Chapter 3

As it turned out, time really had been short. A few minutes after he disappeared, Irene and Robert came through the front door, looking slightly more bedraggled than when they had gone out it. Sarah was grateful, at least, that she had had time between her guest's departure and their arrival home to wash up the dishes, clean Toby up, and get things in order. She didn't really want to explain the skewers to her parents, or why there had been two glasses of juice on the table instead of just hers and Toby's sippy cup. According to her version of events, she had given Toby some bananas to eat, and she herself had scavenged a snack from the larder, and they had sat by the fire, where it was warm and bright, waiting for them to come home.

They commended her on acting responsibly near the fireplace, cautioned her thoroughly on what fire hazards there could've been – she was glad that when she had looked around, all the candles seemed to have disappeared – and gave her their own account of the evening. The restaurant they had gone to had been affected by the black-out, as had at least half the town; a report on the car radio had told them that a nearby power transformer had been damaged in the storm. They had left the restaurant straight away, thinking that they should get home, since they would've likely been cold and hungry – so clever of her to think to do that in the black-out! They really should get gas laid on in the kitchen in case this happened again – but they had been delayed by an accident that had occurred in an intersection where the traffic lights hadn't been working. They had spent most of their Valentine's Day evening sitting in the car, waiting for debris to be cleared from the road so that they could drive past. All in all, the evening had turned into one big, unexpected melodrama.

In more ways than one, Sarah thought to herself as she went upstairs, Irene having fixed her and Toby both a proper dinner, though neither of them had been all that hungry – Toby because he had already eaten three chocolate-and-marshmallow-stuffed bananas, Sarah because she had had too much to think about to have much of an appetite. The whole evening was replaying itself in her mind. The black-out hadn't felt like a whole hour's time; the hour had flown by almost too quickly. As she mounted the stairs, she looked at her own slim hand on the banister, her skin tingling at the memory. What had that been – just a bit of fun on his part, another thing meant to fluster her? She sighed. If it was, then it sure had worked. She couldn't help but feel a bit resentful towards her parents for coming home so early. She was sure it was that interruption that had made him leave, not just the power coming back on. Awkward though she had felt at the time, she couldn't help but wonder what would've happened next if they had been left to themselves after that had happened…

She went into her room, feeling a slight sense of satisfaction when the light obediently clicked on when she flicked the switch. She went to sit at her dressing table, and reached for her hairbrush. She looked up at her reflection in the mirror, and dropped it again with a clatter.

"Hello again."

He was standing in her mirror, apparently leaning on the other side of it; his hands were resting on the mirror's frame, slim fingers poking out onto her side. Then he straightened and strode forward – straight through the dressing table, walking through the wood grain as though he were wading in a thigh-high pool of water. The table was still undoubtedly solid – she was still leaning on it – but he passed straight through it without meeting any resistance, rather like when he walked right through me in the Escher room, she remembered. He emerged on her side of it, much to her relief, and leant against it, perched on the edge of it, no more than a foot away from where she sat.

"You're back." She made it sound matter-of-fact, but a bit of her eagerness at seeing him again went into her voice unbidden. She had expected she wouldn't see him again for a few days at least, let alone again on the same night – tonight, of all nights.

"Well, there was something I wanted to discuss with you." His voice held none of its usual flippancy; it held a hardness that was somewhat akin to the tone he had used in the Escher room, though at least this time he didn't seem angry – at least she didn't think so. He was watching her through two very intensely-focused blue pupils; in the bright fluorescent light they shone almost harshly, like two bits of fiercely bright summer sky in his pale face, his slanting eyebrows drawn over them in seriousness. "Sarah, why didn't you ask me here for Valentine's Day? You know I can't come to see you unless you wish for me to come. I wanted you to, expected you to – but you didn't. Have you grown tired of me already?"

She stared at him in disbelief. Of all the things he could've said to her, this was the most unexpected. "Me– tired of you?!" She asked incredulously. "Why would I be? And what do you mean, 'I didn't ask you'? You make it sound like I stood you up. Which I didn't. We never had any plans for tonight. You never mentioned Valentine's Day, so I didn't either. I assumed you don't even celebrate it."

"Mayhap I usually don't. But I can make a point to celebrate it, if I have someone worth celebrating it with."

Had she heard that right? He was certainly looking at her; surely he couldn't mean anything else… "B-but… I thought you were the one who was tired of me!"

"Why would you think that?" His blue eyes clouded over with confusion. "I fought so hard and so long to win you; do you think I would give you up so quickly? What could I possibly have done to make you think that? Did I say or do something to convey that impression?"

She looked at her hands in her lap so she wouldn't have to look at his earnest expression, a combination of concern and hurt churned together upon his features. It made her feel guiltier than she had felt for the past month. "You haven't done anything like that," she answered truthfully, trying to pick her words delicately. "But… you haven't done much of anything else either. I didn't think you seemed to enjoy being around me all that much. I mean, when I see you in the park, we stand around and talk, and that's all. I-I don't know what I expected, but… but I'm not too interesting to talk to, I never know what to say, never do anything interesting, don't know much about anything, really. I thought that perhaps you were bored with me and didn't really want to spend time with me, and I didn't want to force you to…"

"Oh, Sarah." He folded his arms and peered down at her, shaking his head reproachfully; there was something almost tragic in the gesture. Her heart plummeted down somewhere near her feet. "I see now," he said softly; his voice held none of its characteristic bravado or customary edge of superiority. She had grown so accustomed to the way that he normally spoke that hearing a lack of those things in his voice almost scared her. "I see now where I was wrong." She felt a lump rise in her throat. It sounded like he… like he was about to break up with her…

"I should have reassured you long before this; I didn't realize you thought that… as it turns out, I was actually being too careful. It's my own fault for undermining your expectations. I thought, given our rather… unfortunate history, it would be in my best interest to act slowly and cautiously. I didn't realize that it came across as disinterest… I did it that way, I suppose, because I was afraid that I would send you running scared." He smiled at her then, a sad, remorseful little smile that was so shocking to see there, it rendered her frozen in her chair, listening in amazement. "I'm not very good at appearing to care, Sarah. Throughout my reign, I have become very good at intimidation and belittling others. The previous chapter of our story called on me to create fear; and I was frightening. But we are on a different page now, the story is still being written by us, and I was uncertain as to how to act. So I proceeded cautiously, afraid that if I made any sudden movements, if I acted too quickly or conveyed my feelings too strongly, I would lose you again, and lose you for good. It was cowardice and pride that almost lost you to me after all; I guess I acted with too much 'kingly pride', instead of making certain that you knew how I felt."

He stopped; his apology made her draw a shuddery breath, and when she answered, her voice was rather thick. "No, no, it's not you, you've been great. Really, you have been. Last Christmas was really… a dream come true." They both smiled as they recollected. It really had been just that, in the very sense of the words. "B-but… I wouldn't blame you for becoming tired of me. I mean, you're the Goblin King, and I'm… just a schoolgirl. I never do anything interesting, there's nothing remarkable about me. I don't even act as grown-up as the other girls at my school." Now that she had started, all her pent-up fears seemed to be tumbling out in an almost unstoppable torrent of words. "I thought you'd want someone more special, more important, more talented or prettier or smarter than 're the Goblin King; you deserve someone way better than me."

"That's not true." She had been staring at the tabletop as she spoke; the vehemence of his words made her look back at him. "Do you think I would've done what I did, offered you all that I had to offer, gone to such great pains to try to best you in our foolish game, if I didn't mean to keep you once I had won you? Don't you remember how the story went?"

Without turning to look, without breaking his gaze, his hand went out and picked something up off the tabletop, where it had been kept in pride of place, propped up between a music box and a large snow globe; a little figurine of an otherworldly, regal character with a tiny crystal ball in its outstretched hand stood close by, looking remarkably like its larger counterpart who perched on the edge of that very same table. The object he picked up was one that they were both familiar with and which held a lot of significance, though it looked innocent enough – a small, relatively thin book with a bright red cover. A title was embossed into the leather binding – 'The Labyrinth'.

She looked at it dangling from his black gloved fingers, and nodded slowly. "Yes, I remember…"

"Once upon a time, in a kingdom far away, there lived
a beautiful princess. Life wasn't easy for the young
princess, for her wicked stepmother worked her like a
slave. But what no one knew was that the King of the
Goblins had fallen in love with the princess…"

"…the King of the Goblins had fallen in love with the princess…"

"…but as you said, the story has changed, it's still being written. I thought, perhaps, that you had changed your mind, or realized that you had made a mistake… after all, I'm not much fun to spend time with. I'm just an ordinary, boring school girl…"

"Come now, have more faith in me. Would I choose just an 'ordinary, boring school girl' as a consort for one such as myself?" A hint of his arrogance had returned; it actually made her smile. That sounded more like him. He stood and moved to stand behind her chair; to look at him directly, she had to tilt her head back and almost lean into him. She could feel his warmth close behind her. "You are so stunning, so thrilling just to be near; yet you don't realize it yourself. That's just one of your many charms. I wish I could make you see how truly amazing you are in my eyes."

In response, she just smiled scornful and turned away. "I used to think I was pretty special," she admitted. "Less than a year ago, I was so full of myself, so sure I was secretly a princess, or some undiscovered heroine. I put on a lot of grand airs, but I was never really anything special. I thought I was, but now I see that I was just a brat who invented dramas to keep myself entertained."

"What do you think I am, then?" That managed to coax a smile out of her. He reached up and lightly fingered a lock of her hair, watching her reflection in the mirror before them; she watched him watching her, suppressing a shiver as his gloved fingertips lightly grazed her cheek. "You are a princess to me, though you mayn't be an undiscovered heroine, not any longer – not since I discovered you. You may think that because I'm a goblin king, because you're a mortal girl, because we live in different realms, that we must be so very different… but we're not really. I put on many grand airs of my own, but just because I wear a regal affectation in my own throne room, it doesn't mean I have to wear it everywhere, all the time. I can enjoy the simple things in life as well. I thought I proved as much this evening."

She thought back. This evening… it had been simple - a bit like when they used to roast marshmallows over the fire on frosty winter evenings back when she was a child, before Toby had arrived and they had turned off the fireplace in favour of the more toddler-friendly central heating. Tonight had been fun in a similar way perhaps, yet far more fun than anything she remembered from childhood.

"You love the simple things in life," he continued, "things like cobwebs hung with dew so that they sparkle in the sunlight; patterns in frost on a window pane on a cold winter's day; old fairytales about heroes and princesses, full of chivalry and grand deeds; walking to the park on a sunny day with a dog, a book, and a box of dress-up clothes. And there is nothing wrong with loving simple things like that – for they are not really such things of simpletons. In fact they are the best things, the things that should be best-cherished, the things that most people almost immediately forget as they reach adulthood, in favour of supposed 'grown-up', 'sophisticated' pastimes which amount to little more than painting faces heavily with garish colours and going out, more exposed than dressed, to swill drinks beneath headache-inducing strobe lights in some gathering place where all the men are base and vulgar, and the women even more so." His take on the nightclub scene made her smirk; he saw that he was winning ground, and continued, his trademark half-smile reflected encouragingly at her in the mirror. "I chose you for you. You need never doubt that."

"You chose me because I'm childish?" she asked, trying to remain despondent, yet feeling hope rise rapidly within her despite herself.

"Absolutely. I only hope that you can also tolerate childishness in turn." She turned in her seat to look at him properly. The same half-question had been in his voice, the same one he asked every time she saw him.

"I trust my presence doesn't intrude…"

'Intrude' upon what? Upon reality? Upon the mundane life she normally led? Or upon her time in the park, long lazy afternoons spent musing, daydreaming, enjoying her only means of escape from that reality? How could he possibly be intruding, when he was so much a part of her dreams himself?

"You don't just love childish fairytales like me, Jareth; you are a fairytale. Or a goblintale, anyway. I couldn't find a boyfriend to better suit me than that."

He smiled at that, showing his teeth with a very genuine amount of pleasure. "Well," he purred down at her, "if 'fantasy boyfriend' I be, I'll just have to bring you into my fairytale. And about time, too. I spent many hours planning for today, and thanks to your near self-sabotage, all my preparations almost went to waste."

"Preparations?" She regarded him with a quizzical look. "Preparations for what?"

"Well, you're the one who didn't invite me," he pointed out. "I see no reason, after having to wait so long, why I should relent now and giv-"

"Jareth,"

It was one word, but she put all her best actress' skills into it; truth be told, she didn't have to act too hard to get her meaning across. If she had looked in the mirror at that moment, it would've told her that she looked more beautifully appealing than she could've known, with her large, doe-like hazel eyes raised pleadingly, her dark hair falling about her fair face in soft hanks, her smile holding both a sweet innocence and a great deal of very feminine guile upon two lips as delicate as rose petals. If his heart had been made of glass, it would've undoubtedly melted; before the full force of that vision of loveliness, seen not reflected within the mirror's gaze but directly in person, his resistances – feigned ones, it must be admitted – became intangible, no longer true obstacles; just as she had worn down the defenses of his Labyrinth before. His breath caught in his chest; for a moment, she saw his adoration of her plainly writ upon his face. Her own heart skittered somewhere beneath the heart-shaped pendant laying against her chest - she wondered that he didn't hear it pound. He crossed to stand between her and the bedroom window and gave her a gracious bow.

"Your wish is my command, mila-… my love." He corrected himself, using a term of endearment for her that he hadn't previously allowed himself to use, letting himself utter it now with particular enthusiasm. His hand extended towards her invitingly, waiting for her to take it. She looked at him longingly, yet gave her bedroom door a small, uncertain glance.

"Your family won't miss you for a little while, I promise. Now come, before the expectation does for us both."

She turned back to him, gave him a brilliant smile that warmed him more than any mere firelight could, and rose eagerly from her chair, clasping his hand. He gently rearranged their hold, twining her arm through his, just as he had done back then, at Christmas, on another snowy night…

He beamed conspiratively down at her. Whatever he wanted to show her, it seemed to be something exciting!

"Come," he said.

Together, arm in arm, they took a step across the carpet, towards the frost-laced panes of the bedroom window. They took a second step each; this one crunched on snow.

It startled her; she was lucky Jareth had her arm, as she almost overbalanced and fell upon the crisp white blanket at her feet. She could still see a snowy landscape before her as she had when they stood before the window, but there was no longer any glass between her and it. She turned and looked behind her. Her room was no longer there; only more snow and trees. She noticed as she turned that her clothes rustled loudly, uncharacteristically; looking down, she saw that they had changed. She now wore a dress with a large, circular skirt – a ball-gown, she realized, remembering the only other one she had worn; that had also been in his company…

This one was red instead of white, but it wasn't just a replica of the previous one in a different colour. It was even more sumptuous, if that were possible. It seemed to be made of layer upon layer of satin and velvet flounces which flared out from her waist, each layer edged with delicate white lace. There were swathes of rich white fur at the neckline, hem and cuffs, for which she was thankful, since they were out under a dark, wintry sky. The sleeves and bodice were adorned with gathers of scarlet satin, embroidered with a floral design and detailed with velvet ribbon. It made her feel rather like she was wearing a large red rose bud tipped with frost for a gown, with petals drooping over each other until they reached her feet, where she could feel some low-heeled boots that weren't her own encasing them up to the ankles. Her hand automatically went to her throat; the heart pendant – his heart pendant – was still there. Otherwise, her previous outfit of casual jeans and a jumper had been completely transformed.

"Do you like it?" Jareth asked, having watched her turn this way and that, taking it all in.

"I-it's wonderful! I've never seen anything more beautiful!" It left even her mother's most elaborate stage costumes for dead. She touched a velvet fold almost reverently.

"Neither have I." She drew her eyes away from the gorgeous gown and turned back to him. His outfit had changed, too – though the same shirt and vest remained, he now wore a burgundy satin cravat at his throat, and he had on over it all a frock coat with long pointed tails at the back, made of a similar-coloured velvet, edged here and there with white ribbon. She was happy to see that a familiar pair of cuff links, shaped like tiny silver owls with rhinestone eyes, adorned both his wrists. Something in his face – that same soft, yet almost hungry-looking gaze – told her that at any rate, he certainly liked her dress. Though the way his eyes were riveted upon her rather than the gown, he seemed to have been complimenting something else.

"You're just making empty flattery," she accused him, trying to make light of such extravagant praise.

"Unlike some people, when I say something, I absolutely mean it." That made her smile ruefully at the memory… a memory from very long ago now, it seemed… so much had changed since then…

"How did we get out here?" she asked, looking around at the snow-covered landscape. The familiar little bridge was before them, the stream murmuring sedately underneath it. It was strange, seeing her favourite spot in the park at night time. It was still familiar, yet felt totally different; almost unreal. She turned again to look behind them. There were no footprints leading up to where they now stood; it was as though they had dropped on this spot out of the sky.

"I told you dramatic entrances were a skill of mine. I brought us here; it took no more than a single step-"

He took one, and to her amazement, vanished from her side, seemingly into thin air. A few seconds passed – enough time for her to worry about him – then a pair of gloved hands suddenly came from behind her and covered her eyes. It made her laugh; she tried half-heartedly to peel them away from her face, but they stayed firmly in place.

"Keep your eyes closed," she both heard and felt his lips say somewhere very close to her left earlobe. Resisting the urge to do otherwise, she obeyed; she felt one hand move away whilst the other remained, continuing to shield her gaze. She knew he was performing some other sort of magic. She wondered what she would see…

"Ok, now… open them!"