Part Two: Black as Stars

In which Sarah gets some very good advice and several useful gifts.

Author's note: The Blackstar and his abode are very much inspired by David Bowie's "Blackstar" music video.

Fun fact: Using a tesseract for interstellar travel isn't nearly as much fun as it sounded when I read about it in Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time as a young girl. Dear nine-year-old me: While the instantaneous bending of time and space sounds great, the vertigo just isn't worth it, I promise you. Though I suppose it was good preparation for whatever mangling of the laws of physics was going to happen in Filip's lair.

It was gratifying to see that Cal looked a little green too, at least. Of course, maybe that was just from the glow coming from the Blackstar's house, which was decidedly verdant. It contrasted rather starkly with the desert dusty surroundings of sand and stone.

At least the air was breathable in this place, whatever planet it was. Why that should be was actually unclear - there didn't appear to be much in the way of atmosphere. And come to think of it, the air tasted strange. Like cardamom, or perhaps cloves.

Jareth hummed to himself as he knocked on the Blackstar's door.

"Cal?" I whispered.

"Lady?"

"Why can we breathe here?"

"Adaptive tessering. The Blackstar allows that kind of gate for convenience, so guests don't have to expend their own energy to adjust. Most hosts don't bother with it."

"Why not?"

"Too much of a hassle to maintain. Sucks down magical power like you wouldn't believe."

"So the Blackstar's powerful enough not to care?"

"Actually," came a voice rolling like velvet from the doorway, "I prefer to think of it as maintaining standards of hospitality. It's the little things that often make an impression, don't you think?"

I stared at the figure hovering in the threshold for a long moment. He was slender and lithe as a lute string, with a trembling edge to his movements that suggested barely contained energy. A blindfold wrapped around his head, with pinprick holes for the eyes, and iridescence poured from each hole, one blue and one golden. It offset the plume of silver-bright hair and not-quite-lace cuffs peeking out past the edge of his fitted jacket sleeves quite nicely.

Also, he was the spitting image of David Bowie. It was so unexpected that I couldn't help myself. "Pardon me, uh…" I flailed around for the appropriate title.

"'Sir' will do."

"Sir. Right, okay, sir, why do you look like David Bowie?"

That seemed to utterly delight him. "How do you know David Bowie doesn't simply look like me, dear Lady?"

Well, ask a stupid question, as they say. And then it hit me. "I'm the only one who sees you like that, aren't I?" I glanced at Cal.

Cal just shivered again, seeming to twitch and flicker more with every passing moment. I probably really didn't want to know what Cal was seeing.

I looked back at the Blackstar and then at Jareth. "He's got your eyes."

Jareth smiled fondly at the Blackstar. "Showoff."

The Blackstar smiled, and it was so intense, it burned like liquid nitrogen. "Won't you all come in?"

Cal and I exchanged a heartfelt well-shit look as we trooped in behind Jareth.

It was all very polite really, as we sat at the Blackstar's table, drinking a truly excellent mint tea. Or at least, what appeared to me to be mint tea. All I knew was that it had that perfect arc of frost in the aftertaste, and it hadn't poisoned me, Cal, or Jareth yet.

"So, my friend," said the Blackstar to Jareth, "it's good to see you. And with such lovely companions." His blue pinprick eye seemed to skewer me in place, his gold one showering Cal with razor attention. "Have you come for a song?"

"For a song?" Jareth hummed to himself, a half smile twinkling at the corner of his mouth. "In payment, in search of, or just for old times' sake?"

"All three is best." The Blackstar's gaze turned fully to Jareth.

Jareth seemed to absorb it like a flower with sunlight and tilted his head, as if getting a particularly good neck rub. "Would you consider a trio or quartet?"

The golden pinprick eye fell squarely on Cal again, who did his best to vanish into the lacquered table's surface. "A trio, perhaps." The Blackstar's blue eye landed on me. "Assuming the lady sings."

Jareth nodded. "She does."

I nudged Jareth. "You didn't ask if I could, your Grace."

Jareth smiled. "I have great faith in you, my Lady."

My jaw clenched involuntarily. Never bored, that's me. The Blackstar began before I could protest further.

It was a haunting sort of melody, with sounds that might have been words scuffing and scraping around the rise and fall of breath and voice. It pulled something from inside me just to listen, making me shake with the same trembling I saw running rampant along the Blackstar's limbs. I managed to catch a glimpse of Jareth, and saw that the same eerie energy was sparking through him. Alrighty then. Good to know we were in this together.

At some indefinable point, I suddenly realized Jareth and I were harmonizing on the sighing "ahs" that trailed through the Blackstar's song like stardust. I didn't even know how long I'd been doing it. I could feel Cal shrinking further away from us, at the edge of my awareness.

The not-words clicked into place between one inhalation and the next, and whole phrases shimmered into my thoughts, bursting like soap bubbles. In the centre of it all...your eyes...spirit rose a metre and stepped aside...somebody else took his place, and bravely cried I'm a blackstar...how many times does an angel fall?...I see right, so wide...I want eagles in my daydreams, diamonds in my eyes...at the centre of it all, your eyes...

As the song closed on harmonizing minor exhalations, I felt blue and gold light tickling across my cheeks.

"So, dear Lady," said the Blackstar, "would you like diamonds in your eyes?"

I looked at Jareth, who remained unhelpfully blank. Cal had shrunk off the edge of the table and was presumably taking cover somewhere behind us.

I swallowed. "What does that mean exactly, sir?"

"My gift to you for your coming adventures." His smile was wide, with an anticipatory gleam. "If you want it. I can open wide your sight."

Ooooh, I knew the stories on how that kind of gift went. "Consequences would include declining sanity and vulnerability to things that can see me because I can see them?"

Laughter fell from the Blackstar's mouth like a silver waterfall of coins. "That, and a much higher chance of saving the universe. Among other things."

"Somehow, there's always 'other things'."

He made a clucking noise. "Do you wish it, Dreamer girl? Do you miss it enough to welcome it back?"

Of course I did. His siren song had woken something inside me, and it was buzzing and flitting and pressing against the cage of my bones. It was want and need arcing from capillary to ribosome to dendrite. Sneaky, sneaky Blackstar.

Somehow I knew this was really about that flax inside me, broken into cellular splinters and absorbed at a level so deep, it was part of myself. This was how it could come out of me, how it could release me. If I wanted it. All I had to do was say yes.

I swallowed and held out my right hand with its constellations of tiny reconstructive scars. "Was there ever really a question?"

I felt Jareth's hand land gently on top of mine, our Winter-Summer-whatever bond flaring with an audible crack.

"I'll wait outside if it's all the same to you," said Cal's voice from behind us, dwindling as he put as much distance between himself and whatever was about to happen here.

The Blackstar's smile was light itself.

Unbinding via intimate relations, indeed. Silly me, for thinking I had known what that meant. Sex may connect body to body and heart to heart, but that's at least a layer up from direct mind-to-mind connection. There were two important things I learned.

One: Jareth's mind appeared like a city of glass, with thoughts formed by unearthly winds sighing through the delicate apertures, more than one of which were shaped just like me. And I do mean that literally. Little holes cut into the vibrating structure, the shape of my eyes and my lips and the three bones of my inner ear, among many, many others. Creepy much? You betcha. I've never wanted to repress knowledge from my university human anatomy course so much in my life. I didn't even want to contemplate what my thoughts looked like to him. There be dragons.

Two: I was damned glad the Blackstar mostly shielded his thoughts from us during the process. The bits that leaked through were like looking into the maw of a maelstrom. Holy shiznit. Inexorable force doesn't even begin to cover it. Jareth and I were like grains of sand being rolled by a tsunami. Mostly blissfully unaware until we suddenly weren't.

All in all, it wasn't exactly pleasant. Of course, it wasn't exactly unpleasant either. It didn't really hurt, for instance. But I immediately missed the easy illusion of the Blackstar as a David Bowie oracle. The clearer version of him...well, there's a reason Cal had been trembling involuntarily. It's overwhelming to be in the presence of a god emeritus when you can see him for what he is. No matter how nice he's currently being to you and how good his singing voice is. Or the quality of his illusory mint tea.

"Can I switch it off?" I didn't even know who I was asking really, as I stared down at my hands.

"I don't know," said the Blackstar. "Can you?"

Not this again. "You and Jareth share that same terrible habit, sir," I murmured, searching inside myself for...something.

"Which is, dear Lady?"

"These little inscrutable tag questions."

I felt the thrum of Jareth's amusement in my chest without even looking up.

"Well," replied the Blackstar, "they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And terribly useful in other ways."

That hint was hard to miss. Terribly useful, huh? Alrighty then. I wanted a way to switch this Dreamer sight off, so how about a direct approach...I imagined a light switch tethered to my sight and gave it a good, solid flick.

With a silent snap, we were back to a very civilized sitting room with mint tea in front of us and the Blackstar in David Bowie form. He smiled. "See? You didn't need me to tell you that."

"Uh huh." I took a fortifying sip of illusory tea. "So what do I need you to tell me, sir?"

"So glad you asked. If I might direct your Sight out the window there?"

Jareth and I both turned, and I flicked my Sight switch back on. There was a crackling whirlpool bleeding over the entire sky with a rather unfriendly I-Will-Consume-All-And-Sundry look about it.

"Filip's lair is rather close, you see. Makes it easy to receive his correspondence."

I flicked off my Sight and sucked in some air. "Do I even want to know how the gravitational pull of the black hole isn't ripping this planet to shreds?"

The Blackstar's silvery laughter trickled over my skin. "As I said, it's the little things that make an impression on guests."

I pressed two fingers to my forehead as my temples began a telltale throbbing. "Right, okay. Back to business. So what can you tell us about Filip, sir?"

"Perhaps the most useful is that Filip would dearly love to give the cursed ring up. It's rather a strain for him, you see."

I raised an eyebrow. "Is it 'rather a strain' in the same way that withholding the gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole is one of those 'little things' you enjoy doing for your guests?"

Both the Blackstar and Jareth grinned the same damned Cheshire Cat grin. Unbelievable.

"It's as if she knows you," observed Jareth.

"Okay, then," I said, trying not to overtly massage my forehead. "Epic fetters from the cursed ring. So how can Filip possibly offload the thing?"

"As with many things," said the Blackstar, "the trick is saying the right words at the right time." The Cheshire Cat grin was back.

"Uh huh. And I don't suppose you happen to know the exact form of these magic words, sir?"

"I'm sure they'll come to you when the time comes for bravely crying."

I blinked at him. Then the not-words of his song tickled the back of my mind. Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried I'm a blackstar… My eyes widened. "So I just tell him I'm a-"

"Shhh!" The Blackstar's finger was against my lips. "Not yet, dear Lady."

I swallowed as he withdrew his finger, a sort of fizzing like pins and needles dancing across my lips. I had a feeling I'd just gotten another little gift. "But that's it?"

The Blackstar's lips twitched in suppressed laughter as he shrugged a shoulder. "That's it."

I tapped my fingers against my mouth in thought, and some of that fizzing spread to my fingertips. I tried to ignore it, since there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it right now anyway. "So then the real trick is what to do with the curse part. I'm not keen on it landing on me."

"Mmm," agreed the Blackstar. "I think I might have something useful in that respect." With a practiced magician's flourish, a book appeared in his hand. It was a black leatherbound thing with a five-pointed star cut out of its cover, deep into the meat of the pages.

I eyed it. "Emblematic much? Maybe you should sign it: 'Property of the Blackstar. Nyah, Nyah, Nyah.'"

The Blackstar's laughter flowed over me like an ocean wave, gently pulling and pushing. He leaned forward conspiratorially. "Altruism has its limits. Why don't you take a good look?"

With a wary breath, I flicked my Sight back on.

Goodness. And I thought the crackling whirlpool outside looked hungry. I guess it takes a lot of magical juice to keep the "little things" nice for your visitors.

I slammed my sight off in a hurry. "Okay, so the curse goes in there. How do we direct it?"

"I had an idea about that actually," said Jareth. His eyes were just finishing their spiral dance of might-be-could-be knowledge. "It's a three-man operation, however."

"Hey, Cal," I called out. "I think we're about ready to head out."

Cal appeared at my elbow, wiping his forehead. "Thank Summer for that."

"And we've got a plan."

"You'd better, after all this. Can we vamoose now?"

"The plan involves you."

"Sure, sure, as long as we can get out of here." There was a sudden, awkward pause as he caught the Blackstar's eye and hastily looked down. "No offense intended, sir."

I felt the Blackstar's smile like a sunrise against my skin, and I wasn't even looking at him.

"None taken, little one," said the Blackstar. "But you, dear Lady...you really must come visit more often with Jareth here. There are some fine songs I could teach you."

"I'll keep that in mind, sir." I patted the book/sucking-hole-of-godly-power in my satchel. "Maybe when we get back from Filip's?"

"I'll count on it. Now, off you go and best of luck. I'm sure Jareth knows the way from here."