"Silly child," Jareth said fondly when he entered the room to check on her several hours later. He smiled, but the gesture was filled with sadness. He gazed down at her sleeping form, and the questions he had not asked her before now rose to his lips. "I loved you with everything I had," he whispered to her. "Sarah, you could have been a queen if you so chose, and I thought you would choose. Your world is this world, not Aboveground. Why couldn't you see that?"
She was too young, the soft voice inside his head said. Jareth pretended to ignore it.
"Sweet Sarah," he whispered. "Who was he? Did you see yourself in his eyes? What was it about him that pierced that shell you built around yourself? What made you trust this mortal when all the others you cast away?" He reached down and pulled a strand of hair away from her face, the one contact he allowed himself. "Sarah. Where is he now?"
The sleeping girl didn't answer the questions, and the king of the goblins watched her for a long moment. "You called me once when your heart yearned for adventure and your father's new son was filling your vision with jealousy. You called me a second time when your heart yearned to stop working, to allow you to sleep. To sleep. I can't let you do that; can't let you silence your heart. I can't live within you, and your daughter can't live without you."
He left but returned within moments, this time bearing in his arms the tiny baby, the infant Sarah had tried to give up. He stared down at her, how she slept with an arm curled protectively around the stuffed bear he had swiped from Toby to give her. Smiling with a hint of his old wickedness, he pulled the toy out of her sleeping arms and replaced it with the nameless little girl. Sarah, too deep in sleep to notice the difference, adjusted her arm around the child and sighed softly. Jareth set the bear against the footboard of the bed and pulled up a chair, prepared to watch as Sarah slept. The three humanoids and one little stuffed bear continued through the morning like that, two sleeping, two watching, until the soft humming chimes of the castle's clocks began striking noon.
*****
The sound woke Sarah, though it did not seem to disturb the baby nestled in her arms. She nuzzled the pillow, blinked several times, and only then did she realize that she no longer held a stuffed toy. She stared down at the sleeping infant for several seconds, seconds that stretched into the far side of tomorrow with their apparent length. Her eyes took on a glazed look. She wet her lips, took a shaky breath, and though her eyes did not travel away from the baby her words were for Jareth's ears.
"Dear God, what have you done?"
He didn't answer, and for a long time nobody moved. Jareth held his breath, waiting to see what Sarah's reaction would be. He didn't think she could stare at that sleeping baby and push it away again, deny her gut instinct to nurture the little girl. But he had pushed her perilously close to breakdown many times this day…perhaps too many times. He winced inwardly, but knew it had to be done. For the sake of the two mortal hearts, it had to be done.
It was the nameless infant herself who finally broke the impasse. She moved in her sleep, one tiny fist moving up to rub her eye, her little knees bending and her feet kicking at the air. Sarah moved one hand as if in a dream, touched two fingertips to one tiny, socked foot, and in that one motion Jareth saw that there was nothing more to fear in regard to the child's abandonment.
"Damn you, Jareth."
The words were quiet, but the meaning behind them quite clear. Jareth sighed, not really sure how she'd known he was in the room, and rose. He strode over to the bed and touched her hair again, cradling his hand over the crown of her silky, dark head. "Sarah, it had to be done. You cannot simply abandon her. This isn't a game anymore."
She looked up at him, killing pain in her eyes. "It wasn't a game to begin with! I didn't want this!"
He knelt next to the bed so they were eye-to-eye, and he forced his face into the icy mask. The dangerous Goblin King. The way Sarah liked it; the way she expected him to be. "Sarah, you cannot sit there and tell me you didn't know the consequences of your actions."
She closed her eyes and shook her head, but it was more in refusal of his words than refusal of their meaning.
Jareth let her retreat into herself for several seconds before he again forced her out of her shell. "Who was he?"
Eyes squeezed tight, Sarah visibly fought back a sob. She shook her head again, violently.
"Why won't you tell me?" Jareth continued to question. "Afraid? I am no more here to set your Aboveground societal standards on you than I am to steal away that child."
Her eyes flashed open again, hot amber uncooled by the characteristic green. "Why not? Why wouldn't you take this child, why couldn't you have just left it at that? Why don't you want her?"
"No." Jareth shook his head, ice-cold eyes staring into hers. "No, the question is not why I did not want her. The question is why you, her mother, wouldn't want her. Why not, Sarah? What pain has this innocent child caused you?"
She tried to shake her head again, but Jareth caught her cheeks in his hands and he forced her to continue to look at him. "No more hiding, Sarah. The truth this time. What will it cost you to admit to me the truth?"
"My sanity," she whispered, deadly serious.
They sat that way for a long moment, until one of Sarah's tears found its way to the Goblin King's hand still holding her face. He blinked and pulled his hand away from her skin, but his eyes didn't move from hers. When his touch receded, Sarah took a big breath and began to speak.
"I've told nobody, Goblin King. Not my father, not my stepmother, not the counselor at school who tried to make me talk. They think what they like. Even if I told the truth they would not believe it. So why risk what little good sense I have left in drudging up the past?"
Jareth reached toward her again and she tensed. He ignored it, placing his hand very gently on her shoulder. She shook it off, in her eyes a warning that spoke volumes more than she meant it to. Jareth decided to speak anyway. "You have to face it sometime, child. Maybe not today—I will not force you to speak of it today. But the past will always haunt you until you face the wounds and let them heal. They can't do it on their own."
Sarah pulled her gaze away from his and dropped it to the floor. "Leave me alone."
The king of the goblins stood, then, weary of constantly changing his persona to fit her flighty needs. But he touched her hair one last time, nodded once, and stepped away from the bed. "I'll leave you and the child for now, then. But Sarah, you will talk to me sometime, when you are better rested and healed. I know you don't think so right now, but I am not your enemy. I never really was; you just wanted to believe so."
"I don't know what to believe," she admitted quietly. "I need time. Time to think, time to heal."
Jareth smiled. "Then time you shall have. But hear me—take care of the child. I will send servants to assist you, if you so desire, but she is yours. No matter what pain lies in her begetting, she is innocent of that and she deserves a mother. You."
With that he disappeared completely. There was no puff of smoke, no mask of glitter—he simply was not there between one blink and the next. Sarah sighed, shook her head, and lay back down. She ran trembling fingers over the infant's body, touched her soft skin and tightly clenched fists. Sarah leaned down and experimentally placed a gentle kiss on the infant's forehead. Warm skin, the smell of powder and milk. So tiny…
"You're really not so scary," Sarah whispered. "How could something as small as you be frightening?" Then she shook her head again. "We're in such a mess, little one. You wouldn't believe it."
*****
True to his word, Jareth sent a human servant in to check on Sarah less than an hour after he left her. She pushed the door open and bustled over to the bed in such a no-nonsense way that Sarah didn't quite know what had hit her.
"Who—who are you?" she stuttered as she felt her arm grasped and her body half-lifted from the bed as the woman urged her up.
"Hello, m'lady. It's far too late in the day to still be a-bed. Now, we'll just plop you in a bath, let you soak a bit, and get you settled somewhere more fitting to lounge." She smiled, but it was obvious that she was doing her job as she herded Sarah into the adjoining bathroom and turned on the bathtub faucets. The bubbles that foamed up with the clear water smelled of violets.
Sarah took a moment to study her assailant as they waited for the tub to fill. The woman was tall and, while not round, was definitely heavy-set. She moved with the practiced grace of one who knows exactly what she is about. It was not like Jareth's cat-like, dancing, dangerous grace. He had the elegance of quicksilver, of moonlight, of birds and felines. This woman was more like a workhorse or a dog, something big and ungainly that knew its job and did it well. She had light hair, somewhere between blond and brown, and it lay in dull lines around her shoulders. She wore a white cap, a wine-colored dress, and sturdy shoes. The ease with which she managed Sarah made the new mother wonder if this woman had children of her own.
Before she knew what had happened, Sarah found herself in the bathtub, and the woman was in the process of shoving Sarah's jeans down the laundry chute with ill-disguised distaste. Sarah didn't much like them herself—they'd been maternity wear that she'd trimmed down for after the baby was born, for the few weeks before she'd be able to wear regular clothes again.
Just as Sarah was about to ask the woman her name, she heard a faint cry from the adjoining bedroom. The maid swooped in like someone on a mission and returned with the newborn infant clasped in her arms. "Now then," she said, handing the child to Sarah, "she's hungry. And rightly so; her last meal was a while ago. Had to feed her on bottles. But now that you're here, we can dispense with that silliness."
Jealousy, indignance, and a sense of panic welled up in Sarah at about the same time. Jealousy that this woman had been caring for her child—and where had that come from, Sarah wondered? Indignance that she was referred to as a provider of nourishment like some old cow, and panic that this strange woman expected her to breast-feed this child, the child she hadn't wanted to have and was now stuck with.
"But—" Sarah started. The crying had not ceased, and Sarah felt the beginnings of a headache.
"Shy, I see," the woman said. "Well, I'll be off then, for a bit. Let you take it from here. I'll be back before you're out of the bath, though, or we'll both catch it from His Majesty!" And she left Sarah there, crying infant in her arms, staring after her as if her guardian angel had just flown away the moment she rode into battle.
"Hush, little one," Sarah crooned, not knowing what else to do. Her milk had begun to flow at the child's cries, and not knowing what else to do, she gingerly set the baby at her breast. The infant did all the rest as instinct took over. Sarah held her gently, carefully above the hot water, and relaxed into the back of the bathtub. She closed her eyes and sighed, resting the child against her stomach. Damn Jareth, was her general line of thinking. She could bet the Goblin King would know exactly how unbalanced his choice of hired help would make Sarah feel, and she'd also bed that was exactly the reason why he had done it. Damn him, anyway.
Sarah opened her eyes and turned her attention to the baby nursing quietly at her breast. She raised one wet hand out of the water and touched the child's soft cheek. "Little one," she whispered, "oh, little baby, what am I to do with you?" She smiled experimentally, and the gesture felt good. "I suppose I'll have to name you, eventually." The infant flicked her sweet blue eyes up at her mother for a moment before returning her concentration to suckling. Sarah laughed softly, a tiny sound, but she realized how long it had been since she last laughed.
Sarah… The sound seemed to float around her tangibly, brush like silk against her shoulders, her ear. Sarah… It was Jareth's voice.
Before she had time to decipher what that might mean, the frightening woman was back. She took the child away to burp, and Sarah used the opportunity to duck under the water and clean up. Her entire world smelled of violets, and she loved it.
She sank again under the surface of the warm water, bubbles closing around her. It would be so easy just to slip away like this, with the scent of violets surrounding her. But no, she couldn't do that. She had—and here was that nasty word again—responsibilities. What would happen to the babe with no mother around? What indeed?
Sarah pulled herself to the surface, and there was her helper, just waiting for her. Without a word Sarah was bundled into a towel, then a loose dress that hung softly to her knees, and she was settled on a comfortable couch on the room's balcony. From here, it seemed she could see forever. The beautiful sandstone Labyrinth stretched out for miles any way she looked. She smiled, accepted the cup of hot herbal tea pressed into her hand, and reached for the child settled in a small cradle next to her feet. For now she wouldn't worry about the future and what would happen when she had to go back Aboveground. For now, she would rely on the Goblin King's dubious hospitality and learn to love the tiny infant she had birthed a day ago. Later would come the probing questions, the demands to know who and how and when and why. Now was time to rest. To heal.
