Chapter 5

Jareth stormed down the corridor, away from the ridicuous throne and his cringing mother. He was angrier than he had ever been before. How could she, even with her freezingly sadistic personality, stand to lay such a burden on him? She hadn't even attempted at seeing him all those years....all those years spent lonely and confused in the western wing of the castle; those horrible childhood years of books and bedtiem whispers and watching faeries die....all those years when....he was missing something.
Jareth would never admit to need. It was a useless waste of his time and resources, he decided, and futile. He had all he needed....himself and his mind. He could do away with the rest. His nurses, his illusion of a mother, and even his crystals....
Well, he might want to hang on to the crystals. But not because he needed them. He just liked them, watching them spiral around so carefree and daring, completely transparent, yet no one could see through them as long as they were moving.
The unfortunate goblin prince ascended the stairs to his chamber in the west wing tower. How could she? How could she let herself?
He began tripping up the stairs two at a time, as though trying to reach the moon. How did she allow that? How might she? How dare she?
He kept climbing, more vigorously than ever, taking three steps at a time, four, five, a rhytm resounding in his head. How dare she, how dare she, how dare she.....
He realized that his inner voice had changed and stopped.He had begun to think like a king.
Jareth leaned sideways against the curling wall of the tower, the tug of gravity at his heels. He tried to hold back ungodly screams of despair. Instead, he felt silent tears slide between his clenched eyelids and down his sculpted cheeks.
He thought he heard a pitterpatter of footsteps far below him, descending, and voices How could they have passed him without stopping? Was there another doorway down there?
He pulled himself together and crept back down the winding stairs.
The voices at the bottom were the hollow sounds of mice, crawling about between the cracks in the walls. The feet had been the escape of his own tears, fleeing down the stairwell and hitting the floor.