Fledgling

By J.R. Godwin

Disclaimer: "Labyrinth" belongs to Jim Henson & Co. I'm not making any money off of this.

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh ... And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new.

-ee cummings

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.

-Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

13.

Richard's idea of a good time involved a Trenton dance hall that reeked of cigarettes and piss.

The bouncers were useless. I sneaked us past them without a second glance, but with a fair amount of swearing from the queue that snaked out the door. There was another set of door guardians after that, but they let us through once Richard showed a brace of tickets, and we elbowed our way down a long corridor and into a massive pit before a stage. It was a young audience, and very white. The black patrons had been banished to the rafters above. Public spaces were still segregated then.

The air crackled with something undefineable, and for once it had nothing to do with me. I felt exciteable and itchy, that curious sensation you get under the tongue when adrenalin hits the system. I imagine the sensation is akin to that experienced by racehorses waiting for the bell.

"Isn't it great?" Richard was happier than I'd ever seen him. He was flushed and alive. We'd traded our tuxedos for casual clothes, but we still sweated under the overhead lights.

"What are we waiting for?" I asked. The audience pushed us toward the stage, and on instinct I shot out a hand and grabbed Richard by the elbow. He laughed at my alarm.

"You'll see," he said.

Suddenly the lights turned down, the crowd cheered, and the curtains retreated. A dozen suited black men stood there in perfect formation with saxophones, and another fellow behind them on drums. And before them all, their leader, a small gentleman with big hair and a pencil thin mustache. He stood next to a piano and microphone, and the audience cheered harder as he smiled and waved.

He had the brightest smile I've ever seen in a mortal. I looked around for the piano bench where he was going to sit, but I didn't see one.

"Good evening, New Jersey," he said into the mic, and the audience went wild. I mean wild. This was years before the Beatles arrived on American shores, before musicians became gods in their own right. When the people around me exploded again, I flinched.

That little man and his band started to play - and I tell you truly that I had never heard anything like it before or since. He never sat down, and let me say, playing piano upright takes a lot of skill. And then he sang - oh, how he sang. Tutti Frutti to start, and then Lucille, and Long Tall Sally, recent radio hits I all recognized. I'd never seen the man in the flesh. My mouth kept opening wider and wider as he sang louder and louder. I couldn't believe such a big sound could come out of such a small person. I felt as if I'd heard God.

The people around us went mad, of course. They clapped and shimmied, then they danced with each other, and after a few songs the black folks trickled down from the nosebleed seats and started dancing with the white folks in the pit. Management either didn't care or had given up on crowd control by then. The music made the floor vibrate beneath our feet. It was hard to focus on anything, it was so loud, and men and women danced like fools.

The promise of sex hung heavy in the air. The last time I remembered an atmosphere like this was centuries before, during the Irish fertility rites. It felt like home again.

Richard was dancing across the floor with a young woman who looked like she wanted to crawl all over him. They were vibrant and alive. It was fun to look at them, but by then another woman had touched my elbow, and I was quickly dancing with her. There was no order to the crowd. People moved with the music in groups, like a tidal wave.

We danced for a very long time - until the sweat poured off us all and women started throwing their clothes at the vocalist, who sang through number after number with no sign of flagging. His stamina was truly shocking. There were three encores, and at the end the band had to hustle off the stage before the crowd pulled them into the pit. It was a madhouse. Richard and I ran out a side door into the alley and half collapsed against a brick wall, laughing hysterically into our hands, as if we weren't surrounded by garbage and noxious fumes steaming from the gutter.

It took a minute to compose ourselves. But once we did, Richard sighed and said, "That was rock n' roll."

A cab took us back to Princeton. It was midnight and still early fall, and we had nowhere to be, so we walked aimlessly for a while. Princeton's streets are well lit and, although Richard didn't know it, his companion was the stuff of nightmares for any bogeyman, human or supernatural, which dared raise its head. We were the safest pair of late night pedestrians anywhere on Earth or under it.

We walked slowly with our hands in our pockets like errant schoolboys. Richard wouldn't stop humming, and after a long period of silence between us, he said: "You know, I really think everything's going to work out."

I responded by humming a happy little tune under my breath.

"What is that?" Richard asked. "It sounds like a song I should know."

"Shostakovich. I enjoy his waltzes. They're lovely."

"How do you know so many things?"

"You will too, when you're as old as me."

"How old are you? Like, 35?"

I laughed a deep belly laugh. "You're lucky I'm not a woman. I might take offense at that question."

"Tch, you wouldn't be as fun if you were a chick." He meant to be glib, but it came out a little flat. He suddenly looked uncomfortable, as if his own joke had been laced with poison somehow and he was only just realizing it.

"It's a good thing I'm a man then," I said with a wink.

Richard looked at his shoes and said he'd better get back to the halls. I said it was long after curfew and the front doors would be locked, but he only grinned and pulled from his pocket a key that he'd nicked off some unsuspecting monitor. As I'd come to discover, Richard had nimble fingers and could be a right menace under certain circumstances.

"Come find me this week so we can celebrate me getting into the music department!" he called as he walked up the long drive to the campus.

I was smoking another fag by then and raised an eyebrow in cool disapproval. "My dear lad, I don't chase people."

"So show up or not, you old pain in the ass. See if I care."

There was no maliciousness in this statement. Before I could properly reply, he'd already climbed the university's wrought black iron gates like a spider monkey and vanished.

Of course, I showed up the very next day.

It was Monday, and I found Richard early enough to be there when he got the news that he'd been accepted into the music department. We celebrated by going to the practice rooms and playing piano - or rather, I played piano while Richard watched, dumbfounded by the speed of my hands. Mozart's sonatas are so happy and light, perfect for a celebration, so I played those for a while. Finally I bade Richard join me on the bench. He regarded the piano like a terrified med student expected to perform open heart surgery on orientation day, but I wouldn't have any of that.

"This is Middle C," I said, tapping the key in question. "You'll always find it in the middle next to these two black keys. If you're ever lost, look for the Middle C, alright? Now put your thumb on Middle C, and rest your other fingers on the white keys. There you go. Now press C and D repeatedly while I play."

And that's how Richard got started on the piano, though we didn't stop with Mozart. Very quickly we were playing Boogie Woogie with Richard handling the bass chords and laughing our heads off the entire time as we ran slipshod over the Steinway's keys like a pair of drunks.

Walt found us giggling like rambunctious teenagers and playing the sort of jazz club music he loathed. Oh, and the room stank of cigarette smoke. Not my finest moment.

"How did you do it?" he thundered. We stopped dead and looked to the door, where Walt stood fuming.

I pulled the cigarette from my mouth and blew. "Walt, do come in. Mi casa es tu casa."

"How?" When Walt was angry, he didn't yell - he seethed. He practically oozed over the threshold and rolled across the room with the force of a volcanic ash cloud. "Do you know what happened this morning, Ellingson? I was informed by the president that you were to be admitted into this department post haste. Why is the president fighting your battles for you?"

"Probably because he needed to, Walt," I said quite primly, aware that the young man at my side had begun to shrink.

Walt whirled on me. "And you! Don't think I don't know you had something to do with this! You and your flamboyant skulking about this campus, and your kissing up to anyone who'll have you. Don't think you've fooled anyone, Mr. Goodman, because you certainly haven't fooled me!"

My eyes narrowed. "Tread carefully, you old fool. I am not a man you want for an enemy."

I hadn't moved a hair, but the temperature dropped. Walt paused, more out of shock than anything. He'd seen something Not Human in my gaze, and the lizard part of his brain was no doubt warning him to run away. Indeed, for just a moment, Walt looked frightened. There was something alien in his eyes that I didn't understand. Hate, to be sure. Frustration, of course. We'd just turned his own power trip back on him. That was to be expected. But there was something else that I couldn't name. It was most strange.

When he next spoke, his voice was venom. "You're all in league. Damn you! It won't be long until this community sees this brat for what he is, and he's expelled. You'll see I'm right."

I dropped my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Usually when the villain is defeated, Walt, it's his job to storm offstage. Don't you think it's past your cue?"

Walt looked like he was about to explode. I truly thought for a moment that he was going to choke. His face blew up like a great overripe tomato, and then he turned on his heel and marched out of the room. He nearly broke the door off its hinge when he slammed it.

At my side, Richard let loose a tremendous gasp, like a man who'd been buried alive. "Was that a warmup or a final curtain call, do you think?"

"Walt's a sore loser," I said, affording him a warm little smile. "He'll get over himself soon enough."

"I hope so." Richard sounded so sad when he said it. I looked at him sharply, without any idea what to say.

Richard dropped the last of his science classes. By the end of the week, he was completely engaged with music. His new professors loved him. Within the month, he was invited to play a solo piece at an upcoming concert. By the end of the semester, his new advisor was suggesting internships in New York.

Richard continued to attend rock concerts. I went to a few more with him. Sometimes he brought his friends, none of whom attended Princeton. They were all childhood buddies, or lads he met at street races. Despite his smart aleck attitude, or perhaps because of it, Richard was quite popular among people his age.

Sometimes we went weeks without seeing each other, and Richard would look up while studying at the library or eating in the canteen to find me sitting across from him, smiling as if I'd never been away. I took great pleasure in startling him, and then he'd yell at me for doing so and demand to know how long I'd been there. Life has its cheap, vicarious little pleasures.

We'd talk then, or Richard would talk on and on about everything that was going on, and the fantastic things he was learning, and the people he was meeting, and the girls he was dating, and I'd nod and cant my head to the side like a bird and listen. I wouldn't smile but I wouldn't frown. My face was a perfect mask, as humans would say. I never betrayed a single emotion, though what I often thought was:

Why does he get so upset about so and so? Clearly she's not good for him. And why does he care about such and such? Why does he not just go do something else, if it'll make him happier? His life is too short as it is to worry about bad friends or doing things that don't bring him any joy.

No one ever listens to the immortal, of course. Richard never asked for my opinion, so I never gave it. I just listened. And every time Richard would conclude speaking, he'd sigh as if someone had let the air out of him and look enormously pleased with himself, as if the sole act of my listening had given him deep insight into the meaning of the universe and he felt more confident about whatever course of action he was going to take.

Then Richard would be very happy, and I'd be very satisfied.

"You can't do this!" Richard exclaimed. "You can't just show up out of the blue whenever you like and spook me!"

I sat on Richard's bed, one leg crossed over the other, very devil-may-care. He'd just walked into his locked room to find me waiting for him. "Why not?"

He almost exploded. "Because you can't! And I don't know what you've been up to the last two months, but you know, it'd be nice if you let me know you weren't dead. I don't have any way of contacting you. You just show up whenever you like."

I unfolded my long limbs and stood up very quickly, which made Richard take a step back, and I remember too late that I'd moved a little too fast for a human. "You feel I'm overstepping your boundaries. That I'm disrespecting you."

I'd come to stand very close to Richard then, and he stared at me, mesmerized. When I stopped speaking, he blinked and looked away. "I ... yeah."

"Very well. I shall strive to do better."

"What the hell does that mean?"

I handed him a business card printed on stiff paper. To any discerning human eye, it looked like I'd produced it with a fancy flourish, but I'd really created it with magick out of thin air. It showed my alias - and a phone number and address. "It means you're absolutely right. You should be able to contact me whenever you like, instead of waiting for me to show up at my discretion. We are friends, are we not?"

"... yeah, sure."

I clapped my gloved hands. "Excellent! Then it's settled."

"I still wanna know how you got into my room."

"A magician never reveals his secrets."

"You're a pisser, you know that?"

At any one time, I may have a dozen addresses under a dozen fake names - all safe houses out of which I can operate in the human world. Richard showed up at my Princeton address later that week. It was in a building downtown, next to a series of little shops and delis. I opened the door with a baby on one hip, which admittedly looked ridiculous in the fine tailored suit I wore.

Richard stood on the doorstep in a leather jacket and jeans, looking like the lost cousin of James Dean. When he saw the baby, his brow shot up. "You've been busy."

"Babysitting," I said simply. "Come in."

The office was a nicely furnished townhouse. Richard whistled as I led him inside. "Cool digs, man. You don't do things by halves, do you?"

"Never. Sit. I'll make us tea."

"It's cool, I got class. I wanted to ask you a favour."

Use your words, the goblins said. "Oh?"

"Yeah, you, uh, wanna come to dinner at my family's house this weekend? They've been pestering me to meet my friends."

I cocked my head in confusion and jiggled the squirming baby at my hip. "I don't know if your parents had someone like me in mind. Perhaps your other friends would be more appropriate."

"Nah, all my buddies are greasers. Dad would shit a brick - sorry." He nodded apologetically at the cooing baby, who clearly had no idea what he'd said. "You're normal and proper. They'd get along much better with you, trust me."

"Very well then. I accept."

"Cool, man. Uh, Saturday at four? We do dinner pretty early."

"With pleasure."

"Great. Really. Thanks."

"Richard," I said, "what are you hiding from me?"

"Nothing! Nothing."

"We're so proud of Richard's accomplishments at the university. He's going to make a first rate doctor."

"Is he now?" I shot a look at Richard that could have driven nails. Richard covered his meek smile by taking a drink.

"He'll be the second member of this family to do his residency at Columbia Presbytarian," continued his father. Doctor Ellingson was a tall man with steel grey hair and the strong jaw one expected on cowboys in a Spaghetti Western. He was rail thin. One got the impression that he spent too much time talking to bother with eating. The Ellingson family lived in an impressive house with an even more impressive dining room that must have entertained many guests. It was clear that the father like to play host.

"You forgot about Uncle Jack, Pop," said Jimmy, who was the spitting image of the father in a no-nonsense suit.

"Good catch, son, that's right. Jack started off at Columbia, too. Pass the potatoes. Now, Mr. Goodman, Richard tells me you're his tutor."

"I am."

"Biology?"

"Whatever I'm needed to teach."

"Ah, excellent. Glad to see Richard's on top of things." He nodded approvingly at his youngest son. "I'm looking forward to seeing that report card. Let's hope those grades have picked up since last year, eh?"

Richard smiled wordlessly and took another drink.

"James?" a tired, querelous old voice called from the foyer. It was a sad voice that one expected from mourners at a funeral. It sounded rusty and unused, as if it had been locked away for a century in a forgotten room. I was startled; I hadn't believed there to be anyone else in the house, save for the cook. At the sound of the voice, both Richard and Jimmy jumped up from the table like pheasant flushed out during a hunt.

"Stop!" barked Doctor Ellingson, who nodded at Jimmy. The eldest son swept silently from the room to deal with whoever it was. Richard slowly sat down again, and I sensed resentment from him, as if a bandaid had been ripped off an old wound.

I was still reeling from that voice. That voice was searching for its dreams. I'd felt the tug. You can't fool a Goblin King. We know too much about desire and loss.

"And you're a businessman, too?" Doctor Ellingson broke me from my reverie.

"Yes," I said, blinking. "Acquisitions."

"That must be exciting."

"Actually, it's dreadful. Where is your washroom?"

Doctor Ellingson startled at my flippancy but recovered quickly. "Of course. Richard, why don't you show our guest the way?"

Richard had been sitting on the edge of his chair waiting to bolt. He took off like a jackrabbit and dragged me into the foyer, where we nearly collided with his brother returning from the upper floors. It was simply an enormous house. Richard led me away from the first floor bathroom and took me upstairs. I think he just wanted to get away from everyone for a little while.

I had no interest in the washroom; I'd wanted to find that sad voice again. Richard squashed that idea and led me to his father's study. It was a large room with many degrees on the walls and brass contraptions all over the shelves. Doctor Ellingson had a hobby building toys. They were queer little things, looking like mechanical birds.

"He loves making toys," Richard lamented, "but I've never seen him play a game in my entire life. Go figure."

"You haven't told them." My voice was soft as I closely inspected the brass toys, but the accusation was unmistakeable.

Richard sagged a little. "I'm getting around to it. I just need more time."

I barked a laugh. "Time! Time is all I have, and a cheap commodity. But you? You're worm's meat in the making and you don't even see it. Your problem isn't time, Richard. No, you're a coward. Choose your destiny like a man and own your choice instead of whinging like a child."

His eyes flashed, and I knew I'd hit below the belt. "Screw you, pal. You think this is easy?"

"Nothing worth doing is easy. I never promised you it would be easy. I only said it would be worthwhile."

He had a terrible look on his face. I thought it was anger, but then I realized it was an ache, and it had nothing to do with my taunts or his family's views on his career. Richard stared at me a little too long, and the anger only surfaced when he turned away again. "You're just like them," he said bitterly.

"Don't cheapen this friendship," I snapped. "In the whole of creation, there has never been another like me."

Don't you see what I am? I was desperate to ask, but I didn't dare.

We glared at each other, wary and tired, and the silence stretched until it turned uncomfortable. Richard finally broke it. "Dad's gonna be wondering where we are," he said, and we trudged back downstairs side by side, though we might as well have been walking with a wall between us. The rest of the meal was awkward, but I don't think Doctor Ellingson noticed, so content was he to prattle on about business. He didn't even notice that Richard and I wouldn't look at each other, like a married couple in a feud.

Jimmy did. His dislike wasn't obvious, but it hovered at the corner of his mouth and turned his nose up into a slight sneer. He was bigger than Richard, with a hard edge that probably served him well in a law office. His disapproval worried me. I wondered what he'd seen in us.

"Did Richard tell you he plays the violin?" Doctor Ellingson said as supper ended and I was escorted to the door. "You should attend one of our parties sometime so you can see him perform. He's quite good."

The man was truly clueless. "I look forward to it," I said without enthusiasm.

Richard's face had gone white as an alabaster statue. For a moment I thought he was reacting to his father's words, but he was looking over my shoulder, and suddenly Jimmy was reacting with the same stone face. We turned as a group - a woman stood on the staircase. She wore a dishevelled robe, and her hair resembled a bird's nest. She looked very, very ill.

"James, your mother called," she said. "She wants to take the baby this afternoon. Who's this?"

Doctor Ellingson stiffened. "Moira, you should be in bed."

"You had a guest and you didn't call me!" she declared. "I'm the hostess of this house, aren't I? What's your name, sir?"

She proferred a hand that hadn't seen a manicure in a very long time. I took it, more out of surprise than anything. "David Goodman, ma'am."

The woman - she had to be Richard's mother - blushed with pleasure. She was a small thing, and reminded me of a sparrow, all fine bones with a fluttering heart that threatened to burst its ribcage at a moment's notice. I could feel it beating from where I stood, and with it came a riot of dreams I couldn't hope to understand. They hovered on the brink of my consciousness, a tangle of confusion and colour that one rarely saw outside of sleep. I saw different worlds clashing for attention, and a woman disconnected from reality and time.

Pity flooded my senses. A man of Doctor Ellingson's standing would have had no trouble keeping his wife out of a mental hospital. Even in 1950s America, such institutions had questionable practices, and more patients died from neglect and abuse than their illnesses. At that time, it was far better to keep a family member at home, if you could afford the expense and heartache.

"Your friend has nice manners, James," Moira said. "But for heaven's sake, don't forget about the baby. I don't trust that new nurse with Jimmy. She'll drop him on his head."

"Of course, honey," Doctor Ellingson said soothingly. "Why don't you go to bed and I'll be right up."

"He's like this all the time," Moira complained to me, but she winked and ran up the stairs with the vigour of a schoolgirl. She hadn't acknowledged either of her sons, not once. All three men looked as if a blade had gone through them.

"We tried telling her once that Jimmy had grown up," Richard said apologetically to me, "but it only upset her. We don't correct her anymore."

Doctor Ellingson harshly coughed, as if Richard had said something distasteful. I took that opportunity to graciously make my exit.

There is something terribly ironic about my envy of humans. I wield more power than you will ever know, see more worlds than you will ever see, and will likely live to see this planet's death throes when you are dust and long forgotten. And yet I cannot do something that you do every day: I cannot tell anyone my name.

There's great power in names. Share it with the wrong person and you open up yourself and your kingdom to betrayal and destruction. But on a more practical level: I cannot be easily found. A being on my level must have aliases, must have easy ways to escape at a moment's notice. I travel the world in my work and wear many masks.

And no one (no one) can ever know what I am.

I am a god and a king. I can be worshipped from afar but never truly loved.

You'll rarely find buildings and monuments in sub-Saharan Africa. That's because Europeans destroyed them, after they raped and pillaged the continent of its resources and people. So African history resides on drawings and stories told by travelers passing through. Occasionally you'll find ruins of great cities, long forgotten by contemporary history books written by white men.

But I promise, these places existed: wondrous cities of great learning and industry that awed the ancient world. Benin City was one such place. In the 13th century, it boasted boulevards many times the size of the biggest roads in Europe of the time. The king's palace was supported by heavy walls, the houses shone like looking glass on a hill, and anyone with time on their hands could while away many happy hours perusing the fine galleries or markets.

The British destroyed that city in 1897 - looted it, burnt it to the ground, stamped it out. A large collection of the city's bronze art is on display at the British Museum in London, but I assure you, that exhibit was stolen from its rightful owners. A much poorer and smaller Benin City still exists, but you wouldn't guess its rich history from how it looks today.

The richest man in the history of humanity was Mansa Musa, emperor of the 14th century Mali empire. At the time of his death, he was worth the equivalent of $400 billion (US). He founded universities and the library of Timbuktu, oversaw the creation of at least 400 cities, and supplied half the world's supply of salt and gold. When he pilgrimaged to Mecca, he gave away so much gold along his route that its value in those places dropped for the next decade.

Many an awed Italian traveler returned to Europe with inspiration for his own Renaissance. 14th century Timbuktu was the Paris of the mediaeval world. It was five times the size of mediaeval London. Its streets were immaculate, and it wasn't unheard of to see buildings with windows plated in silver and gold.

Europe had been stifling in a Dark Age, its people dropping like plague rats from war and disease, its greatest scholars persecuted by religion. But other areas of the world were thriving, especially Africa and the Americas. There were many great cities, especially in what you today call Ohio and Mexico City, but none compared to Timbuktu.

Yes, I liked Timbuktu very much.

I loved a woman there. Her name was Sassouma.

Sassouma. I have not spoken that name in centuries. It's strange to think of it now.

She was not royalty, but she was of the nobility, and I wore a disguise to get close to her. This is not hard to do. I can look however I wish, and most humans choose to see me in whatever form makes the most sense to them. She was a brilliant woman, Sassouma. A respected scholar, and completely ignored by a womanizing husband whose business often took him far from home. He was a fool.

Blinded by love, I made the mistake of sharing my name with Sassouma, and the true nature of what I am: a god made flesh who can walk among humans. I cannot tell you why I did this. Love made me an idiot.

She ... did not take it well. I've since come to understand how fragile the human mind is.

I was the one who found the body. I try not to think about it, or why my beloved chose suicide over me. Didn't she understand how wonderful we were together? How blessed she'd been to be loved by a god? Humans in Ireland and Egypt had begged for my embrace. There was nothing wrong about our love. She was not royalty in her world, but she would have been in mine. I would have made her a queen, had she allowed it.

That was the last time I shared the truth with anyone.

I did not hear from Richard for days after the dinner at his father's house. Perhaps he was angry. I was surprised at how much this worried me - I, a Goblin King who cared for no one else's opinions, and certainly not a whelp with a superiority complex and a smart mouth.

I paced my throne room and kicked goblins. I canceled business meetings, claiming I suffered from fatigue and needed a vacation. I took long walks in Snowdonia, perused the markets of Jaipur, and always came home frustrated. Someone wished away a baby again. I gave the girl a ridiculously easy riddle to solve just so I wouldn't have to deal with them.

My head ached. My body was restless. Nothing soothed me.

A week passed, and I finally lost it. I went to Richard's hall and knocked on his door, hating myself all the while. A king never begs. You're not begging, I thought firmly. You're checking on him to make sure he's alright.

The door to the staircase slammed shut, startling me out of my reverie. Richard was running down the corridor. He looked like a lunatic, with sopping wet clothes and a crazed look in his eyes that put one to mind of a man who's been lost in the woods for days on end. He must have run home in the rain.

He was laughing. "David!" he cried, shaking me by the shoulders. "I did it! I told them! Dad hit the roof and disowned me, but I told them!"

I grabbed his hands. "You what?"

"I told the old bastard! He flipped out. Totally out of his gourd. Jimmy yelled at me, too. Said I was a liar and a disgrace to the family. Oh my God, I can't believe I did it. I did it!" Richard opened his door as he spoke and pulled me through it. I was surprised at how clean his room was. Since his transfer to the music programme, you could now see the floor, and he'd neatly shelved all his belongings. There wasn't a science textbook in sight.

"- and then he told me to get out and that I wasn't welcome in his house anymore!" Richard was prattling on as he toed off his shoes and socks, which looked as if he'd jumped into a river. I couldn't tell if his shaking was from the laughter or the cold. Perhaps both. "I'm free, David. Oh, God. Shit." He suddenly stopped laughing and held his face in his hands. The shivering grew worse.

I meant to reassure him when I touched his shoulder. Really, I did. But Richard turned and gave me a wild look, and then he kissed me on the mouth.

It was a surprisingly nice kiss. I gasped, startled. If I'm being honest (a rarity), I think my interest in Richard hadn't been innocent from the start, but I hadn't expected anything. Perhaps a friendship, someone fun to play music with, nothing more. This was a wonderful surprise.

I recovered quickly and opened my mouth, invited him in. Richard took it with a groan, and I got a taste of tongue before he recoiled with a look of unbridled horror on his face, as if I'd punched him. "Sorry! Oh God, I'm sorry-"

He shut up when I kissed him and held the back of his head to prevent another retreat. He was trembling like a bird. I scratched my nails across his scalp, teased the tension out of him, let him know it was alright. I wanted this as much as he did.

That broke him. Richard inhaled deeply and kissed me like a man starved for answers and convinced I held every last one. I tasted cigarettes and heat. Gods only knew what he tasted on me.

I tilted his head and trailed my tongue along his jaw line. Richard moaned and bared his throat to me, so I bit him there, and pressed myself solidly against him, let him know exactly how pleased I was to have him. The feeling was mutual. We were hard and aching.

Richard shifted his hips a little, rubbing against my erection. The sensual contact was like electric sparks. It tore the breath from my lungs and made me see stars. I responded by slamming him against the wall and violently taking his mouth. I almost broke his nose. We were making ridiculous sounds - hungry, needy, excited sounds.

I got my hands under his shirt, adjusted my grip, and ripped. Buttons popped off in every direction. There was a noise I didn't recognize, a clink of metal on metal. Richard was fumbling with my belt. I wanted to say something witty, wanted to say he never ceased to surprise me ... but then Richard had a solid hold on me and all higher brain function vanished. I gasped, twitching and hard in his palm, and buried my face in the crook of his neck. I wouldn't last if I looked at him.

"The bed," he said in my ear. I nodded, refusing to meet his gaze. We made an odd couple as we fumbled across the room. We didn't find the bed so much as trip over it. I hit the mattress first and Richard knocked the wind out of me when he landed on my chest.

He apologized for that, then yelped when I bit him. "You apologize too much," I said, but the acid was gone from my voice. I was raw and trembling. We were both trembling. Richard settled his weight against me and kissed me, desperate. We were a mess of hands and teeth. I wanted to undress him further, but being apart from him for even an instant was deeply distressing, as if I'd reached for a handhold on a ladder and only clutched air.

I shoved up against him with fierce urgency, pressed myself solid against the length of him, and he pressed me back into the bed with a sharp movement of his hips. We came together perfectly and the world exploded. The feeling was so intense it almost hurt, and we clung to each other as we spasmed in release. For a moment my heart shuddered and threatened to stop.

Richard choked, dazed, and stared at me in shock. When I ran a thumb over his mouth, he laved it with his tongue, and he jumped when I nipped his earlobe. Our eyes met and we giggled uncontrollably, exhausted and drunk from the other's closeness.

We lay in that bed for a long time, holding each other tight, our clothes disheveled. I'd destroyed Richard's overshirt, which now hung on him in pieces. I wasn't sure, but I thought my belt was missing, and I suddenly realized that I no longer wore a waistcoat or tie. Richard had removed them without me noticing, which said a lot about how quickly the blood flow to my upper extremities had shut off.

Our breath eventually slowed, and drowsiness set in. I felt sticky and not very nice, but my blood was singing in my veins, and I wouldn't have moved for anything.

Richard finally broke the silence with a sigh against my chest. "Um. I wasn't expecting that."

I laughed weakly and tilted his face up to meet my gaze. "Have you never done that before?"

The tips of his ears burned pink. "Not with a guy. I ... I ... no offense, but I'm not a ..."

"Homosexual?"

"F-f-faggot," he stuttered, and he broke out in nervous laughter that quickly dissolved into frantic tears, which only horrified him further. I pulled him back into my embrace then, shushing him and gently carding my fingers through his hair. Richard sobbed. It might have been worrisome under normal circumstances, but he'd had an exhausting day.

When he'd finally gotten a hold of himself, he surprised me by kissing me again, so fiercely and deep that I groaned into his mouth as if mortally wounded. "Sorry," he muttered in a voice roughened by lust and tears.

I shook him by the hair. Not hard, just enough to make him gasp. "You apologize too much," I whispered against his lips.

A few changes happened after this.

First, and most obviously, Richard was cut off from his family. Happily, the university was quick to offer him a full scholarship. (Walt was livid when he heard the news. Richard and I agreed that this was an unexpected bonus.)

Second, we began to spend every spare moment together. He visited me often at the townhouse, where I'd teach him how to cook or we'd play our instruments. He was baffled by how I sneaked past the hall monitors to spend so many nights in his bed. Part of this was due to the simple fact that the monitors were on the lookout for girls, which Richard understood. And part of it was due to being a magickal creature with a gift for slight of hand and other parlour tricks, which Richard wouldn't have understood if I'd told him. Of course, I never did.

Third, and perhaps most subtly of all, Richard blossomed in every facet of his life. Oh, he didn't see it, but I did. Without the shadow of his family's expectations looming over him, Richard threw himself whole hog into his music. He finally learned how to read sheet music and took a class on advanced composition. He was a quick study on the piano, to the surprise and delight of his professors.

He walked taller, without shame of who he was. He was rosy-cheeked, laughed often and loudly, and began befriending his classmates. I daresay this is when Richard finally felt at home in his own skin.

Gods, I loved him.

The next year passed quickly, but not uneventfully. Soon Richard was a junior, and his professors were introducing him to colleagues at the New York Philharmonic with the aim of helping him secure a job upon graduation. He had a meeting once or twice with the President of the University, who remained one of Richard's strongest supporters during his college years.

Richard became more social on campus. As he settled in, he lost a bit of his reputation as a braggart. He still went to drag races and rock concerts, but he began to feel safer around his fellow Princetonians.

The summer before his junior year, I took him to Buenos Aires and Berlin. We stayed at the historic Schlosshotel im Grunewald and went horseback riding in the nearby forest. Richard had never ridden a horse before. He looked ridiculous and adorable.

Alas, a few thorny problems remained.

He never outwardly grieved the loss of his family, though I knew their ostracism nettled him sometimes, especially in the quiet moments when he had a lot of time alone with his thoughts. It was subtle, but I knew it upset him. I was a master at reading his moods.

More troubling was the question of his sexuality. He had never fancied girls, he confessed to me one afternoon as we lay drowsing in my bed after fucking like rabbits. "I tried, really I did," he insisted. "I've known my dad expected me to be a doctor since I was eight years old, and I couldn't even do that right. I thought, if I was going to be a musician, the least I could do was bring home a nice girl and make Pop happy. Maybe it would fix everything else." He chuckled without humour. "I always knew it was pointless, ever since I got a crush on this kid in fifth grade, Tommy Becker. I thought I'd grow out of it. I was in denial."

"And now?" I murmured.

I was holding him close and cradling his throat like a precious thing. His eyes were large, limpid pools, open and raw in the sunlight filtering through the window above our heads. When I ran my thumb over his lips, he closed his eyes with a sigh. His eyelashes were suddenly wet.

"Now I don't know," he whispered hoarsely. "I love you, and that scares the hell out of me. I feel like a freak."

"You are not a freak," I hissed, and Richard ducked his head in embarassment.

The truth was, Richard's desires frightened him - and for good reason, for they made him an even bigger target than they would have today. At the time, same-sex relations were a felony in all 50 states, punishable by imprisonment and hard labour. Homosexuality was considered a mental illness and would not be removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders until 1973.

We were years before the Stonewall Riots, before openly gay politicians like Harvey Milk were being elected to public office, before Matthew Shephard's murder galvanized hate crime legislation. This was 1950s America. The Red Scare had been in full swing for a decade. Anti-communism hysteria had killed many careers and sent innocent people to prison.

Meanwhile, homosexuals were considered criminals and lunatics. The FBI and police departments across the country kept lists of known homosexuals and frequently harassed them and anyone who associated with them. The US post office tracked addresses where material about homosexuality was being mailed. Cities did regular sweeps to clear neighbourhoods and bars of gay people. Many of them disappeared and turned up in mental hospitals. Or prisons. Or medical experiments. Or the bottom of the local river.

To be publicly identified as gay meant humiliation, ostracization, harassment, firing, jail time, and death. It's no exaggeration to say that Richard risked his life every moment he spent with me.

All he had were fellow voices crying out in the wilderness - mostly poets like Allen Ginsberg, who shocked mainstream America with his frank discussions of erotic love, gay and straight alike. Richard clung to those voices like a life raft in a cold, dark sea. His bookshelf overflowed with their works.

A few decades meant nothing to a creature like me, but it was a lifetime for Richard. I ached for him, for his loneliness. I was alone too, but at least I didn't have an entire society hunting me. After all, I had been worshipped in the ancient world.

"You are not a freak," I repeated against his mouth. "Human history is very long and has a weak memory. Men have loved men since time immemorial. They've loved each other while they built cities and conquered continents. Your feelings are not unnatural, nor do they make you any less a man."

He laughed again. I'd known for a long time that he tended to laugh when it was preferable to crying. This was one of those times. I distracted him then with a kiss ... and other, more exhausting activities.

I loved this brilliant, talented, infuriating man. He belonged to me. And while many things have been said about the Goblin King, let it never be said that I don't protect what is mine.

Jimmy fell sick later that year. We only found out through a phone call from Doctor Ellingson's office in Manhattan. The father was brusque and emotional, and I knew right away that it had to be serious for him to break no contact.

I accompanied Richard to the hospital, of course. Jimmy was still functional then. It was only the first of many fits. He was still able to talk, able to work ... able to notice subtleties. Richard and I had made it a habit never to stand too close in public. Hold hands? Never. So I'm not sure what it was, exactly, that tipped him off about us. I would have found Jimmy's perceptiveness impressive if he hadn't been such a pigheaded arsehole hellbent on destroying my sex life.

The father chalked Jimmy's surliness up to his fits. I'm sure they didn't help. As they progressed, and Richard spent more time visiting home, things became strained between the brothers. This confused and upset Richard, who had looked up to Jimmy since they were boys.

The simple truth was that I remained the thorn between them. Jimmy hated my presence. He never said anything to Richard, but he did to me - snide little comments that made it clear he understood the nature of my relationship with his brother. He threatened me once with a knife. Doctor Ellingson thought it had been the schizophrenia talking, and he didn't hold it against me that I broke Jimmy's hand. Personally, I think homophobia had been more at play than mental illness, but I never said anything.

Eventually the fits got so bad that it was decided staying at home like Mrs. Ellingson was out of the question. Jimmy had simply become unmanageable. Thus began the first of many electroshock treatments, and finally the lobotomy that rendered him catatonic.

Richard was inconsolable. He'd just graduated Princeton then and, as expected, won a plum position as the New York Philharmonic's newest violinist. Life was supposed to be grand, but the latest developments with Jimmy had shaken the shrinking family to its core. Now it was just Richard and his father. The mother lived in another reality most days.

I'm sure Richard was thinking of his brother when he asked me one day, "Do you think homosexuality is a disorder? Like schizophrenia, or paedophilia?"

I sighed, dreading this line of questioning. "No."

"How do you know?"

"Because I know."

"But how?"

"Homosexuality has existed in every culture since the birth of man. If it's a mental illness, then humanity has been mad for thousands of years, along with a large number of animal species."

"But do you think-"

"Is this real?" I asked, snatching up his hands, holding them to my chest so he could feel my heartbeat. "Do you think madness would feel this way? Do you think I would be capable of being this happy, if I were mad? How could love this deep be a sickness? How could it be wrong? I would kill anyone who ever tried to hurt you, and we're not mad, so stop worrying about it."

He stared at me, stunned. He probably thought I exaggerated in my promise to protect him, but I didn't. I was serious. I'd killed men before and had no fear of doing it again, especially to protect my family - and Richard was very much my family. I would have ripped the Underground asunder and carpet bombed cities to protect him.

I have few regrets. Does that surprise you? With everything I've done, and the many people I've lost?

I swear it's true. I've seen much and lost much more, but I don't regret many things. Living with regret will kill you, in spirit if not in body.

But sometimes, when all is quiet, I wonder how things would have been different if I'd only taken Richard Underground. The thought fluttered past my mind many times, when I'd watch Richard practicing his violin in the sunny living room of the Princeton townhouse, or when he sat across from me at dinner, laughing openly at my stories. This is a cruel world for men like him. You should take him from it. Bring him home and let him be honoured as the beloved consort of a king.

Or would that have killed him? Driven him to madness and self-harm?

We were long past the days when men believed in magick and faeries. We believed in science now, and the power of the atom. We believed in God too, but not a God who appeared in the flesh for holy rites (except perhaps for the Catholics with their crucifixes and wafers). Even then, the idea of gods who were deeply vested in the well-being of humans was ludicrous to most, and they certainly didn't believe gods could walk down the street. God was an abstract idea, incapable of manifesting in everyday life outside of serendipity and aid provided by invisible angels. Even priests believed that.

I had come to learn that human minds become inflexible after a certain age. Shock can quite literally kill a person. I was very careful with my humans.

"David, you're thinking too much again."

Startled, I glanced up. We were sitting on the veranda of an Amsterdam cafe. Richard sat across from me in a tailored suit. He still liked his leather jackets, but he'd begun to let me dress him up for outings, perhaps to humour me.

He tapped my wine glass. "You said so yourself that you can't get a good Riesling outside of Europe. Well, here you go, buddy. Drink up."

I smiled tightly. "Of course." My name is Jareth. Would you call me that, if I asked? Should I tell you? "What do you think about moving here?"

Richard's wine glass was on its way to his mouth, but he stopped in mid air and gaped at me. "Move? Here? Just up and leave the States?"

"Yes."

"I ... I don't think we can."

"Why not?"

"I have my work. You have your work-"

"I can work from anywhere. You can get a job here. Amsterdam doesn't lack for orchestras."

"My family is in New Jersey," he pleaded. Ah, we'd hit on the real core of the problem. I gathered his hands in mine over the table.

"Amsterdam is one of the most tolerant cities in the world for us," I said gently. "Holland decriminalised homosexuality a century ago. You can walk down the street without being afraid. Look, I'm holding your hands now and no one's looking. No one cares. You'd be happy. I want to see you happy."

"David-"

Jareth.

"-my family's been through so much. I can't leave Jimmy. Not now."

"Jimmy won't know whether you're there or not," I said tactlessly. Richard removed his hands from mine and coldly returned to sipping his wine. "Tch. It's true, Richard. You know I'm right."

Tell him, Jareth. Tell him what you are.

What makes you think he'll come Underground with you? He won't even move to bloody Amsterdam.

Remember Sassouma. You'd rather Richard be ignorant than dead. Say nothing.

So I said nothing. Not that it saved him, in the end.

The next few years were very happy ones for us, which is why the end of our relationship was so traumatic.

We didn't end with a bang. There were no fights, no threats, no theatrics. Until the day we parted, we'd been going to dinner and sharing a bed. The simple truth was this: Richard had grown tired of hiding. He wanted to be normal. And that meant taking a wife.

I'd rather not discuss the breakup. Suffice it to say, I was livid. I like anger; it's far preferable to grief and more comfortable than tears. We've already established than I never cry.

I coped the best way I knew and stayed Underground to focus on my work as Goblin King. Humans left a bad taste in my mouth for a while. When I finally ventured Above again, it was well into the 1960s.

I watched him from afar. I often saw his name mentioned in the papers - mostly articles about his performances in New York, San Francisco, London. There was a wedding announcement concerning him and a Miss Deborah Hershey, a socialite from Boston. His father must have been thrilled. And more articles, in Life and Time, chronicling Richard's ascent. There were record albums, and book deals, and interviews with Mike Wallace. Richard wasn't Elvis, but he was rapidly becoming one of the most beloved classical musicians of the modern era.

I never called on Richard, though he wrote me a number of letters. I shredded them unopened. He even sent a package once, but I refused to accept it.

And then, one day, there was an obituary.

I had to read it three times before the name registered. It didn't make sense. Nothing made sense. Richard was young, not even thirty. He had no health issues ... unless ... I thought of the Ellingson family curse. Schizophrenia. It usually appeared in early adulthood. Had Richard taken ill? Had he hurt himself? I thought of Sassouma. Insanity isn't required to take one's own life.

Obituaries don't mention cause of death. I scoured the papers for other news and found what I was looking for on the front page of an old Star-Ledger. My heart dropped into my stomach when I read the headline: Acclaimed violinist dead in murder, suicide. That darling socialite wife shot Richard in his sleep and turned the gun on herself. He was 27.

A week later, the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan, officially marking the arrival of British rock music on American shores and (some have said) the real start of the 60s. The following years would see the rise of movements for civil rights, gay rights, women's rights. And oh, so many rock musicians. Richard had terrible timing to die when he did and miss all of it.

The police said it was a troubled marriage. I still don't know why she killed him, but I have my suspicions. A wife knows when a husband has lost interest, or never maintained interest in the first place. Did she find his stash of gay pornography? Did he have a boyfriend? Did he tell her it was a sham marriage, and why? Did she take his preferences so personally that she decided to end it all?

Was she prone to violence? Did she often mistreat him?

Or was she just a very sick woman?

Or was it something else?

I don't know. I'll never know. If I had more control over time in this dimension, I would rewind things and find out - or better yet, save him. But I don't, so I try not to dwell on the idea.

I got my hands on the police reports. Goblins may be annoying little buggers, but they make excellent thieves. I learned she shot him in the stomach before putting the gun in her mouth and firing up into her palate and thalamus. The bullet exited immediately from her skull and lodged itself in the ceiling of their bedroom. She died instantly.

Richard was not so lucky. It was a fatal shot, but a slow death. The coroner estimated Richard lived for another eight minutes, but by then the bullet had shattered his spine and punctured his colon. Eight minutes spent knowing he was going to die and there was nothing he could do. He bled out on the bed, afraid and alone.

I couldn't sleep after reading that.

By the time I learned about the murder, I'd already missed the funeral. I called Richard's father, thinking perhaps he would remember me. He did, but not in the way I expected.

"Hello?" It had only been a few years, but Doctor Ellingson sounded as if he'd aged decades.

"Doctor, I'm so sorry," I said. "You may not remember me, but it's David. Richard's friend."

There was a long, pregnant pause and then: "Oh! Yes. Mr. Goodman. Of course I remember you." There was another pause, but this time it was awkward. "I'm afraid you're too late, sir. My son is dead."

I flinched. "Yes, I just heard. I'm sorry."

"Me, too." There was a wet sound on the phone, and I knew the man was silently weeping. "He was a good boy. I thought I'd have more time to share things with him, but I guess I was wrong."

I was standing in the kitchen of my large, empty townhouse and rested my forehead against the refrigerator to close my eyes. I saw Richard for a moment in my memories, laughing and playing his violin with wild abandon. It's how I wanted to remember him forever. "Death certainly has a way of mucking up plans," I replied, because I had no idea what else to say.

"You loved my son, didn't you?"

"Yes. Yes, I did."

"You loved him more than everyone else though, right?"

There was a strange tone in Doctor Ellingson's voice that I didn't understand. It contained a hint of emotion that defied my comprehension. "I suppose you could say that," I said carefully.

Doctor Ellingson sniffed. "Listen, Mr. Goodman, we don't know each other well, but I saw the way you looked at each other, and I know Richard adored you. You were the person he chose to have in his life. I didn't understand it, and I still don't, but I know you made him happy, and I'm sorry he didn't keep you. I'm so sorry."

Not as clueless as I thought. I couldn't think of anything to say. I was struck dumb.

The moment stretched until it became uncomfortable, and we finally said muted apologies and hung up.

Justice may be slow, but it always comes. For Richard, justice came not in a courtroom, for his killer was dead. Nor did it arrive with pomp and fireworks. It arrived quietly in a cemetery. Doctor Ellingson had buried Richard on a hill overlooking a lake near Princeton's campus. All told, it was very pretty.

I found Walt there, staring at the grave with his hands in his pockets. He jumped ten feet in the air when he turned around and saw me sitting on a bench. I used to find that effect hilarious when it happened to Richard, and I felt renewed anger and grief that I'd never experience that again with him.

"Hullo Walt," I said quietly.

Walt clutched his chest and shook his head. "David! Jesus Christ, you almost gave me a heart attack. It's been a while. You-" He squinted at me. "-you haven't aged a day."

"Ah, but you have. How old are you now? Sixty? Have you found a girlfriend yet? You've been alone a long time, haven't you?"

This stunned him. "Who the hell do you think you are, you son of a bitch?"

I continued as if he hadn't said anything. "I admit, I didn't understand it for a long time. He's a widower, I thought. He's got his work at the university, I thought. But then I wondered if it was something else." I made a movement with my hands, as if balancing a slinky or weighing the contents of a scale. "Did you really miss your wife, or was your heart taken elsewhere ... along with other, more interesting regions of your anatomy?"

Walt turned white. It was quite a new experience. Usually he was all bluster and self-righteous frothing at the mouth. Finally he said in a strangled whisper, "I don't know what you're talking about, or who you've been talking to, but this conversation is over."

"But my dear Walt, we've just started!" I sang, springing up from my seat and suddenly rolling a crystal ball between my hands.

The man startled. "What is that?"

"This? It's a crystal. Nothing more. But if you turn it this way and look into it, it will show you your dreams."

Walt watched in mute fascination ... and then recoiled. I might as well have offered him a snake. "No!" he shouted, horrified at what he'd seen within.

"Oh, let's not mince words, Walt. You have very kinky thoughts, and they often involve young men under your charge. But they're only dreams, are they not? You've never acted upon them, correct?"

We stared at each other.

"Did you interfere with him?" I asked softly. Many people mistake a soft voice for calm. This is a mistake. A soft voice can mean I'm two steps away from blind rage and breaking bone.

Walt flinched. "I don't know who you're talking-"

"DON'T!-" I roared, "-lie to me. I shall be most displeased if you lie." At this point, I was two inches from Walt's nose. The ground shook a little at my words, and Walt's hands had flown up to cover his head. "You hated Richard, despised him. For years, I thought it was because you were jealous, because he was willful, but it went far deeper than that, didn't it? You wanted him, and it enraged you to have this handsome young man so close and be unable to ... have him."

I grabbed Walt's chin, forced him to look me in the eye. "Or did you? Did you ... try something? One day, perhaps, in your office, when the door was shut and he was at your mercy? Was that why he hated and feared you so much? He was never the same around you after that day, when he and I met outside your office. Richard was a loudmouthed brat with you before, but that was the day everything changed. After that he'd tremble whenever you walked into the room. Why? What did you do to him, Walt? Why was he suddenly so afraid of you? Why did he fear his own desires, years later?"

Walt was shaking. I could feel it in his limbs. I could feel it in his pulse, where my fingers had come to rest against his throat. "You can't prove anything," he said with a smile. The bastard smiled at me.

I hissed in a breath. "Proof? Who has need of proof? Proof is for human laws, and human courts, and human judges. No, I need not prove anything. My suspicions are enough."

I withdrew my hand. Walt mistook it for a retreat. He stood taller. Stupidity does wonders for bravado. "I always knew there was something weird about you. You were queer for that boy. I knew it! I'll see to it you never step foot on campus again. No trustee will ever take your calls. You're finished."

"Finished? Yes, we're quite finished here." Suddenly my human guise was gone. I wore full black armour. The sun disappeared overhead, and the sky churned grey. Walt did a double take. He looked like a man whose world had just fallen down and his mind was scrambling to pick up the pieces.

"What?" he said. "I don't ..."

The look on his face was one of mounting terror. I'd peeled away every mask and let him see my true form. The only other humans to do that had been my lover who killed herself shortly thereafter, six centuries earlier. Or the humans who ran my Labyrinth, and they were never quite right in the head again, even if they made it home.

"Heath Walton," I said, "there's enough reason for me to kill you right now. I'd uncoil your intestines across this lawn and let the crows pick your corpse clean. But that's too tidy an end for a villain such as yourself. Richard suffered for years, and I think it fitting you should feel the same, don't you?"

Walt shook his head, struck dumb. He was clearly moving into shock.

"I'm the gatekeeper who holds fast the door to the Nightmare Realms. Sometimes people ... accidentally find themselves on the other side of that door, and I have to go fish them out. Otherwise they go mad." I waved a finger in his face. "Since you love to dream, I condemn you to a lifetime of dreams. You will go home right now and go to bed, and you will never wake up. You will have frightful nightmares, and every time you think you're waking up in relief, you will only wake up into another nightmare. There will be no respite, and no one will come to save you. You will live out the rest of your life, which is at least another twenty years, locked in your own mind until the day you die. Goodbye, Walt."

The man's face was expressionless. At my final instructions, he slowly walked down the hill to the little side street where his car was parked.

Heath Walton did indeed go to sleep that day and never woke up. He died in 1989 in a mental hospital in upstate New York.

They say that if you can remember the 60s, you weren't really there. My memory is a bit of a blank slate between 1964 and 1978. I know I drank, smoked, snorted, licked, sucked and fucked my way through more cities than I can count. I befriended many musicians. I played at concerts. I frequented nightclubs. I met famous people, including one strange fellow from Brixton who fancied himself a singer and a space alien. If anyone asked, I would have told them I was out to have a good time. But the truth is I was grieving.

Fortunately, no one ever asked.

I suppose the turning point came after one night in Studio 54. I awoke in a bed with a stranger, my nose clogged with blood and cocaine, without any idea who or where I was.

Someone stared at me from across the room, a villainous man with a cadaverous face that scared the piss out of me. It took a beat to realize I was looking at my reflection in a cracked mirror over the vanity, and I felt ashamed and disgusted.

I took a shower, found clean clothes, and slapped some sense into myself. It was years since I'd been to Princeton, but I went there that afternoon and laid flowers on Richard's grave. I told him that I loved him, and I said goodbye.

I haven't been back since.

Give me the child. Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City ...

If you think I'm going to give up my free will to another master, you're not only delusional, you clearly haven't been paying attention to a single thing I've said all week.

Even now you use my name and speak to me as an equal, as if you were unafraid. I must tell you, I find it delightfully refreshing from the usual prostrating I get from humans.

You can't rule everybody through fear, Your Majesty.

When I want direction on how to rule my kingdom, I'll be sure to ask.

Where can I drop you off ... Jareth?

You're going to be waiting a long time, Your Majesty.

When mortals learn of my existence, they tend to grovel. Some go mad. Others head right into denial. Precious few have accepted the truth (mostly writers and artists), but they are few and far between. All have feared me.

That Sarah has defied all of this is a constant source of aggravation and fascination to me. Even Richard never knew the truth. Sassouma killed herself over it. Yet here we have Sarah, a grown woman who still believes in faeries and magicians, who doesn't fall apart when the world around her does, who laid low a god and his kingdom when she was barely fifteen.

I can't make heads or tails of it. None of it makes sense. I try to fit the pieces together in my mind, and I can't. She neither fears nor needs me, yet there's something about me that draws her back again and again. I can feel it in our interactions. We are kindred. Anima and animus. Allies in a world that has forgotten magick and imagination.

She finds me a puzzle, too. I can see it in her eyes. I sense cynicism, curiosity and respect. I am a villain, but she's not afraid. I am a god, but she doesn't kneel. I am a colleague, a perplexing accomplice, a font of wisdom and advice. Some may call our relationship a wary alliance, or even a fledgling friendship. Together we are strangers in a strange land. I cannot remember the last time a human and I shared equal footing or understood each other to the degree we do. She even knows my name and shares my power, and so far it hasn't killed her.

The woman is unflappable. I can't figure her out, but I want to, even if I'll only have a few decades before she's taken from me.

All I have to do is make Sarah love me. I'm confident I can do this. For after all, my will is as strong as hers, and my kingdom as great.

Fae weddings are not small affairs. They can last days, weeks. Tiberius and Filomena wed in late summer, months after Sarah has begun her volatile apprenticeship with Muriel. When the day arrives for the wedding, I attend with a small entourage overseen by Cornelius. A king can never travel alone, not to a party this size. There are always things to be done for a king.

When I tire of the dancing and feasting, I retreat to a small grassy hill overlooking the festivities. The stars have come out, though the valley remains well lit by lamps and pyres. I lie back in the grass and watch the stars. I created them, billions of years ago, and they still look beautiful. I'm rather proud of my work.

Soon Tiberius finds me, huffing and puffing his way up the hill.

I laugh at him. "You're drunk."

He tries to sit beside me, but he falls down instead. "Not enough. I'd like to remember my wedding. Say, why didn't you bring your new love? I've wanted to meet her."

My face goes very still. "You're very presumptuous."

"You needn't lie to me. You're in love."

"You're imagining things."

"Bullshit. I could tell at my last party. You're hooked."

"Tch."

"She must be very beautiful."

"You're very confident it's a woman."

"I wasn't actually, I only guessed and you confirmed it."

"I didn't confirm anything."

"Jareth," Tiberius says as if speaking to a child, "of course you did. Your eyes gave you away. You have a terrible poker face."

"She doesn't love me yet."

Tiberius gives me a sad smile. "If she doesn't love you, let her go. This is eating you alive."

"Just like you would have let Filomena go if she told you to sod off?"

He has the nerve to look hurt. "If Filomena had rejected me, of course it would have hurt, but I would have moved on. There are more fish in the sea for me. I never understood why you never grasped that concept for yourself."

How dare he. He doesn't know. He hasn't a clue what I've gone through, how I've suffered. "No," I snapped. "No! Sarah is mine!"

Tiberius is tight lipped and pale, then, apologizing profusely and bowing as he retreats. No longer my friend but a subservient lord who knows he's overstepped a boundary. I sit there for a while longer, smoldering. I could decimate a world with my anger. Sarah is mine. How can he not understand that?

How can't she?

By the time I rejoin the party, the band's struck up a lively waltz, and suddenly there's a hand on my arm. Tiberius, with a proper hangdog look on his face. "Gwyneth is here," he hisses apologetically. "I had to invite her. She's royalty."

I grit my teeth. "Don't worry, Tiberius. I was the one who had to seduce a woman with control issues."

He vanishes into the crowd again. I want to follow but I can't, because someone's staying my hand. It's Gwyneth of course. She has deep set eyes and a beautiful but belligerent mouth.

"Jareth," she says, "I've missed you."

"Gwyneth, it's been a while."

"Yes, because you haven't called on me!"

I shake my head. "I told you, I wasn't interested."

She stares at me in unabashed amazement. "I don't understand you. Men have gone to war for my hand. They've killed each other for me. Any man would be thrilled to be picked by me and you ... you really don't care. What's wrong with you?"

"Your Majesty, now isn't the time or place for this discussion." Even I can hear the plea in my voice. Am I begging? Hell yes, the Goblin King is begging. Wonderful.

Gwyneth flinches as if I've slapped her. "No, that's not fair!" she hisses. "You were mine!"

I can't help it. I burst out laughing.

It's a terrible, deep, belly laugh meant to terrify children and wither crops. It's wicked and mocking and wild. It even frightened Sarah, once, when she was fifteen.

The wind pauses in its rustle of the treetops. The stars stop twinkling. The music screeches to a halt and everyone stares in confusion and fear. Laughter from the Goblin King? The Bogeyman? Surely something is wrong and someone is about to die a most ignoble death. I sense Tiberius panicking nearby. This has never happened at one of his parties.

"Thank you," I say sincerely. "I understand now."

"But you were," Gwyneth insists on the cusp of angry tears.

I cradle her face in my hands and whisper in her ear with infinite tenderness, "No, my dear, I'm not." Kindly, lovingly, but firmly. I am no one's anything. I am only myself. I am an entire universe unto myself.

Gwyneth recoils as if I've slapped her and flees into the surprised crowd. Fortunately, being a king means understanding crowd control. "Well?" I ask the assembled with a flourish. "Play on."

The music swells up again, and the people return to dancing with a few furtive glances and no real protest. Tiberius fights his way through, Filomena on his arm. She looks radiant. He looks like his head's about to fly off his shoulders like a rocket from a launching pad.

"What did you do?" he demands. "What did you say to her? Her brothers are going to hear about this. They're going to kill me. What ... wait, where are you going?"

I'm dropping my ridiculous hat and loosing the tie at my neck. With a flash of glitter, my clothes melt into fitted jeans and a T-shirt. I look respectably human, if a little crooked. "Tiberius, do you remember all the times when you made thinly veiled allusions to me being an idiot?"

"Uh-"

"I've been an idiot. I apologize. Don't let it go to your head."

"Jareth-"

"I've overstayed my welcome," I say simply, dusting off my drab human clothing of glitter. "You look wonderful, my dear," I tell Filomena, sweeping up her hand for a kiss. "My sincere congratulations on this, most joyous of days. I'm sorry I ruined your wedding."

"Jareth-!"

Filomena laughs. "It's been a pleasure hosting you, Your Majesty. You didn't ruin anything."

I wink at her with a conspirator's eye. "Be careful with him. Your new husband's a troublemaker, you know."

"Because of you, Jareth!"

"Tibby, sweetheart, please calm down ..."

I touch a gloved hand to my forehead in a mock salute and vanish with a flurry of sparks. I have a gift for Tiberius and Filomena, which Cornelius will deliver to them minutes after my exit. It's a little box made from crystal that will open for no one but its owners. Inside, they will find a key to the front door of a villa in Santorini, which I've secured for their honeymoon.

The gift is partly to celebrate their union and partly to thank Tiberius for putting up with me. It's hard to find good friends who will tell a king when he's being an arse.

Few experiences can rival the loss of a loved one in its barbarity, but the death of a dream comes close. It is excruciating, nearly to the point of stopping your heart. Dreams mean hope and creativity and pleasure. I should know, since I traffic in them. Surprisingly, I don't have many dreams of my own, but the ones I do have are potent and can keep me going for eons.

Here is my dilemma: I can accept that Sarah will live out her life in the mortal world and die in a few years, or I can ignore her wishes and take her Underground to enjoy what time she has with me.

If I do the former, she'll probably marry some unimaginative idiot who won't appreciate her. I bet he'll be an accountant, or some equally useless profession where they tally sums and compare business cards in the Wall Street version of a dick-measuring contest. He'll probably be named something atrocious like Kevin. Sarah will have to hide her magick, and whisper bedtime stories to her children, who will one day grow up to stop believing in them. Then Sarah will have to pretend she no longer believes in fairytales or else her own family will call her an eccentric old woman.

If I do the latter, she'd never forgive me. And despite my earlier opinion that I could make her happy even after stealing her from the world, I've recently come to the aggravating conclusion that no one can truly make anyone happy unless that person was happy to begin with. I loved Richard, and I love Sarah, but pinning my hopes on external forces only killed me in spirit, even if it couldn't kill me in body.

My situation isn't fair, but life rarely is. Sarah is the first human I've loved who knows what I am, AND doesn't fear me, AND knows my true name, AND defeated me twice, AND even knows some magick herself ... but she doesn't feel particularly inclined to follow me anywhere, let alone love me back.

Ain't that a kick in the head, as Dean Martin would say.

It's not hard to find Sarah in her dreams. She's currently in a strange, backward little dimension where you don't often find humans, even the oddball ones like Richard. But I suppose Sarah's time in the Labyrinth rubbed off on her more than either of us noticed.

She's wearing a hoodie, but I'd recognize that figure anywhere and try not to startle her too much with my sudden appearance at her side. "Not how I'd normally picture my Labyrinth," I say, "but dreams can be most strange, I suppose. I like the purple you've chosen."

Sarah startles anyway. "What the-! Oh. It's you. How'd you find me in my dreams?"

"Tsk. I'm made of dreamstuff, and I've known your dreams since you were very small. Have some faith in me."

We turn to stare out over this dream version of the Underground. "It looks different every time I come here," she murmurs. "I followed the roots of the Labyrinth to this place. It looks like an inversion of the real place."

"The Labyrinth is even more beautiful in physical life. Especially in the fall. It loses the beige and all the trees turn gold and glittery. Sarah," I say very earnestly, "are you enjoying your wish?"

She bites her lip. "Um, hard to say. Some days I want to kill Muriel, or myself. But I can't imagine anything different. It's ... really interesting. I can't explain it. It's like there's this entire world's been hiding from me my whole life, and I only saw snippets of it when I was fifteen. Now I'm finally peeling back the curtain. Yeah, I'm enjoying it."

Sarah has a tendency to speak eagerly with her hands when she's particularly worked up about something. When she does that, her entire being brightens. And in that moment, the epiphany strikes: there is a third option. I can't take her, and I can't abandon her, and yet my life is so much more interesting with her in it. I want her in whatever capacity I can have her. Friend? Ally? Fine. That will suffice. It must suffice. I have no other choice. The other options are unthinkable.

I sigh. "Good. I have a request."

Sarah looks askance at me.

"If something were to ever happen to me," I continue, "the Underground will need a guardian. Someone with a strong imagination, and a deep connection to the place. I hope, if the need ever arises, you would care for my kingdom in my absence."

Sarah grabs me roughly by the arm. "Are you in trouble?" she demands. Hero voice.

"I believe you're manhandling me. It's rather pleasant."

"Jareth," she snaps, shaking me a little. "Be serious for a second. Is something wrong?"

I suddenly feel very tired and very old. "Sarah, I have been alive for a long time. I have never had an ally, particularly a human, who might actually be capable of caring for my kingdom. Do you think you could do it, if you needed to?"

Sarah narrows her eyes. "How do I know this isn't a trick to steal me away? You said so yourself you'd take me in a heartbeat, given the chance."

Oh, bother. "There has long been a lack of trust in this friendship - entirely my fault. I intend to remedy that. Yes," I insist at her startled look, "friendship. Does that surprise you?"

"I trust you more than most people," Sarah says wearily, "but don't push your luck, Goblin King."

I bark a laugh. "Sarah, if you ever find yourself an unwilling captive anywhere, including my beloved Underground, I would not rest until you were free to go wherever you wished. And that's a pledge made honestly and true, upon my crown."

If anything, Sarah looks even more worried. "Oh my God. It must be really, really bad."

"Yes," I say sadly, "it probably is." She flinches as I suddenly lean in. "Shh, it's alright. It isn't that type of kiss."

And I kiss her gently between the eyes.

To be continued.