Chapter Seven

Mimi brought a ceramic bowl of home-made chicken soup out to the kitchen table,
using two dark green pot holders with little pink pigs on the tops. Sarah and Toby shared
a short glance, and their stomachs rumbled relentlessly at the scent of the food that drifted
all around the kitchen.

"Haven't cooked for three in twenty years," Mimi commented as she also took her
place around the large table, "But I'm sure the food will be more than enough."

Sarah nodded, her eyes wandering over to the window, where the curtains had
been drawn back. Outside it was gray and the frigid snow had left frost around the edges
of the glass. Sarah peered through the darkness for snow, but it had stopped.

"It'll be back," Toby explained calmly as he ladeled some of the fresh soup into his
bowl.

Sarah glanced at her little brother, whos eyes were now firmly on her, and she
smiled. Mimi watched them closely, and then, adjusting her glasses on the bridge of her
nose, lifted her spoon. "Well, lets not wait until dinner's as cold as it is outside there!"
Sarah and Toby laughed and then, promptly, began eating.

"How was school?" Sarah inquired.

Toby chewed thoughtfully on a hunk of white meat as he let his spoon slip back
under the golden broth. He merely shrugged with a brief mutter of "fine" and then began
eating again. Sarah, perplexed, looked towards Mimi who, with a horribly sarcastic grin
merely shrugged and dropped Sarah a subtle wink.

"You saw him today, didn't you?" Toby asked, and Sarah started enough to send
her spoon spinning out of the bowl and across the table. Droplets of the broth spattered
over her cream sweatshirt, and more upon the smooth surface of the table.

Mimi reached out and took hold of Toby's hand. "Of course not, Toby. Brian's
still far away from us... just someone playing a joke." Mimi looked at Sarah pointedly,
willing her from saying anything else. "Just a joke." She spoke again as if she needed to
convince herself of the same thing and then motioned towards the food. "Eat up."

"Not *him*, HIM! Sarah, you saw the man from the goblin world," Toby said,
ignoring everything Mimi had said to him.

Sarah reached out to take her spoon back, still shaken from the idea that Brian had
been to the farmhouse. But, the mention of Jareth, after her run-in with Gabriel... she
shivered and looked outside again. The gray remained, but small swirling bits of white
dotted the bleakness outside. Snow.

"Don't be silly, Toby. You know he was just make believe. Honestly, you were
just little when I made it all up.... I'd have thought you'd forgotten by now," Sarah bit out,
and then calmly observed her half-brother squirming beneath the iciness of her words.

Toby fixed his jaw, and screwed his face up tightly as he fought against tears that
welled in his eyes. Then, angered that even his sister, who had told him all about the
Underground a thousand times before she went to New York, he rose from the table. He
looked once at Mimi, who reached out to take his arm and try to speak something that
would calm him, and then rushed out of the kitchen.

"Sarah, how could you? He's only ever talked fondly about your adventures. You
could have at least..." Mimi stopped as she shook her head and stared longly at the
half-full soup bowl in front of her.

Sarah looked after the door he had just rushed through, still swinging back and
forth in its frame. She didn't know what had come over her, but... for some reason had
needed to tell him what she had been telling herself since the therapy sessions. Maybe
Toby had been young, but she had told him the stories so many times, somehow he had
retained them.

"He has to learn, Mimi," Sarah whispered as she swept the spoon through the soup
some more. But, as she looked longly at the food, she was certain that her appetite was
completley gone.

"Sometimes, Sarah, fantasies are just the beginning of reality. What do you think
flying to the moon was for people at the turn of the century?" Mimi paused as Sarah let
the words sink in. "Just don't stop him from dreaming so soon."

"I'll talk with him.... after school tomorrow. I'll go and pick him up," Sarah said
softly and then took another spoonful of soup before pushing the bowl aside and leaning
her chin upon her hand as she watched the snow filter past the window.

Mimi's eyes twinkled briefly from behind the thick glass of the spectacles she
wore. She let a smile wander over her lips as she took Sarah's and her own bowl in hand
to clean them in the sink. The china clinked against each other and Sarah turned to watch
Mimi just as a flash of white dived in front of the window, drifting into the sky.

An owl.

~*~

One week Sarah thought absently as she drove her Mustang back over the
horrifying bridge. After a week of passing it at least twice daily she still hadn't gotten
accustomed to aiming the wheels over the slats of wood, nor was she comfortable with the
dull groaning sound they made with the weight of the car. Mimi's truck would probably
make them scream.

Town was a good twenty minutes down the bumpy country roads and, finally,
ending into asphalt only 4 miles outside of the main road. But it was a quiet drive, giving
Sarah more than enough time to decide if what she was doing really was the best idea.
But Gabriel was everywhere in her thoughts.... she couldn't just ignore it all the time.

"You're just gonna ask him if he wants to do something. Pretty darn easy."

But your still married

The thought shivered down Sarah's spine of its own free will. Instinctively she
looked in her back seat and saw no one, nor a sign that anyone had been there. The note
could have been a prank. A stupid prank that just happened to coincide too well with
what was currently going on with her life.

Sarah focused back on the road and slammed the brakes on. Piles and clouds and
showers of dust and rocks sprayed up from behind her tires. This time the car was spared
anymore abuse, but Sarah just sat. Her hands blanched out in the death grip she had on
the steering wheel as she watched, in awe, an enormous white owl swoop away, flying low
over the rolling tawny fields.

*You saw him today...*

Sarah thought back to what Toby had said a few days back. She had already made
ammends with her brother but that didn't make the haunting clarity of his words go away
any easier. Why was there an owl out in the middle of the day? And flying around traffic
so near? And why did it have to be the goddamn white owl that Jareth was always....

"Just go, Sarah," she told herself as she took her foot of the brake and stepped on
the gas a little too hard.

More dirt cartwheeled out from her rear wheels as they skidded a moment, then
caught, and she was on her way to town once again. There was no reason to linger on the
owl. But she did glance briefly over her should, and noticed that the bird was already long
out of sight.

Sarah shook her head, doubting forcibly that she had ever seen the bird before. In
her mind she started to repeat her mantras again, but could only get halfway through them
and suddenly found that she couldn't remember the rest. And by the time she had given
up completely and turned the radio on she found herself on the paved road.

"We Are the Champions" was being aired over the classic rock station and Sarah
leaned back more comfortably in the driver's seat and began humming along to the catchy
tune. Everyone loved the song.

"But it's been no bed of roses, no pleasure cruise...." Sarah couldn't help but
agree as she saw the town creeping in nearer as she came over a sloping hill and nosed the
car downwards and across the railroad tracks that abused her poor shocks and shook the
mustang completely.

The one stop light in the town was read, and a literal gaggle of children all talking
together rushed across the street, holding their backpacks on their backs and swinging
lunch bags and boxes with Barbie, Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers on them in bright and
cheery colors.

Sarah watched them walking, oblivious of the real world. One little girl had
brunette hair, and two long braids on either side of her head that rested along her back. It
would have been nice to stay forever young, forever untouched by the realities of life. It
was funny, when she was young she had only wanted to be "grown up." Now, Sarah
would give anything to be able to enjoy a fantasy or two without reprecussions.

The person behind her was laying on the horn and Sarah started immediately. She
sped up quickly, almost went right past the store, and then slid her car into a public
parking lot that was only half full, around the corner. She opened the door, killed the
engine and waited a moment listening to the *ding, ding* that informed her that the keys
were still in the ignition.

"Sarah, what are you thinking?" she asked herself, then peered at her reflection in
the rear-view mirror.

She pulled a stray piece of brunette hair behind her ear and then jerked the keys
into her hand. She had come this far. Outside the air tasted like cinammon from a bakery,
and the clouds were little sugar plums above her. They sat fat and heavy in a crystal sky,
washed clean from the icy snow earlier. Whatever had remained of the snow was abruptly
gone that morning, melted into puddles and dissolved into mud that she sunk into
immediately having left her car.

"Great," Sarah muttered, wiping the waffle-sole of her sneakers against a brown
post that lined the gravel extent of the parking lot. The mud clung, like clay, and she
ignored it's gritty weight on the bottom of her shoes as she walked down the sidewalk.

The store was still there, instantly assuring her that she hadn't just created the
whole thing. Lord knew she had done that before. Sarah brushed her hair back again,
daring the wind to catch it and dance it into an unkempt style as she opened the glass door
and stepped inside.

Sarah paused as she let the door slip closed behind her. It cast a gust of chilly air
into the store, disturbing the clunking and churning heater that was somewhere behind the
towering bookshelves. Another woman was at the counter, leaning over and tugging at
her scarf as she watched Gabriel turning a book over in his long, delicate hands.

Sarah swallowed, and sidestepped past them, avoiding any direct eye contact as
she approached the same table in the middle of the store. But the books had changed, and
The Labyrinth was no nowhere to be found. Perhaps that had just been her mind... Sarah
took a large volume of Moby Dick up and flipped the pages, smelling a hundred hands and
a thousand hours of enjoyment on the yellow paper.

"And how much was it again?" the other woman inquired in a chirpy bird-like
voice.

Sarah set Moby Dick down a bit louder than she had first intended. It slapped
against a manuscript that was lacking its cover and echoed the sharp noise. Sarah, blushed
and embarassed, immediately snaked around the corner as both sets of eyes followed her
progress through the store.

"What was I thinking?" she asked herself again, prying through the hundreds of
books with only half interest.

But, it was such a waste to do nothing. It was a bookstore, after all, and she had
always loved reading. And, what with all the extra time on her hands... What a pretty
book. She reached up and took the lavender book into her hand. It fit easily, small and
compact.

"Intriguing choice," a voice purred from behind her.

Sarah turned with an gasp as she pressed the book agianst her chest. Gabriel
smiled and gestured with a short nod of his head towards the novel she now held. "Oh,
this?" she asked, trying to pretend that it had been her intent all along to get the book.
She held it out to Gabriel, who took it readily.

"It was written by a woman the whole psychological world today would deem,
insane," he remarked, turning it so that Sarah could see the intricate cover, emblazoned
with a whole network of golden leafs and vines and a sparkling cut crystal, the size of a
quarter in the upper right hand corner. Sarah could only look at it in wonder.

"Really?"

"Quite. She was committed and, presumably died in the institution," Gabriel
offered Sarah the book, with something that resembled a loud sniff, "She was comatose
before they even brought her there. But her writing is amazing."

Sarah nodded, and turned the book so she could see the spine, but it was wordless.
And nothing more than a single dark crease ran down the center of the spine, indicating
that it had once been read, and perhaps never finished. Sarah opened it, and then ran her
hand over the wax-paper thin title page.

"Sarah Abagail Donover," Sarah muttered to herself, chilled from finding the
authoress bearing her own name.

"You were here the other day?" Gabriel inquired as he glanced backwards. His
eyes sparkled, like a blue sapphire. Sarah shivered again and stepped forward, afraid that
what she was preparing to say was one of the stupidest mistakes of her life, but more
afraid of her regrets should she conitnue to live in her shell.

"Yes," she stated calmly, following Gabriel to the front counter. He had a
porcelain cup of amber liquid, that must have been tea. But it smelled so divinely that
Sarah nearly asked him about it outright. She watched a tendril of steam lift
serpantine-like from the surface and then slip into the air.

"Would you care to join me, Sarah? I just started up a fresh pot," he offered,
noticing her interest in the warm drink.

"Oh, well.... I should probably just get this and start out before it starts snowing
again. I don't even have the chains if it gets really bad," Sarah explained as she let the
lavender book down gently on to the counter.

Gabriel's smile broadened, even though his offer had been rejected. Sarah
instinctively regretted having not agreed instantly to staying here. Hadn't she been the one
who was going to ask him out in the first place? But, the sight of his smile was rivetting
and Sarah couldn't help but overcome her disappointment in herself to return the grin
slowly. "What?" she inquired.

"I think your a bit late to avoid that snow," he remarked and gestured towards the
large display window, finely polished for optimum viewing.

Sarah stared, wide-eyed, at the amount of snow that was coming down. It was
astronomical that it had just been partly cloudy when she entered the store. But now...
She looked back at him curiously, and Gabriely merely held up the cup of tea and then
shrugged briefly.

"They come around quickly here. Now, Sarah, will you join me or do you still
want to brave the weather?" he asked.

And for a moment Sarah felt a twinge of fear rake across her body, and embed
deeply in her gut. There had been something just a little bit sinister in the way Gabriel had
held the cup to his mouth and sipped, offering her the smallest of grins in the process.
There was something that wasn't quite right. But then, she wasn't quite right either.
Ignoring her original gut instinct Sarah nodded.

"It would be my pleasure."

Outside the wind began to send the snow spiraling and send the people quickly to
their warm homes.