Author: AKA Jay
E-Mail: aka_jay66@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine. They belong to Jim Henson Productions. For the most part, this is a good thing.
Feedback: Would be appreciated.
Summary: Wouldn't that involve some forethought on my part?
Part Five
Sarah stood over the library table, an avenging angel with a copy of Lord of the Flies clutched in her hands like a sword. She was breathing heavily and there was blood on her cheek.
On the table, the shattered pieces of crystal glowed like a million dying stars. The twisted fragments of what had once been a rose stared up at Sarah in mute reproach, accusing her of destroying something beautiful for no fault of its own. Unless you think that being otherworldly, uncannily beautiful and rippling with magic are faults. In that case, you should probably stay away from Jareth. He wouldn't take kindly to being hit over the head with Lord of the Flies. It was lucky that he wasn't in the library at that moment, because the odds were heavily in favour of Sarah doing exactly that. To clarify, it was lucky for Sarah.
She wasn't feeling lucky.
Thoughts chased themselves through her mind starting with a dazed It can't be true..., stumbling through a desperate I won't let it be true... and ending with heartfelt I'm going to kill him...!
In between these relatively coherent thoughts, fear and anger fought for dominance of the mental playing field. Happiness tried to put on a half-time show but was chased off the field by disbelief and had to lock itself in the ticket booth.
To put it mildly, Sarah was confused. She stared at the glittering crystal fragments as if she could force them to melt into some more plebeian form through sheer force of will. Mind you, if they had suddenly began to change shape she would have screamed her lungs out. There's no pleasing some people.
A hand fell on her shoulder.
Sarah turned quickly and saw... nothing. Realising that she had inadvertently set her angle of vision to Goblin King Height, she looked down to see Mrs Lunney, the librarian, staring at her worriedly.
"Are you all right, dear?" Mrs Lunney said.
Sarah tried to smile reassuringly, the expression turning into a grimace as she felt a sudden shock of pain. She lifted one hand to her cheek and felt the stickiness of blood against her fingers.
One of the crystal shards must have cut me- the crystal!
Twisting around, Sarah looked over her shoulder and saw with no small relief that the crystalline remnants had vanished. The cut would be hard for her to explain away; the crystal would have been impossible.
"Yes, I brought one of my many crystal vases to school today and clumsy me, I broke it! Why are the pieces glowing? Um..." Right. That would have been fun.
Sarah smiled at Miss Lunney, keeping her hand arched protectively over the cut on her cheek. "I'm okay," she said. "Really, it's just a scratch."
Miss Lunney looked puzzled. "From what?" She said, glancing around the library, which like most libraries was as safe as the lawsuit-minded could make it without actually padding the walls. The most dangerous things in there were probably the obligatory kitten-hanging-off-a-branch posters.
Drawing on her still present acting skills, Sarah strove to look sincere and said, "It's an old cut. I was doing some Drama exercises and it must have opened it up again."
"Oh, you poor thing!" Miss Lunney said sympathetically. "You should have the nurse look at it right away. "
Sarah nodded and scuttled quickly out of the library before Miss Lunney could ask more questions. Her copy of Lord of the Flies stayed behind, forgotten on the library table.
As soon as she was out of sight of the library, Sarah changed direction. As much as she would like to avoid painful infections and possible lifetime scarring, she couldn't go to the nurse.
For all Sarah knew about the medical profession, a simple blood test might be able to prove that otherworldly forces had caused her cut. The nurse would tell her parents, her parents would tell the media and before you knew it Sarah would be naked on a cold metal table while government scientists with very sharp knives and no concept of personal space experimented on her helpless form.
This train of thought explains a lot about Sarah in general and her decision-making processes in particular. It's also a pretty convincing argument for the Amish way of life.
Sarah made her way to the girls' washroom through the empty halls, ducking into doorways to avoid the few teachers wandering about.
Once there, Sarah started to moisten a paper towel in the sink but found herself hypnotized by the water swirling down the drain. Concentrating on the soothingly repetitive motion was infinitely preferable to thinking about what was happening to her. Unless there'd been a breakthrough in silicate flora that she'd somehow missed, that rose wasn't normal for this dimension. It wasn't over. Damn it.
She lifted her eyes to the mirror and dabbed gently at the blood that stained her cheek. When she lifted the reddish paper towel away the blood was gone and the skin of her cheek was unbroken, though slightly moist. Her eyes narrowed, Sarah touched the place where the wound had been. She was perversely angry at the lack of pain.
"Don't try to be nice!" Sarah said aloud, instantly regretting it when she realised that the comment could be construed as an invitation to dialogue. Her mind struck up the same mantra of hope that had sustained her during her travels in the Labyrinth, a constant tumbling stream of thought that babbled Pleasedon'tbewatchingpleasedon'tbewatching over and over again.
It didn't work this time either.
"I am 'nice'." Jareth spoke from behind her, the undertone of menace
twisting the words into mockery.
The shock drove the breath from Sarah's lungs and left her speechless. Considering
that the only response that she could think of was "Are not!" this
was all to the good. Moments of almost perfect silence were measured out by
the steady dripping of the obligatory faulty tap.
"Sarah."
He's not here. I'm not here! There is no here. Keeping her eyes fixed
on her reflection, Sarah wondered if someone could, hypothetically, drown herself
in a sink. I'm not that lucky.
Suppressing the urge to lunge for the door, she turned slowly to face Jareth.
He should have looked ridiculous. The harsh overhead lights should have deadened
the alabaster whiteness of his skin and bleached the laughter from his eyes.
Failing that, being surrounded by pale green tile walls should have made the
black and silver ensemble that worked so well in his domain seem tacky and overdone.
It was very irritating that none of those things happened. Instead, Jareth's
presence seemed to call hidden unreality from the sterile room. Once-wan shadows
darkened with his power and spread across the walls and floor like draperies
of black velvet. Innocuous porcelain fixtures took on the aspect of predatory
plants waiting to trap the unwary. For the hand-dryers, this was simply a matter
of bringing out already present tendencies. They're nasty little beasts.
Jareth took a piece of her world and made it his own.
Something that would have sent a smile screaming in the other direction curled
Jareth's lips upwards as he watched Sarah absorb the changes happening around
her. When her eyes finally met his, renewed anger had burned her shock to ashes.
"I won." Sarah said firmly, the words both a plea and a threat.
The unspoken corollary, so go away!, hung between them. A threatening
addendum, Or I'll MAKE you go!, briefly attempted to make itself felt
but was viciously attacked by the unequal power balance and wound up playing
a game of Scrabble with Happiness in a dusty corner of Sarah's mind.
"True." Jareth drawled, blissfully unaware of all these mental manoeuvrings.
"You won that game."
The emphasised "that" hit Sarah right between the eyes. As she struggled
with the implications, Jareth took the opportunity to really look at her for
the first time since his arrival. His elegant brows drew together as a shock
beyond words spread across his face.
"What are you wearing?!"
Well, almost beyond words.
___________
Snerk. Yeah, I amuse myself. It's strange that I enjoy writing about Jareth
and Sarah so much. I'm such a freakily suggestible person that I normally avoid
writing about the omnipotent. Otherwise I get all silly and scared when I see
shadows on the road or find things not where I put them or find messages written
in rose petals in my bathwater *blink* Paranoia isn't pretty, folks.