7: Wilderness
Soundtrack for Chapter 7:
Dean Martin: "Baby It's Cold Outside."
Chaos Chaos: "Do You Feel It?"
"You said I could have anything in the bowl," Sarah said. "I see Jareth in the bowl. I choose Jareth."
"What!" One of the novitiates in white turned to her black-clad mother, all outrage. "She can't take a demon! That's not fair!" She held out her witch's gift, its novelty gone pale. "If she gets that, I get Bochomedes!" Her whining elaborated, her mother remonstrated, and Sarah wasted no more time on her. Instead, she looked solemnly at Linda.
"I'm to be given one gift of your power."
The Elf in the box roared again, shaking its chains. Linda winced. "My darling, you should choose something else," she said pleadingly. "I have better things to give you, gifts you can control. The power to control the blizzard, the most subtle of concealing glamours…"
"I choose Jareth! Are you going to give him to me or not?"
"Obstinate girl!" Linda said, giving up patience. "Thrice asked, once answered. Have him then! Hold out your hand. Touch your ring-finger to mine." Sarah did, and Linda slid her diamond ring down her glove and onto Sarah's hand. As it was transferred, the ring became a crude bronze loop, thick, the same metal as Jareth's pendant.
"He belongs to you now. In a world of witches with the power to command spirits, the ring gives you the power to be ascendant over him. Never remove that ring, not for an instant. For if you do, your enemies may seize it, and use him against you." The ring shrank to fit her finger, and it pulsed around her finger like a heartbeat. His heartbeat.
"And now a warning." Linda's eyes flashed with restrained fury. "Jareth is shaped for betrayal. He will turn on you the first chance he gets. Do not give him that chance. It's his fault your father divorced me. As for you…" She addressed Jareth. "Keep her alive and pristine. If you don't, I will make you wish you could die, the punishment I'll give when I take you back."
"Linda," Jareth said coldly. "She whose milk is maggots. May you never take me back." Sarah's coat, her white coat, was winging over the pandemonium of the hall, and he had her sleeves in it and was buttoning her up before she could say one word of objection. She shoved her purse in her pocket as his arms clutched around her, lifting her in his arms as a child is lifted. His chest was warm against her knees. She looked over his shoulder and had a wonderful view of the Esbat as he carried her away from it.
Chaos reigned in the banquet-hall as the guests pinballed against each other, buffeting, shouting, the familiars puffing out smoke and sparks, women in black leaning on each other in nostalgia and fear, and the sixteen other novitiates in their white, with baubles clutched in their hands, scattering for the doors, some few pausing, still choosing, others receiving a last touch, a last loving embrace from their mothers.
Sarah saw Apollonaire standing at his table, with a grey-haired father, and his mother as well, all in black. Each of them had a hand on his shoulder. He stared at Sarah aggressively and made a disgusting gesture with his mouth.
She screwed her neck around and saw that Jareth was taking her to the iron box. No dignity left, she squealed and tried to fight her way out of his embrace. "Please don't! Don't! The doors are behind you!"
"We'll be leaving through the back. Now shut up," Jareth said, and the ring on her finger went cold with his fear. "Hide your face."
Sarah clapped one hand over her eyes, with a slit to see through. The chains holding the box closed had some slack now, and little fur-mittened hands, three, six, seven, were reaching out, some to pry at the chains, and others to snatch the offerings left on the cart—white hair-ribbons, white scarves, white cords, white laces… and quantities of red-dyed cords made of leather. These things giggled, they screamed in delight, strange bells rang inside the box, and the silence of the Elf was ominous.
"Close your eyes," he murmured, and Sarah did. She blindfolded herself with a lock of his hair. "Don't even breathe," he said. She inhaled one last gasp, filtered through the strange perfume of his hair. She could hear the Elf inside snuffling, smelling for her.
He turned her away from the box as they passed it, so close that her hood brushed the wall. She kept her eyes shut tight.
Jareth sang to the box, low and resonant, as if a lullaby. She recognized it as 'Good King Wenceslas' by the tune.
"Bring me flesh, and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither.
Thou and I shall see him dine, when we bear them thither.
Page and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together,
Through the rude wind's wild lament and the bitter weather."
He held her so gently, so securely, even reaching up to press the flat of his palm against her back, to calm her as if she were a frightened baby. She gave herself up into his keeping entirely, having no other choice, but she longed for her father, wished she was still a little girl whose parents could protect her from anything.
Sarah sensed the change in temperature, the smell of their dinner, the clank of dishes being washed, of pans scraped and scalded, that she knew they were through to the kitchens. She lifted her head.
"Help me!" a man's voice cried out. "For the love of Jesus, help me!"
Sarah turned just in time for a priest in a long black cassock to lock eyes with her. He was handcuffed to the leg of a stainless-steel counter. The servers and chefs ignored him, bewitched. Human sacrifice, Sarah thought, and suddenly her defiance cut through her terror and her sorrow. No. I won't have it!
"Help him!" she commanded Jareth. The ring on her finger throbbed. Without breaking stride, he picked up a cleaver one-handed from a plate of roast, and doubled around.
"Stretch out your chain as far as you can over the counter," he told the priest as he advanced. "Make it taut. I have time for one cut, no more."
"Thank you, thank you, may St. John bless you," the old man babbled, pulling the slack around, so that one hand was atop the counter, one below.
"Bless my lady, Archbishop. It's wasted on me." Jareth raised the cleaver and brought it down one clean inch into the wooden countertop, and then he was turning away again, and the priest was screaming, holding on to a bloody stump of his wrist, but free of the handcuffs, certainly. Sarah stared at him in horror as Jareth kicked open the door to the street and took them out into the cold.
"You didn't have to do that!" she yelled, struggling in his arms.
"Yes I did. My lady gave her order." Jareth ignored her struggles. "He's free. He'll even live, provided he stops squealing and runs. If you don't like it, stop dictating my actions to me."
"You cut off his hand!" Sarah yelled.
"Pah, who cares about him?" He laughed, a breathless laugh, and spun around with her in his arms. "Think of me, and how much I love you! I'm free of her." He practically crowed his joy to the night-dark alley. "Clever, clever girl! Clever Sarah!" He jostled her up and down and rocked her so hard as he walked that she thought she might throw up. She saw very clearly that he had only offered himself to her in order to get away from her mother. It sickened her to think that his protection would only be as strong as that hatefulness—which in this moment seemed infinite.
"Put me down!" she ordered. "I can walk!"
He put her down and gave her an ironic bow. The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees since that afternoon, and the cold pierced through her nylon stockings so thoroughly it was as if she were naked. She shoved her hands into her gloves, grateful for her coat. Jareth stayed jaunty, even to humming "Good King Wenceslas' in unforgivable good humor. He grabbed her arm proprietarily and dragged her out the alley, three steps to her four.
"And no more hurting people," she ordered, jerking her arm away.
"Still on him?" His clothing had transmogrified, she saw; the short jacket was now a redingote with wicked-looking brass buckles at the waist and wrists, and a crimson scarf like a spill of blood was tucked between the points of his high collar. The wealth of his hair had come unbound and spread like a nimbus under the sodium lights of the city. His immaculate beauty irritated her instead of confounding her, though, now that she knew she could command him to strip naked and walk barefoot in the streets. And I just might, she thought angrily. If I have to punish him, I just might.
"Still on him," Sarah insisted, walking as quickly as she could manage in her fancy shoes. "Don't hurt anyone else. That's an order."
He glared down at her. Cruel eyes calculated her worth and let her know she was coming up short.
"What?" Sarah demanded, just before the cold of the wind whipping down the open streets took her breath away. The snow was driving down as hard as rain. He instantly whirled around to her side, protecting her from the blizzard in the lee of his body.
"I don't know why I'd hoped Linda's daughter would see me as more than a wish-fulfilling dildo, but I'm an endless optimist," Jareth muttered. The drifts of unshoveled snow melted under his boots as she followed his footsteps. "If your most loyal and humble slave may offer his very great lady some advice," he said, walking backward, "You want to rescind those commands. If I'm to keep Snow White alive and as pristine as her mother demands, I may have to hurt several people. Including the Elf and the alfarstreussel. Perhaps in the next few minutes, if you don't hurry up."
"Well, they're not people," Sarah insisted, but picking up her pace.
"No?" Jareth's face mocked surprise and he moved three paces ahead of her her, still sheltering her, still breaking their trail. Every fifth or sixth step he would pause, and cock his head as though listening for something.
"Aren't they?" Sarah asked, pulling up her hood. Without his help, this was hard going. She practically had to trot, and her shoes weren't made for walking.
"Obviously I can't tell you anything, Sarah," Jareth said tightly. "You've seen so much of the world, and are so very informed on every subject altogether, particularly on who counts and who doesn't."
"I know what you did to that man was wrong," Sarah said, stopping in her tracks. "No more hurting human people. I mean it!"
Jareth walked on several steps without her before turning around. He crossed his hands behind his back and cracked the ice on the pavement with a stamp of his boot-heel. "Show me your tits and jerk me off," he said, in falsetto imitation of Apollonaire Vaan Knecht. "He's human, so I suppose he matters. Should I retroactively apologize for threatening such a precious flower of manhood? No? Well then, speak, Sarah! The whole world waits to hear you!" His voice thundered in his rage.
"No more hurting innocent human people!" Sarah yelled against the wind. The ring on her finger squeezed her so tightly, so painfully, she was afraid that digit would fall off. "You mutilated him! And the witches were going to kill him. Don't tell me they weren't!"
"Oh, they surely were," Jareth said. He spread out his arms and began walking backwards, daring her with his eyes to refuse to keep up. His speed increased until she was practically jogging, icy air stinging her lungs and freezing her nose. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the Salvation Army bells ringing. "One could even give them credit for performing justice. That priest you love so much more than any cautionary thought for your own survival… he's innocent as a lamb. He never pressed his child-hungry cock into portals too small to receive him, or threatened the raped with visions of hellfire and damnation should they open their mouths for anything but—oh, does this information trouble your virginal ears?" He broke off as Sarah made a face of disgust. "Archbishop Del Rais, to his credit, has brought comfort and solace to a great many individuals—mostly brother priests below him in his order, all of whom have been taken from their old stalking-grounds and given new ones."
He crossed another street in a bold dash, and Sarah followed close behind him. The cars passed behind them like hissing ghosts. "If thy right hand offends thee, cut it off. In my opinion, it should have been both of his eyes, his bollocks, and his hypocritical tongue. But you believe I exceeded my authority?"
"I didn't know all that!" Sarah objected.
"There's precious little you do know, princess." He grabbed her by the wrist and practically dragged her along with him in his rush.
"I know you tried to kill me, with the Cleaners!" Sarah snarled.
He merely shrugged. "You insulted my Labyrinth. Served you right. Anyway, you didn't die, unless of course you did, and all this is just a vision in the Hell we occupy together."
"Hell wouldn't be this cold," Sarah muttered into the fur of her hood.
"Let's take the subway," Jareth suggested, leading her down the icy staircase with infinite care. She could hear the bells more loudly now, but they were intermittent and clanking, not the cheerful notes of the golden charity bells. The sound troubled her, made her walk more quickly, made her more grateful for his help.
It was blessedly warm inside, blessedly bright. Sarah shuddered with gratitude to be out of the wind, although the remaining store of coins and bills in her purse seemed alarmingly small after she paid their fare. Jareth spread himself out over the seats, as if the world entire were his throne. She sat near him, but not too near.
"This will work," he said. "By the light, it just might do." He breathed a deep sigh and leaned his head far back, staring up. "Remember the bargain we agreed to? I promised to see you through the night alive, if you promised to put all your trust in me. You're not holding up your end."
"It's hard to trust someone who says he loves me but doesn't even like me," Sarah retorted. She stomped her feet against the train-floor. They were alarmingly numb. She couldn't feel anything below her knees. "You're so mean to me."
"Ah, but I do like you, Sarah." The train began to move. He stared out the windows blankly, and the ring on her finger relaxed its death-grip. "Bickering with me arouses your anger, and your anger is a far better servant to you than your fear. But we're well away now. The train will throw them off the scent as effectively as running water." His eyes didn't blink, fixated outside and not on her as he casually asked, "Are your feet cold?"
She opened her mouth to say something cutting, something snide, but stopped herself. She followed his gaze out to the platform and saw what he saw. She caught a glimpse of a face like a doll's face, lacquered wood, but stuffed atop a misshapen child's body. Horns? And then their car was past the platform, into the dark. Over the clack of the rails, she thought she heard the sound of an iron bell.
"They were that close," she whispered.
"That close," Jareth said, taking her feet into his lap. He removed her shoes and chafed her feet one by one until the blood came back into them, and they began to prick with pins and needles. They had the train almost completely to themselves, and as with all irregularities in New York, people ignored them, the wild-haired man in the red-black coat and knee-high leather boots, and the girl in her white party dress with her feet on his lap.
"Do what you have to," Sarah said, shivering all over. "Just please, don't hurt anyone if there's some other way."
"There's the trust," Jareth said quietly. He gathered her up into the circle of his arms. "It's bitter, isn't it, having no choice?"
She clung to him and didn't answer.
Author's Notes: Some of you may recognize "Do You Feel It" from the Rick and Morty episode, "Auto Erotic Assimilation." I love that show so much I may someday write fanfiction for it. Totally brilliant.
Archbishop Del Rais does not exist, but his style of blasphemous sin certainly does, and not just among Catholics.
I hope those of you who celebrate had a merry Christmas, that others kept good Yule cheer, and all others assorted have/had/will have very happy holidays. Mine was particularly sweet this year.
