"Good," replied Tieran.
"So what do I do now? I need to get my stuff together and take it home. Can I tell Cara?"
"You do not need to do anything. Leave everything here. I will bring you back just after you leave. You need not even tell Cara."
"But visiting hours are just about over. Can you do it that close?"
"It will not be difficult. Just bring anything you think you might need and I will need the stone."
After putting the stone in her pocket, Alia rummaged through her purse for her comb and a rubber band. She braided her long, thick hair, fastened it with the rubber band, and said, "Okay, that's out of the way and I guess that's it. I'm sure I'll need something else later, but that can't be helped now. I'm ready."
"Give me your hands and close your eyes. You may feel a little dizziness."
Alia took one last look at Cara and held out her hands. Tieran grasped them firmly. He felt solid and real enough. If her imagination created this figment, it had created yet another difference between Tieran and Jareth – Tieran wore no gloves. She wondered why the Goblin King did. Meanwhile Tieran waited for her to close her eyes.
"It is really easier on you if you close your eyes," he said. Alia nodded, closed her eyes, and braced herself. She felt a slight sense of movement and then he released her hands.
When she opened her eyes to ask if there was a problem, she stopped in shock. They stood in a long colonnade of pale stone, walled on one side, open on the other. Steps ran down from it to a large garden overlooking the shore of a lake. The sun had just begun to set (or rise?) behind the mountains across the lake, bathing the columns in gold and amber light.
"Where are we? Is this the Underground?"
"Yes, this is my home."
"You live here?! It's beautiful."
"Thank you. I enjoy it very much."
"I can imagine," she said, awed, as she walked down the steps to get a better look beyond the columns.
"Come with me, I want to show you something," Tieran said, holding out his hand and gesturing for her to come with him.
She turned away from the landscape and looked up at Tieran. For the first time she saw him in full light. Even though he had removed his cloak, he still dressed eccentrically for her world. Not in tights and ruffles, but a tunic and trousers of midnight blue, decorated at the wrists and neck, and laced and tied over a white shirt. His eyes were a blue so deep and dark that she found it hard to determine their exact color until she approached to within a few feet of him.
He turned and motioned for her to proceed through an archway leading from the colonnade into a large room. She paused for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the relative dimness of the room and waited for Tieran to show her the way.
"Come this way. If we hurry, we may catch the last of the sunset."
They walked quickly through the sparsely furnished room, continuing over an ornately patterned, inlaid stone floor, through another archway into a large foyer and crossing to a large, imposing staircase which they ascended. At the top of the stairs, they turned several corners and proceeded down a long hallway to yet more stairs, this time spiraling up inside a broad tower.
Alia calculated that they must have climbed the equivalent of several floors passing no landings, doors or windows, when they suddenly reached the top of the tower. The stairs welled up through the floor, directly onto the crown of the tower. A stone parapet of latticework enclosed the tower on all sides, but wide openings between the columns supporting the roof allowed an unobstructed view and permitted the winds playing around the tower to enter.
Tieran walked to the west side of the tower. The last sliver of the sun was just slipping behind the mountains, but still shed just enough light to see the spectacular view. Alia could see the full length of the valley. The house sat on the shores of a lake that occupied about a third of the valley floor. Meadows and woods reaching up the shoulders of the mountains surrounding the valley shared the rest of it.
"Is just the valley yours or do you own further into the mountains as well?"
"Just the valley. I do not rule a large kingdom as the Goblin King does. I live here with only a few people to help care for the house and the immediate grounds. Most of the Underground has forgotten I am here. I have not attended one of the meetings of rulers of the lands in this area, in a very long time. I keep to myself and I doubt any of them think of me anymore."
"Don't you get lonely?"
"I am not alone here," he responded defensively. "I see people everyday. I follow what is happening in the rest of the world. I prefer not to involve myself in the petty feuds and social posturing. If something concerns me, I attend."
"You sound like me talking to Cara. She's always prodding me to go out to clubs. I think I say pretty much the same thing you did."
"And what does she say?"
"Usually, she says something like I'm in denial."
Alia turned away and walked around the tower looking at the rest of the valley. An awkward silence fell over them. A chill wind blew through the latticework and she shivered.
"If you have seen enough, we can go down now and I will show you your room," Tieran suggested.
"Yes, we can go down now," Alia agreed. "It's getting too dark to see and that wind is a little cold for just jeans and a light jacket."
Tieran started down the stairs. "I had Irielen, my steward and head of household, look for some clothes for you for your journey and stay here. You can change into something warmer before dinner."
"How long should it take me to get there?"
"A few days? A week? Maybe more." He shook his head. "I do not know."
"That long? I thought you said you lived near the Goblin King?"
"I do. In this direction, I live nearly as close as one can. Do not forget you will be on foot and travelling through mountains for part of the distance."
"Do you have a map?"
"Yes." He paused as they reached the hallway at the foot of the tower. "Would you like to look at it now or wait until after dinner?"
"It can wait until after dinner." They resumed walking and turned down another corridor she had not noticed before. "I get involved in maps. When will dinner be?"
"Not long, I believe. I will return for you when it is time. Your room is just at the end of the hall here. I thought you would stay here tonight and start in the morning. If you feel you need to stay longer, you may, but the longer you stay, the greater the chance that Jareth will notice your presence. Here is your room."
Tieran opened the door for her and Alia looked around the large room. A cluster of chairs and a table sat in front of a lit fireplace with another cluster near a set of French doors leading out onto a balcony. Heavy curtains hung at the windows and all around the four-poster bed. Tieran showed her a door to one side leading to a private bath, then left.
Alia walked over to the bed and couldn't resist reaching out to touch the hangings and bed cover of deep blackberry velvet embroidered with silver and gold. Then she walked over to the doors and passed between the matching curtains out to the balcony. Dusk had turned to full dark and the air had cooled even further in the short time it had taken them to descend from the top of tower. She turned back inside to find warmer clothing.
She opened the doors of the wardrobe in the corner of the room and found a wide variety of clothing. Dresses fit for balls, dresses for everyday wear, tunics and breeches like Tieran had been wearing, and even some "normal" clothing, recognizable as having come from her own world, hung in the wardrobe. She found a dress that looked warm and changed into it, assuming that dinner would be more formal than jeans and a blouse would cover.
Alia pondered for a moment the question of how the clothes fit her, then she remembered that Tieran had been watching her to know that she fit the prophecy. Between that and magic – when in doubt, magic covers everything – he could easily have figured out her clothing size.
The dress she chose was a heavy silk velvet in a charcoal gray color. Looking in the mirror Alia saw that it matched her eyes almost as well as Tieran's clothing had matched his. Her reflection showed her a pretty, but not gorgeous, young woman with what she considered average brown hair looking back at her. She found nothing remarkable in the image except perhaps her eyes. The color of her eyes had always pleased her. Alia sighed. "Still, I'm nothing compared to Cara. She's got those exotic looks that guys go for, those big brown eyes and silky black hair."
After combing out her hair – actually chestnut-colored – from its braid and putting it up in a bun, Alia sat in one of the chairs in front of the fire. Her hands fidgeted in her lap. She would have liked to have some work to go over or at least a book to read, but she could see no books anywhere in the room.
Her mind wandered. She thought back over the experiences she had had with Cara, tried to think back to when they first met. She could not remember at first. It seemed as if they had always known each other and been closest friends. Then she remembered; they had met when Cara had moved in from out of state during their first year in high school. Cara had been assigned a locker near Alia's and, when Cara could not get it to open, Alia had shown her the trick she had seen its previous owner use.
That had started it all. After that they became inseparable. They even went to college together, but decided not to room together freshman year, each one eventually getting her own apartment.
Alia continued on with graduate school to start working toward her doctorate, while Cara went further into her hobby of computers, eventually working for a big company. Then things started to fall apart when Cara got sick...
Someone knocked on the door, disturbing Alia from her thoughts. "Yes?" she answered. "Who's there?"
"Tieran." He complimented her as she opened the door. "That dress suits you. Are you ready for dinner?"
As she had expected, he had changed clothes as well, but had not dressed too formally. He wore deep russet red now, in a finer material. "Thank you. I'm ready if you think this is suitable for dinner," she replied.
"It will do well," he said. "While I am here, I need the stone you found. Could you get it for me, please?"
"Sure," Alia agreed, and walked into the bath where she had left her clothes. "What do you need it for?"
"It will be a surprise. Thank you," he said as he took the stone and it vanished.
"Did you just transport that somewhere?" she asked, astonished. "If you could do that on a regular basis, why did we have to hurry up all those stairs?"
"Sometimes it is easier and better to do things without magic," Tieran said. "Shall we go?" he asked as he held out his arm for her to take.
She tucked her hand under it and, as they walked down to dinner, wondered how she could so blithely accept all that was happening.
Disclaimers, credits, and trivia:
Everything belongs to Jim.