Chapter Nine

For days after last talking to her grandmother, Bowie had left the box sitting on in the closet in the living room, quietly waiting to be explored as things became more and more busy for her. She began to scramble to finish her landscape, and to prepare for her finals which would take up most - if not all - of the week.

After an exhausting five days, however, she was finally finished with the last tests of her first semester of her last college year, and had all of Winter Break to waste away. For the next few days, Bowie decided to take advantage of Nick's words and wait a few days before texting to tell him she would be free to work until school started back up - and, during those days the week after finals, she remembered the box which was sitting in the living room closet.

She shifted in her spot, hesitant to leave the warmth of her blanket and the soft pillows on the couch of her apartment, to bring her attention from Orange Is The New Black - an older show that apparently her father had loved a long time ago. The closet seemed to beckoning her, however, and she paused the show to get up.

Bowie opened the door, and the box sat on the ground - it looked just like any ordinary box, but with its contents peeking out from the top. She sighed and picked the box up before setting it on the living room floor. She shivered as she sat down, already regretting leaving the warmth of her blanket. But she knew that, if she didn't look through the box now, she never would.

The first thing she pulled out was an old crown made of plastic pearls and metallic paper - she looked at it for a few seconds before laughing quietly to herself, imagining her grandmother when she was younger wearing the old thing. Bowie carefully set it down, then pulled out an old poster of winding staircases that seemed to break the rules of traditional design - they went sideways, upside down, rightside up, and so many more directions that Bowie lost track of where to focus.

"Trippy," she mumbled before setting it down, too, and then caught a glimpse of the little stuffed fox once more. She let out a laugh from the back of her throat as she looked into its plastic eyes, and the deep blue hat on its head.

"Sir Didymus," Bowie said, holding him up higher to look at him in the artificial light of the living room. "Apparently a friend of my grandmother's."

She set the stuffed animal down carefully, running the tips of her fingers over the surface of its fur. Then, still touching the fur of the stuffed animal, she caught a glint of light off of something in the box. Her curiosity received the best of her, and she reached inside the box to feel around for whatever it had been to catch her attention.

It seemed to be the biggest item in the box, as well as the heaviest - from her guess, the item was made of clay or something alike, and something of a statue.

When she finally pulled the item out of the box and set it down, she took the time to look it over. She had been right - it was a tall ceramic statue, no taller than 20 inches. It was a statue of a man who wore tall boots and tight pants, as well as an open shirt under a leather vest. A dark cape was draped over his shoulders, cascading all the way down to his feet in waves and encircling him body. His face was pointed and stern, his seemingly long hair sprawled out over his shoulders and framing his face.

Bowie furrowed her eyebrows before realizing that this had to be the Goblin King - the person who her grandmother claimed was the owl, and the one who could possibly be following her.

"Hm," she whispered, running her fingers over the hard surface of his hair, "Curious."

She then heard a tap on the window and jumped, looking over just in time to see a white owl flying away into the sky.

He couldn't deny it - Jareth knew that there was something about the human girl he had seen that was different, and that his urge to see Sarah in her elderly age was no mere coincidence. He knew it, and he especially knew that things were going to end up . . . well, strangely, and for the first time he wasn't sure what to expect.

He could remember the decision he made to see Sarah one last time - one last time, and he would be completely done with her, and all she would be was a distant memory. He went to the small house where she lived as an adult, and raised children, and her children's children under one roof. The house had become older with time, and more run down than it had been at one time - just as Sarah.

He watched through the living room window, hidden away in the bushes as she stacked books into a box slowly, tucking her white hair behind her ear every once in awhile. He watched precariously, wonder filling his head before - lo and behold - a young girl stepped into the room with a dusty box in her arms.

Instantly, Jareth knew that this was a descendant of Sarah - they had the same nose, lips, and close to the same eyes if not for the girl's being more blue. She looked confused as Sarah looked over the box as if she were suddenly remembering something. When Jareth saw the red book that had been stored away for ages, he knew that the story had been awoken and there was nothing he could do about it. When the book was passed to the girl, however, he knew what he would do from now on: he would watch her.

For weeks he kept his eyes on her, and only on a few different occasions did she notice him - and she seemed scared, curious almost, and had even once talked with him without knowing he wasn't just simply an owl. At first, Jareth had decided that he would trick the girl into wishing someone away - the girl who she was friends with, perhaps - as revenge for Sarah leaving.

Jareth thought about it all as he crossed the throne room which had once been lively, and was now crumbled sandstone and free of the once giddy goblins. He looked out the window he had once stood at all those years ago, watching as Sarah made her way through the Goblin City to save her baby brother. Only this time, his eyes were met with a worse sight.

The city was no longer as it had been - goblins were hidden away in the rubble, the houses nothing but piles of stone and sticks, just as ancient cities were to be. The labyrinth beyond was by far the worst - it had remained untouched for centuries, with the walls growing higher than ever before, and vines covering most of the labyrinth in a thick canopy. The forest beyond had spread to cover half of the labyrinth, even going so far as to reach the Bog of Eternal Stench. It was a dangerous place now - he didn't even dare to step a foot inside of it.

He thought of the girl - Victoria, her name was - as he looked out at the labyrinth that had once been his pride and joy. From the weeks he spent watching her, he had grown quite fond of her - she was a strange girl, unlike any other that Jareth had ever met, and seemed much more than what she put out to the world. At this point, Jareth wasn't sure if he wanted the girl to wish herself away - in fact, he wasn't sure if he would want revenge again. Instead, he was much more interested in learning more about the strange girl named Victoria.