AN: this will be a lot from Sarah's perspective, but I hope you like it!

Finding Roots in the Desert

S

It seemed inevitable. I'd have to sleep along the trail in the middle of the marsh lands. The trees were mostly pine, clustering and pitted with scars. Rocks and outcroppings shielded the horizon from view. The smell of peat and moss overwhelmed my nostrils.

I'd been warned about the caves, so I wasn't planning to sleep in the mouth of any of the rocks. As dusk wrapped its heavy arms around the sky, I found a cluster of trees and did my best to arrange some branches into a little partition in some useless gesture of self-protection.

My palms were sweating as the night set in. I lay awake for what seemed like hours. There were no stars visible to tell the time by. Only darkness. I started to wonder if what I heard was only an amalgam of rumor and folklore. In any case it just sounded like people got scared and ran away. Maybe they let their imaginations run away with them. After all, everyone loves a good scare… My thoughts wandered, trying to make my situation bearable. At last I began to drift asleep.

A sound filled me and grew steadily louder. I must have fallen asleep, for my eyes snapped open in alarm as I realized the sound was coming from without. It was a very strange, pinched roar coupled with a deep rushing crash of wind. Then I saw light, two large lights rushing towards me. The sound became unbearable, I wanted to scream, to… Help! Oh God Help! No, No! Not to me. I tried to drive off the road but it was too late. I felt the steering wheel under my frozen hands and braced myself for the impact. Everything in my body cried out. So this is how it ends, I thought to myself as the sound and lights threatened to overtake my waking mind.

But then I felt something flow from inside me. Peace. Peace poured out of my center and wrapped around me like a blanket. My breathing began to return to normal. The sound subsided, the lights grew dim. I remembered the feeling of lying in bed in the castle and knowing Jareth was about to come in the room. I remembered the way he would come to my bedside and smile at me with those ice blue eyes, lit with love and warmth. Heaving a sigh, I felt my chest relax and my heart rate return to normal. Sleep took me, and I woke in the morning as if nothing had happened.

The memory of last night's dream sat strangely with me as I collected my things and started off for the morning. The danger had felt so real. I swear I saw and heard things with my waking mind, and yet…

In any case, I was nearly to my destination. I kept my head set on the goal and pushed forward with unshaken determination, hoping everything else would run smoothly.

Little flowers were starting to bloom everywhere. It truly was a special time to be traveling on foot.

J

I woke with a jolt, my body covered in sweat. My heart was beating as if in a fury. Darkness and the empty echoes of stone was the only thing to welcome my ragged pants.

Fear was to blame. But it was not my fear that stirred in me. Sarah… My insides ached at the thought she might be in trouble. My first impulse was to reach for a crystal and see where she was. But for some reason I knew I didn't have time. A current opened within me, as instinct pushed me to concentrate on the magic already brewing.

It was still black all around me. Eyes closed I focused on a light at my center, like a porthole. I could not see anything at the other end, but I could feel fear and… At once I knew it was Sarah. Somehow the transfer had connected us. Our life forces were tied together in a delicate, mysterious bond, and I was feeling her acute fear. Her panic spiked with a violence that made my stomach cramp, and I understood I had to act.

Harnessing a force I did not even realize dwelt in me, I sent a surge of magic through the porthole open in my soul. Trusting the magic would know what to do when it got there, I continued to send energy through to Sarah until I felt her fear subside. Wanting to make sure she was safe, I stayed up till dawn monitoring the sensations I could gather from the porthole within me and sending protective magic out to wherever she might be. I had never read of this sort of enchantment. It was entirely new to me, and yet I did not question it. For some reason, it just made sense. Sometime early in the morning, I felt the opening that led to her emotional center close. I hoped that meant she was now at peace. Still mildly uneasy, I flicked my wrist at last to search out her image amongst the realms of the Underground. To my dismay my crystal only came up misty. Wherever she was, the magic around her was strong enough to blind my own powers of location and surveillance.

I had trouble eating that day.

Throughout the afternoon I tried to find that gateway inside myself that could reconnect me to her essence, but to no avail. I tried to tell myself I'd be able to feel if she had suffered injury or death. If I had felt her fear, certainly I would have felt anything more…

I spent the night nervously reading in my study. I don't think I absorbed much of what I read.

As dawn broke on the horizon, I checked a crystal once more. To my surprise and partial relief I saw farmland and the edge of a forest. Things were still partially obscured in fog, but I realized she must be making progress on her journey. The longer I inspected the fog, the clearer it became that some alien protection was keeping her image from me. I squinted and could not quell the bubble of indignant rage that rose within me at the realization.

"Whoever you are, she's mine…" I growled without thinking.

In the following days I continued to check my crystals. It bothered me to no end knowing that someone else was protecting her from me. How do they even know I am watching her? Magic of surveillance was one of my fortes. It would take a powerful sorcerer even to detect the energy from my spell, much less hinder me.

In any case, I saw the farmland at last give rise to a city. The image was too blurry to know for certain, but I could guess which city she'd arrived in. Larutan? Is that where you are Sarah? What do want there? How do you plan to live? Curiosity niggled my waking moments and eventually I had to give up looking in the crystals for my own peace of mind. It was hard not to check, but I managed to force myself back into a routine of self-discipline—once a week, tops. It's not like I could make out the figures that floated like blobs in my crystal orb anyway.

S

Life in the city filled me with a strange nostalgia I could not quite pin down. But I loved being so near the sea.

I settled into my new life and did as Insy and Sassanity suggested. I cut my hair upon arrival and sold it to a wigmaker. The feeling of fast coins in my pocket gave me courage and protection from the threatening sense of vulnerability in this large and bustling city. Larutan must have been host to several hundred thousand souls at least. I'm not sure how, but I had the sense I had seen larger cities before, so guessing the population came more or less naturally to me.

I found Dardinian's shoe shop and made my introduction. Once I told him about Insy and Sassanity, his mistrust softened into a warm welcome and I found myself lodged in a small bed up in the back corner of the third floor of the building. The first floor was the shop. The second floor was some sort of warehouse, and the third floor housed his family. My privacy was marginally curtailed, but I didn't have to worry about procuring meals, as his wife and children had a good time trying to figure out what I'd eat. As they were all rather different from me—being covered in fur and generally gristly in appearance, we tended to eat a lot of fish. The children also got a rise out of trying to get me to eat odd magical berries, bugs and other sundry unpalatables. Generally my instinct served me well, but there was one night Dardinian came upstairs to a rather blue-ish face and icicles dangling from my ears—they'd slipped some dried ice berry powder into my evening tea infusion. Sniggering cackles met with harsh consternation that night as his wife Strawly helped me get back into form with the aid of several pints of hot cider and some very questionably smelling herbs.

After a week, I broached the topic of remuneration, and though I understood Dardinian to be a fairly generous and well meaning beast, I also understood he had a family to feed and that it probably would bode well for me if I saw to the matter of regular rent sooner rather than later. Luckily, the coins from my hair were still handy. I asked him what he thought might be a reasonable rent for this area and then asked him what a pair of men's shoes might cost to make.

With his help and the help of his sweet children who were not above sharing with me several of their hand-me-downs, I managed to pull off the outfit of a page. Now suitably attired, I set out to comb the city looking for work. I had an idea of what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with books and manuscripts. It'd earn me money and give me a chance to research—perhaps I'd come across something helpful in my quest for self-discovery.

…

Okay, so I got a little side-tracked from my task of seeking employment. It'd been months since I'd seen a proper library, and when I realized books were a major economic item in this city my heart did a couple summersaults of joy. First I saw them in carts in the market, then I found the quarters with curiosity shops, and finally the streets devoted only to the written art. Day after day, blood zinged and whipped through my brain as I did everything I could to process these new surroundings.

I went through the old bookstores in the city with some success. Unfortunately, without funds, most people were reluctant to let me scavenge through their wares. Still, I managed to make a little headway. I kept finding references to another realm where another race dwelt. It reminded me of what I'd read in the book in Jareth's library. Humans lived in that realm mostly unaware of the world of fae. It seemed strange to me to contemplate—for after all, were not the fae generally ignorant of the world of humans? I'd never come across any book that claimed to have hard evidence for the existence of humans. And yet the notion of a parallel realm, remote from the daily goings-on of the fae and their sister races, gripped my imagination. For some reason this so-called mystical realm haunted my daydreams. I tried with little success to picture a world different from the one I now knew, but refused to accept the limitations of my own mind. The thought possessed me. In the end, I couldn't contain myself. What if the human realm was real? Being somewhat skeptical, I only dared to entertain the possibility as a curious fantasy, but I let the world slip with the children at home just to gauge their reaction.

"Humantales, that's all you're talking about. Don't be silly. Humans only exist in stories!"

"Creature's silly. Creature thinks humans are real!"

The three little beastlets guffawed at one another as my mind raced from the words I'd come across earlier that day.

"Now, children, it has a name. Its name is Sarah, not creature," the hum of Strawly's voice chided over a line of freshly hung laundry soaking up the sun through the wide open windows at the front of the house.

"We know, we know! But it likes our name. It told us its name was Creature!"

It's true, I rather liked the way Insy and Sassy used to refer to me. And since I tended think of the children as beastlets, one day, out of playfulness, I had told them the story of how I acquired the title 'creature.'

Anyway, I gleaned a few extra humantales from the beastlets plus one story that caught me entirely off guard…

"No, you're not telling it right!" the eldest broke in on the other two and looked at me with eyes filled with frustration seeking validation, as if to say: see, you and I are the only reasonable ones here. I smiled at her attempts to identify with me and nodded waiting for her to speak.

Her furry brow leveled with mine and then turned to quiet her siblings. Obediently, the other two settled down and found a seat snuggled against one another on the carpet. I watched with bemused features as Karly the eldest drew us into her world with all the instincts of a born performer.

"Once upon a realm there was a great sorrow. The sorrow came from people not knowing that there was something more than regular life. Their lives seemed small and sad and no one knew that there were other realms and other times and other races…"

I raised my eyebrows with marked appreciation for this precocious youth. She truly had a gift.

"But what no one knew was that there existed a bridge between their realm and another neighboring realm. The bridge was invisible. But one king was clever and discovered the bridge, stumbling over it one day. It didn't take him long to guess what it was. Since he was a brave and daring king, he crossed the bridge and found a new world. It was different from the world he knew and still familiar. There were men and women who looked like him. He found a beautiful woman there and fell in love with her. Since he was a king, his magic was strong and so he wooed her with gifts and promises of his own realm. Over time the woman returned his love and they went back to the king's realm together. But since she missed her own world, she did not want to live far from the bridge. The king was also thoughtful and realized how powerful such a bridge was, so he built a castle to protect it and to house his queen, who could return over the bridge and see her loved ones. Everyone was happy…the queen had several children and in time the magic of her new world entered her so that she learned to be a sorceress as well. The children went out in the world and brought happiness to everyone because they were a mixture of fae and human. They brought a different kind of magic to their world. And everyone was happy again…"

Karly stared at us all with satisfaction. I was still on the edge of my seat but I realized she had finished her story.

"So what happened after that?" I asked tentatively.

"I don't know, it's just a story. What do you think it really happened?" She teased me and turned to her siblings before running off to help her mother.

And that was that. The image I saw in the book I found in the keep returned to me—a castle and a bridge, a couple under a tree with fruits. I wondered if they were variations of the same story. Mentally I kicked myself for not reading that part more carefully. Anyway, perhaps I'd find more answers here in Larutan. I reminded myself that patience was necessary for any recipe of progress.

All in all, I felt rather confident. My coins were almost gone, but I had an inkling as to where I might find work. The book sellers didn't trust a vagabond like me, but I'd noticed several publishing houses along the outskirts of the city, not too far from the shoreline. I would do some reconnaissance first and then present myself as page seeking employment.

…

As I lay in my bed trying to set aside my plans for the next day, I attempted what I usually do anymore. I tried to search my own mind for a clue to who I might have been. Sometimes through association, sometimes through cataloguing every skill and every fact I can recall, and sometimes, I still think of Jareth and the time I spent with him…

Anyway, I have tried thousands of times to remember my life, but every time I attempt it only the echo of an unspeakable scream wrenches through my body, and then everything is lost. Sometimes I wonder if I could just withstand the scream, somehow penetrate its depths, a flash of illumination would follow and I could see the moment preceding; and that if I could but see the moment preceding, I would understand everything.

As it stands, all I can remember is what comes after the scream, and even parts of that are not particularly clear. Except for one part…

For the longest time there was a great pain and a darkness swallowing me. The pain seemed to go on endlessly. I felt as though it would never cease. I must have tried to thrash, but I could not recognize my own body. Only pain. I thought I was dead or dying. Miraculously, the pain began to ebb after what seemed like an unbearable eternity. And as the pain began to subside, I became aware of a gentle presence. I still couldn't see, but somehow strange factures of light and glowing shades filled the blackness of my mind whenever the presence drew near. I began to respond to the presence. The more I sought it out, the lighter my world grew and my suffering lessened. From the light flowed the shimmering glint of colors—at present the first colors I ever remember seeing. Sparks of life rained on my fevered consciousness until peace seeded itself in my core once more. Warmth gripped me, and I felt something new. I felt cared for, even though I wasn't sure who it was that had decided to care for me. I understood the light was a being, a person. And I understood the person flowed with loving warmth for me. My soul drank from that warmth as though it were an oasis amid the desert. I felt my spirit stir, reaching out to greet that light even when my body was still immobile. The first time I felt my body instead of the jarring pain was in a moment of recognition. I felt a hand on my temple and tried to press my head against it, for I didn't want the hand to move away from me. I wanted the light to stay with me. I wanted to feel it touching me, bringing life to my body. I must have fluttered my eyelids, or perhaps even managed to move my head a little, as I heard a name spoken to me.

"Sarah," relief, surprise, tenderness and something else rendered the tone teeming against my still ringing ears. And so I first heard the name which I thenceforth recognized to be my own. The voice was rich and continued. I loved that it continued, even though I was still too weak to make out the words. The voice was just like the light—filled with love, care, warmth, comfort.

I was like a plant growing out instinctively toward the sun, the sun of loving compassion and tender care. Perhaps I can admit it to myself now—I embraced the love that surrounded me in those days and responded with matching fervor. It was as though I somehow remembered him from before. The voice soon became the form of a man, and my body slowly regained a sense of itself. I was weak but lived for the moments he would touch me lightly on the forehead or squeeze my hand. One day I was strong enough to squeeze back. The next week I was strong enough to turn my head and nestle my cheek into his palm. Two weeks after that I was able to lift his hand to my lips and kiss it. That changed things for him, I think. Looking back, I'm not sure if he was expecting that from me. But I continued. I could not imagine a warmth more comforting more sumptuous than the heat I felt radiate from his heart. Finally one day, he decided to help me sit. I wasn't sure if I could, but he let me steady myself against his chest, and as I looked out the window on a sunlit kingdom, bathed in gentle rays and realized I had seen nothing but this room for perhaps two months, I turned to him and kissed him. Yes, that wasn't particularly ladylike of me. But I was overjoyed, and he held me so sweetly making sure I didn't miss the panorama of his glorious labyrinth spread out beneath me… I kissed him not with the passion of bold lovers but with tender tenacity, clinging to him so as not to fall back on the bed. He held me, folding my frail frame into his embrace, at length daring to softly kiss me back. And that is how we lived—for months. As I regained my strength, he showed me more of the castle. I found my legs at last but not without several falls, temper tantrums and fits of laughter. Sometimes pain would seize my body and he would tend to me with assiduous devotion. And at the end of almost every day he would coddle me asleep in his arms. My heart sensed it had never known such paradise. And so I trusted him with everything I was, until the ghost of my past began to haunt me…

I'm sorry, Jareth, I'm not sure why I left you some days. You never hurt me.