and Aunt Sue. The carnies had worn vibrant colors, even the ones not dressed like clowns. This guy was louder than his clothes and looked ready for a business meeting, and his accent was strange, but she couldn't place it. Definitely not from around here, that was all.
"Sarah," she said, deciding to humor him.
"Ah! Special price of admission for you, miss. What is your heart's desire?"
Sarah frowned. His question didn't make sense. None of this made sense. My heart's desire? The job in San Francisco, for one thing. Who asks that?
The crowd was getting impatient behind her. She could feel hundreds of eyes boring into her back. "I-I don't know," she blurted. "I just want to be me, I guess."
The words sounded dumb as soon as they left her mouth, but the barker reacted as if she'd won the lotto. He stepped aside with a triumphant flourish. "Mais bien sûr, mademoiselle, et avec grand plaisir! Permettez-moi de vous accueillir au Carnaval de rêves perdus. Entrez-vous, je vous en prie. And may your journey be very fruitful, indeed."
O-Okay, she thought with a very shaky grin, but she just ducked her head shyly and walked inside.
She had to hand it to whoever was in charge: this carnival was something else. She saw performers breathing fire, and shy adults pulled onstage to dance with people who didn't look like people at all, and booths where participants had to fight trolls and walk on water (which of course couldn't be true, but the illusions were so real.)
The light here wasn't so good, and you had to make your way by the faint lightbulbs overhead (though the harder she looked, they more they seemed to move, and she realized they weren't lightbulbs at all but faeries).
"What a strange place," she murmured aloud. Of course magic carnivals had to exist. Of course. She was 20 years old and still got regular visits from Ludo, Hoggle and Sir Didymus. Why shouldn't magic exist outside of the Labyrinth? Why shouldn't it visit dying little hometowns like hers, where the only decent jobs were with the local welders union or the Litchfield maximum security facility off route ninety?
We probably need magic more than anybody, she thought ruefully. The idea that magic could infiltrate such a desperate place made her feel curiously warm and satiated, as if she'd just eaten a good meal. She felt hopeful.
A strange melody interrupted her thoughts. It was a haunting tune that reminded Sarah of funerals, and it ran a cold finger down her spine. What ...?
There weren't as many kids running around underfoot here, and she'd left the busier part of the carnival with all the performers. Now she stood in a quiet lane in front of a haunted house. It was a crooked little building, in a crooked little place. She liked it immediately, even though it put her on edge.
"One please?" she asked the masked person guarding the door. She couldn't tell their gender, and they silently waved her inside.
Definitely a haunted house. The front salon had cages with (masked?) monsters in it, and a hallway up to the second floor had a ghost that dogged her every footstep and breathed down her neck, and the second floor had a library with books that flung themselves across the room and forced her to duck and run.
Finally she entered a pitch black room and waited, anxious and jittery, until a light slowly came on. "Figures," she said with good humor.
It was a room of mirrors. She made revolting faces in the first mirror she saw, and recoiled when her reflection stayed stuck that way. Whoaaaaaaa ... cool!
What else was in this place? It was a maze of reflections as far as the eye could see, and she wandered past mirror after mirror, sometimes backtracking to find her way. Some of the mirrors made her tall, some made her short, others showed her in rags or beautiful clothes or sporting feathered wings or showed her hair on fire but not burning her.
Her reflection morphed from mirror to mirror: she was a police officer, a doctor, a botanist, an artist, a theater usher, a bodyguard, a mother, a coach, a pilot, a clown. Some of the reflections made her nervous. In one, her haggard face was covered in sores like she'd seen on Andrew Mobley when he'd started doing meth in 12th grade. In another, she saw a funeral casket.
And in another, she had no reflection, as if she didn't exist at all.
"Okay, this place is starting to creep me out," she muttered, rubbing her arms. "How do I get out of here?"
Suddenly, the path spilled her out into a circle of mirrors, and Sarah found herself staring at a dozen reflections, some of them gruesomely disorted. She made a face at herself and watched her reflections grimace back. "Cute. But where's the exit?"
"Sometimes the way forward is the way back. I thought you knew this."
Sarah whirled around, but she was alone. "Who's there?"
Jareth stepped out from the opposite side of one frosty glass and leaned nonchalantly against the frame with a smile that seemed all teeth, and Sarah's heart dropped into her shoes.
"I should have guessed," she said with remarkable calm. "Who else would be behind a magic carnival?"
"I'm touched by your faith in me," he said. Gone was the demure suit she'd last seen him in. But he'd abstained from his familiar black armor. Now he wore fitted jeans, and an Alice in Chains t-shirt, and his hair was long and unkept but not nearly as big as she remembered. It was wavy and tucked away neatly behind his ears. He might not have been out of place at a coffee shop or a rock concert.
Still crooked, she thought, but not nearly as thin as she remembered. He was lean but not skinny, not at all. She saw the definition of his muscles through the shirt, and she forced herself to keep her eyes on his face.
"Going grunge?" she asked. "It's a better look on you than the armor."
Jareth laughed. It was a racuous laugh, one which had terrified her when she was fourteen and raised all the hair on her arms right then, only she didn't think now it had anything to do with fear. "Oh Sarah, let it never be said you're not forthright. I always appreciated that about you."
"What do you want?"
"Getting right down to brass tacks, are we?"
"If you're after Toby-"
"-I can't have him," Jareth said firmly. "Yes, you made that quite clear last time. You needn't fear. Your brother doesn't interest me, sweet lad that he is."
"You can't have me either," she said quickly.
Jareth tsked. "Yes, let's talk about you," he said softly, and he braced himself against both sides of the mirror and looked at her. Really looked, and it was the same look she'd gotten from Mr. Hendricks, her guidance counselor, when she'd told him she was thinking about the local community college and he'd looked down his nose at her and said, Sarah, we both know you can do better that that ...
"Let's talk about what you're missing," Jareth continued, and if it wasn't for her past experience with him, she almost would have thought he sounded sincere. She cocked her head at him.
He sucked his teeth and rapped a finger (no gloves) against the frame on his side of the mirror, with the air of an annoyed pedestrian waiting for the bus. He looked like he was going to stay silent and thoughtful, but then he said, "I hope you go to San Francisco. I really do."
She tasted bile at the back of her throat. "How can you possibly know about that?"
"What don't I know about you?" he asked with a flick of the wrist. "I told you once: everything I did, I did for you. I'm the Lord of Dreams. What don't I know about you, Sarah? It's my job to know your dreams. It's what I was made to do."
"Uh huh." She didn't even sound convinced to her own ears. "And you just wanted to show up and offer me life advice, is that it?"
"I was very sincere in my last offer to you," he said softly. "You and I both know you've been ... dissatisfied."
And she knew exactly what he meant, and felt her face flame red to the tips of her ears, and if she hoped for a carefree denial, she was sorely disappointed and too embarassed to even pretend otherwise. "That's n-none of your business," she stuttered, but her throat was closing up, and she didn't know what to say ...
She stood closer to the mirror than she'd thought, because Jareth suddenly reached through it and cupped her cheek, and she couldn't move. "You call upon those nitwits of mine whenever you need them," he murmured. "Of course I know about that. I know everything that happens in my kingdom and with my subjects. They keep your imagination alive. I could have stopped them, but I never did, because I've never denied you anything."
She was trembling and couldn't look him in the face, and he was closer than ever now, because he leaned into her ear. "You invite your friends in so you can remember how to stay a child. You need balance. I can help you know what it's like to be a woman."
"I don't need your help for that," she said, but it was a quiet protest, without any bite to it.
"No, you've done well for yourself. But there's so much more to growing up than professional success." He lifted her chin and made her look at him. She was startled by the hunger in his eyes. "Let me in. Command me."
"You're not serious," she whispered.
"Command me and I'll show you just how serious I am," he insisted.
This isn't real. I've lost my mind. In her shock, she realized she'd covered his hand with hers, holding it against her cheek. What exactly was he asking? How far was he willing to go? And then he must have seen the dawning realization in her eyes, because he kissed her on the corner of her mouth.
It was a chaste kiss, really, without much heat. But it was an adult kiss, and she'd kissed enough boys to know the difference. When she opened her mouth to gasp, he kissed her there, too. He had a nice mouth, and a lot of passion, and without thinking she opened her mouth wider and let him in. She tasted heat, and she clasped the sides of his face, suddenly desperate for him to stay with her, and he groaned into her mouth as if a blade had gone right through him. It was just this side of too much, and Sarah's eyes welled with tears.
And then he tilted his head, and she tasted tongue. He was making the strangest noises: hungry, needy, excited noises.
She broke the kiss, desperate for air, and they clutched each other with fingers gone thick and useless. Jareth leaned uncomfortably out of the mirror as if he was about to fall, and she thought it strange that he didn't come through all the way into her world.
"Please," he said, and his voice was rough, and it was the first time she'd ever heard him say please to anyone, let alone meant it.
She couldn't stop trembling, and he took the opportunity to nuzzle her jawline and place a kiss at her pulse point, and she almost lost her head completely. You have ... have no ... p-p-power ...
Sarah dragged Jareth away from her throat by his hair. It shocked even her, but she had the distinct impression that he enjoyed the way she manhandled him. "What are the rules?" she demanded.
"Rules?" he asked, and THERE was the Jareth she remembered, because his expression aimed for innocence but crashed and burned about five miles short of it. Apparently Jareth could do sincere, and he could even be affectionate, but innocent just wasn't in his blood.
"I'm not putting myself or my family in danger again," she said.
"Who said anything about danger?" he asked huskily. He licked his lips, and his hungry eyes flickered back to her mouth, and her pulse jumped again.
"No." She pushed him away, and he looked more startled by the word than her rough treatment of him. "Nothing is worth losing everything again. My answer is no."
He surprised her by not leaving right away, but leaned against the frame and regarded her with an intense stare that made her feel like she was being split wide open. His face was shockingly thoughtful beneath the longing, and when he reached out to her again, there was now glass between them as if it had always been there.
"Don't let anything stop you from San Francisco," he said. "And if you change your mind, call on me."
To be continued
