Chapter 4: The Heart-Shaped Box

Soundtrack for chapter 4:
My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult: "Daisy Chain 4 Satan"
Swans: "Love Will Tear Us Apart"

A/N: With all respect and courtesy to American Horror Story: Coven, Cotton Mather and the Malleus Maleficarum for the term "Seven Wonders" as used in this chapter.

While there were two cafeterias at Triptoleme University called "Husker Hall," in reference to the college mascot (some moldy old Classical demigod who rode in a winged chariot and perpetually brandished a handful of cut wheat) it was generally agreed that Old Husker was the superior of the two for eating. This might have had something to do with the fact that Old Husker was the private cafeteria for faculty, administration, and invited companions and so the nosh was of slightly higher quality, or it might have had something to do with the fact that Old Husker was housed not in the tiled and fluorescent conglomerate that was the student union, but rather in one of the original old buildings of the university, with polished rafters and pointed pseudo-medieval windows and faux-gas chandeliers. Aesthetics were a sauce to appetite, and Old Husker was open to the students for brunch on weekends. Or at least, that was what the staff believed, after Polly had prompted them. So it was to Old Husker they went, giving the traditional nod to the university's namesake effigy as they passed on their way.

Nan was already waiting for them, her plate steaming with waffles and various smoked and sliced animal meats and her leather jacket slung over the back of her chair. Polly and Sarah dithered intensely over the various breakfast items on offer, and came to her with their trays similarly laden. Other than the staff and some ancient professor Sarah recognized from the Anthropology department, they had the place completely to themselves.

Nan kept her sunglasses on and her face averted from the delicious food that she apparently didn't want now. She had an entire carafe of coffee—another benefit that the professors' eatery had that the regular cafeteria didn't—and was pouring herself another cup as Sarah and Polly sat down. When Polly reached for the carafe, Nan practically snarled at him and drew it closer to herself.

"Rough night, babe?" Polly asked with habitual cruel accuracy. Nan's only reply was to flip him the bird. "You should eat that breakfast instead of staring at it, you know. You're too skinny. No curves to you. I was saying just the other day that when God cut off your penis, he ruined a perfectly good boy."

"And when God put teeth in your mouth, he ruined a perfectly good asshole," Nan said in a voice that had seen too much smoking, drinking, and general run-around the night before. "Let this coffee work before you say one more thing to me, Pollyanna. It was one fuck of a Friday night."

"Slept in your clothes again, huh?" Polly said.

"I didn't. Sleep." Nan said, and began eviscerating a waffle.

Sarah and Apollonaire exchanged significant glances.

Nan Bullen was two years Sarah's senior. Her red-golden hair seemed to float under the ebullience of its own curls in a cheerful cloud around her head, like the puckish heroine of some romance novel. It was her only visible softness in a personality made of stabbing gestures. She liked drugs, nightclubs, and dangerous company. She did not like school. She treated it as an afterthought, skipping classes as she felt like it, and eschewing homework altogether. That she hadn't been summarily kicked out on her ass—or managed to graduate—was testament to her witch's voice. Her teachers, academic advisors, and deans had a tendency to see her presence at Triptoleme as desirable and normal, once Nan had had a private chat with them and told them what to think about her situation.

Today she was wearing loose blue pants, a fishnet shirt worn under a dangerously open Oxford, hectically smeared make-up around her eyes and mouth, and not much else. She looked ready to collapse under a strong breeze. She looked like herself. She gave Sarah a fading smile and pushed the coffee over to her.

"Thanks," Sarah said, and played mother to Polly. By mutual accord, they ate in silence before moving on to the business at hand.

Near the end of the meal, Nan pulled a wide-spread rose out of her tangle of hair and began to feed it morsels of jelly and creamer and waffle-crumbs from the tip of her finger. It was only if one looked closely at the rose that one saw it had a wee little mouth, two wee beady sap-green eyes, and wee greeny-brown arms and legs (but somehow, always one or two too many of these and always at the wrong angles). It was Prickpetal, Nan's familiar spirit, and as spirits of that type went, it was cute and helpful. In the intervening years since the familiars' rebellion against their coven, Nan had reached a careful détente with her family's magical tutor. It was a meager thing, but still potentially dangerous, being free. Sarah still felt uneasy around it.

Polly's feelings were far less ambiguous. "At the fucking table, Nan? You're feeding that thing at the fucking table?"

"He's gotta eat!" Nan whined, but after a tiny kiss, she nested the rose back into her hair. "You're such a freakin' racist, Polly."

"It's not racism if it's not a person," he said, the opening bid to an old argument.

"Enough," Sarah said, slapping her hand down on the table. They both looked at her with that deference and fear that Sarah had grown used to seeing. "Polly, quit dogging Nan about Prickpetal. She has it under control. Nan, if you always use that thing to boost your abilities, you're never going to get better on your own. And you wouldn't have to feed it so often. You know it grosses Polly out."

"Fine," Polly said, clearly still offended by the spirit's presence.

"Whatever," Nan agreed, the stubborn jut of her lips indicating no plan to cut down on her magical addiction of choice.

Polly was right, Nan spent far too much time taking Prickpetal's instruction, borrowing Prickpetal's abilities instead of developing her own resources. The problem was, while Polly was the most formidable witch in the room and probably New England, and while Sarah had the most unrealized potential, Nan wasn't naturally in their league and probably never would be. She flagged in the simple spells and magical exercises they practiced. She used her familiar the way that less endowed athletes used steroids. And Sarah wasn't sure that without it, she would ever find ways to develop her powers before she gave up on magic altogether.

At least as far back as the days of witch-hunting in medieval Germany, and set down for mundane eyes in the Malleus Maleficarum, witches categorized their powers into seven wonders: Movement, fruitfulness, withering, bewitchment, unbinding, the tempest, and the voice of command. At least according to Jareth at the time he was filling her in on her back history, the first six wonders all had their origins in the tutelage of familiar spirits. The Seventh Wonder, the voice of command, was the thing that had allowed the first witches to speak to the unseen, and to shape and call the familiar spirits into existence and reality. The Seventh Wonder was a coveted prize that all non-human entities wanted for themselves, but had never acquired.

Unlike the wild and feckless spirits like the one she'd banished from the English classroom, all the familiar spirits had a core of mortality, a nucleus of reality into which they'd first been called. Prickpetal, the tutelary spirit of the Bullen family, had first been invoked from a pot-rose watered by a courtesan's tears. As far as familiar spirits went, Prickpetal was still an infant, only a few centuries old. Bootis, the Vaan Knecht family demon, had been embodied in a poppet made out of a stillborn son's arm bones sometime in the eighth century B.C. And Jareth… he had described his origins to Sarah when she first took possession of him three years ago, and they had been similar but much older, almost to the dawn of civilization in Europe, and much more violent. All familiar spirits could take any form they wanted, but the ones with their origins in sorrow and love and need and human remains were far more powerful, more difficult to control, and more dangerous.

Every familiar spirit had untold power to work six wonders in the mortal world according to their ability, and to teach these wonders to the witches according to her needs. Their nucleic cores, over the centuries of the demon's tenure, were sometimes lost and destroyed and the spirit's presence in the world went with them. But more often, an element of that core was transferred or embedded in a ring, a jewel, a locket, and ownership of the spirit passed down from mother to daughter to granddaughter, forming a never-ending servitude. Jareth's essence was embedded in at least two amulets Sarah knew about—she didn't fool herself into thinking there might be more somewhere—infant's fat mixed with ashes, making a little manikin, had been forged into the metal of the pendant he perpetually wore. A slave's collar. The power to command him had gone into a bronze ring, forged at the same time. Sarah's mother had done that, centuries ago. She had given the ring to Sarah. And Sarah had given the ring back to Jareth.

And there was a reason why a familiar as old and practiced as Jareth was dangerous to witches. The most potent spirits could impregnate mortal women, and bring about that most fearsome creature: a half-breed witch's child, one who could control the spirits of men and animals and ether via the mortal inheritance of the Seventh Wonder—one who might overturn mortal reality and crush the normal order of the world, having no innate allegiance to it. Modern Christians liked to call this being "Antichrist." Sarah didn't care for the term, finding it inaccurate, but it arguably came down to the same thing: a child who could bring about an apocalyptic end to the world, in fire and blood.

But for that kind of child to be born, a witch would have to do more than engage in coitus with her familiar spirit. She would have to allow herself to become fertile. She would have to tend every stage of the pregnancy with care and attention, helping something grow that should not and could not be born on its own. It was considered a disgrace, a shameful weakness, to love a familiar spirit enough to give it a child, but it had happened here and there over the past few thousand years, to no noticeably bad ends. One of Polly's first accusations against Sarah had been that she had been fathered by a demon—by Jareth, in fact. This hadn't been true, but it had been close to the mark. Jareth had told her, quite clearly and directly, that what he wanted from her was a marriage, deeper and more personal than the usual master-slave relationship. He wanted her to come and live with him, in his kingdom, where he had mastery and rule over the normal working of the world. The labyrinth: a kingdom somewhere between Hell and Fairy where he wouldn't need more than her tertiary consent to pregnancy and childbirth. He wanted to make a child in his own image. He wanted to overturn the world and its gods in the same way he'd overturned her mother's coven.

This was precisely Polly's fear: that Sarah would give birth to the wrecking-ball that was a half-demon child. And he had reason to be afraid. Jareth, the most dangerous familiar spirit, had far more freedom than any familiar spirit ought to have. Sarah had freed him.

Polly was right; she could be colossally stupid. But at the time, and even now, it had seemed like the right thing to do. She couldn't bring herself to regret that decision. Nothing that understood the misery of slavery should be made a slave, even if they were as dangerous as Jareth. He had been called into the world hundreds of thousands of years ago. He had not asked to be called. He had asked for nothing, not even from Sarah, but to be loved.

The danger was, she did.

Sarah tried to refill her coffee cup but the carafe was empty. Nan and Polly watched her every move; she'd been brooding in silence while they were desperate to have her speak. She stretched her fingertips out on the table. Her two witches also reached out and they made contact through their fingertips, against the smooth wood. Sarah felt the hum of their connection move through them like a palpable current.

"Here are the witches, and here is the circle we've made," Sarah said, using the traditional words. "Let us share our knowledge."

"I will," Polly answered promptly.

"I will," Nan said a bit uneasily.

"I want us to talk about our dreams. I'll go first," Sarah said in a low voice. "The Goblin King spoke to me in the dark, telling me we'd made a bargain; him to be fed, and me to be warm. He reminded me that I needed his warmth, just as he needed me to feed him. He asked if I'd let him warm me, and I answered yes."

"Here is my dream," Polly said, equally quiet. His voice shook. "The Goblin King sat high above me on his throne, and tossed my father's amulet down at my feet. He told me it was a silly token, nothing at all to him, but that I could use it to control Bootis, just as my father did. But he told me that if I valued my father's life and my mother's lives as much as I coveted their prestige, then he could restore them to me. All I had to do was deliver Sarah into his power. I didn't answer him. I woke up. And when I did, my father's amulet was in my hand."

"Jesus," Nan said with distaste. "Why are you slumming it with us if you've got that?"

"Hush," Sarah said. "Nan, what did you dream?"

Nan looked uncomfortable. "It wasn't a dream, really. More of a waking dream. I was dancing and I was rolling E, and I turned my eyes up at the lights, and Prickpetal began singing. And then I saw him. You know who I mean."

"The Goblin King," Polly said. "Great. What did he offer you, a pretty dress and a ring?"

"He said," Nan continued, with a glare in Polly's direction, "He said that if Sarah wouldn't take him, he'd find another witch. He..." Nan stared down at the table. "He took me in his arms and smiled at me and danced with me, and I forgot all about the time."

Sarah blushed, in empathy and in jealous anger.

"I said no!" Nan said defensively, and now she also blushed so red that her face outshone her hair. "I told him to forget it. And he just laughed and said I shouldn't have thought the offer was for me. He said I was rubbish at magic and maybe he'd come for me someday when he had nothing better to do." There was a wet plop from the rim of her sunglasses; Nan's tears had collected there. "As the ecstasy faded, so did he. He laughed. He humiliated me. "

"Nan, it was cruel of him to do that," Sarah said. "Anyway, it's not true."

"Yes it is," Nan said furiously, breaking their circle to shove her hands up to smear at the dripping tar-pits of her eyes. From the tangle of her hair, Prickpetal began to keen its dismay in a note so high and faint it could be mistaken for a misaligned electrical circuit, or a dogwhistle. "I am shit at witchcraft."

Polly tossed a handful of napkins at Nan. "Clean yourself up and get yourself together, you giant baby," he said coldly. "You're not rubbish."

Sarah gave Polly a glare. "Try that again."

"I mean," and Polly stood, reached over and took Nan's hand in his, an expression of kindness on his ruined face that made him look superlatively stupid, because he wasn't practiced at it, "What I mean is you're really good at growth and withering. It's just that Sarah and I aren't as interested, so we haven't done as much with the second and third wonders. A bit mean of us, to leave you in the cold with what you've got. But you're not rubbish. Your voice of command is getting better every day."

"You're just saying that to be nice," Nan said, still sniveling, but Polly dabbed at her face with the paper napkins. In her secret heart, for a moment, Sarah felt she hated her. She'd had Jareth's arms around her, she'd had Jareth's attention, and now she had Polly's. It wasn't fair.

"Dry up, Nan," Polly said affectionately. "When have you ever known me to say something just to be nice?"

Nan burbled an inadvertent laugh. "Thanks. But it's true, what he said. I have proof. He gave me something. He said if I was worthy, I'd be able to open it. If not, I was to give it to you." She fiddled with her jacket and drew out a prosaic heart-shaped box of the kind that traditionally contained Valentine's Day chocolates. It was a pink box, tied thriceover with a red, red ribbon in a complicated and many-looped knot. As the box landed on the table between the three of them, it made a distinct thump, as if something heavier than confectionary were inside.

"I tried," Nan said, not looking at Sarah. "That's what I was doing when I got home. Trying to untie that knot. But he was right about me. I tried for hours. I couldn't get it open. Then I called you."

"It wasn't meant for you," Sarah said with quiet fierceness. "How dare you, Nan? How dare you?"

"I vote we burn it," Polly said, eyeing the box with distaste. "Whatever it is, it means no good for us."

"Second!" Nan added.

"This isn't a democracy. We're not voting," Sarah said. "And it's not a socialist paradise. Don't take what's mine, Nan. Not ever again. Or I'll hurt you."

"Calm down, Sarah," Polly said uneasily.

"I'm calm enough. Don't tell me what to feel," Sarah said, drawing the box into her shadow. She pressed her hand down over it. She could feel something inside, some movement, something like life. It could be coming from the box itself, which despite all appearances was a masterwork in magic. As far as touch could tell her, the ribbon could not be cut, nor the paper torn. She took the edge of the ribbon between her thumb and finger, and gave a slow pull. Like a thorn drawn cleanly from flesh, the ribbon moved. The first pass of the knot undid itself as eagerly as a groom undressing himself on his wedding-night.

Unbind, unbind, unbind, Sarah thought, using her gifts to facilitate the process. But the knot needed little prompting; at her touch another knot-loop arched itself open, so pliant and willing that there weren't any marks of torsion on its silky surface.

"I think you should stop," Nan said quietly. "Whatever it is, he's doing it to hurt you."

"Shut up, you. That didn't bother you when you were trying to open it," Sarah said, brow furrowing as she worked the third pass. She had a memory then, as the ribbon danced under her desire, snake to snake-charmer, of doing just such an unbinding, of unwinding the red, the blood, of her ruined dress into skeins of red ribbons, into which she'd ensnared Jareth. In the last moment when she might have stopped, the ribbon lay uncoiled in a spiral around the heart-shaped box, and there was nothing to be done now but open it.

All three of them leaned forward, fascinated and fearful, as Sarah lifted the lid of the box and set it aside. And just as quickly, Nan and Polly fell back, as if what was contained therein was the force of an ill wind.

Nestled between chocolate bonbons in their black paper wrappers, fit perfectly inside the heart-shaped space it echoed, was the Goblin King's pendant, the core of his being.

She picked it up. It fit so smoothly and so rightly into the palm of her hand. She felt the life of him beating there, beating like a heart.

"So," Sarah said. "This is the demon's valentine."