CHAPTER XVI: Only a Dream
One toe, then a whole foot, then another touched the concrete of an alley off Broadway. Soon enough, two claws gripped the edge of a nearby windowsill, their owner whistling in amazement at the surroundings. The companions walked from the shadows of their landing site to make a further ground exploration of what they had viewed from above.
"Geeze, would ya look at all those lights!" Rattlebeak exclaimed. "What kind of magic can do this?"
Toby bit his lip in awe, but was still able to mumble a reply. "Er, just a different sort, that's all. It's called electricity. Scientists create this stuff."
"Well, I gotta say that these scientists can make a better light show than when Hoggle gets together all the paper lanterns that the light guild can make in two seasons! Electricity is a curious magic..." The bird perched atop the boy's shoulder. It was not long before people were passing them by, giving them odd stares.
"Heya, Rattlebeak..." Toby mumbled.
"Huh?" The question brought the abrupt attention of a passer-by who seemed to consider the possibility of the bird's speech, and soon discounted it.
"You might not want to speak so loud," he continued in a whisper. "Birds don't talk on our world. Unless you're a parrot, and you don't look at all like a parrot."
"What do, uh -- parrots -- talk about?"
"Just crackers. They always want to eat crackers." Toby shrugged his shoulders. "They're green, mostly." Toby began to walk aimlessly, looking around in amazement. Few seemed to find it strange to see a young boy walking down Broadway, talking to himself and the little red bird on his shoulder. The bird looked around as well, shivering at a thought. He quietly murmered to himself, "Hmph. Green. Terrible color for a bird. Can't stand green birds."
"Whatcha got against green birds?" Toby asked, digging around in his pockets.
"Talk too much."
The boy chuckled. "I thought only red birds talked too much."
The bird's response was curt. "Hmph."
The boy switched his search from his jacket pockets to his blue jeans. "C'mon, gotta be somethin' here..."
"Whatcha lookin' for?" Rattlebeak queried.
"I'm lookin' for money. The one thing you can't make with magic. That's something Sarah used to tell me... and I think she's right, because I'm really wishing for some right now, and I don't have a bit."
"What do ya need money for?"
"Food. I'm starvin'."
"Now that you mention it, I'm a little hungry myself. What kind of food can we get in New Yak?"
Toby chuckled. "Keep it up, and you'll really sound like you're from here. It's New York, Rattlebeak."
"Whatever. So, how are we gonna get some grub?"
Toby looked around a bit. "Hmm, I don't know. I guess I could wish something... but I don't want to do it in front of all these people. Besides, anything that could fit in my pocket probably wouldn't do me any good. I need abig pizza, or something. How about we look around for a place to sit down...? Maybe while we're looking we can figure out where Sarah... er, her shadow, or whoever ... is at right now."
"Sounds like a good plan to me," Rattlebeak replied. "Where are you gonna start?"
"I don't know, but I hope a solution comes along soon."
Rattlebeak pointed a wing toward the jeweled curtains behind the window of a shop. "How about that?" A sign behind the glass read, "Find your answers here... Ask Madame Marlena to reveal your path. Other worldy powers show the underground road of your existence." Toby gave the bird a sidelong glance. "I think I can get used to this wish stuff."
* * *
A hazy, lazy light fell across the room from a few candles dispersed in random places. Flowery perfumes scented the air, probably due to the number of bottled fragrances that lie in neat rows on the bureau. Voices and screams echoed from without the room, as chaos reigned throughout the castle. Somehow, within Sarah's bedchamber, all of these worries seemed trivial and emasculated. Peace took its grip in the silence that echoed through the room, in the sweet expression of sleep that rested on her face as it glowed in the flickering candlelight. Nearby Jareth sat, his cushioned chair sitting inches from her bed, his chin resting on his fist as he gazed quietly at her. Sage was tending to matters within the castle, leaving Jareth with the much longed-for respite that involved staring at the woman he had so long loved and so long missed. It was the first peace that they had shared since the beginning of this escapade, though she was unconscious for the event. It was a problem he was debating on solving or not. He knew the means, but couldn't calculate their rightness.
A handmade piece of paper lay in his lap, its edges possessing the worn nature characteristic of self-designed parchment. Next to him sat a little wooden box filled with blocks of colored pastels and charcoal. He lifted his left hand and gazed at it, rubbing the fingers together, thus smudging the brightly colored chalk that decorated them into a murky brown. With a gentle glance he looked into the box, fingering each piece of chalk, rummaging through them to find a certain hue. He successfully found a vivid green, only indicated as such by the few areas where the outer surface had chipped away -- the close contact of the other pieces had muddied its exterior with sundry colors. He carefully wiped away the mud onto the fabric of his fine trousers, unconcerned for the state of his clothing. It left a brownish mark where he wiped, but had successfully burnished the piece of chalk to its true glowing nature. With it he began to draw in a furious, emotional stroke that simultaneously cut and caressed the paper. A dress emerged; Sarah's dress, but quite contrary to the true color that it possessed. Hints of green made themselves evident in the surroundings of this rendered queen, and it became apparent that she was sleeping in a forest. Again he rummaged through the box of colored blocks, emerging with alight brown tone. It wasn't long before her face appeared, almost as if she had been hiding within the dress, and was crawling out to see her new world, like a turtle in a sacred shell, moved from place to place by the outside force of a human being. Trunks and roots surrounded her on all sides, reflected in the water of a nearby lake. Growing, loving, the environment was birthed by the brandished tools of the artist's possessed hand and mind. Jareth was consumed in his paper worship, his pupils wide and mesmerized as his hand seemed to draw of its own accord. As the ritual seemed to approach its conclusion, a decision seemed to have been made. The hand moved slower, the eyes grew deeper, and the sleeping angel emerged as a new world emerged on all sides. Pinks and blues of a queen's bedchamber transcended and merged into a green, until the green overpowered and pillows had become tree roots, blue carpet was green grass, and the mirror of the bureau a rippling, blue-green lake. Jareth sat, spent, on a large, half-submerged tree root across from the sleeping queen. The only magic Jareth possessed from his fall of four years ago was one that came only from his deepest passions and long-practiced skill. It could create the illusion of different places, and could awake the sleeper from within.
"Jareth?" Sarah stretched her arms, yawning luxuriously. She sat up on the root and leaned against the trunk of the tree that claimed its nether depths. Her bright green dress flowed all around her. "What are you doing here?" Looking around like an enchanted child, Sarah smiled tranquilly. "Hmm, this is the place I like to dream best. It's funny how I always come here to dream. It's a little like a place I had been some time back... I guess it has some significance, but I just think it's beautiful in its own right. What do you think of this place? I don't think I have ever dreamed of you here before."
"It is very lovely, Sarah," Jareth answered as he gazed at her intensely, but half-smiling under the surface.
"Yes, it is. Hmm, I wonder why this is the first time I have dreamed you here? I guess it doesn't matter. I can show you, now." Like a lively child, she jumped from her seated position and grabbed Jareth's hand.
She walked with him through the forest, dreamy-eyed and gazing all about. The clearing ran alongside a small lake, where a tiny inlet of mountain curved gracefully at the edges, releasing a gentle waterfall into the lake, where it flowed out into a river that seemed, due to the distortions of this imaginary world, to flow straight back to Sunset City.
In the distance, Sunset City morphed back and forth into the Goblin City, the sky at once brooding and bright. Magicmockers filled the trees, singing gracefully and paving the way for good fortune. All that went on was immediately reminiscent of Sarah's long ago journey through the Underground where she sought out the amethyst for the long ago Jareth. Trees would sway to and fro to reveal fieries dancing in the distance, the beast men were in another nook, playing with their children, and someone was coming to Hoggle's father, The Bookkeeper, to gain some form of wisdom. It seemed as if Sarah actually longed for the old days of adventure, to find a place of lesser responsibility, and to explore once again like a boundless child.
"I know what this place is, now," Sarah said suddenly, gazing up at Jareth with smiling eyes. She held both of his hands before her and spun to face him. "This is where the Magicmockers helped me to get Hoggle and the others out of the dungeon. And this is also where I met the elves, and Sage."
Jareth became downcast. "Yes, I know. I'm sorry for all of the heartache I caused you, Sarah."
"What for?" Sarah exclaimed. "We had a grand time! I danced with Vindar, and saw Didymus in rare form..." Her eyes drifted off into the distance, and soon she was giggling hysterically and running away, clutching her dress between her fingertips.
"Sarah, wait!" Jareth ran after her, trying his best to catch up with her in the forest. She was a sparkling nymph in his eyes at that moment, the pure essence of all that was joy and wonder. The darkness that had always crept at the edges of his demeanor like a stubborn rust at the place where screw and metal meet, this darkness fell away under the sunshine of the child within the woman. Soon he found himself laughing as she did, and, since he knew this was a dream and that she did not, he slipped behind one tree far behind her, and came out magically from another directly before her. He caught her between his arms, and they laughed like little imps escaping the cries of the governess to come home.
Soon their laughter was calmed by a deeper emotion that grew strong with their fixed gaze.
"Oh Sarah, how lovely you are. If only I could make you see my intentions, if only we could be as such in wakefulness..."
She put up a finger to silence him. "Though I may forget this is a dream when I wake, I forgive you here and now."
He was startled. "Do you mean that you know that you are dreaming?"
"Yes... Ever since you left and I began to learn magic, I have found myself dreaming lucidly more and more as time passes. It's not completely under my control... You always do what you will within the dream."
"What do I do in your other dreams?"
"That doesn't matter. I feel this dream is shortly over... And then I will be alone."
"No you won't, Sarah. I will always be with you." Jareth's eyes were ablaze in fiery green hues.
"I know you are not there in the real world, Jareth... Nor will I remember this dream. But I will remember a kiss."
He wanted to protest, to make her realize that he was there in reality, sitting beside her bed and willing to do whatever she would ask. Instead, he brushed her hair aside and looked into those brown eyes that had kept him awake and raving in a deep sweat that came from longing many a night. Her lightly pink cheeks flushed with emotion, full lips asking only to be kissed...
Emotion was so real and tangible that the kiss was a barely sufficient accent. Their lips came together, passionate and full of motion, their arms clasped about one another as if the world could not provide foundation. He gripped her hair gently but firmly between his fingers, every sensation wild in his body with only the kind of feeling that something other than reality could possess him with. She stood on her toes, her fingers pressed deeply into his neck, caressing and kneading his skin, finding corporal expression of the ephemeral. The trees rocked and swayed toward them, bending inward as if their joining was stretching the world in toward them, where it would be sucked up into a black hole.
And then it stretched in the opposite direction. The noise of a shrieking mountain came from the distance; they parted, barely able to pull their gaze away from each other in order to look in the direction of the sound. The rumbling increased, and it was suddenly obvious that a great earthquake had begun, rending the ground beneath them in two.
"Sarah! What is happening?" Jareth shouted above the din.
A new look took Sarah over, and she seemed resigned, a slave. "The dream is coming to an end, my love." Her balance thrown awry, she attempted to gain stability by leaning against a tree. She was weak and fragile.
"Whatever it is, you can stop it, Sarah! This is your dream!" Jareth stepped along the edge of the break, trying to find a place to jump across. He even tried to will his way to the other side, but nothing would work. There was a strange resistance in the air.
"Goodbye... I think I am going away..."
The other half of the world disappeared, taking Sarah with it. Jareth was left staring into a white, windfilled void, empty of everything but fluttering leaves, suddenly dead.
It did not take Jareth long to realize what had happened.
* * *
The crow cawed, pleased at his handiwork. He flew out of the doorway with the amethyst shard in his claws, his beating wings causing a breeze that beckoned the candle flames to look in his direction. Behind him he left an empty hole in the wall, a vacated bed, and one half of a drawing, depicting Jareth, sullen and without hope.
One toe, then a whole foot, then another touched the concrete of an alley off Broadway. Soon enough, two claws gripped the edge of a nearby windowsill, their owner whistling in amazement at the surroundings. The companions walked from the shadows of their landing site to make a further ground exploration of what they had viewed from above.
"Geeze, would ya look at all those lights!" Rattlebeak exclaimed. "What kind of magic can do this?"
Toby bit his lip in awe, but was still able to mumble a reply. "Er, just a different sort, that's all. It's called electricity. Scientists create this stuff."
"Well, I gotta say that these scientists can make a better light show than when Hoggle gets together all the paper lanterns that the light guild can make in two seasons! Electricity is a curious magic..." The bird perched atop the boy's shoulder. It was not long before people were passing them by, giving them odd stares.
"Heya, Rattlebeak..." Toby mumbled.
"Huh?" The question brought the abrupt attention of a passer-by who seemed to consider the possibility of the bird's speech, and soon discounted it.
"You might not want to speak so loud," he continued in a whisper. "Birds don't talk on our world. Unless you're a parrot, and you don't look at all like a parrot."
"What do, uh -- parrots -- talk about?"
"Just crackers. They always want to eat crackers." Toby shrugged his shoulders. "They're green, mostly." Toby began to walk aimlessly, looking around in amazement. Few seemed to find it strange to see a young boy walking down Broadway, talking to himself and the little red bird on his shoulder. The bird looked around as well, shivering at a thought. He quietly murmered to himself, "Hmph. Green. Terrible color for a bird. Can't stand green birds."
"Whatcha got against green birds?" Toby asked, digging around in his pockets.
"Talk too much."
The boy chuckled. "I thought only red birds talked too much."
The bird's response was curt. "Hmph."
The boy switched his search from his jacket pockets to his blue jeans. "C'mon, gotta be somethin' here..."
"Whatcha lookin' for?" Rattlebeak queried.
"I'm lookin' for money. The one thing you can't make with magic. That's something Sarah used to tell me... and I think she's right, because I'm really wishing for some right now, and I don't have a bit."
"What do ya need money for?"
"Food. I'm starvin'."
"Now that you mention it, I'm a little hungry myself. What kind of food can we get in New Yak?"
Toby chuckled. "Keep it up, and you'll really sound like you're from here. It's New York, Rattlebeak."
"Whatever. So, how are we gonna get some grub?"
Toby looked around a bit. "Hmm, I don't know. I guess I could wish something... but I don't want to do it in front of all these people. Besides, anything that could fit in my pocket probably wouldn't do me any good. I need abig pizza, or something. How about we look around for a place to sit down...? Maybe while we're looking we can figure out where Sarah... er, her shadow, or whoever ... is at right now."
"Sounds like a good plan to me," Rattlebeak replied. "Where are you gonna start?"
"I don't know, but I hope a solution comes along soon."
Rattlebeak pointed a wing toward the jeweled curtains behind the window of a shop. "How about that?" A sign behind the glass read, "Find your answers here... Ask Madame Marlena to reveal your path. Other worldy powers show the underground road of your existence." Toby gave the bird a sidelong glance. "I think I can get used to this wish stuff."
* * *
A hazy, lazy light fell across the room from a few candles dispersed in random places. Flowery perfumes scented the air, probably due to the number of bottled fragrances that lie in neat rows on the bureau. Voices and screams echoed from without the room, as chaos reigned throughout the castle. Somehow, within Sarah's bedchamber, all of these worries seemed trivial and emasculated. Peace took its grip in the silence that echoed through the room, in the sweet expression of sleep that rested on her face as it glowed in the flickering candlelight. Nearby Jareth sat, his cushioned chair sitting inches from her bed, his chin resting on his fist as he gazed quietly at her. Sage was tending to matters within the castle, leaving Jareth with the much longed-for respite that involved staring at the woman he had so long loved and so long missed. It was the first peace that they had shared since the beginning of this escapade, though she was unconscious for the event. It was a problem he was debating on solving or not. He knew the means, but couldn't calculate their rightness.
A handmade piece of paper lay in his lap, its edges possessing the worn nature characteristic of self-designed parchment. Next to him sat a little wooden box filled with blocks of colored pastels and charcoal. He lifted his left hand and gazed at it, rubbing the fingers together, thus smudging the brightly colored chalk that decorated them into a murky brown. With a gentle glance he looked into the box, fingering each piece of chalk, rummaging through them to find a certain hue. He successfully found a vivid green, only indicated as such by the few areas where the outer surface had chipped away -- the close contact of the other pieces had muddied its exterior with sundry colors. He carefully wiped away the mud onto the fabric of his fine trousers, unconcerned for the state of his clothing. It left a brownish mark where he wiped, but had successfully burnished the piece of chalk to its true glowing nature. With it he began to draw in a furious, emotional stroke that simultaneously cut and caressed the paper. A dress emerged; Sarah's dress, but quite contrary to the true color that it possessed. Hints of green made themselves evident in the surroundings of this rendered queen, and it became apparent that she was sleeping in a forest. Again he rummaged through the box of colored blocks, emerging with alight brown tone. It wasn't long before her face appeared, almost as if she had been hiding within the dress, and was crawling out to see her new world, like a turtle in a sacred shell, moved from place to place by the outside force of a human being. Trunks and roots surrounded her on all sides, reflected in the water of a nearby lake. Growing, loving, the environment was birthed by the brandished tools of the artist's possessed hand and mind. Jareth was consumed in his paper worship, his pupils wide and mesmerized as his hand seemed to draw of its own accord. As the ritual seemed to approach its conclusion, a decision seemed to have been made. The hand moved slower, the eyes grew deeper, and the sleeping angel emerged as a new world emerged on all sides. Pinks and blues of a queen's bedchamber transcended and merged into a green, until the green overpowered and pillows had become tree roots, blue carpet was green grass, and the mirror of the bureau a rippling, blue-green lake. Jareth sat, spent, on a large, half-submerged tree root across from the sleeping queen. The only magic Jareth possessed from his fall of four years ago was one that came only from his deepest passions and long-practiced skill. It could create the illusion of different places, and could awake the sleeper from within.
"Jareth?" Sarah stretched her arms, yawning luxuriously. She sat up on the root and leaned against the trunk of the tree that claimed its nether depths. Her bright green dress flowed all around her. "What are you doing here?" Looking around like an enchanted child, Sarah smiled tranquilly. "Hmm, this is the place I like to dream best. It's funny how I always come here to dream. It's a little like a place I had been some time back... I guess it has some significance, but I just think it's beautiful in its own right. What do you think of this place? I don't think I have ever dreamed of you here before."
"It is very lovely, Sarah," Jareth answered as he gazed at her intensely, but half-smiling under the surface.
"Yes, it is. Hmm, I wonder why this is the first time I have dreamed you here? I guess it doesn't matter. I can show you, now." Like a lively child, she jumped from her seated position and grabbed Jareth's hand.
She walked with him through the forest, dreamy-eyed and gazing all about. The clearing ran alongside a small lake, where a tiny inlet of mountain curved gracefully at the edges, releasing a gentle waterfall into the lake, where it flowed out into a river that seemed, due to the distortions of this imaginary world, to flow straight back to Sunset City.
In the distance, Sunset City morphed back and forth into the Goblin City, the sky at once brooding and bright. Magicmockers filled the trees, singing gracefully and paving the way for good fortune. All that went on was immediately reminiscent of Sarah's long ago journey through the Underground where she sought out the amethyst for the long ago Jareth. Trees would sway to and fro to reveal fieries dancing in the distance, the beast men were in another nook, playing with their children, and someone was coming to Hoggle's father, The Bookkeeper, to gain some form of wisdom. It seemed as if Sarah actually longed for the old days of adventure, to find a place of lesser responsibility, and to explore once again like a boundless child.
"I know what this place is, now," Sarah said suddenly, gazing up at Jareth with smiling eyes. She held both of his hands before her and spun to face him. "This is where the Magicmockers helped me to get Hoggle and the others out of the dungeon. And this is also where I met the elves, and Sage."
Jareth became downcast. "Yes, I know. I'm sorry for all of the heartache I caused you, Sarah."
"What for?" Sarah exclaimed. "We had a grand time! I danced with Vindar, and saw Didymus in rare form..." Her eyes drifted off into the distance, and soon she was giggling hysterically and running away, clutching her dress between her fingertips.
"Sarah, wait!" Jareth ran after her, trying his best to catch up with her in the forest. She was a sparkling nymph in his eyes at that moment, the pure essence of all that was joy and wonder. The darkness that had always crept at the edges of his demeanor like a stubborn rust at the place where screw and metal meet, this darkness fell away under the sunshine of the child within the woman. Soon he found himself laughing as she did, and, since he knew this was a dream and that she did not, he slipped behind one tree far behind her, and came out magically from another directly before her. He caught her between his arms, and they laughed like little imps escaping the cries of the governess to come home.
Soon their laughter was calmed by a deeper emotion that grew strong with their fixed gaze.
"Oh Sarah, how lovely you are. If only I could make you see my intentions, if only we could be as such in wakefulness..."
She put up a finger to silence him. "Though I may forget this is a dream when I wake, I forgive you here and now."
He was startled. "Do you mean that you know that you are dreaming?"
"Yes... Ever since you left and I began to learn magic, I have found myself dreaming lucidly more and more as time passes. It's not completely under my control... You always do what you will within the dream."
"What do I do in your other dreams?"
"That doesn't matter. I feel this dream is shortly over... And then I will be alone."
"No you won't, Sarah. I will always be with you." Jareth's eyes were ablaze in fiery green hues.
"I know you are not there in the real world, Jareth... Nor will I remember this dream. But I will remember a kiss."
He wanted to protest, to make her realize that he was there in reality, sitting beside her bed and willing to do whatever she would ask. Instead, he brushed her hair aside and looked into those brown eyes that had kept him awake and raving in a deep sweat that came from longing many a night. Her lightly pink cheeks flushed with emotion, full lips asking only to be kissed...
Emotion was so real and tangible that the kiss was a barely sufficient accent. Their lips came together, passionate and full of motion, their arms clasped about one another as if the world could not provide foundation. He gripped her hair gently but firmly between his fingers, every sensation wild in his body with only the kind of feeling that something other than reality could possess him with. She stood on her toes, her fingers pressed deeply into his neck, caressing and kneading his skin, finding corporal expression of the ephemeral. The trees rocked and swayed toward them, bending inward as if their joining was stretching the world in toward them, where it would be sucked up into a black hole.
And then it stretched in the opposite direction. The noise of a shrieking mountain came from the distance; they parted, barely able to pull their gaze away from each other in order to look in the direction of the sound. The rumbling increased, and it was suddenly obvious that a great earthquake had begun, rending the ground beneath them in two.
"Sarah! What is happening?" Jareth shouted above the din.
A new look took Sarah over, and she seemed resigned, a slave. "The dream is coming to an end, my love." Her balance thrown awry, she attempted to gain stability by leaning against a tree. She was weak and fragile.
"Whatever it is, you can stop it, Sarah! This is your dream!" Jareth stepped along the edge of the break, trying to find a place to jump across. He even tried to will his way to the other side, but nothing would work. There was a strange resistance in the air.
"Goodbye... I think I am going away..."
The other half of the world disappeared, taking Sarah with it. Jareth was left staring into a white, windfilled void, empty of everything but fluttering leaves, suddenly dead.
It did not take Jareth long to realize what had happened.
* * *
The crow cawed, pleased at his handiwork. He flew out of the doorway with the amethyst shard in his claws, his beating wings causing a breeze that beckoned the candle flames to look in his direction. Behind him he left an empty hole in the wall, a vacated bed, and one half of a drawing, depicting Jareth, sullen and without hope.