Chapter Eight
There was a room in the back that was separated from the main store by an old
door and a toppling column of books. But beyond the disheveled exterior, the room was
comfortable and pleasant, with leather chairs and an ornate rug that decorated the floor in
front of a roaring fire within the brick enclosure.
Gabriel gestured to one chair, as Sarah peered curiously around the quiet solace.
In the far corner was a large shelf, on which was some mechanical stove that was currently
sending a tea kettle into outrageous shrilling cries. For some reason Sarah never
questioned the fact that she hadn't heard the noise from the store, when it hadn't been all
that far away.
"What if a customer stops by?" Sarah inquired, choosing the chair nearer to the
door of the two and leaned in closer to the warmth of the fire.
Gabriel glanced over his shoulder at her and continued to watch her until she
turned to acknowledge him. "There won't be anymore today," his calm surety broke into
a smile that couldn't quite dissipate the underlying threat that Sarah noted in his words.
She looked away quickly, out the window, watching the winter falling from the sky.
"How do you manage to afford it?" Sarah asked, needing more to converse than to
avoid any contact... at least to abate her nerves.
Gabriel was suddenly at her side, like the first green shoot of grass from beneath a
heavy ice crust, when the seasons first began to change. She jerked away, hitting his arm
and, by grace and quick reflexes, he moved just so as to keep the full tea cups from
toppling on to her lap.
"I manage," was all he said as he handed her the perfect cup and saucer, not one
amber drop disturbed.
Sarah nodded in thanks, set it on her lap and then contemplated whether or not she
was really going to drink this. For a moment her mind wandered back to thoughts of the
book, wondering if it was still at the counter. A pervasively selfish tinge lit her insides and
she suddenly wanted the book with her and nowhere else. But to leave then would be
rude, and besides... No one would be in anymore.
"Tell me, Sarah," he paused and sipped the tea. The way he said her name was
like honey, and Sarah wondered briefly if Gabriel had known that she enjoyed some of the
sweet nectar in her teas. "Why did you come here?"
He looked at her intensely, not letting her dare to look away. Out of sheer instinct
Sarah grasped the cup and took a large sip that danced in her mouth like sparklers. It lit
her tastebuds and she was certain that a sense of honey lingered on the back of her tongue.
It was more intoxicating than any liqueur, and twice as addictive. She smiled all the more.
"Family problems," Sarah managed to relent, as she continued to drink the tea and
watch Gabriel watching her.
"Is that so?" he further pressed, setting his own, mostly full, cup aside on a short
table that Sarah couldn't remember being there earlier. She dismissed her worries as easily
as she ignored the way the firelight played on the fine bone structure of Gabriel's face.
Looking at him in the light he seemed feral... something so far from domesticated that it
was a farce just to see him in the cultured room.
"My Aunt," Sarah began, biting back the information that wanted to spill out, "I
came to see her here."
Gabriel nodded. Do you see what I'm offering you....?
Sarah jerked upright, completely disoriented. She had seen a crystal dancing and,
it playing in the firelight like a little fairie. She looked at Gabriel, as if their conversation
had never ended. And he was still the same, and his tea was still spilling steam into the
chilled air. Sarah felt only vague cramps, that told her things were not as they seemed.
"What... did I fall asleep?" Sarah inquired, rubbing her hands roughly across her
face. Her eyes still felt heavy.
Gabriel tilted his head just enough. Such a pity.
Sarah shook her head, hearing the voice surround them like a warm blanket. It
was Jareth, and there was no doubt in her mind as far as that. Only his voice was so
intoxicating and yet so completely demeaning at the same time. It was the voice of a king,
a king who was completely imperfect. The way a real King always was.
"What did you say!?" Sarah demanded, standing upright and feeling only the
slightest bit dizzy on her legs.
"Say?" Gabriel questioned.
The fire in the fireplace roared upwards, and the orange and red flames licked
across a the wooden mantel above. Yet nothing burned, and the smoke was strangely
missing from the scene. Sarah wavered, holding the back of the chair tightly as she tried
to make the room speed up, it was in a motion behind her own thought processes.
"What did you give me?" Sarah demanded, backing away, until she slammed
against the far wall and heard the books on the opposite side tumble over. Briefly she
wondered if the door was blocked, but instead forced herself away from the wall.
"Sarah, what's wrong with you!?" Gabriel yelled, his hands flexing around her
upper arms and squeezing so that she felt a single lick of pain over her skin. Brilliant red
dots screamed over her pale flesh and she found the room slipping back into focus around
Gabriel's worried face.
Had she confused the Base with the Ground again.
"Ground yourself, Sarah. You need to see the Base, not the extraneous sounds
around it. Your mind can only take such busy things for a matter of hours, before it slips
into the fantasy again... and you don't want that, do you?"
"I-I think I should go."
Gabriel backed away, his eyes so intensely worried that she wasn't sure why she
had decided to leave in the first place, other than the voice in her mind was that of her
therapist from eleven years earlier, and she only remembered him when something was
very wrong. Her lucid fantasies were clamoring in the small dark space of her psyche that
she wished to, above all else, hide.
"Perhaps its the herb," Gabriel offered, glancing nervously towards the tea.
She nodded, but couldn't help remembering the sinister expressions that had been
on the man's face earlier. Why was he so different suddenly? And why did he look so
damn much like Jareth. She looked around herself, wondering if she had left anything, not
caring enough to stay around to find out, and then almost collapsed out of the room.
She felt more oriented in the bookstore as she walked briskly along the dingy aisles
and up to the counter where she knew Gabriel had set the little lavender book. She
paused, feeling for her keys in her pocket, and then waited as Gabriel walked carefully,
regally, around the front desk.
"I'm sorry if I upset you, Sarah," he said gently, pulling out a little paper bag that
he dropped the book into.
Sarah watched him work, and wondered briefly how old he was. If she had been
forced to guess she would have assumed early thirties, but then that didn't really matter.
He handed her the bag tirelessly, waiting for a response, but she hadn't even barely heard
what he had just said.
"It stopped snowing," he mentioned casually.
Sarah glanced briefly out the large display window and then back towards Gabriel.
His blue eyes burned as strong as the frost on the glass. She trembled beneath his gaze,
but not as she would had he been a predator. Instead, something inside shook with
anticipation and a silent, deadly longing.
"How much do I owe you?" she asked, her voice fluctuating slightly.
She gripped the bag tightly in her hands, crinkling the paper bag between her
fingers. Gabriel just smiled and leaned a bit nearer to her as he watched her eyes. Sarah,
instinctively, looked away, feeling a red blush rise up on her cheeks. And then the sense
to leave returned and she took a single step backwards.
"Its a gift *I've brought you a gift*," he whispered, two voices merging into one
as Sarah listened.
And for the briefest moment, as she took the book closer to her body, wondering if
it was safe to accept a gift from this man, Sarah saw two distinct images overlaying each
other in her vision. Like a twice-exposed photograph Gabriel's calm, but attractive
features were highlighted with something just slightly ajar. Menace, cold steel, and a
regality that only a Goblin King could possess.
She forcibly blinked, and when she looked again only Gabriel stood there, smiling,
but somehow knowledgeable as well. In that moment she was sure that all the things she
had been told in therapy had not been completely true. The realization made her quiver all
the more, and she bustled away without another word.
Gabriel, in his lovely sweatshirt, just watched her walk away, out the door, down
the snowy white sidewalk. Others had begun to mill through the road, as if the ending of
the snow had been some magical event. The cold breeze still zipped through the streets,
and he noticed a bit of Sarah's hair caught in the wind as she glanced sideways into his
store one last time.
An eon of changes of becoming the chameleon to wait, to harbor his
metamorphosis as science betrayed the sanctuary of a kingdom and a dream. A bit of a
dream, like stardust, lit upon a mind one day and in the moment, flourishing like a seed in
the most perfect of conditions, it became something so much more than could have ever
been anticipated.
Born from a dream, born to the world, freed through reality, all that was opposed.
It was an ironic world when that which was supposed to help, only strengthened the one
thing Sarah ever really feared and loved. It was the ultimate paradox....
Gabriel stood a moment longer, his mind making no sense as he watched the last
bit of her clothing slip out of sight. She wouldn't be back, he realized, but it didn't matter
much. The winter was there, and the snow was due to be strong that season. Snowblind
weather.
From behind his counter Gabriel pulled a little black purse, setting it briefly on the
table top. She had run so quickly that she had forgotten it, and would certainly be missing
it. Mimi would be in town shortly, she did her shopping every Monday, two days from
then. Two days wasn't a long time to wait, not when one had waited eons to simply be
born again.
I can't live within you
And he couldn't. So he hadn't. Perhaps she had cut her ties to the others,
severing little silver threads like umbilical cords... they were the children of her brain. But
he was not connected by a damn string, something breakable, separate from her. He was
more than connected to her. Gabriel smiled and stowed the purse beneath the desk once
more.
"You and I, Sarah," he paused and licked his lips, watching two college-age
women pause at his door, laughing among themselves, "We are one."
* * * * *
An excerpt from James T. Kelly's synthesis on fantasy-prone personality in the
adolescent female:
"...In testing, SW displayed all eleven of the testable traits for Fantasy-Prone
Personality. She has a long history of intense imaginative involvement in reading and in
play. She claims that she experiences physical reactions such as nausea and anxiety to
violence on television and in movies, that she enjoys spending as much as half her free
time engaged in fantasy. Further, fantasy has lapsed into time set aside for school and
work, where it is critical for SW to participate in the 'real world.'
SW is highly hypnotically suggestive. She responds to most any hypnotic
suggestion even those that involve profound alterations in subjective experience. With the
affliction of intense fantasy-prone disorder, SW has found her life compromised.
Separating her from the typical fantasizer is the fact that she is unable to determine and
recognize the difference between her fantasy and reality. SW can immediately return to
her fantasized "Underground" without any trouble, and has such strong belief that she is
capable of drawing others into her delusions.
One of the primary goals of my research was to trace the development of fantasy
proneness of this extent in SW. And what I found supports the commonly held belief that
highly imaginative children are lonely and cultivate a rich fantasy life to compensate for a
lack of stimulation. In other words, some children escape into a fantasy life as a way of
coping with a less than perfect world. SW reported feeling lonely, especially following the
divorce of her parents and subsequent marriage of her father. The birth of her
step-brother triggered the intense fantasizer in her, showing a new finding of fantasy-prone
disorder... the adolescent identify v. role confusion (Erickson's stages of development)
when not encouraged by the parents leads to them forming an identity in the realm of their
fantasy.
While fantasizers do not as readily engage in addictive and harmful activity, their
drug of choice is just as damaging. SW suffers daily in the belief that one particular
figment of her imagination has left the confines of her mind, born out like a dream, and is
now "tracking" her. Despite convictions from myself, SW is unable to perceive the fact
that such a possibility is completely impossible...."
There was a room in the back that was separated from the main store by an old
door and a toppling column of books. But beyond the disheveled exterior, the room was
comfortable and pleasant, with leather chairs and an ornate rug that decorated the floor in
front of a roaring fire within the brick enclosure.
Gabriel gestured to one chair, as Sarah peered curiously around the quiet solace.
In the far corner was a large shelf, on which was some mechanical stove that was currently
sending a tea kettle into outrageous shrilling cries. For some reason Sarah never
questioned the fact that she hadn't heard the noise from the store, when it hadn't been all
that far away.
"What if a customer stops by?" Sarah inquired, choosing the chair nearer to the
door of the two and leaned in closer to the warmth of the fire.
Gabriel glanced over his shoulder at her and continued to watch her until she
turned to acknowledge him. "There won't be anymore today," his calm surety broke into
a smile that couldn't quite dissipate the underlying threat that Sarah noted in his words.
She looked away quickly, out the window, watching the winter falling from the sky.
"How do you manage to afford it?" Sarah asked, needing more to converse than to
avoid any contact... at least to abate her nerves.
Gabriel was suddenly at her side, like the first green shoot of grass from beneath a
heavy ice crust, when the seasons first began to change. She jerked away, hitting his arm
and, by grace and quick reflexes, he moved just so as to keep the full tea cups from
toppling on to her lap.
"I manage," was all he said as he handed her the perfect cup and saucer, not one
amber drop disturbed.
Sarah nodded in thanks, set it on her lap and then contemplated whether or not she
was really going to drink this. For a moment her mind wandered back to thoughts of the
book, wondering if it was still at the counter. A pervasively selfish tinge lit her insides and
she suddenly wanted the book with her and nowhere else. But to leave then would be
rude, and besides... No one would be in anymore.
"Tell me, Sarah," he paused and sipped the tea. The way he said her name was
like honey, and Sarah wondered briefly if Gabriel had known that she enjoyed some of the
sweet nectar in her teas. "Why did you come here?"
He looked at her intensely, not letting her dare to look away. Out of sheer instinct
Sarah grasped the cup and took a large sip that danced in her mouth like sparklers. It lit
her tastebuds and she was certain that a sense of honey lingered on the back of her tongue.
It was more intoxicating than any liqueur, and twice as addictive. She smiled all the more.
"Family problems," Sarah managed to relent, as she continued to drink the tea and
watch Gabriel watching her.
"Is that so?" he further pressed, setting his own, mostly full, cup aside on a short
table that Sarah couldn't remember being there earlier. She dismissed her worries as easily
as she ignored the way the firelight played on the fine bone structure of Gabriel's face.
Looking at him in the light he seemed feral... something so far from domesticated that it
was a farce just to see him in the cultured room.
"My Aunt," Sarah began, biting back the information that wanted to spill out, "I
came to see her here."
Gabriel nodded. Do you see what I'm offering you....?
Sarah jerked upright, completely disoriented. She had seen a crystal dancing and,
it playing in the firelight like a little fairie. She looked at Gabriel, as if their conversation
had never ended. And he was still the same, and his tea was still spilling steam into the
chilled air. Sarah felt only vague cramps, that told her things were not as they seemed.
"What... did I fall asleep?" Sarah inquired, rubbing her hands roughly across her
face. Her eyes still felt heavy.
Gabriel tilted his head just enough. Such a pity.
Sarah shook her head, hearing the voice surround them like a warm blanket. It
was Jareth, and there was no doubt in her mind as far as that. Only his voice was so
intoxicating and yet so completely demeaning at the same time. It was the voice of a king,
a king who was completely imperfect. The way a real King always was.
"What did you say!?" Sarah demanded, standing upright and feeling only the
slightest bit dizzy on her legs.
"Say?" Gabriel questioned.
The fire in the fireplace roared upwards, and the orange and red flames licked
across a the wooden mantel above. Yet nothing burned, and the smoke was strangely
missing from the scene. Sarah wavered, holding the back of the chair tightly as she tried
to make the room speed up, it was in a motion behind her own thought processes.
"What did you give me?" Sarah demanded, backing away, until she slammed
against the far wall and heard the books on the opposite side tumble over. Briefly she
wondered if the door was blocked, but instead forced herself away from the wall.
"Sarah, what's wrong with you!?" Gabriel yelled, his hands flexing around her
upper arms and squeezing so that she felt a single lick of pain over her skin. Brilliant red
dots screamed over her pale flesh and she found the room slipping back into focus around
Gabriel's worried face.
Had she confused the Base with the Ground again.
"Ground yourself, Sarah. You need to see the Base, not the extraneous sounds
around it. Your mind can only take such busy things for a matter of hours, before it slips
into the fantasy again... and you don't want that, do you?"
"I-I think I should go."
Gabriel backed away, his eyes so intensely worried that she wasn't sure why she
had decided to leave in the first place, other than the voice in her mind was that of her
therapist from eleven years earlier, and she only remembered him when something was
very wrong. Her lucid fantasies were clamoring in the small dark space of her psyche that
she wished to, above all else, hide.
"Perhaps its the herb," Gabriel offered, glancing nervously towards the tea.
She nodded, but couldn't help remembering the sinister expressions that had been
on the man's face earlier. Why was he so different suddenly? And why did he look so
damn much like Jareth. She looked around herself, wondering if she had left anything, not
caring enough to stay around to find out, and then almost collapsed out of the room.
She felt more oriented in the bookstore as she walked briskly along the dingy aisles
and up to the counter where she knew Gabriel had set the little lavender book. She
paused, feeling for her keys in her pocket, and then waited as Gabriel walked carefully,
regally, around the front desk.
"I'm sorry if I upset you, Sarah," he said gently, pulling out a little paper bag that
he dropped the book into.
Sarah watched him work, and wondered briefly how old he was. If she had been
forced to guess she would have assumed early thirties, but then that didn't really matter.
He handed her the bag tirelessly, waiting for a response, but she hadn't even barely heard
what he had just said.
"It stopped snowing," he mentioned casually.
Sarah glanced briefly out the large display window and then back towards Gabriel.
His blue eyes burned as strong as the frost on the glass. She trembled beneath his gaze,
but not as she would had he been a predator. Instead, something inside shook with
anticipation and a silent, deadly longing.
"How much do I owe you?" she asked, her voice fluctuating slightly.
She gripped the bag tightly in her hands, crinkling the paper bag between her
fingers. Gabriel just smiled and leaned a bit nearer to her as he watched her eyes. Sarah,
instinctively, looked away, feeling a red blush rise up on her cheeks. And then the sense
to leave returned and she took a single step backwards.
"Its a gift *I've brought you a gift*," he whispered, two voices merging into one
as Sarah listened.
And for the briefest moment, as she took the book closer to her body, wondering if
it was safe to accept a gift from this man, Sarah saw two distinct images overlaying each
other in her vision. Like a twice-exposed photograph Gabriel's calm, but attractive
features were highlighted with something just slightly ajar. Menace, cold steel, and a
regality that only a Goblin King could possess.
She forcibly blinked, and when she looked again only Gabriel stood there, smiling,
but somehow knowledgeable as well. In that moment she was sure that all the things she
had been told in therapy had not been completely true. The realization made her quiver all
the more, and she bustled away without another word.
Gabriel, in his lovely sweatshirt, just watched her walk away, out the door, down
the snowy white sidewalk. Others had begun to mill through the road, as if the ending of
the snow had been some magical event. The cold breeze still zipped through the streets,
and he noticed a bit of Sarah's hair caught in the wind as she glanced sideways into his
store one last time.
An eon of changes of becoming the chameleon to wait, to harbor his
metamorphosis as science betrayed the sanctuary of a kingdom and a dream. A bit of a
dream, like stardust, lit upon a mind one day and in the moment, flourishing like a seed in
the most perfect of conditions, it became something so much more than could have ever
been anticipated.
Born from a dream, born to the world, freed through reality, all that was opposed.
It was an ironic world when that which was supposed to help, only strengthened the one
thing Sarah ever really feared and loved. It was the ultimate paradox....
Gabriel stood a moment longer, his mind making no sense as he watched the last
bit of her clothing slip out of sight. She wouldn't be back, he realized, but it didn't matter
much. The winter was there, and the snow was due to be strong that season. Snowblind
weather.
From behind his counter Gabriel pulled a little black purse, setting it briefly on the
table top. She had run so quickly that she had forgotten it, and would certainly be missing
it. Mimi would be in town shortly, she did her shopping every Monday, two days from
then. Two days wasn't a long time to wait, not when one had waited eons to simply be
born again.
I can't live within you
And he couldn't. So he hadn't. Perhaps she had cut her ties to the others,
severing little silver threads like umbilical cords... they were the children of her brain. But
he was not connected by a damn string, something breakable, separate from her. He was
more than connected to her. Gabriel smiled and stowed the purse beneath the desk once
more.
"You and I, Sarah," he paused and licked his lips, watching two college-age
women pause at his door, laughing among themselves, "We are one."
* * * * *
An excerpt from James T. Kelly's synthesis on fantasy-prone personality in the
adolescent female:
"...In testing, SW displayed all eleven of the testable traits for Fantasy-Prone
Personality. She has a long history of intense imaginative involvement in reading and in
play. She claims that she experiences physical reactions such as nausea and anxiety to
violence on television and in movies, that she enjoys spending as much as half her free
time engaged in fantasy. Further, fantasy has lapsed into time set aside for school and
work, where it is critical for SW to participate in the 'real world.'
SW is highly hypnotically suggestive. She responds to most any hypnotic
suggestion even those that involve profound alterations in subjective experience. With the
affliction of intense fantasy-prone disorder, SW has found her life compromised.
Separating her from the typical fantasizer is the fact that she is unable to determine and
recognize the difference between her fantasy and reality. SW can immediately return to
her fantasized "Underground" without any trouble, and has such strong belief that she is
capable of drawing others into her delusions.
One of the primary goals of my research was to trace the development of fantasy
proneness of this extent in SW. And what I found supports the commonly held belief that
highly imaginative children are lonely and cultivate a rich fantasy life to compensate for a
lack of stimulation. In other words, some children escape into a fantasy life as a way of
coping with a less than perfect world. SW reported feeling lonely, especially following the
divorce of her parents and subsequent marriage of her father. The birth of her
step-brother triggered the intense fantasizer in her, showing a new finding of fantasy-prone
disorder... the adolescent identify v. role confusion (Erickson's stages of development)
when not encouraged by the parents leads to them forming an identity in the realm of their
fantasy.
While fantasizers do not as readily engage in addictive and harmful activity, their
drug of choice is just as damaging. SW suffers daily in the belief that one particular
figment of her imagination has left the confines of her mind, born out like a dream, and is
now "tracking" her. Despite convictions from myself, SW is unable to perceive the fact
that such a possibility is completely impossible...."
