To Sever Love From Charity
by Alison Harvey
Disclaimer: Labyrinth is not mine. It's certainly not my work and I wouldn't be so silly as assume you'd believe me if I did claim it was mine. Author's notes are posted at the end of the chapter.
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Berowne:
Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
It is religion to be thus forsworn,
For charity itself fulfils the law
And who can sever love from charity?
--Love's Labours Lost (III.iv.364-369)
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Prologue: Sunset
The midsummer sun was burning in the sky, heating the late afternoon air to a lazy stillness. At the traffic light, Sarah Williams rolled down the window—the damn air conditioning had broken again, and she could feel sweat beading at her brow and rolling clammily down the back of her dress.
The engine rumbled softly as she watched the red stoplight intently, willing it to change.
"Hurry up," Sarah muttered after a quick look at the dashboard clock for the time. Toby's orchestra concert was tonight, and he was playing seventh violin in selections from Stravinsky's Rites of Spring. She shook her head. The new conductor was ambitious. Tonight's concert would either be very good or very bad. At least with Stravinsky's atonal harmonies, it'd be hard to tell if the borrowed high school choir missed a note.
She winced. Maybe it wasn't too late to buy earplugs.
The other cars had finally finished turning left. She gauged it would be at least another two minutes before she could shift into drive and start the air flowing through the open windows. She wiggled uncomfortably on the vinyl seat, already sticky, wishing she'd gone to get the a.c. fixed on her way home from the downtown office.
Oh, right. Bill, the absentminded payroll manager, had forgotten to give her the Friday paycheck, so she was cashless until she came into work on Tuesday.
A universal truth of college life: tuition, classes and finals are all bad, but there is no hell like a summer internship. Sarah was already tired of hers, and this wasn't the first time Bill had been late with the pay slips. Maybe she could get an advance from Karen so she could afford to go to the mechanic on Monday. It was supposed to be even hotter next week.
Restless, she squirmed again, accidentally banging her hip against the side of the seatbelt. "Ow," she muttered, stretching her hand down to rub against her side. Then she felt it.
"What the hell?"
She slipped a hand into her pocket and grabbed what she had felt beneath the fabric of her dress. Even as she withdrew it, she knew what it was from its shape.
Impossible.
Glimmering in defiance of her disbelief was a perfect, round crystal.
"Take it back!" she yelled, forgetting that the windows were down. The bored teenage girls in the next lane over giggled at her outburst. She glared, but clamped her mouth shut.
The crystal didn't disappear, oblivious to her frantic desire that it do so.
But why was it there in the first place?
The stoplight turned green. Her peaceful mood destroyed, Sarah wrenched the stick into third gear and peeled away, leaving the giggling girls far behind. She made it home in record time, the crystal rolling on the passenger seat as she pulled into the driveway. Leaving a space for her father to get into the garage when he came home, she hopped out.
She opened the passenger door and grabbed the crystal, hoping it would break when she touched it. It didn't. She slipped it into her pocket uneasily.
Karen was fussing in the kitchen, beating the pastry of the apple pie with special attention. When she saw it was Sarah who entered, her face fell.
"It's just me," Sarah said wryly.
"It's not that," Karen hastened to explain, rinsing her hands in the sink. They were always cautious with each other nowadays, afraid of saying the wrong thing and destroying the growing truce between them. Most of the time, it worked.
Done, Karen pushed back a strand of blonde hair with a damp hand. "I was just hoping it was Toby. He's leaving it a bit late to dress."
Sarah frowned. "What? He's not back yet?"
Toby had wandered out of the house that morning, munching an apple and carrying a knapsack of books, sandwiches and a thermos of Pepsi. A sensible, balanced diet for a nine-year-old on summer vacation.
Karen shook her head. "He knew he was supposed to be back with enough time to change out of those filthy clothes he wore this morning. If he doesn't come back soon, would you mind running by the park to pick him up?"
"The park?" Sarah asked sharply, her heart sinking as she saw Karen nod. She could feel the heavy weight of the crystal in her pocket
Now she knew the crystal hadn't been a message. It was a summons.
She forced a smile. "Tell you what, it's getting late. Why don't I just walk there and send him home?"
Karen looked relieved. "You'd do that?"
Sarah nodded and kissed her stepmother on the cheek. "I'll get his butt home before you come chasing after him with that rolling pin. Don't let him eat my slice of pie before I make it back!" Karen laughed and went back to punishing the dough. Sarah left hurriedly.
When she shut the garage door behind her, Sarah knew Karen expected her to scold Toby, linger until it grew dark, then return in time for dinner. Her habit of solitary sunset watching in the park was well known to her family, and she was grateful Karen hadn't thought it was odd she'd risk being late to dinner. Her calm appearance was too fragile at the moment to survive direct questions.
The walk to the park usually took ten minutes, but she was reluctant to arrive. So she lingered on the way, watching the neighborhood children ride their tricycles around the cul-de-sac and clumsily try their older sibling's bicycles. Mr. Johnson was cutting his grass with the smoke- belching lawn mower that always made her father's environmental engineer heart crack. Mr. Johnson wiped sweat off his brow as she walked past, pausing to take a swig out of a water bottle. He dropped the empty bottle onto the front step with a loud clatter and flashed a broad grin at her.
Through the windows of the blue corner house she could see the teenage Silverstein boy playing video games, his mother angrily waving a sheaf of notebook paper at her indifferent son. Sarah looked away, pained. Jess Richards, Junior League president, beamed toothily, offering a thumbs-up for Sarah's white dress as she started her four-mile post-work jog.
Robert Williams turned down the street in his blue Honda and stopped to wave to his daughter. Sarah waved back with a carefully neutral expression, waiting until he had pulled into the driveway before continuing. She walked faster, abandoning the sidewalks to climb through backyards, splash through streams and scramble over walls until she reached the park.
Her feet knew the way too well, leaving her alone with the company of her bleak thoughts. She saw the approaching summer thunderstorm, but dismissed it; the evening breeze was picking up and would soon shred the clouds to pieces.
When she reached the far side of the lake, she hesitated. The blue sky beckoned her as it shaded into crimson, drawing her towards her haunt by the northern edge of the lake. From its banks she had often watched the sun set over the hills, reflected huge and orange in the dark waters.
Sarah waited quietly between the bank and the forest, hands clasped in front of her to hide their slight trembling. She needed to keep her courage. Everything, she suspected, depended on it.
She had no idea what she planned to do. Demand Toby back? Run the Labyrinth again? Call Hoggle and ask him to rescue her? She hadn't looked for him in the mirror for at least three years: would he even know to respond? She waited, the breeze coming off the lake playfully catching at her skirts.
When the Goblin King came, he wore green. His shirt was silk, the pale hue of spring grass, with darker stitching as intricate as dragonfly wings around the cuffs and the open neck. His breeches, tucked into knee-high black leather boots, were the deep black-green of uncut beryl. Gold clasps with polished jade insets closed the folds of his moss-colored cape around his shoulders. A pendant glinted like a second sun against the strip of skin his open shirt revealed.
As he stepped forward into the late summer of the human world, he pushed back the gold-embroidered hood of the cape with black-gloved hands and let his mane of feathery hair spill forth. A slim golden chain bound a crescent emblem against his high forehead. In the fading sunlight glancing through the trees, his pale, angular features shone with unnatural light, the arch of bone above his eyes shimmering green and gold.
Jareth looked out to the lake with quiet arrogance and the authority of one born to walk in splendor among the arching trees. He favored her with an amused smile from where he stood beneath the mightiest of the white oaks, but did not move to join her from where she stood by the lake.
The sight was wasted on Sarah, who had eyes only for the slim boy who walked stiffly out of the copse to join the Goblin King. He wore a disheveled circlet of laurel leaves in his messy blond hair. The glossy leaves were pristine and fresh; the boy was gaunt and worn, blue eyes clouded and disoriented in his distant, drawn face. He cowered next to the Goblin King in response to some quiet word from thin lips, his black jeans, t-shirt and muddy sneakers disturbingly normal against Jareth's casual elegance.
"Toby," she cried, moving under the sweeping canopy towards him. She knew it was a mistake to leave the open sky and water, but couldn't resist the chance of rescuing her stepbrother.
The boy blinked in confusion, then his eyes opened wide. "Sarah!" He rushed forward, only to stop short less than half a step from where he had appeared. Panicked, he tried again, jerked back against his will from the invisible line separating them.
Sarah was reminded horribly of when her neighbor had installed an electric fence for their new puppy. Triangular flags marked the boundaries of the wires for human watchers, but the beagle had no way of learning except through cruel experience. She had watched the little dog run up against the fence and be shocked into obedience with tears in her eyes.
One day, she'd taken the collar off and watched happily as the beagle ran away. Karen, catching her defiance through the kitchen window, had made her bring the dog back, apologizing for her stepchild's willfulness.
Now, watching her beloved younger brother test the limits of his confinement, she reached into her pocket. The cool, hard outline of the perfect sphere under her fingertips reassured her.
She stepped forward cautiously, inching her hand forward to the invisible barrier Toby's frantic hand gestures defined. When she touched the air, it felt thick and hard. When she probed further, testing its resistance, a current shocked her. She jumped back, looking at Toby with alarm.
"Help me," Toby said pleadingly, glancing quickly at the figure by the tree. "I don't know why he's doing this!"
"Just stay calm," she said soothingly, biting her lip as a painful second shock grounded itself through her. "He wants you to panic."
Jareth wanted him to panic, she didn't add, because he knew how it would twist her heart to see the boy's pain. She watched Toby grunt as he threw himself against the line and was flung back further than before. Dazed, he picked himself off the ground.
"I would not advise trying that again," Jareth said, speaking for the first time. His warm, accented voice poured over her panic like a balm that both itched and soothed. She wanted to rip the smug smile off his face—and she wanted nothing more than to touch his perfect face and see if he truly was that beautiful. She remembered being caught between the two instincts as a girl. Nothing, it appeared, had changed.
"Then why don't you take it away," she challenged, facing him. "Give Toby back."
It was a test to see what he truly wanted. Sarah might have guessed his motivations, but she would not let him frighten her into giving him what he wanted if he had merely come for a brief talk.
Right, she thought. Just a chat. If the Goblin King had gone to the trouble to take Toby, he wanted more than a quick gossip and an invitation to dinner at Karen's.
Jareth flicked his gaze quickly over to Toby, who was eying the empty space in a prelude to trying the barrier again. Turning his attention back to Sarah, Jareth straightened from his casual stance against the oak tree, tugging a glove tight against the back of his hand with one quick movement.
"The shock increases each time he tried to pass the barrier. If he tries again, he risks brain damage, troubling for such a promising young man." He shrugged. Toby stopped in mid-rush, backing fearfully away from Sarah. "As touching as your attempted reunion is to watch, it was not what I had intended by bringing him here to see you."
"That's not what you told me!" Toby shouted, clenching his fists. He looked to where the barrier began, then away. He stayed where he was.
Jareth smiled.
"Give Toby back," Sarah said again, throwing Toby a warning glance.
Don't say anything, please don't make it harder. She had to remember that Jareth had planned this all. If she let Toby play his part, it would make getting him back that much harder.
"I'm afraid that your demands are impossible to fulfill," the Goblin King said. "It saddens me to learn that you have not yet revised your expectations. Still making demands of any unfortunates in your path, I see."
"Sarah," Toby said softly, drawing her barbed reply from her tongue, and she turned to see him beseeching her with blue eyes. "I'm sorry. It's my fault. I asked--"
Her heart quickened. "Asked what?" she prompted, dread coiling in her stomach. She had assumed he had been taken. But now, a sudden fear suffused her.
What if he hadn't been taken? What if...
"Go on, young one," said the Goblin King, leaning forward with interest. "It's far too late to conceal it now."
Toby looked back to Jareth and gulped. His laurel crown slipped another inch and he fumbled to push it back.
What if he'd wished himself away?
"I asked him to take me," her half-brother finished miserably. "I didn't know and didn't remember and I just wanted to know! I didn't think it would work!"
She closed her eyes out of sudden pain, too late to hide the Goblin King's knowing smile. If he had wished himself away, she had no idea what she could do.
Toby, well aware of the trouble he was in, continued to explain how much worse the situation was than she had guessed.
"He says there's no way out!" Toby said. "And then he said that you'd already rescued me once..."
Her eyes flew open.
"...and if you could take my place to run the maze, which he'd never let you do, that would be the only way I could go."
Brown, brown pine needles. Between the drifts of fallen needles, she could see dark earth mixed with flecks of leaf mold. An ant crawled busily through the debris at her feet, carrying a tiny green cutting. She watched it industriously carry the green scrap beyond the length of her shoe.
"So then he said he'd let you come see me and tell me what I could do."
Of course he did. Of that, Sarah had no doubt. Toby had most likely jumped at the offered chance of help.
Brown pine needles. Green leaf mold. Sarah frowned again, stopping the scuffing motion of her foot, wondering how it looked to the hawk-like gaze trained on her. Green, green like the Goblin King's clothing. Green like the crown Toby was wearing. Laurel leaves? She recognized them from the ancient Greek history classes she'd taken as a budding historian before realizing what a historian made these days. Laurel leaves were Greek. There were box laurels in the Johnson's hedge, but the shape was wrong...
"Toby, take it off," she said suddenly. Toby, using Karen's sharp intelligence, guessed immediately what Sarah meant and reached for the haphazard crown. When his fingers touched the leaves, he stiffened, carefully feeling around the half-circlet. He threw it off and started to step towards the barrier.
"Far enough," the Goblin King said, cutting into their hopes. Toby was pushed backwards as he hit a new invisible barrier another step closer to Sarah. From the way Toby's eyes unfocused as he shakily stood, the Goblin King's comment about danger had been correct.
"Needless to say," Jareth continued coldly, "you two are not to touch each other. It would give the boy an advantage." His eyes narrowed. "I am not in the business of distributing handicaps."
"Why did you bring him here, then?" Sarah asked the Goblin King. "If you have a reason, then say it before I start telling Toby exactly what he came here to find out about your little game."
Anger flashed in Jareth's eyes. Toby flinched. Sarah, twenty-two and less impressionable, did not.
"I did not say I would permit you to tell him how to win the game." He came towards them, and Sarah could have sworn that branches curled away from his path as he approached. "Nor should you assume that your advice would in any way be useful. Why should I continue to use an obviously flawed system?"
Toby was the one who gaped. Sarah had found herself distracted by the smooth flow of the Goblin King's steps. A long-repressed realization was clamoring for attention that she did not want to give.
"You got rid of the Labyrinth?" Toby asked incredulously. "But that's the key to the palace! How could you have given up--"
"I did not say I had given anything up," Jareth cut in. Sarah noticed how quickly he had cut off whatever information Toby had gleaned from her copy of the book and his time with the Goblin King. She wanted to know whatever Jareth clearly did not want shared. "It has changed to accommodate new conditions necessary to keep the playing field even."
He stopped short of the brother and sister. "Nor will you be permitted to run the Labyrinth, for that matter."
Now he had her attention: they both knew she waited on each word. He was playing it out for maximum effect, damn him. The sick weakness of her body returned, matched by the sour taste of bile in the back of her throat.
She had never forgotten Jareth. She could not imagine a world in which he did not exist, no matter how distant. He was too secure in his own reality to ever persist otherwise in her mind.
"What will he be permitted to do, then?" she asked thickly, her mouth dry as cotton wool.
"Stay in the castle with me," Jareth said idly, his attention seemingly on Toby. She looked up, past the darkening tree branches. Sunset was giving way to twilight, and the evening breeze she had predicted was methodically ravaging the last mauve traces of cloud.
"What?" asked Toby, looking down quickly at the wilting crown of leaves at his feet, then to Sarah. "Why can't I run the Labyrinth? Why don't I get that chance!"
There was a long pause.
Just say it, Sarah silently urged the Goblin King. End the wait. Tell him what you want me to know.
"You have wished yourself to me," Jareth said. "Since you have named no intercessor in that wish, you are mine to do with as I see fit. Any sort of challenge is pointless under these circumstances. I have decided to send you to join my property in the castle."
Sarah closed her eyes, trying to shut out Toby's low moan of anguish. She didn't need sight to know Jareth's current emotions. Ill-favored triumph was omnipresent in the stagnant air.
"I want to go home," Toby said in a shaky voice. She knew he was crying.
You bastard.
"I'm afraid you have little choice in the matter anymore. The magic demands that the contract be fulfilled. But why would you not want to stay with me?" A smile of sharp teeth. "Is my company not worthy of you? Would it be a boring life? I assure you that the transition to a goblin is both painless and quick. Having started it once, your body already remembers it."
The gauntlet, such as it was, had been thrown. Sarah thought furiously, trying to see some give or take in his words. The Goblin King was a creature of bargains. There would be a loophole somewhere, if she looked hard enough.
"I don't want to be a goblin...I just want to go home," Toby said pleadingly, obviously still hoping that Jareth would be reasonable.
She didn't expect reason.
"Now, I recall you quite enjoyed visiting with me last time, young one," she heard Jareth reply.
"I'd rather be home, if it's all the same."
Part of her had always wondered if he would come back. The memories of each trial in the Labyrinth were seared into her mind, as vivid and clear as the Goblin King in front of her. She understood that she had beaten him, and that it was in some way unusual. It was rational to expect he might resent this and seek to correct the imbalance.
But she had won! It wasn't right—the heroine, by rights, was always free. No fairytale or legend had taught her otherwise. She should have known that he would follow real life, Murphy's Law: what could go wrong, will.
She was unsurprised by the terms he was explaining to her brother, or that she had yet to play a part. If she had been included in this game but not to offer advice, there were very few other purposes she could fulfill.
"You don't have a choice," the Goblin King said gravely.
Sarah took a deep breath, and stepped forward, digging in her pocket for the crystal.
"But I do," she said quietly into the expectant silence. She held out the glittering sphere. "Contracts can be changed and still be valid."
Jareth smiled lazily, turning the weight of his stare onto her with slow care. "What's this you're offering?" He looked at the crystal in her hand before shrugging. "An object of my own magic is hardly worth trading for the addition of this bright young boy to my collection."
Toby shrank further. Jareth was succeeding admirably in using him to provoke her, hard as she tried to resist. He had proven his unspoken point; Toby was never meant to fulfill this bargain.
As she had known, really, since she had first found the gleaming crystal in her pocket. Now it barely caught the starlight gleaming through the trees. Toby's face was a ghost in the darkness, thankfully too faint to read. Only Jareth remained in her sight, hyper-real, watching her with anticipation.
"You offered my dreams for him once," Sarah said. "Would you now honor the reverse?"
The Goblin King shook his head, and she wondered for one horrifying moment if she'd completely miscalculated.
"What use do I have for your dreams? You barely know them as it is." He smiled to himself, a private jest. She frowned. "They are worthless to me."
He would not force her into it, of course. Rather he left it open, allowing her to damn herself.
"If the magic demands a person taken..."
Sarah faltered at the immensity of the statement, began again. "If you need someone to go with you, then...I'll go in his place."
A slow smile of satisfaction spread across his face. She bowed her head. He had won. She hadn't been able to avoid it.
The crystal in her hand began to glow.
"Swear it," Jareth said harshly, and she shivered at the cold eagerness in his voice. "Swear it to the magic. Swear you do this of your own free will, that you bind yourself to me in exchange for his freedom."
It was one thing to anticipate what he had planned and another to know this was the moment of entrapment. She was not as calm and resolute as she wanted to be.
She wanted to go home and forget all about this, but unlike Toby, there was no one to come and claim her from the Goblin King.
This would be a terribly final decision.
"Sarah!" called Toby, but his voice was dim and muffled, easy to ignore. She knew he was babbling for her not to do this, that he would happily go if it would spare her. She wouldn't let him. Toby didn't have the ability to survive, not if the Goblin King was denied his revenge. She didn't have the heart for trite speeches and compromises of familial duty. Oddly, her irritation gave her the courage she had lacked before.
She lifted her chin, looked at him with a cool gaze. "I, Sarah Williams, swear that I do this of my own free will. I choose to take my brother's place in this bargain."
Toby is safe, now.
"Done," Jareth said. "Sealed, with witness."
She looked at him, startled, as the glow of the crystal went out.
She heard one last muffled cry from Toby, and then the wind came, screaming around her and drawing her away from sense and sight.
Through it all she could see the intense satisfaction on Jareth's face.
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Mud ground harshly into pale skin.
Sarah licked her lips, tasting blood from the battering of magic that had drawn her across lines and worlds. She opened dark lashes to grey night bounded by gravel and wet earth. Tall hedges reached across the gravel, nearly touching overhead in black spiderwebs of woven branches.
The Labyrinth looked decidedly less enchanting this time around.
"Get up," the Goblin King said, and for a moment her heart fluttered at the chords and harmonics of his smooth voice.
The tip of a pointed boot nudged against her ribs, finding the most battered, and all the romance and silken dreams his voice had conjured were forgotten. She winced.
"Get up, Sarah," he bit out, and the last cobwebs lifted from her mind at the anger in his voice. His foot pushed again, closer to a kick than before.
She lifted her aching head from the cool mud and stones, tilting her head to follow the grain of his leather boots to the silk lining at his knees. She dared not look further.
Slowly, she drew herself up. It took energy to ignore the thousand scrapes and bruises, but she refused to acknowledge them in his presence. Every muscle was slow to respond, as if she was standing in a column of the same thick air that had trapped Toby. She didn't remember this from the first time he had brought her here.
"It is time," he announced flatly.
Oh, she tried so hard...and failed. Sarah forgot not to look into his eyes.
Hazel met unequal blue with a pulse of energy that left her reeling. She studied the angle of his eyebrows, drawn together, following the tension of his brow to his narrowed eyes and widened pupils.
Worse, she forgot to hide that she loved him.
Even with his harsh gaze upon her, she was drawn to him, needing him. Six years ago, she had taken her stepbrother home, safe from the Goblin King. She had hidden away her dolls and her flowing costumes and pretended she hadn't felt the raw longing that kept her awake at nights with a terrible yearning and restless dreams far too old for a young girl.
Time and distance had not lessened the surge of emotion he effortlessly called up in her.
She had never needed anything more than her life until she had met him, and had never wanted another. She had given it up as a lost, wild dream that needed to be smothered quietly over time until the call faded. Just when she thought she had finally succeeded, he had come to her again to offer her a devil's choice that promised no love, no affection.
Little did he know that he could vanish right now, leave her with a broken, useless heart, and have his revenge.
Seeing him, she knew she loved him. It was useless to deny it, not here at what would most certainly be an ending. And yet, her final weapon was the ability to deny him this power over her. It was her private thought, to keep to herself, no matter what happened.
A secret to name as her own. A last defiance.
Three crystals, called from the ether, danced in his leather-clad fingers. They drew her eyes away from his, hiding her secret before he could swoop in with a predator's instinct and take it from her. She frowned. There was something wrong with the third crystal, but it wove in and out of the looping pattern too quickly for her to understand her instinctive cringing at its sight.
The Goblin King smiled thinly and tossed the first at her with hard, bruising speed. Something cracked in her hand and she recoiled, holding the pristine sphere in a palm that had gone numb with the impact.
Compared to the slow cruelty she faced now, the Labyrinth was a child's toy.
In slow, agonizing inches, she lifted the crystal to her face.
"Toby," she whispered. His image danced beneath the surface, fleeing out of sight as her head dropped.
"A reminder," Jareth replied, his gaze harsh as he looked at the woman in front of him. "You are sure of this decision? To keep him free of obligations to my world?"
Looking at the Goblin King, she knew she had to keep Toby away from him. She had seen the fear in his eyes when offered a place in the Labyrinth. While Sarah at nine might have eagerly accepted a promise of a dream-castle and its king, Toby had turned the Goblin King's offer down even before knowing his humanity was the cost. Jareth wanted him and Toby had been right to fear what form his bargain would force on him.
If she had ever needed proof that Toby was Karen's child, she had it now. Karen would be proud of her son's careful reasoning and correct decision.
To protect Toby, Sarah would do anything: all three knew that, and it was clear that Jareth had counted on it. She straightened, looking at the Goblin King from within a numb, high plateau beyond fear.
Don't think of where you might have gone. Think of the beady eyes, the mindless hurt, the terror as the goblins heeded their king. Remember Toby's leg, half-changed in the Escher room, wrong in its shape and turn of bone. Remember the green scales on his neck and the animal wreck of the Goblin City.
He would do that to Toby, not to you. That would be too easy.
"I choose his path as mine. He is free and will remain free."
The words echoed oddly in her aching head, startling her. She moved slightly, gravel crunching beneath her tattered shoes.
Jareth shrugged, twisting the crystals over and under his wrist against gravity in a way that made her head hurt.
"It is your choice," he said at last. "That is your first dream. I choose to grant it."
"Generous of you," she said quietly.
"I am always generous."
The crystal vanished in her hand. Her fingers curled reflexively around the space. She cried out against the feel of fire in the frail bones of her hand, a soft expression of pain.
The second crystal danced over to her at Jareth's whispered command, floating softly in the air. It nestled in her wounded palm and neatly filled the gap between her cupped fingers, flowing through and around the digits like water until it reformed inside. The cool of the crystal soothed the hurt and its solid structure braced her hand. Inside, more images swirled in pale hues.
She knew better than to look, but good judgment had been lost to her since sunset. Arm trembling, she brought the second crystal to her face, only to blush furiously at the entwined couple within.
For one desperate moment, the image of the Goblin King and herself made her wonder if there was no need to hide her last secret after all.
"Your second dream," Jareth said nonchalantly, addressing the space between them. "One not unexpected, but certainly never to be more than a fantasy." He curled his lips into an expression that would have been a smile on a human being. She sensed the cruel humor that had broken his indifference and kept her head safely bowed, fearing what form it might take.
"I do not want this," she said futilely to the vision, her gaze straying to the figures suspended in the crystal. Her voice was thin and strained even to herself. Shame crept into her, forcing her to Jareth's will. She fought it briefly; let it take her. She was his. She had brought this upon herself; so let her take the punishment in full.
"Toby," Sarah said, picturing her stepbrother as the first crystal had shown him. She sketched the slight build of the tall, gawky boy in her mind, drew in the shaggy mop of blond hair and added the dog-eared, well- worn books in his hand. Red leather formed in her mind, gilt scrolling out a familiar title.
He had said he was sorry when she saw him again. Sarah couldn't blame him. She didn't wonder how Toby had found her copy of Labyrinth. Now she knew where it had gone after she returned from her time in the maze. Jareth's smile of satisfaction when he came at sunset had explained it all.
It had been a trap, and yet she would have done the same again, given the choice. Even knowing the bruises, and the pain, and the humiliation as he had dragged her to this place.
The erotic writhing of her miniature self and the other in the crystal broke her careful picture, and she blushed crimson at the thought of her dreams out on display for his unclean hands to touch.
Strange, how he took love for lust, Sarah thought, chagrined at the heat she felt from the images. Nothing was pure in his world, least of all her childish notions.
A lesson was learned.
Like a thinning soap bubble, the crystal began to fade, swirls of magic passing less rapidly over its surface until it passed into nothing like the first crystal.
Her silence asked a question. The Goblin King chose to answer it.
"The first disappeared because it was fulfilled. The second is gone because I choose to show you the last." His lips drew back further from his pointed teeth. This time she shuddered at his feral smile.
She waited for the third crystal, the tainted one that had puzzled her.
It appeared in her hands. Now that it wasn't moving she could see what was wrong with it: it was opaque instead of shining, a dark, ugly creation. Light curved around it without touching it, leaving it in a puddle of blackness that spilled into her hands in an oily caress.
Sarah said nothing, biding her time. It was clear Jareth wanted her to acknowledge its strangeness and play the questioning student to his mastery. She would not give him the satisfaction.
"What is it?" her mouth said. It had shaped the words, defying her control. She jerked her head up from the crystal to see Jareth still smiling at her. The choking smell of magic hung heavy in the air. For the briefest of moments, anger broke through her fear and gave her strength. Then she was left numb as he pronounced his next words with deliberate slowness.
"Your future."
Horror filled her, her imagination more than creative enough to offer a thousand interpretations. The crystal lay weightless in her broken hand as both dropped limply to her side.
The Goblin King had come closer. Hell was the feel of his nearness, the heat of his body behind hers. Soon, though, she would be gone from this and his revenge--for what else could she call it?--would be complete.
She thought of Toby, living his life free from the Goblin King. She thought of Karen and Robert, free from the vexing heartaches that she knew the Goblin King had sent them; the constant mechanical malfunctions at Robert's business, the second and third miscarriages, and her mother's slow illness without cause or cure. All gone now that she had returned to pay her debt. She nearly managed a smile at that.
"You fear a world where no one knows you existed," the Goblin King whispered into her ear.
She was startled at how deeply his voice could cut into the private places she had barred from him. She did not want to be forgotten. It was her reward for this. One day, even as a sliver of memory, Toby would remember what had happened to her, that she had protected him and he would no longer be plagued by nightmares whispering from dark corners. Toby would grow older, safe, and thankful. Maybe there'd even be a grandchild named after her, the vanished hostage. That would be how she lived, knowing that at least one person understood why Sarah Williams had disappeared.
The Goblin King would take this away. Cold settled inside of her.
Frightened, she fell down into the sanctum of her mind. His words followed, destroying her last hopes.
"They will never know," he continued, soft as any lover as his hand brushed against her hair and traced the outline of her ear. "You will cease to exist."
Her eyes stung. She blinked as tears formed and ran down her cheek, caught by his leather-clad fingers.
"You will live," he said. She had already known. "But no one will remember. I choose to grant your third wish."
"Not my dream," she said dully. His polished boots shone against the rough gravel in the orange moonlight. She did not move away or protest as he ran his hand down her neck to rest at her collarbone, streaking her tears until they disappeared between the leather and skin.
She felt wisps of his hair against her sensitized neck as he leaned forward over her shoulder. "Correct, little mortal. I took the liberty of procuring a nightmare of yours instead."
Sarah murmured a few choice words. He tipped back his head and laughed, a rich sound meant for bedroom intimacies. Sarah's heartbeat quickened, though she hated herself for it.
"Your gratitude is underwhelming. After all, the traditional number of wishes to grant is one. You have three and I have chosen to give you two. Most others would consider themselves fortunate."
"I hate you," she said. She felt the power of the words fill her, strengthening her.
"How touching," the Goblin King said. "Any final speech? Any last words for this stage? I find the quality of your repartee has also failed to improve over time."
Sarah kept her lips sealed.
He laughed again. Why not? It was the height of his revenge, she supposed. It was nearly over. She clenched her hand, ignoring the bursts of colors swelling in her vision, threatening to take her away. The Goblin King was too busy conjuring a fourth crystal to notice that she had closed her fingers tightly around the dark sphere in her hand, straining against its frail surface. Anger burned hot within her, renewed by the agony lacing her hand. It swept away the fog that had bound her since she had arrived.
Magic, her mind whispered to her later, when she tried to remember what had happened. He used magic to bind you to his will and then you broke through it, back to yourself.
The Goblin King was no fool. Although he didn't hear the first crack, he raised his head from his crafting at the soft grinding sound. She had finally succeeded in closing her shattered fingers into the flesh of her hand.
She met his gaze calmly and opened her fingers. A flurry of black crystal shards drifted to the ground, piling in delicate ebon snowdrifts. In the gleam of the setting moon, a dark red liquid dripped from her torn palm to shine wetly among the remnants of the crystal and her nightmare.
The pain nearly blinded her, but adrenaline stole it from her and kept her strong. The hurt was a small price to pay for the pleasure of derailing his plans.
She watched the blood mingle with the fractured black with painful satisfaction, pleased to have done this small part to destroy his revenge and make it harder. She watched his face eagerly, watched his eyes narrow.
"Foolish woman!" he bellowed, grabbing her arm roughly. "Do you know what you could have done?" A twirl of his wrist exchanged his conjured sphere for a smaller one lit within by green and gold sparks. Quickly he pushed it into her palm and shut her fingers around it, ignoring her yelp of pain as her fingers were bent wrong again.
His anger and sudden concern pleased her, quelling the strange surge that had prompted her defiance. Looking down at her hand, she opened her fingers without pain and saw the clean flesh there. A few fragments drifted to the floor, smearing the last of her blood against the healed hand.
"It only bought you a few seconds," he commented coldly as he called the other, larger crystal back to his hand and ran his fingers over it with a master's precision. "Now, it is time to decide your fate."
"You cannot judge me," she said tiredly, feeling poisonous exhaustion begin to take her. She had not thought he would shrug aside the broken crystal so casually. "No one told me it would hurt you to regain my brother."
"You know nothing of what you did," the Goblin King hissed. He stepped too close.
She stumbled as she tried to scramble away, flailing out with one hand. Her hand caught warm skin and cold metal, then air as he quickly backed away.
"My kingdom was wrecked and my powers ruined by your ill-fated words," the Goblin King said icily. "You were not meant to meddle with the greater magic, child, and now you must repay me for my years of work. There must be a reckoning for what you did. Now you are within my reach and my right at last." His fingers stilled on the crystal after giving it one last affectionate caress. "Stand and meet my price."
And Sarah did straighten, meeting his eyes for what she realized would be her last look. He would not kill her, she was sure, but whatever the next moment brought would not be kind.
Fates can change in an instant.
The crystal exploded in a burst of light.
He was closer to the spell than her. Sarah's clutch for support as she fell had left a dull brown stain on the bright gold of his pendant. As gleaming power expanded outwards, one small part absorbed the bloodstain and changed.
Blood magic, oldest of the old ways. Powerful. Instinctual.
It could be shed on stones or smooth altars, by ritual knives or tearing claws. It could run down the carved channels of a broadsword, be caught by the purified bowl and silver chalice, or smeared onto the virgin wool. The method and materials were unimportant; what mattered was that the fresh blood was offered up like wine or water to mix into a source of magic.
Blood magic, in its strange and arcane way, did not require innate magic to guide its use. The sacrifice was still alive, her intent like a beacon in the night.
It was enough.
Please don't let him do this, Sarah pleaded to absent deities. Help me!
Jareth's spell was immensely powerful, woven to be effective and immediate. The pulse of the blood matched the rhythm of the magic and a unity was forged, warping the original intent of the caster in subtle, significant ways.
Jareth had wanted the world to forget Sarah.
Sarah loved Jareth despite reason, despite sanity. Desperate as she was, she knew he could never have this tool against her. She sought to protect it as much as she wanted to be free of his revenge. She wanted to be safe.
A new spell emerged from the blend of Labyrinth and blood magic, unknown to either frozen figure. The light pulsed, blinding both.
As the glow faded, Jareth's memory of what he had done this night dimmed as well. A faint satisfaction suffused him as he returned to his castle.
Sarah Williams vanished, her name swept away by the magic.
Not to a place of forgetting, but to the Masquerade Court, sister-court of the Labyrinth.
-----
Author's note:
Welcome to the rewrite of Smoke and Mirrors. Thanks to all who put up with the seven-month hiatus on this story. For those who have read the first four original chapters, I hope you can stick with me a little longer.
(If you haven't read the previously posted chapters of Smoke, please don't. The story will be changing in crucial ways--I'd written myself into a corner six chapters down the line--and it'll ultimately be fairly confusing.)
This prologue is entirely new material, and chapters 1-4 are being reworked very soon. After I've posted chapter two, the original version will be taken down. Right now it's useful as a placeholder, but will soon be unnecessary.
Your reviews, even after months of stopped work, were wonderful and helped me make the time to begin again on this story. I can't thank you enough for the support I constantly received from the reviews in my mailbox. I'd appreciate it if you could continue to leave such wonderful feedback.
And, lastly, a giant shout-out to Alorin, Arianne and Lilith, my trio of lovely betas. They've (collectively) put up with me for almost a year now and patiently edited and commented on what, at times, were very rough drafts. And now I'm sending them a whole new set of chapters. If you have the chance, look at their works: they're all fantastic in their own right.
-AH
by Alison Harvey
Disclaimer: Labyrinth is not mine. It's certainly not my work and I wouldn't be so silly as assume you'd believe me if I did claim it was mine. Author's notes are posted at the end of the chapter.
-----
Berowne:
Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
It is religion to be thus forsworn,
For charity itself fulfils the law
And who can sever love from charity?
--Love's Labours Lost (III.iv.364-369)
-----
Prologue: Sunset
The midsummer sun was burning in the sky, heating the late afternoon air to a lazy stillness. At the traffic light, Sarah Williams rolled down the window—the damn air conditioning had broken again, and she could feel sweat beading at her brow and rolling clammily down the back of her dress.
The engine rumbled softly as she watched the red stoplight intently, willing it to change.
"Hurry up," Sarah muttered after a quick look at the dashboard clock for the time. Toby's orchestra concert was tonight, and he was playing seventh violin in selections from Stravinsky's Rites of Spring. She shook her head. The new conductor was ambitious. Tonight's concert would either be very good or very bad. At least with Stravinsky's atonal harmonies, it'd be hard to tell if the borrowed high school choir missed a note.
She winced. Maybe it wasn't too late to buy earplugs.
The other cars had finally finished turning left. She gauged it would be at least another two minutes before she could shift into drive and start the air flowing through the open windows. She wiggled uncomfortably on the vinyl seat, already sticky, wishing she'd gone to get the a.c. fixed on her way home from the downtown office.
Oh, right. Bill, the absentminded payroll manager, had forgotten to give her the Friday paycheck, so she was cashless until she came into work on Tuesday.
A universal truth of college life: tuition, classes and finals are all bad, but there is no hell like a summer internship. Sarah was already tired of hers, and this wasn't the first time Bill had been late with the pay slips. Maybe she could get an advance from Karen so she could afford to go to the mechanic on Monday. It was supposed to be even hotter next week.
Restless, she squirmed again, accidentally banging her hip against the side of the seatbelt. "Ow," she muttered, stretching her hand down to rub against her side. Then she felt it.
"What the hell?"
She slipped a hand into her pocket and grabbed what she had felt beneath the fabric of her dress. Even as she withdrew it, she knew what it was from its shape.
Impossible.
Glimmering in defiance of her disbelief was a perfect, round crystal.
"Take it back!" she yelled, forgetting that the windows were down. The bored teenage girls in the next lane over giggled at her outburst. She glared, but clamped her mouth shut.
The crystal didn't disappear, oblivious to her frantic desire that it do so.
But why was it there in the first place?
The stoplight turned green. Her peaceful mood destroyed, Sarah wrenched the stick into third gear and peeled away, leaving the giggling girls far behind. She made it home in record time, the crystal rolling on the passenger seat as she pulled into the driveway. Leaving a space for her father to get into the garage when he came home, she hopped out.
She opened the passenger door and grabbed the crystal, hoping it would break when she touched it. It didn't. She slipped it into her pocket uneasily.
Karen was fussing in the kitchen, beating the pastry of the apple pie with special attention. When she saw it was Sarah who entered, her face fell.
"It's just me," Sarah said wryly.
"It's not that," Karen hastened to explain, rinsing her hands in the sink. They were always cautious with each other nowadays, afraid of saying the wrong thing and destroying the growing truce between them. Most of the time, it worked.
Done, Karen pushed back a strand of blonde hair with a damp hand. "I was just hoping it was Toby. He's leaving it a bit late to dress."
Sarah frowned. "What? He's not back yet?"
Toby had wandered out of the house that morning, munching an apple and carrying a knapsack of books, sandwiches and a thermos of Pepsi. A sensible, balanced diet for a nine-year-old on summer vacation.
Karen shook her head. "He knew he was supposed to be back with enough time to change out of those filthy clothes he wore this morning. If he doesn't come back soon, would you mind running by the park to pick him up?"
"The park?" Sarah asked sharply, her heart sinking as she saw Karen nod. She could feel the heavy weight of the crystal in her pocket
Now she knew the crystal hadn't been a message. It was a summons.
She forced a smile. "Tell you what, it's getting late. Why don't I just walk there and send him home?"
Karen looked relieved. "You'd do that?"
Sarah nodded and kissed her stepmother on the cheek. "I'll get his butt home before you come chasing after him with that rolling pin. Don't let him eat my slice of pie before I make it back!" Karen laughed and went back to punishing the dough. Sarah left hurriedly.
When she shut the garage door behind her, Sarah knew Karen expected her to scold Toby, linger until it grew dark, then return in time for dinner. Her habit of solitary sunset watching in the park was well known to her family, and she was grateful Karen hadn't thought it was odd she'd risk being late to dinner. Her calm appearance was too fragile at the moment to survive direct questions.
The walk to the park usually took ten minutes, but she was reluctant to arrive. So she lingered on the way, watching the neighborhood children ride their tricycles around the cul-de-sac and clumsily try their older sibling's bicycles. Mr. Johnson was cutting his grass with the smoke- belching lawn mower that always made her father's environmental engineer heart crack. Mr. Johnson wiped sweat off his brow as she walked past, pausing to take a swig out of a water bottle. He dropped the empty bottle onto the front step with a loud clatter and flashed a broad grin at her.
Through the windows of the blue corner house she could see the teenage Silverstein boy playing video games, his mother angrily waving a sheaf of notebook paper at her indifferent son. Sarah looked away, pained. Jess Richards, Junior League president, beamed toothily, offering a thumbs-up for Sarah's white dress as she started her four-mile post-work jog.
Robert Williams turned down the street in his blue Honda and stopped to wave to his daughter. Sarah waved back with a carefully neutral expression, waiting until he had pulled into the driveway before continuing. She walked faster, abandoning the sidewalks to climb through backyards, splash through streams and scramble over walls until she reached the park.
Her feet knew the way too well, leaving her alone with the company of her bleak thoughts. She saw the approaching summer thunderstorm, but dismissed it; the evening breeze was picking up and would soon shred the clouds to pieces.
When she reached the far side of the lake, she hesitated. The blue sky beckoned her as it shaded into crimson, drawing her towards her haunt by the northern edge of the lake. From its banks she had often watched the sun set over the hills, reflected huge and orange in the dark waters.
Sarah waited quietly between the bank and the forest, hands clasped in front of her to hide their slight trembling. She needed to keep her courage. Everything, she suspected, depended on it.
She had no idea what she planned to do. Demand Toby back? Run the Labyrinth again? Call Hoggle and ask him to rescue her? She hadn't looked for him in the mirror for at least three years: would he even know to respond? She waited, the breeze coming off the lake playfully catching at her skirts.
When the Goblin King came, he wore green. His shirt was silk, the pale hue of spring grass, with darker stitching as intricate as dragonfly wings around the cuffs and the open neck. His breeches, tucked into knee-high black leather boots, were the deep black-green of uncut beryl. Gold clasps with polished jade insets closed the folds of his moss-colored cape around his shoulders. A pendant glinted like a second sun against the strip of skin his open shirt revealed.
As he stepped forward into the late summer of the human world, he pushed back the gold-embroidered hood of the cape with black-gloved hands and let his mane of feathery hair spill forth. A slim golden chain bound a crescent emblem against his high forehead. In the fading sunlight glancing through the trees, his pale, angular features shone with unnatural light, the arch of bone above his eyes shimmering green and gold.
Jareth looked out to the lake with quiet arrogance and the authority of one born to walk in splendor among the arching trees. He favored her with an amused smile from where he stood beneath the mightiest of the white oaks, but did not move to join her from where she stood by the lake.
The sight was wasted on Sarah, who had eyes only for the slim boy who walked stiffly out of the copse to join the Goblin King. He wore a disheveled circlet of laurel leaves in his messy blond hair. The glossy leaves were pristine and fresh; the boy was gaunt and worn, blue eyes clouded and disoriented in his distant, drawn face. He cowered next to the Goblin King in response to some quiet word from thin lips, his black jeans, t-shirt and muddy sneakers disturbingly normal against Jareth's casual elegance.
"Toby," she cried, moving under the sweeping canopy towards him. She knew it was a mistake to leave the open sky and water, but couldn't resist the chance of rescuing her stepbrother.
The boy blinked in confusion, then his eyes opened wide. "Sarah!" He rushed forward, only to stop short less than half a step from where he had appeared. Panicked, he tried again, jerked back against his will from the invisible line separating them.
Sarah was reminded horribly of when her neighbor had installed an electric fence for their new puppy. Triangular flags marked the boundaries of the wires for human watchers, but the beagle had no way of learning except through cruel experience. She had watched the little dog run up against the fence and be shocked into obedience with tears in her eyes.
One day, she'd taken the collar off and watched happily as the beagle ran away. Karen, catching her defiance through the kitchen window, had made her bring the dog back, apologizing for her stepchild's willfulness.
Now, watching her beloved younger brother test the limits of his confinement, she reached into her pocket. The cool, hard outline of the perfect sphere under her fingertips reassured her.
She stepped forward cautiously, inching her hand forward to the invisible barrier Toby's frantic hand gestures defined. When she touched the air, it felt thick and hard. When she probed further, testing its resistance, a current shocked her. She jumped back, looking at Toby with alarm.
"Help me," Toby said pleadingly, glancing quickly at the figure by the tree. "I don't know why he's doing this!"
"Just stay calm," she said soothingly, biting her lip as a painful second shock grounded itself through her. "He wants you to panic."
Jareth wanted him to panic, she didn't add, because he knew how it would twist her heart to see the boy's pain. She watched Toby grunt as he threw himself against the line and was flung back further than before. Dazed, he picked himself off the ground.
"I would not advise trying that again," Jareth said, speaking for the first time. His warm, accented voice poured over her panic like a balm that both itched and soothed. She wanted to rip the smug smile off his face—and she wanted nothing more than to touch his perfect face and see if he truly was that beautiful. She remembered being caught between the two instincts as a girl. Nothing, it appeared, had changed.
"Then why don't you take it away," she challenged, facing him. "Give Toby back."
It was a test to see what he truly wanted. Sarah might have guessed his motivations, but she would not let him frighten her into giving him what he wanted if he had merely come for a brief talk.
Right, she thought. Just a chat. If the Goblin King had gone to the trouble to take Toby, he wanted more than a quick gossip and an invitation to dinner at Karen's.
Jareth flicked his gaze quickly over to Toby, who was eying the empty space in a prelude to trying the barrier again. Turning his attention back to Sarah, Jareth straightened from his casual stance against the oak tree, tugging a glove tight against the back of his hand with one quick movement.
"The shock increases each time he tried to pass the barrier. If he tries again, he risks brain damage, troubling for such a promising young man." He shrugged. Toby stopped in mid-rush, backing fearfully away from Sarah. "As touching as your attempted reunion is to watch, it was not what I had intended by bringing him here to see you."
"That's not what you told me!" Toby shouted, clenching his fists. He looked to where the barrier began, then away. He stayed where he was.
Jareth smiled.
"Give Toby back," Sarah said again, throwing Toby a warning glance.
Don't say anything, please don't make it harder. She had to remember that Jareth had planned this all. If she let Toby play his part, it would make getting him back that much harder.
"I'm afraid that your demands are impossible to fulfill," the Goblin King said. "It saddens me to learn that you have not yet revised your expectations. Still making demands of any unfortunates in your path, I see."
"Sarah," Toby said softly, drawing her barbed reply from her tongue, and she turned to see him beseeching her with blue eyes. "I'm sorry. It's my fault. I asked--"
Her heart quickened. "Asked what?" she prompted, dread coiling in her stomach. She had assumed he had been taken. But now, a sudden fear suffused her.
What if he hadn't been taken? What if...
"Go on, young one," said the Goblin King, leaning forward with interest. "It's far too late to conceal it now."
Toby looked back to Jareth and gulped. His laurel crown slipped another inch and he fumbled to push it back.
What if he'd wished himself away?
"I asked him to take me," her half-brother finished miserably. "I didn't know and didn't remember and I just wanted to know! I didn't think it would work!"
She closed her eyes out of sudden pain, too late to hide the Goblin King's knowing smile. If he had wished himself away, she had no idea what she could do.
Toby, well aware of the trouble he was in, continued to explain how much worse the situation was than she had guessed.
"He says there's no way out!" Toby said. "And then he said that you'd already rescued me once..."
Her eyes flew open.
"...and if you could take my place to run the maze, which he'd never let you do, that would be the only way I could go."
Brown, brown pine needles. Between the drifts of fallen needles, she could see dark earth mixed with flecks of leaf mold. An ant crawled busily through the debris at her feet, carrying a tiny green cutting. She watched it industriously carry the green scrap beyond the length of her shoe.
"So then he said he'd let you come see me and tell me what I could do."
Of course he did. Of that, Sarah had no doubt. Toby had most likely jumped at the offered chance of help.
Brown pine needles. Green leaf mold. Sarah frowned again, stopping the scuffing motion of her foot, wondering how it looked to the hawk-like gaze trained on her. Green, green like the Goblin King's clothing. Green like the crown Toby was wearing. Laurel leaves? She recognized them from the ancient Greek history classes she'd taken as a budding historian before realizing what a historian made these days. Laurel leaves were Greek. There were box laurels in the Johnson's hedge, but the shape was wrong...
"Toby, take it off," she said suddenly. Toby, using Karen's sharp intelligence, guessed immediately what Sarah meant and reached for the haphazard crown. When his fingers touched the leaves, he stiffened, carefully feeling around the half-circlet. He threw it off and started to step towards the barrier.
"Far enough," the Goblin King said, cutting into their hopes. Toby was pushed backwards as he hit a new invisible barrier another step closer to Sarah. From the way Toby's eyes unfocused as he shakily stood, the Goblin King's comment about danger had been correct.
"Needless to say," Jareth continued coldly, "you two are not to touch each other. It would give the boy an advantage." His eyes narrowed. "I am not in the business of distributing handicaps."
"Why did you bring him here, then?" Sarah asked the Goblin King. "If you have a reason, then say it before I start telling Toby exactly what he came here to find out about your little game."
Anger flashed in Jareth's eyes. Toby flinched. Sarah, twenty-two and less impressionable, did not.
"I did not say I would permit you to tell him how to win the game." He came towards them, and Sarah could have sworn that branches curled away from his path as he approached. "Nor should you assume that your advice would in any way be useful. Why should I continue to use an obviously flawed system?"
Toby was the one who gaped. Sarah had found herself distracted by the smooth flow of the Goblin King's steps. A long-repressed realization was clamoring for attention that she did not want to give.
"You got rid of the Labyrinth?" Toby asked incredulously. "But that's the key to the palace! How could you have given up--"
"I did not say I had given anything up," Jareth cut in. Sarah noticed how quickly he had cut off whatever information Toby had gleaned from her copy of the book and his time with the Goblin King. She wanted to know whatever Jareth clearly did not want shared. "It has changed to accommodate new conditions necessary to keep the playing field even."
He stopped short of the brother and sister. "Nor will you be permitted to run the Labyrinth, for that matter."
Now he had her attention: they both knew she waited on each word. He was playing it out for maximum effect, damn him. The sick weakness of her body returned, matched by the sour taste of bile in the back of her throat.
She had never forgotten Jareth. She could not imagine a world in which he did not exist, no matter how distant. He was too secure in his own reality to ever persist otherwise in her mind.
"What will he be permitted to do, then?" she asked thickly, her mouth dry as cotton wool.
"Stay in the castle with me," Jareth said idly, his attention seemingly on Toby. She looked up, past the darkening tree branches. Sunset was giving way to twilight, and the evening breeze she had predicted was methodically ravaging the last mauve traces of cloud.
"What?" asked Toby, looking down quickly at the wilting crown of leaves at his feet, then to Sarah. "Why can't I run the Labyrinth? Why don't I get that chance!"
There was a long pause.
Just say it, Sarah silently urged the Goblin King. End the wait. Tell him what you want me to know.
"You have wished yourself to me," Jareth said. "Since you have named no intercessor in that wish, you are mine to do with as I see fit. Any sort of challenge is pointless under these circumstances. I have decided to send you to join my property in the castle."
Sarah closed her eyes, trying to shut out Toby's low moan of anguish. She didn't need sight to know Jareth's current emotions. Ill-favored triumph was omnipresent in the stagnant air.
"I want to go home," Toby said in a shaky voice. She knew he was crying.
You bastard.
"I'm afraid you have little choice in the matter anymore. The magic demands that the contract be fulfilled. But why would you not want to stay with me?" A smile of sharp teeth. "Is my company not worthy of you? Would it be a boring life? I assure you that the transition to a goblin is both painless and quick. Having started it once, your body already remembers it."
The gauntlet, such as it was, had been thrown. Sarah thought furiously, trying to see some give or take in his words. The Goblin King was a creature of bargains. There would be a loophole somewhere, if she looked hard enough.
"I don't want to be a goblin...I just want to go home," Toby said pleadingly, obviously still hoping that Jareth would be reasonable.
She didn't expect reason.
"Now, I recall you quite enjoyed visiting with me last time, young one," she heard Jareth reply.
"I'd rather be home, if it's all the same."
Part of her had always wondered if he would come back. The memories of each trial in the Labyrinth were seared into her mind, as vivid and clear as the Goblin King in front of her. She understood that she had beaten him, and that it was in some way unusual. It was rational to expect he might resent this and seek to correct the imbalance.
But she had won! It wasn't right—the heroine, by rights, was always free. No fairytale or legend had taught her otherwise. She should have known that he would follow real life, Murphy's Law: what could go wrong, will.
She was unsurprised by the terms he was explaining to her brother, or that she had yet to play a part. If she had been included in this game but not to offer advice, there were very few other purposes she could fulfill.
"You don't have a choice," the Goblin King said gravely.
Sarah took a deep breath, and stepped forward, digging in her pocket for the crystal.
"But I do," she said quietly into the expectant silence. She held out the glittering sphere. "Contracts can be changed and still be valid."
Jareth smiled lazily, turning the weight of his stare onto her with slow care. "What's this you're offering?" He looked at the crystal in her hand before shrugging. "An object of my own magic is hardly worth trading for the addition of this bright young boy to my collection."
Toby shrank further. Jareth was succeeding admirably in using him to provoke her, hard as she tried to resist. He had proven his unspoken point; Toby was never meant to fulfill this bargain.
As she had known, really, since she had first found the gleaming crystal in her pocket. Now it barely caught the starlight gleaming through the trees. Toby's face was a ghost in the darkness, thankfully too faint to read. Only Jareth remained in her sight, hyper-real, watching her with anticipation.
"You offered my dreams for him once," Sarah said. "Would you now honor the reverse?"
The Goblin King shook his head, and she wondered for one horrifying moment if she'd completely miscalculated.
"What use do I have for your dreams? You barely know them as it is." He smiled to himself, a private jest. She frowned. "They are worthless to me."
He would not force her into it, of course. Rather he left it open, allowing her to damn herself.
"If the magic demands a person taken..."
Sarah faltered at the immensity of the statement, began again. "If you need someone to go with you, then...I'll go in his place."
A slow smile of satisfaction spread across his face. She bowed her head. He had won. She hadn't been able to avoid it.
The crystal in her hand began to glow.
"Swear it," Jareth said harshly, and she shivered at the cold eagerness in his voice. "Swear it to the magic. Swear you do this of your own free will, that you bind yourself to me in exchange for his freedom."
It was one thing to anticipate what he had planned and another to know this was the moment of entrapment. She was not as calm and resolute as she wanted to be.
She wanted to go home and forget all about this, but unlike Toby, there was no one to come and claim her from the Goblin King.
This would be a terribly final decision.
"Sarah!" called Toby, but his voice was dim and muffled, easy to ignore. She knew he was babbling for her not to do this, that he would happily go if it would spare her. She wouldn't let him. Toby didn't have the ability to survive, not if the Goblin King was denied his revenge. She didn't have the heart for trite speeches and compromises of familial duty. Oddly, her irritation gave her the courage she had lacked before.
She lifted her chin, looked at him with a cool gaze. "I, Sarah Williams, swear that I do this of my own free will. I choose to take my brother's place in this bargain."
Toby is safe, now.
"Done," Jareth said. "Sealed, with witness."
She looked at him, startled, as the glow of the crystal went out.
She heard one last muffled cry from Toby, and then the wind came, screaming around her and drawing her away from sense and sight.
Through it all she could see the intense satisfaction on Jareth's face.
-------
Mud ground harshly into pale skin.
Sarah licked her lips, tasting blood from the battering of magic that had drawn her across lines and worlds. She opened dark lashes to grey night bounded by gravel and wet earth. Tall hedges reached across the gravel, nearly touching overhead in black spiderwebs of woven branches.
The Labyrinth looked decidedly less enchanting this time around.
"Get up," the Goblin King said, and for a moment her heart fluttered at the chords and harmonics of his smooth voice.
The tip of a pointed boot nudged against her ribs, finding the most battered, and all the romance and silken dreams his voice had conjured were forgotten. She winced.
"Get up, Sarah," he bit out, and the last cobwebs lifted from her mind at the anger in his voice. His foot pushed again, closer to a kick than before.
She lifted her aching head from the cool mud and stones, tilting her head to follow the grain of his leather boots to the silk lining at his knees. She dared not look further.
Slowly, she drew herself up. It took energy to ignore the thousand scrapes and bruises, but she refused to acknowledge them in his presence. Every muscle was slow to respond, as if she was standing in a column of the same thick air that had trapped Toby. She didn't remember this from the first time he had brought her here.
"It is time," he announced flatly.
Oh, she tried so hard...and failed. Sarah forgot not to look into his eyes.
Hazel met unequal blue with a pulse of energy that left her reeling. She studied the angle of his eyebrows, drawn together, following the tension of his brow to his narrowed eyes and widened pupils.
Worse, she forgot to hide that she loved him.
Even with his harsh gaze upon her, she was drawn to him, needing him. Six years ago, she had taken her stepbrother home, safe from the Goblin King. She had hidden away her dolls and her flowing costumes and pretended she hadn't felt the raw longing that kept her awake at nights with a terrible yearning and restless dreams far too old for a young girl.
Time and distance had not lessened the surge of emotion he effortlessly called up in her.
She had never needed anything more than her life until she had met him, and had never wanted another. She had given it up as a lost, wild dream that needed to be smothered quietly over time until the call faded. Just when she thought she had finally succeeded, he had come to her again to offer her a devil's choice that promised no love, no affection.
Little did he know that he could vanish right now, leave her with a broken, useless heart, and have his revenge.
Seeing him, she knew she loved him. It was useless to deny it, not here at what would most certainly be an ending. And yet, her final weapon was the ability to deny him this power over her. It was her private thought, to keep to herself, no matter what happened.
A secret to name as her own. A last defiance.
Three crystals, called from the ether, danced in his leather-clad fingers. They drew her eyes away from his, hiding her secret before he could swoop in with a predator's instinct and take it from her. She frowned. There was something wrong with the third crystal, but it wove in and out of the looping pattern too quickly for her to understand her instinctive cringing at its sight.
The Goblin King smiled thinly and tossed the first at her with hard, bruising speed. Something cracked in her hand and she recoiled, holding the pristine sphere in a palm that had gone numb with the impact.
Compared to the slow cruelty she faced now, the Labyrinth was a child's toy.
In slow, agonizing inches, she lifted the crystal to her face.
"Toby," she whispered. His image danced beneath the surface, fleeing out of sight as her head dropped.
"A reminder," Jareth replied, his gaze harsh as he looked at the woman in front of him. "You are sure of this decision? To keep him free of obligations to my world?"
Looking at the Goblin King, she knew she had to keep Toby away from him. She had seen the fear in his eyes when offered a place in the Labyrinth. While Sarah at nine might have eagerly accepted a promise of a dream-castle and its king, Toby had turned the Goblin King's offer down even before knowing his humanity was the cost. Jareth wanted him and Toby had been right to fear what form his bargain would force on him.
If she had ever needed proof that Toby was Karen's child, she had it now. Karen would be proud of her son's careful reasoning and correct decision.
To protect Toby, Sarah would do anything: all three knew that, and it was clear that Jareth had counted on it. She straightened, looking at the Goblin King from within a numb, high plateau beyond fear.
Don't think of where you might have gone. Think of the beady eyes, the mindless hurt, the terror as the goblins heeded their king. Remember Toby's leg, half-changed in the Escher room, wrong in its shape and turn of bone. Remember the green scales on his neck and the animal wreck of the Goblin City.
He would do that to Toby, not to you. That would be too easy.
"I choose his path as mine. He is free and will remain free."
The words echoed oddly in her aching head, startling her. She moved slightly, gravel crunching beneath her tattered shoes.
Jareth shrugged, twisting the crystals over and under his wrist against gravity in a way that made her head hurt.
"It is your choice," he said at last. "That is your first dream. I choose to grant it."
"Generous of you," she said quietly.
"I am always generous."
The crystal vanished in her hand. Her fingers curled reflexively around the space. She cried out against the feel of fire in the frail bones of her hand, a soft expression of pain.
The second crystal danced over to her at Jareth's whispered command, floating softly in the air. It nestled in her wounded palm and neatly filled the gap between her cupped fingers, flowing through and around the digits like water until it reformed inside. The cool of the crystal soothed the hurt and its solid structure braced her hand. Inside, more images swirled in pale hues.
She knew better than to look, but good judgment had been lost to her since sunset. Arm trembling, she brought the second crystal to her face, only to blush furiously at the entwined couple within.
For one desperate moment, the image of the Goblin King and herself made her wonder if there was no need to hide her last secret after all.
"Your second dream," Jareth said nonchalantly, addressing the space between them. "One not unexpected, but certainly never to be more than a fantasy." He curled his lips into an expression that would have been a smile on a human being. She sensed the cruel humor that had broken his indifference and kept her head safely bowed, fearing what form it might take.
"I do not want this," she said futilely to the vision, her gaze straying to the figures suspended in the crystal. Her voice was thin and strained even to herself. Shame crept into her, forcing her to Jareth's will. She fought it briefly; let it take her. She was his. She had brought this upon herself; so let her take the punishment in full.
"Toby," Sarah said, picturing her stepbrother as the first crystal had shown him. She sketched the slight build of the tall, gawky boy in her mind, drew in the shaggy mop of blond hair and added the dog-eared, well- worn books in his hand. Red leather formed in her mind, gilt scrolling out a familiar title.
He had said he was sorry when she saw him again. Sarah couldn't blame him. She didn't wonder how Toby had found her copy of Labyrinth. Now she knew where it had gone after she returned from her time in the maze. Jareth's smile of satisfaction when he came at sunset had explained it all.
It had been a trap, and yet she would have done the same again, given the choice. Even knowing the bruises, and the pain, and the humiliation as he had dragged her to this place.
The erotic writhing of her miniature self and the other in the crystal broke her careful picture, and she blushed crimson at the thought of her dreams out on display for his unclean hands to touch.
Strange, how he took love for lust, Sarah thought, chagrined at the heat she felt from the images. Nothing was pure in his world, least of all her childish notions.
A lesson was learned.
Like a thinning soap bubble, the crystal began to fade, swirls of magic passing less rapidly over its surface until it passed into nothing like the first crystal.
Her silence asked a question. The Goblin King chose to answer it.
"The first disappeared because it was fulfilled. The second is gone because I choose to show you the last." His lips drew back further from his pointed teeth. This time she shuddered at his feral smile.
She waited for the third crystal, the tainted one that had puzzled her.
It appeared in her hands. Now that it wasn't moving she could see what was wrong with it: it was opaque instead of shining, a dark, ugly creation. Light curved around it without touching it, leaving it in a puddle of blackness that spilled into her hands in an oily caress.
Sarah said nothing, biding her time. It was clear Jareth wanted her to acknowledge its strangeness and play the questioning student to his mastery. She would not give him the satisfaction.
"What is it?" her mouth said. It had shaped the words, defying her control. She jerked her head up from the crystal to see Jareth still smiling at her. The choking smell of magic hung heavy in the air. For the briefest of moments, anger broke through her fear and gave her strength. Then she was left numb as he pronounced his next words with deliberate slowness.
"Your future."
Horror filled her, her imagination more than creative enough to offer a thousand interpretations. The crystal lay weightless in her broken hand as both dropped limply to her side.
The Goblin King had come closer. Hell was the feel of his nearness, the heat of his body behind hers. Soon, though, she would be gone from this and his revenge--for what else could she call it?--would be complete.
She thought of Toby, living his life free from the Goblin King. She thought of Karen and Robert, free from the vexing heartaches that she knew the Goblin King had sent them; the constant mechanical malfunctions at Robert's business, the second and third miscarriages, and her mother's slow illness without cause or cure. All gone now that she had returned to pay her debt. She nearly managed a smile at that.
"You fear a world where no one knows you existed," the Goblin King whispered into her ear.
She was startled at how deeply his voice could cut into the private places she had barred from him. She did not want to be forgotten. It was her reward for this. One day, even as a sliver of memory, Toby would remember what had happened to her, that she had protected him and he would no longer be plagued by nightmares whispering from dark corners. Toby would grow older, safe, and thankful. Maybe there'd even be a grandchild named after her, the vanished hostage. That would be how she lived, knowing that at least one person understood why Sarah Williams had disappeared.
The Goblin King would take this away. Cold settled inside of her.
Frightened, she fell down into the sanctum of her mind. His words followed, destroying her last hopes.
"They will never know," he continued, soft as any lover as his hand brushed against her hair and traced the outline of her ear. "You will cease to exist."
Her eyes stung. She blinked as tears formed and ran down her cheek, caught by his leather-clad fingers.
"You will live," he said. She had already known. "But no one will remember. I choose to grant your third wish."
"Not my dream," she said dully. His polished boots shone against the rough gravel in the orange moonlight. She did not move away or protest as he ran his hand down her neck to rest at her collarbone, streaking her tears until they disappeared between the leather and skin.
She felt wisps of his hair against her sensitized neck as he leaned forward over her shoulder. "Correct, little mortal. I took the liberty of procuring a nightmare of yours instead."
Sarah murmured a few choice words. He tipped back his head and laughed, a rich sound meant for bedroom intimacies. Sarah's heartbeat quickened, though she hated herself for it.
"Your gratitude is underwhelming. After all, the traditional number of wishes to grant is one. You have three and I have chosen to give you two. Most others would consider themselves fortunate."
"I hate you," she said. She felt the power of the words fill her, strengthening her.
"How touching," the Goblin King said. "Any final speech? Any last words for this stage? I find the quality of your repartee has also failed to improve over time."
Sarah kept her lips sealed.
He laughed again. Why not? It was the height of his revenge, she supposed. It was nearly over. She clenched her hand, ignoring the bursts of colors swelling in her vision, threatening to take her away. The Goblin King was too busy conjuring a fourth crystal to notice that she had closed her fingers tightly around the dark sphere in her hand, straining against its frail surface. Anger burned hot within her, renewed by the agony lacing her hand. It swept away the fog that had bound her since she had arrived.
Magic, her mind whispered to her later, when she tried to remember what had happened. He used magic to bind you to his will and then you broke through it, back to yourself.
The Goblin King was no fool. Although he didn't hear the first crack, he raised his head from his crafting at the soft grinding sound. She had finally succeeded in closing her shattered fingers into the flesh of her hand.
She met his gaze calmly and opened her fingers. A flurry of black crystal shards drifted to the ground, piling in delicate ebon snowdrifts. In the gleam of the setting moon, a dark red liquid dripped from her torn palm to shine wetly among the remnants of the crystal and her nightmare.
The pain nearly blinded her, but adrenaline stole it from her and kept her strong. The hurt was a small price to pay for the pleasure of derailing his plans.
She watched the blood mingle with the fractured black with painful satisfaction, pleased to have done this small part to destroy his revenge and make it harder. She watched his face eagerly, watched his eyes narrow.
"Foolish woman!" he bellowed, grabbing her arm roughly. "Do you know what you could have done?" A twirl of his wrist exchanged his conjured sphere for a smaller one lit within by green and gold sparks. Quickly he pushed it into her palm and shut her fingers around it, ignoring her yelp of pain as her fingers were bent wrong again.
His anger and sudden concern pleased her, quelling the strange surge that had prompted her defiance. Looking down at her hand, she opened her fingers without pain and saw the clean flesh there. A few fragments drifted to the floor, smearing the last of her blood against the healed hand.
"It only bought you a few seconds," he commented coldly as he called the other, larger crystal back to his hand and ran his fingers over it with a master's precision. "Now, it is time to decide your fate."
"You cannot judge me," she said tiredly, feeling poisonous exhaustion begin to take her. She had not thought he would shrug aside the broken crystal so casually. "No one told me it would hurt you to regain my brother."
"You know nothing of what you did," the Goblin King hissed. He stepped too close.
She stumbled as she tried to scramble away, flailing out with one hand. Her hand caught warm skin and cold metal, then air as he quickly backed away.
"My kingdom was wrecked and my powers ruined by your ill-fated words," the Goblin King said icily. "You were not meant to meddle with the greater magic, child, and now you must repay me for my years of work. There must be a reckoning for what you did. Now you are within my reach and my right at last." His fingers stilled on the crystal after giving it one last affectionate caress. "Stand and meet my price."
And Sarah did straighten, meeting his eyes for what she realized would be her last look. He would not kill her, she was sure, but whatever the next moment brought would not be kind.
Fates can change in an instant.
The crystal exploded in a burst of light.
He was closer to the spell than her. Sarah's clutch for support as she fell had left a dull brown stain on the bright gold of his pendant. As gleaming power expanded outwards, one small part absorbed the bloodstain and changed.
Blood magic, oldest of the old ways. Powerful. Instinctual.
It could be shed on stones or smooth altars, by ritual knives or tearing claws. It could run down the carved channels of a broadsword, be caught by the purified bowl and silver chalice, or smeared onto the virgin wool. The method and materials were unimportant; what mattered was that the fresh blood was offered up like wine or water to mix into a source of magic.
Blood magic, in its strange and arcane way, did not require innate magic to guide its use. The sacrifice was still alive, her intent like a beacon in the night.
It was enough.
Please don't let him do this, Sarah pleaded to absent deities. Help me!
Jareth's spell was immensely powerful, woven to be effective and immediate. The pulse of the blood matched the rhythm of the magic and a unity was forged, warping the original intent of the caster in subtle, significant ways.
Jareth had wanted the world to forget Sarah.
Sarah loved Jareth despite reason, despite sanity. Desperate as she was, she knew he could never have this tool against her. She sought to protect it as much as she wanted to be free of his revenge. She wanted to be safe.
A new spell emerged from the blend of Labyrinth and blood magic, unknown to either frozen figure. The light pulsed, blinding both.
As the glow faded, Jareth's memory of what he had done this night dimmed as well. A faint satisfaction suffused him as he returned to his castle.
Sarah Williams vanished, her name swept away by the magic.
Not to a place of forgetting, but to the Masquerade Court, sister-court of the Labyrinth.
-----
Author's note:
Welcome to the rewrite of Smoke and Mirrors. Thanks to all who put up with the seven-month hiatus on this story. For those who have read the first four original chapters, I hope you can stick with me a little longer.
(If you haven't read the previously posted chapters of Smoke, please don't. The story will be changing in crucial ways--I'd written myself into a corner six chapters down the line--and it'll ultimately be fairly confusing.)
This prologue is entirely new material, and chapters 1-4 are being reworked very soon. After I've posted chapter two, the original version will be taken down. Right now it's useful as a placeholder, but will soon be unnecessary.
Your reviews, even after months of stopped work, were wonderful and helped me make the time to begin again on this story. I can't thank you enough for the support I constantly received from the reviews in my mailbox. I'd appreciate it if you could continue to leave such wonderful feedback.
And, lastly, a giant shout-out to Alorin, Arianne and Lilith, my trio of lovely betas. They've (collectively) put up with me for almost a year now and patiently edited and commented on what, at times, were very rough drafts. And now I'm sending them a whole new set of chapters. If you have the chance, look at their works: they're all fantastic in their own right.
-AH