Chapter Eighteen
Jareth lifted his head higher as he heard her speak, a twinge went through his face,
like a nerve being pinched. "Perhaps," was all he said and let a grin flicker over his
features.
Sarah slowly rose on legs that drifted beneath her like water. She held the book in
shaking hands, fingers blanched out against the strongly violet cover. Sarah, deliberately,
took a step and another towards him. "No, this is yours Jareth! I understand now, its like
the Labyrinth all over again," she muttered to herself, her eyes flashing like they had done
when first they met so many years before.
Jareth backed down as she approached, and with each bit of confidence that spun
and grew withen herself, Sarah's clothes faded in around her slithe body. First the jeans
and then her white poet's shirt, all the while her grin remained and her eyes shone like two
hazy stones.
"You infected her mind too, didn't you? This authoress who went mad! And she
wrote you a life in this book and almost made you something more!!!" Sarah laughed as
the pieces began to fall into place. Jareth struck the wall behind him as he retreated from
her, still standing proud, even as the brick began to crumble and masonry dust spiraled up
around him.
"I was only real with you, Sarah, you made me the King and then you set me free
from your mind to be- mortal," Jareth shuddered at the word and then fixed Sarah coldly
with his ice eyes. She tilted her head upwards defiantly and urged him to continue. When
he said no more she merely shrugged.
"How long have you been this parasite?! How long have you jumped from mind
to mind of helpless dreamers and made them make you real in their dreams?" Sarah
stepped over a large hole that had sunk into the ground beneath her feet. She watched as
the window, through which Jareth had just recently peered, folded in on itself and crashed
to the ground below... far, far below.
"She could have made me what I am now, but she was afraid. You, Sarah, you
have the darkest of souls that's just waiting to be wrought," Jareth stepped forward and
extended a gloved hand to her. It was as it had been when she was young- temptation.
This time of a different sort. "You, after all, made me real. And now I exist in your
world, in your dreams, and beyond all that."
Sarah hesitated a moment, looking at his fine-boned hand, supple in the blanket of
black leather. She felt a beast within her writhe to be let free. For that moment she
shuddered and she felt her own hand move to be with his. But she turned away and
looked at the throne, where Jareth must have sat earlier.
"What did you want from me this time?" she inquired, willing the "darkness" of
which Jareth had spoken, to sink deeper into her psyche.
"A new life," was all he answered and she felt his warm breath against her chilled
neck. Sarah bent herself away from him, turning quick on her heels to look into his
chiseled face.
"You wanted me to make you a new kingdom, didn't you? You wanted me to let
you back into my mind again, until I finally went mad," Sarah ground her teeth together as
she spoke and behind her, with a brillaint burst of sparks, the throne lit afire. "You
wanted me to learn from her," she gestured to the book and to Jareth's widened eyes,
"and make you the King again."
Jareth watched the flames lick over his throne warily. Sarah turned slowly to
observe it and shuddered once more. "Sarah," Jareth inquired. But she didn't respond.
Instead she walked to the fire, her hands still trembling as they held the lavender book.
She paused, feeling the lick of warmth across her skin- only Jareth hadn't caused the
tingles this time.
"You do not control my mind, decision, life, or body! If I had ever loved you
before then its gone now!" Sarah drew her arm back and then, as Jareth stood stone-still,
she tossed the lavendar book into the flames. At once the King screamed, a horrible cry of
such agony that Sarah nearly leapt into the fire herself to take the novel back out.
But instead she watched him fall to the ground and she moved to circle him. The
darkness inside her surfaced and she let it. It was best to hide herself from what she was
about to do. This was, after all, her imagination at work. Jareth no longer understood the
rules. And she had weakened him... Sarah smiled at the thought, had weakened him with
his own gift.
*You thought this would have been easier, didn't you?*
A large metal shackle secured around Jareth's right wrist, and he paused in his
painful cries to look, awe-struck, at the restraint. He tried to reach with his other hand
and found it also secured completely to the ground. Behind him the fire danced to the
walls, eating at them as if they were made of dry tinder and not thick blocks of masonry.
Sarah continued to smile as her eyes radiated the flames in black irises.
*You thought I would be ready to have you back after Brian, didn't you?*
Now the shackles snapped around his ankles, and suddenly Jareth was laid out on
the stone floor as if he were being crucified. Sarah paused at the point of his feet, where
they joined together under the restraint and looked at her work as the fires began to circle
them both.
*But this is my mind, Jareth, and I've taken what I wanted from you* She smiled
and showed teeth that were somewhat pointed behind her ruby lips. Sarah turned and
began to walk through the arched doorway that stood proudly behind her.
"Wait!" Jareth called out, his voice wavering and hoarse in the drench of smoke
that encased him. Sarah turned again and looked at the King, her King. The strange being
she had made real without even realizing what had happened.
*I don't desire you any longer.*
With that she exited the throne room that she had made for him and a heavy metal
door snapped down behind her. Sarah stopped just beyond the threshold, feeling her
breath catch in her throat. She felt smoke biting at her lungs, felt her air being forced
away and a searing pain eating at her arm. Sarah screamed, clawing at herself as she
rushed down stairs that ran crooked circles into a deep unknown.
All around Jareth's cries followed her. He screamed and she sobbed, fighting
away from the invisible fire that enveloped her.
*we are one, you and I* she heard him speak the words again in her mind and
suddenly even more made sense.
"Enough!" she cried out and collapsed in the middle of her race down the stairs.
Sarah struck once, colliding with the corner of the stairs and then slumped against the wall
as an agony of her fall and the fire consumed her.
And then a hand was on her shoulder and Sarah was looking up. Instead of the
hateful flames over her skin she felt a bitter cold and could scarcely move her head to look
up. Mimi's kind face smiled back and she touched Sarah's cheek so tenderly that Sarah let
her eyes slipped closed again.
And she slept.
* * * * *
"Are you sure you won't stay longer?" Mimi inquired, leaning heavily against one
of the thick posts in her porch.
Sarah stood quietly on the walk, looking at the trees that were freshly bloomed.
Spring was new and youthful, and everything smelled like rebirth around Mimi's farm.
Toby was swinging in an old tireswing nearer to the red barn, which had been victim to
even more neglect since the scene of the last Snowblind.
A single almond blossom drifted in the wind by Sarah and she reached out quickly
to touch it's delicate petals. "You know, I think that its about time to move on," Sarah
remarked and grinned up at her aunt who merely shook her head. Sarah adjusted the
heavy pack looped over her shoulder and turned to walk towards her blue Mustang.
Winter had been hard and cold and unforgiving, in the light of the fresh spring day,
wearing a T-shirt that let her arms be kissed by the new sun, Sarah could almost forget
everything. She let her mind briefly drift as Toby ran to her and she hugged him and ran
her hand over his blonde hair. He would be handsome one day.
"I love you, and I'll come back to see you sometime soon," Sarah promised as she
forcibly kissed his cheek. Toby backed away, wiping the same spot with the back of his
hand. But a crooked grin had found his mouth and he hugged Sarah once more.
"Mimi doesn't really know, does she?" Toby asked, when he was near enough to
Sarah to whisper directly into her ear. Sarah moved out of the embrace and looked at her
brother- who was nearly as tall as herself. He had sprouted during the winter... the only
thing to grow. Toby glanced back at his aunt, but a knowing sparkle in his eyes told Sarah
that her brother understood much more about their Snowblind than he was willing to say.
"You take care," Sarah reminded him.
He nodded, and scratched the back of his neck. Then, moving in once more Toby
inquired: "It was him, wasn't it? Gabriel?" Sarah shivered at the name being spoken and
then, after a short while, nodded in affirmation.
"Never think about him, okay? Never let yourself think about him or dream about
him," Sarah insisted, and didn't stop looking at Toby even after he nodded and then
galloped up the stairs to stand by Mimi on the porch. Sarah struggled to leave, her fear
rising within her at the thought of the King.
Sarah waved again and then pulled open the door to her car. She slung the bag
into the back and then slid herself inside. Mimi and Toby waved once more and then, sat
down on the swinging bench on the porch. "We are one, but you better never hurt him."
Sarah felt something stir at the back of her mind. She hadn't died, and so.... She
didn't let the thought complete itself as she pulled onto the little dirt road that led away
from Mimi's house (as it had always led to before) and then turned her radio on in
attempts to forget about the disturbing thoughts that had invaded her in her farewell to her
family.
A Styx song answered the silence in the car and Sarah, padding her hands in beat
on the steering wheel, glanced briefly into the rear-view mirror. From the reflection, like
two great icy orbs, she saw his eyes looking back at her. Sarah turned her face away,
focusing instead on the road as she forcibly made her way across the old bridge.
Then she began to laugh. In herself she could hear him laugh, from the part of her
mind where she had safely tucked the memories away. She was still alive... and they were
one. Sarah laughed all the more as she took a turn on to the main road and, thinking only
a moment about which way to go, she turned to head towards town.
There was a stop she had to make before heading on to her future in "God only
knew where." She would find a life somewhere, maybe even with her mother. Sarah
sniffed and then laughed again. Her car swerved once as she wiped the tears from around
her eyes and then she straightened herself and her driving skills.
Taking one shaking breath she turned off the radio, glad to be back in silence.
The first gas station laid just outside the town limits and Sarah pulled in to the
helpful smile of the attendant. She opened her door quickly, slammed it shut just as
hurriedly and then offered him a wink as she brushed past and towards the restroom. He
caught only a quick glimpse of what she was holding.
When she left with a full tank of gas, in a hurried mix of blind fear and hopeless
excitation, the gas station attendant merely scratched his head and walked, scuffing, to the
open door of the women's restroom.
"Young People," was all he muttered as he began to draw the door closed. But a
cut of light fell on a used container- the same pink and white box. Sighing he entered,
bent to retrieve it and then shook his head again. "We've got enough of these single
mothers."
The man tossed the pregnancy test into the trash and let the door close with a
single thunk.
Overhead the clouds seemed to gather for a spring storm.
Jareth lifted his head higher as he heard her speak, a twinge went through his face,
like a nerve being pinched. "Perhaps," was all he said and let a grin flicker over his
features.
Sarah slowly rose on legs that drifted beneath her like water. She held the book in
shaking hands, fingers blanched out against the strongly violet cover. Sarah, deliberately,
took a step and another towards him. "No, this is yours Jareth! I understand now, its like
the Labyrinth all over again," she muttered to herself, her eyes flashing like they had done
when first they met so many years before.
Jareth backed down as she approached, and with each bit of confidence that spun
and grew withen herself, Sarah's clothes faded in around her slithe body. First the jeans
and then her white poet's shirt, all the while her grin remained and her eyes shone like two
hazy stones.
"You infected her mind too, didn't you? This authoress who went mad! And she
wrote you a life in this book and almost made you something more!!!" Sarah laughed as
the pieces began to fall into place. Jareth struck the wall behind him as he retreated from
her, still standing proud, even as the brick began to crumble and masonry dust spiraled up
around him.
"I was only real with you, Sarah, you made me the King and then you set me free
from your mind to be- mortal," Jareth shuddered at the word and then fixed Sarah coldly
with his ice eyes. She tilted her head upwards defiantly and urged him to continue. When
he said no more she merely shrugged.
"How long have you been this parasite?! How long have you jumped from mind
to mind of helpless dreamers and made them make you real in their dreams?" Sarah
stepped over a large hole that had sunk into the ground beneath her feet. She watched as
the window, through which Jareth had just recently peered, folded in on itself and crashed
to the ground below... far, far below.
"She could have made me what I am now, but she was afraid. You, Sarah, you
have the darkest of souls that's just waiting to be wrought," Jareth stepped forward and
extended a gloved hand to her. It was as it had been when she was young- temptation.
This time of a different sort. "You, after all, made me real. And now I exist in your
world, in your dreams, and beyond all that."
Sarah hesitated a moment, looking at his fine-boned hand, supple in the blanket of
black leather. She felt a beast within her writhe to be let free. For that moment she
shuddered and she felt her own hand move to be with his. But she turned away and
looked at the throne, where Jareth must have sat earlier.
"What did you want from me this time?" she inquired, willing the "darkness" of
which Jareth had spoken, to sink deeper into her psyche.
"A new life," was all he answered and she felt his warm breath against her chilled
neck. Sarah bent herself away from him, turning quick on her heels to look into his
chiseled face.
"You wanted me to make you a new kingdom, didn't you? You wanted me to let
you back into my mind again, until I finally went mad," Sarah ground her teeth together as
she spoke and behind her, with a brillaint burst of sparks, the throne lit afire. "You
wanted me to learn from her," she gestured to the book and to Jareth's widened eyes,
"and make you the King again."
Jareth watched the flames lick over his throne warily. Sarah turned slowly to
observe it and shuddered once more. "Sarah," Jareth inquired. But she didn't respond.
Instead she walked to the fire, her hands still trembling as they held the lavender book.
She paused, feeling the lick of warmth across her skin- only Jareth hadn't caused the
tingles this time.
"You do not control my mind, decision, life, or body! If I had ever loved you
before then its gone now!" Sarah drew her arm back and then, as Jareth stood stone-still,
she tossed the lavendar book into the flames. At once the King screamed, a horrible cry of
such agony that Sarah nearly leapt into the fire herself to take the novel back out.
But instead she watched him fall to the ground and she moved to circle him. The
darkness inside her surfaced and she let it. It was best to hide herself from what she was
about to do. This was, after all, her imagination at work. Jareth no longer understood the
rules. And she had weakened him... Sarah smiled at the thought, had weakened him with
his own gift.
*You thought this would have been easier, didn't you?*
A large metal shackle secured around Jareth's right wrist, and he paused in his
painful cries to look, awe-struck, at the restraint. He tried to reach with his other hand
and found it also secured completely to the ground. Behind him the fire danced to the
walls, eating at them as if they were made of dry tinder and not thick blocks of masonry.
Sarah continued to smile as her eyes radiated the flames in black irises.
*You thought I would be ready to have you back after Brian, didn't you?*
Now the shackles snapped around his ankles, and suddenly Jareth was laid out on
the stone floor as if he were being crucified. Sarah paused at the point of his feet, where
they joined together under the restraint and looked at her work as the fires began to circle
them both.
*But this is my mind, Jareth, and I've taken what I wanted from you* She smiled
and showed teeth that were somewhat pointed behind her ruby lips. Sarah turned and
began to walk through the arched doorway that stood proudly behind her.
"Wait!" Jareth called out, his voice wavering and hoarse in the drench of smoke
that encased him. Sarah turned again and looked at the King, her King. The strange being
she had made real without even realizing what had happened.
*I don't desire you any longer.*
With that she exited the throne room that she had made for him and a heavy metal
door snapped down behind her. Sarah stopped just beyond the threshold, feeling her
breath catch in her throat. She felt smoke biting at her lungs, felt her air being forced
away and a searing pain eating at her arm. Sarah screamed, clawing at herself as she
rushed down stairs that ran crooked circles into a deep unknown.
All around Jareth's cries followed her. He screamed and she sobbed, fighting
away from the invisible fire that enveloped her.
*we are one, you and I* she heard him speak the words again in her mind and
suddenly even more made sense.
"Enough!" she cried out and collapsed in the middle of her race down the stairs.
Sarah struck once, colliding with the corner of the stairs and then slumped against the wall
as an agony of her fall and the fire consumed her.
And then a hand was on her shoulder and Sarah was looking up. Instead of the
hateful flames over her skin she felt a bitter cold and could scarcely move her head to look
up. Mimi's kind face smiled back and she touched Sarah's cheek so tenderly that Sarah let
her eyes slipped closed again.
And she slept.
* * * * *
"Are you sure you won't stay longer?" Mimi inquired, leaning heavily against one
of the thick posts in her porch.
Sarah stood quietly on the walk, looking at the trees that were freshly bloomed.
Spring was new and youthful, and everything smelled like rebirth around Mimi's farm.
Toby was swinging in an old tireswing nearer to the red barn, which had been victim to
even more neglect since the scene of the last Snowblind.
A single almond blossom drifted in the wind by Sarah and she reached out quickly
to touch it's delicate petals. "You know, I think that its about time to move on," Sarah
remarked and grinned up at her aunt who merely shook her head. Sarah adjusted the
heavy pack looped over her shoulder and turned to walk towards her blue Mustang.
Winter had been hard and cold and unforgiving, in the light of the fresh spring day,
wearing a T-shirt that let her arms be kissed by the new sun, Sarah could almost forget
everything. She let her mind briefly drift as Toby ran to her and she hugged him and ran
her hand over his blonde hair. He would be handsome one day.
"I love you, and I'll come back to see you sometime soon," Sarah promised as she
forcibly kissed his cheek. Toby backed away, wiping the same spot with the back of his
hand. But a crooked grin had found his mouth and he hugged Sarah once more.
"Mimi doesn't really know, does she?" Toby asked, when he was near enough to
Sarah to whisper directly into her ear. Sarah moved out of the embrace and looked at her
brother- who was nearly as tall as herself. He had sprouted during the winter... the only
thing to grow. Toby glanced back at his aunt, but a knowing sparkle in his eyes told Sarah
that her brother understood much more about their Snowblind than he was willing to say.
"You take care," Sarah reminded him.
He nodded, and scratched the back of his neck. Then, moving in once more Toby
inquired: "It was him, wasn't it? Gabriel?" Sarah shivered at the name being spoken and
then, after a short while, nodded in affirmation.
"Never think about him, okay? Never let yourself think about him or dream about
him," Sarah insisted, and didn't stop looking at Toby even after he nodded and then
galloped up the stairs to stand by Mimi on the porch. Sarah struggled to leave, her fear
rising within her at the thought of the King.
Sarah waved again and then pulled open the door to her car. She slung the bag
into the back and then slid herself inside. Mimi and Toby waved once more and then, sat
down on the swinging bench on the porch. "We are one, but you better never hurt him."
Sarah felt something stir at the back of her mind. She hadn't died, and so.... She
didn't let the thought complete itself as she pulled onto the little dirt road that led away
from Mimi's house (as it had always led to before) and then turned her radio on in
attempts to forget about the disturbing thoughts that had invaded her in her farewell to her
family.
A Styx song answered the silence in the car and Sarah, padding her hands in beat
on the steering wheel, glanced briefly into the rear-view mirror. From the reflection, like
two great icy orbs, she saw his eyes looking back at her. Sarah turned her face away,
focusing instead on the road as she forcibly made her way across the old bridge.
Then she began to laugh. In herself she could hear him laugh, from the part of her
mind where she had safely tucked the memories away. She was still alive... and they were
one. Sarah laughed all the more as she took a turn on to the main road and, thinking only
a moment about which way to go, she turned to head towards town.
There was a stop she had to make before heading on to her future in "God only
knew where." She would find a life somewhere, maybe even with her mother. Sarah
sniffed and then laughed again. Her car swerved once as she wiped the tears from around
her eyes and then she straightened herself and her driving skills.
Taking one shaking breath she turned off the radio, glad to be back in silence.
The first gas station laid just outside the town limits and Sarah pulled in to the
helpful smile of the attendant. She opened her door quickly, slammed it shut just as
hurriedly and then offered him a wink as she brushed past and towards the restroom. He
caught only a quick glimpse of what she was holding.
When she left with a full tank of gas, in a hurried mix of blind fear and hopeless
excitation, the gas station attendant merely scratched his head and walked, scuffing, to the
open door of the women's restroom.
"Young People," was all he muttered as he began to draw the door closed. But a
cut of light fell on a used container- the same pink and white box. Sighing he entered,
bent to retrieve it and then shook his head again. "We've got enough of these single
mothers."
The man tossed the pregnancy test into the trash and let the door close with a
single thunk.
Overhead the clouds seemed to gather for a spring storm.