Sarah had left the hedge maze while in the midst of her memories and reflections. After that came the forest, deep and dark and wild. The last time she'd been in the Labyrinth, the forest had led her right up to the gates of the goblin city—via the enormous trash heap piled outside them. This time, she kept to the edges of the forest, following half-familiar paths and checking her location every time she could get a clear sight-line on the castle in the distant. At least there weren't any Fireys around to try taking off her head.
Unfortunately, the Bog of Eternal Stench was still within the forest. Its rancid odor assaulted her nostrils long before she came anywhere near it, and Sarah found herself coughing and gagging. At fifteen, it had just been an awful stink, somewhere between raw sewage and rotten garbage. It still smelled like that, but now the horrible corruption of death arose from it as well. As if that weren't enough, there were overtones of burning plastic that made her nauseous, her head pounding. The fumes might actually be toxic this time around, Sarah realized, and covered her mouth with her sleeve. That made breathing a bit easier, but she needed to get away from the noxious bog, and soon.
Up ahead, she saw a break in the gnarled and moss-covered trees. Sarah moved toward it, coming out on the top of a cliff. Below was the bog, its stench wafting up to her. She could see the forest rising toward the walls of the Goblin City on the other side of the ravine the bog ran through. Her way was across, and luckily for her, there was a bridge.
She wished for Sir Didymus again, even wished for the rickety bridge that had stood for a thousand years … until she put her feet on it, whereupon it collapsed under her, and only Ludo had saved her from a fate worse than stench. Because this bridge was a single, clean sweep of stone, arcing high up over the bog, without any sort of handrails or even a curb. The edge just dropped straight off into space, and though right here it was as wide as the street she'd grown up on, it narrowed as it rose.
Sarah wasn't afraid of heights. She just had a healthy respect for them. Rooftop parties didn't bother her, but she wasn't one of the daredevil idiots sitting on the very edge of the parapet, feet swinging over a many-storied drop. For the same reason, she had never gotten into bungee jumping or sky-diving or anything else that involved tempting gravity. And this bridge, with its conspicuous lack of any kind of failsafe, was exactly the sort of thing she avoided.
She heard the faintest rustling click, and turned to see a damned barn owl perched on one of the bridge's stone piers. "I know that's you," Sarah said. "And even if it isn't, you've got about thirty seconds before I chuck another rock at you, so beat it, birdbrain."
The owl fluffed itself and hopped off the stone, only to land as Jareth. "Poor form, Sarah. Your insults usually have more originality."
"Oh, go gloat somewhere else," she snarled at him. Hell, she was almost blushing just looking at the man, but Sarah would be damned if she'd outright ask any of the questions she was refusing to let plague her confused mind.
"Do not tell me that you survived all the hazards so far only to be defeated by a bridge," Jareth said, glancing at it. "A pity you cannot fly."
She attempted to stomp past him and glare at the bridge as if had personally offended her. Just sizing it up, not hesitating at all. "Well, we can't all be you. For which anybody trying to buy eyeliner around here is probably pretty glad."
"At least that one shows some effort," Jareth remarked. "Although, I'm not sure why you think I should be offended. I do not subscribe to any of your human norms of behavior and appearance."
"Tell me about it," she scoffed, still staring at the bridge.
He laughed, that amused little chuckle that made her long to kick him square in the solar plexus. "Since you ask … if you're trying to mock my taste in personal adornments, Sarah, I would have to say that I've never heard any complaints."
"Good to know," she muttered, refusing to look at him. She'd certainly never minded a man in guy-liner, especially not Jareth.
"And if you were trying to challenge my conformance to your species' laughably narrow and artificially-derived definition of masculinity, well…" The chuckle deepened, but she had the odd sense that for once it wasn't just her that he found so funny. "You studied some history, did you not? Heeled shoes, wigs, and cosmetics were all men's fashions long before women wore them. Your male contemporaries are far too restrictive in their tastes, too paranoid of seeming unmanly."
"Yeah, well, it's not every guy who can rock eyeshadow, gloves, boots, and riding breeches," Sarah shot back, and immediately winced. She'd handed him an opening to brag about masculinity by mentioning the pants, and his 'royal prerogative' was not something she needed to think about right then.
To her everlasting shock, he didn't rise to the bait. "Of course not. They are all terrified that they might be mistaken for women. Which, for them, is the worst of all possible fates. Idiots, the lot of them."
Sarah finally looked at him, curious despite herself. "I never said a percentage of them weren't Cro-Magnon morons."
His tone was dead serious. "And you, my fierce Sarah, could never be happy with a man who views the idea of being female with horror. You know you are not an inferior copy engendered from some man's rib and made to serve him."
"Not real good at the serving thing, as you've noticed," she said flippantly. "And again. Not your Sarah."
He didn't argue, for once. "Men fear you."
Her head whipped around to glare at him. "What?"
"You, as in women in general. But also you, specifically." Jareth moved toward her, regarding her thoughtfully. "You already know that, do you not? Men fear what they don't understand, and belittle it to make it seem less terrifying. And I regret to inform you, that even among my kind, women are often beyond our understanding. We, at least, know to treasure our women. Your kind could use a reminder that they once worshipped goddesses. But you, Sarah, men fear you because they realize you do not need them. You are no man's servant or slave."
Sarah's mind echoed back on his last word. The earnest, desperate tone of his last joust. I ask for so little. Just let me rule you and you can have everything that you want. Just fear me. Love me. Do as I say, and I shall be your slave.
Now wasn't the time to be haunted by past deeds. She felt adrift, knowing there had to be an angle in this somewhere, but she couldn't figure out how it worked to his advantage. Also, she tended to think of faery kings are being fairly medieval, and the fact that he was stating progressive feminist ideas as self-evident fact had thrown her off. It didn't help that she was uncomfortably reminded of Barton, who had complained more than once that he felt superfluous.
Sarah's refuge lay in sarcasm, always. "Exactly. So quit with the 'my Sarah' bullshit, all right?"
He only smiled, leaning against the bridge pier and regarding her much too closely. "I seem to recall that you did not mind it so much, once upon a time."
A flash of what she had told herself was dream roared to life in her mind. A shudder, high and startled, her head thrown back into the pillows as her eyes rolled up. Her own voice, rough and needy, 'Please, please now.' He moved then, drawing a moan from low in her throat this time, and she felt him catch her hips. ' My Sarah', was a purr with a trace of a growl against her loose hair, against her ear before he rolled her astride him. 'My Sarah, my Sarah, my queen'.
She could have screamed with frustration at her mind's sudden entirely-inappropriate recall; why couldn't she just hammer the lid on all of that now that she'd unlatched Pandora's Box? Segue to the damned dreams again. He had to mention it, the bastard. I should've known. "All right, look," she said, rounding on him with an uneasy mix of anger and reluctant honesty. "What I said, and did, in dreams? It doesn't count here and now, you got that? Even if you were watching like your own personal voyeuristic heaven, even if you were actually there, it doesn't mean I'm gonna fall down at your feet. You took the child, Jareth. And I don't forgive you for that."
"Have I given you the impression that I sought your forgiveness?" he asked silkily, but a storm of opalescence was brewing in those mismatched eyes, and it began to creep into his tone as he talked. "After your dreams haunted me for years? Not that they were not most enchanting, Sarah, but I do, in fact, have a kingdom to run. It sometimes, nay, often requires my full attention, which over the years has been distracted by you."
Heart pounding as he got too close to the truth, she raised her chin defiantly. "Not in the last five." And immediately hated herself for her quick temper and quicker tongue.
"Ah, yes. That." Instead of disappearing on her, Jareth leaned closer into her personal space. "You inspire treason among my subjects, lay waste to my city, wreck parts of my castle, break my own magic, and then have the audacity to call out to me in dreams, often at the most inopportune times, for years. And then, when at last we'd reached some sort of understanding, you locked me out."
Sarah flinched at his tone, and hated herself for it. And, just like that, it was out there. There was relief and sadness and longing and self-righteous anger wrapped within those words finally, finally spoken. She had known it was going to come to this. He likely had, too. Be it dream or reality, it had been years of her life. Ones she had forced herself to willfully forget to go on, to become something more than those around her had expected.
Blue blue caravan/Won't you drive away all of these tears/For my true love is a man/
That I haven't seen in years…
Even now, with the lies between them shattered, Sarah could feel the coldness of that snowy night on her skin. It had been a casual first date with an attractive contact, Aaron, at a new little coffee house near the office that played live music some nights. He had tossed off the idea as he was leaving her office on a Friday night, in celebration of a successful partnership on a case he'd helped close. Though she didn't generally mix her work and her private life, she'd laughed and agreed when he'd stumbled over the words. Her acceptance had been her attempt to try to make her days more solid and grounded than her nights. Maybe getting out of her own head for a while would do her some good.
And it had been. There had been no real chemistry, for which she had been perversely relieved, but there had been laughter and good company. On a night like that, it was good to not be alone in her little apartment. Until the band that had been playing that night struck up for their second set. It had been pleasant background noise, the singer's voice beautiful and soothing, and it still was even as the lyrics of this new song captured her attention and changed her life irrevocably.