Chapter Ten: Sleep
Jareth eventually fell into a fitful sleep, necessary only because of his condition.
The throne was uncomfortable and that woke him up several times, but each time, he didn't have the will to move.
In his dream, Sarah lived in the castle with him.
She sat on the arm of his throne, dressed in a beautiful wedding gown, as they watched a young girl struggling through the Labyrinth. The entire front wall of the castle was missing, providing them with a spectacular view of the Goblin City and the surrounding areas of his maze.
The girl was accompanied by Sarah's old friends, Hoggle, Ludo and Sir Didymus. But the girl wasn't Sarah. It was Lydia.
She reached the Goblin City, looking almost absurd in her pink nightgown, holding the hand of a big, orange-furred monster. Jareth and Sarah smiled delightedly at the girl's progress.
She went through a battle with the Goblins just as Sarah had. The group managed to avoid every attack, and retaliated with Ludo calling the rocks to roll through the city.
Jareth and Sarah laughed victoriously every time Lydia and her friends felled a Goblin with their ingenuity.
Then, suddenly, a chicken landed on Sarah's lap and pecked Jareth's side.
He slowly pulled himself out of the dream, to find that he was leaning heavily on the arm of his throne, grinding it into his side. He sat back up and closed his eyes again.
Sarah stood naked in the middle of a room Jareth recognized as her boyfriend's living room—or her ex-boyfriend, as he obviously had become.
The ex-boyfriend in question—Jareth couldn't remember his name, and didn't particularly care, anyhow—sat on the couch, holding an ice cream cone. He seemed oblivious to Sarah as he intently stared at the blank screen of the television behind her.
Jareth stepped forward, bringing himself to her attention. Her eyes brightened and she smiled as she saw him and slid her body gracefully against his. For the first time in his life, Jareth felt unsure of himself in a sexual situation, and not only because of their seemingly unaware audience. This was Sarah, this was perfection, and how would he compare?
Sarah wrapped her arms around his neck and pushed down on his shoulders with her arms. They landed on the floor, on their knees. He skimmed his hands across her bare back, feeling the muscles move gently as she shifted her body slightly in response.
Just moments later, his shirt lay on the floor beside them and Sarah's breath burned across his collarbone. Her fingertips traced the outline of his silver and gold pendant against his chest.
Then he felt something breathtakingly cold dripping down his back. He glanced behind him.
The boy sat there, dumbly staring ahead just as he had from the couch. Only now, his hand held the ice cream out against Jareth's skin.
The dream faded and Jareth found himself leaning onto his knees. However, quite to his surprise, nothing cold or wet seemed to be on his back. He sat up again and closed his eyes.
He stood before a beautifully decorated Christmas tree with Sarah, gently holding her hand.
The room was dark. He glanced sideways, startled at how beautiful Sarah looked, her face lit only by the soft glow of the white lights on the tree. She looked over at him, and her smile broadened. Smiling back, he watched the delicate shadows her eyelashes made across her cheeks. They moved as she blinked.
Then they stopped.
Sarah's hand instantly turned cold in his and her face became pale. His arms went around her as she started to fall.
He let her down gently, laying her body on the cold floor. The tears fell from his face onto hers, and he desperately tried to wipe them away.
Slowly, the lights on the Christmas tree began to dim until Jareth was left in the dark. He reached out for Sarah's cold, stiff hand, but found that her body was gone.
He woke up again.
We don't even celebrate Christmas in the Underground, he thought before falling back asleep.
The last dream was the best.
Sarah knelt beside him in a clearing in the middle of his forest, near the bank of a stream. He looked up at her from where he lay, feeling small and frightened. Sarah smiled reassuringly and lifted his hand to her lips.
Softly, she kissed every wound and then lay down beside him. They stared up at the sky, neither talking nor thinking. They just saw the trees and the stars. There was nothing else for either of them.
He woke up.
The pain in his hand was gone. He glanced down, but saw only the bandages. Quickly, he pulled them off.
Most of the cuts had faded entirely. The worst of them had been reduced to nothing more than pale pink scars.
"Such a nice man," Karen sat primly, sipping at a cup of coffee. Sarah and her father sat on the couch, across from the pink armchair Karen occupied.
"Mhm," Robert agreed, lifting a delicately painted teacup to his lips.
Sarah, the only one in the room without one of the little cups, awkwardly shifted on the couch.
"Will you marry him?" Karen asked.
Sarah looked quickly around the room, seemingly in hopes that someone had appeared to take the attention off her.
"Well, I don't know. I just met him," she mumbled, pointedly looking away from her stepmother. Karen sighed heavily, sitting her teacup back onto its saucer on the coffee table.
"Sarah, for the love of God, you had better make a decision for once." Sarah was surprised to hear that coming from her father—it was so unlike him and so perfectly like Karen. Unable to come up with a response, she stared at him blankly.
"Don't you look at your father that way, Sarah! He's right," Karen supplied, glaring over the stiff, formal-looking floral arrangement on the table. "Are you going to marry the man?"
Sarah looked helplessly around the room again. This time, however, she was rewarded with the sight of the man in question watching from the window behind Karen.
Jareth, the Goblin King, visiting from the Underground.
Sarah jumped to her feet, waving her arms frantically, knowing only that she had to tell him something.
"Do you want me to come or do you want me to leave?" He yelled through the glass.
Sarah woke up, startled to find herself staring at tree branches instead of her bedroom ceiling.
It took her only seconds to remember why, and she sat up, looking around for Jareth and trying not to think about her dream. Usually Sarah enjoyed analyzing her and her friends' dreams—they were like little fairy tales, but with much more personal meaning. But this was one she didn't want to understand, and furthermore, had no time to contemplate.
She didn't see him, and began feeling the pain of her ankle the same time as the disappointment.
Lydia was not dreaming, nor was she sleeping.
She sat on the blankets in the corner of the room, spontaneously eyeing the window.
She had cried over her hunger and her confusion and her sadness and her regret. Then she screamed, then she hit the wall, and then her gaze fell on the window.
It was a tiny window, but she was a tiny girl, even for her young age of nine years and two months. The problem would be reaching it to climb up.
She wasn't entirely sure what she was planning to do once she got there—probably either summon help or jump. She didn't understand the significance of her actions, and therefore didn't judge it to be of great importance. The main thought on her mind was how unbearably hungry she was.
She walked to the far wall, surprised to find the window not quite as high as she had thought from her place on the floor. She placed her hands firmly on the window sill and pushed up, scrambling to reach it with her knees.
After several jumps and an awkward twisting maneuver, she made it.
Sitting on her knees and holding firmly to the frustratingly smooth walls, she leaned over the edge.
It was much father down than she had thought. She felt the terror pushing its way into her mind, but her stomach growled, not allowing itself to be forgotten so easily.
Lydia clumsily and cautiously twisted herself until she sat sideways, one leg dangling on either side of the wall. She felt much safer that way, although a little exposed, with her nightgown pushed up almost to her waist.
She looked down, outside. Past her foot with its pink, painted toenails, she could see a few chickens milling about. Further away, she saw the Goblins going about their daily routines within their city—those in dirty, faded rag dresses feeding chickens, washing clothes. Others were casually sharpening spears and swords. One seemed to be chasing a small, round, rock-like creature with sharp-looking spikes all over its body. She heard that Goblin's aggravated cries as the thing dashed down a narrow street and out of Lydia's sight.
While jumping was almost entirely out of the question, she could still call for help, couldn't she? But the Goblins were loyal to their king and had no reason to help her.
Satisfied with that excuse, she focused on watching the goings-on of the Goblins. Some of them amused her with their antics, some shocked her with their deformed faces and rough bodies, and yet others earned her pity. They had all been normal children once, hadn't they? And if the Goblin King was wrong about Sarah, I'll be a Goblin, too.
Jareth, now fully awake, felt Lydia's desire to see him.
Then that faded. Obviously something else had caught her attention.
He leaned against the back of his throne. He was improving rapidly, but it would still be some time before he could go to Sarah. His lips, a quick glimpse into a half-formed crystal had shown, were still slightly blue and his hand shook dramatically if he did not rest it on something.
He could still go speak with Lydia, find out what she wanted and leave. The last time, he waited so she wouldn't think she had any control over him. But now, she was no longer interested in seeing him, so what did it matter? Besides, it was a way to pass the time until he could see Sarah again and apologize for leaving her there in such a condition.
Jareth stood. His first steps towards the girl's room were undeniably shaky, but it got easier as he progressed.
Lydia gasped as the door suddenly swung open.
The Goblin King, one hand resting on the doorframe, stood watching her with false serenity. Even Lydia could see that something was distracting him—he simply wasn't himself.
"Hello, Lydia," he said. The cool tone of his voice didn't seem to be off.
"Goblin King," she responded, trying to duplicate the attitude. "I haven't ate in a long time." That came out sounding too whiney for her to be formidable in any way. Can't even do that right, she thought.
Jareth's eyebrows rose suddenly. "Is that all?" He asked.
"Well, yeah," Lydia glanced back down at the Goblins in their city, wondering if she should get down now that she had taken care of the major problem.
"I'll have one of the Goblins bring you something." Jareth reached for the door and pulled it shut before him.
Startled at how easily she had dealt with that, Lydia didn't think to ask about Sarah, or the time.
"And do be careful," Jareth's voice came through the crack of the door just before it clicked into place.
Lydia turned back to the Goblins. She enjoyed watching them, but she really should get down now—after all, such drastic actions were no longer required.
Just as she turned to hop back down, something caught her attention.
A small Goblin, obviously no more than three or four years old, peered at her from a window on the second story of one of the nearer houses. Lydia heard no cries, but she could distinctly see the tears rolling down the baby's face. Its small hand reached up and waved to her just before it disappeared below the window.
Maybe the Goblins aren't so bad, Lydia thought as her bare feet smacked the hard stone floor.