-----
In an old white Victorian house, a woman sat staring vaguely into the fireplace from her rocking chair. She was old but not frail. She had been a great beauty once, which the classical bones of her face still attested to. Her hair was even now oddly dark, though strands of silver white ran throughout it.
She merely stared at the fireplace, rocking.
-----
In the kitchen, a woman with light brown hair sat talking to a man. She was wringing her hands, but he was expertly calm.
"I don't know what to do anymore," she said. "She's never any trouble, but it's just gotten so odd recently."
"What has she been doing?"
"Nothing I wasn't prepared for when I moved in, I suppose. You told me it would get like this. But you talked to her today, was she any different?"
The doctor shifted. "No, but that's how it is with Alzheimer's. One day they can be perfectly normal, and the next--"
"I know, I know. I had just hoped that Mom wouldn't get like this. Not yet."
"Tell me what she's been doing."
"Little things, of course. Things like checking if the doors are locked a dozen times a night; just standing there in front of the sink like she doesn't remember what she was doing; forgetting to put on shoes or her shirt."
"Normal for patients," he prompted.
"Yes, but now I'll find her sitting at her vanity, putting on makeup and saying that she's got to hurry if she's going to make the curtain. Or she'll be in her closet, half dressed in some sparkly old costume, asking me like I was Roberta--that was her stage manager--which one she should wear. Sometimes she doesn't know me. Other times she acts like I was a little girl again, telling me to come sit next to her and she'll tell me a story."
"I understand how upsetting this all is. I could look into adjusting her medication. But you know that no matter how odd things sound to you, she doesn't realize she's doing it. It seems perfectly natural to her."
She nodded. "I know, she's starting to relive things that happened when she was younger, forgetting things now..." she trailed off. "But I can still care for her; it's not so bad that she needs to be in a home. She's still there, I just...I feel like she's a prisoner in her own body sometimes."
The doctor nodded. "But what's bothering you so much?"
"It's that she's living in the past more and more now. And while it hurts that she doesn't remember me sometimes, I can deal with it. I mean, she apologizes for not watching Toby better. She sometimes calls me her stepmother's name and accuses me of being unfair. But she's started asking for people."
"People from her past?"
"I assume."
"Who?"
"The thing is, I don't know. But she keeps begging that I get Jareth for her. 'Find Jareth, darling,' or 'I must speak to Jareth,' or 'Jareth hasn't come, has he?' She asks in the middle of the night more than in the daytime, like he should just be dropping in or something. I've even heard her talking in a room by herself, demanding that he show up. But I have no idea who Jareth is."
"Have you asked your uncle?"
"Uncle Toby doesn't know, either. He said he's never heard of anyone named Jareth. No one left from Dad's family knows, either. Mom started asking for Jareth a few months ago, but during the last week, it's been almost incessant." She squeezed her hands together in frustration. "How could no one know about someone who was that important to her?"
-----
Sarah lay in her bed in the living room, the dull glow of the fire the only light. Her bed had been moved here so that she wouldn't have to trouble with the stairs anymore. Truthfully, she didn't mind. Julie had taken the master bedroom upstairs. It was already late tonight, and her daughter was long asleep. Sarah still was awake because she just didn't need as much sleep as she used to.
She had heard Julie and the doctor talking together in the kitchen. They were talking about her, she knew, though she couldn't hear their conversation.
Sarah knew that she forgot things. She knew what she had, at least on some days. She knew that sometimes she would suddenly 'come back,' as it were, and find Julie looking at her confusedly, and she herself having no recollection of the last few moments, hours--days maybe. She knew that she said and did things that she didn't remember later. And it hurt her to see the hurt and confusion on her daughter's face, but she couldn't help it.
There was nothing that she could do. Sometimes, Sarah felt that she would rather be out of her mind than in it. For when she was in it, all she could do was think about the fact that there was nothing she could do--about anything. She needed help doing everything in day-to-day life, and she who had always been so independent was now a burden.
Sarah lay back against the pillows, staring at the flickering orange light on the ceiling. She enjoyed the cool breeze from the open window and looked out at the stars beyond. Then the thought came to her that the window shouldn't be open at all.
Suddenly Sarah became aware of the presence of someone else in the room. She saw a figure watching her from the shadows in the corner of the curtains. Instinct told her to scream, but a completely different instinct told her keep quiet.
The figure slowly stepped into the light, and leisurely made his way toward her bed. He was dressed in something that looked fit for the stage--completely black pants and shirt, a cape behind him, tall boots, even black gloves. It struck Sarah that he had an otherworldly air. He stopped next to her bed, and lowered himself into a chair that she was sure hadn't been there a moment ago. His light hair and skin seemed to glow almost eerily in the firelight, and his eyes held an odd depth. They also hadn't left hers.
"You..." she said slowly, the word on her lips before she realized it. Out of all the things that she had forgotten, he was not one of them. He was like something that should have been out of a dream. There was no logic to his existence, but there he was.
"Sarah." His voice was soft, low. He sat back and grinned, as absolute recognition washed over her features.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded, sitting up, suddenly feeling everything snap into place. Sitting across from her was the Goblin King. She hadn't seen him since that night when she was fifteen.
"I only came to grant your wish."
"My wish? I haven't wished anything."
"But you have, quite frequently, in fact. Some part of you wanted very deeply to see me again. You've been calling my name and insisting that I appear for weeks."
"I've done no such thing." Then Sarah blanched. Or had she? Had she been calling Jareth? There was so much that she did that she wasn't aware of, couldn't remember. But she hadn't had anything to do with the Labyrinth since the night that she had come back. She hadn't forgotten it, but she just couldn't deal with it for some reason, so she had gone on with her life. Sarah looked back at Jareth. "I didn't. Did I?" she asked in a small voice.
"Oh, you most definitely did."
"So...that's why you're here?"
He studied her for a long moment, and Sarah suddenly realized that he looked the same. Exactly the same. Like something out of a nightmare or a dream, but the same. He was just as she remembered, yet she herself had changed immeasurably. She was old, her face was drawn, her body was weak, and her memory was fading. Sarah had never thought that she'd see him again, though she had always wanted to, just a little. But this was a rude awakening. Over half a century had passed, and not a bit of him was different. He might as well have been frozen in time, the way he walked out of yesterday. The old thought came: It wasn't fair.
"No, it's not," he suddenly said, grinning and obviously guessing her train of thought. Then he said, "How would you like it, Sarah, if you were on the other side of unfair?"
She frowned. "What?"
A crystal suddenly appeared in Jareth's hand. He tossed it to her. Instinctively she caught it. "Your dreams," he said.
Sarah looked into the crystal. There was nothing at first, then a blur that increasingly became more focused. An image of herself dressed in a ball gown floated within the crystal. She looked not a day over twenty. Then the picture receded out, and someone appeared behind the Sarah in the crystal. Jareth. He walked up beside her, and planted a light kiss on her lips. She moved to lean against him, and his arm went around her waist. The two of them stood frozen there. But suddenly the eyes of the Sarah in the crystal met her eyes and stared back out at her. She seemed to be asking: Don't you want this?
Sarah gasped and dropped the crystal. She looked back at Jareth. "You mean..." she started.
"Yes, Sarah," he almost whispered. "All you have to do is say yes, and you can have your dreams for eternity. I offered them to you once, and you refused. But now?" Jareth turned his head to the side, as if to study her. "You've had your life, your other adventures, your other loves, your aspirations here--but you've never really forgotten, have you?"
"No," she said quietly. Then, "You've waited, that long?"
"Not long at all. Not when you have forever."
Sarah put her hand to her face. "But--I'm so old."
He covered her hand with his own. The material of his gloves felt silky to her skin. "You're still beautiful. But these things can be changed. I would reorder time for you once again. All you have to do is come. Do you want forever, Sarah?"
Her thoughts were a jumble. "But what will happen to Julie?"
"What will happen to Julie when you die?"
He leaned closer, looking into her eyes. His eyes seemed endless, and for a moment she lost herself in them. They were daring her to take the offer, begging her to take it.
Sarah bit her lip. Her head was spinning. Jareth. Eternity. Her dreams. Her life here almost over already. Nothing to lose, was there? And everything to gain.
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes."
A true smile appeared across his face. Then he leaned in, his lips meeting hers. It was light and brief, but a sudden warm tingle passed throughout Sarah's body--something odder than the feeling of a kiss, even a kiss from Jareth. When he pulled back, a mischievous yet pleased smirk was on his lips. A mirror suddenly materialized in his hand. Taking it, Sarah eagerly looked at what she already knew to be true.
She looked no different than she had in the crystal that he had shown her. Dark hair, flawless face, her old figure. She suddenly jumped up out of the bed and laughed, throwing back her arms and spinning around the room in her nightgown. Then she walked back over to Jareth, who had watched her, amused and bewitched by the girl before him once again.
He extended his hand, and she took it, disappearing with him into the night.
-----
Julie came down from her bedroom and started the morning coffee. Then she went into the living room.
She realized that she was completely alone. Her mother was nowhere to be found. She looked all over the first floor, then even checking the upstairs and the yard. But there was nothing, no one.
Not knowing what to do, she found herself sitting on her mother's bed, staring dejectedly at nothing. It was then that something on the bed caught her eye. It was a round glass ball. She picked it up without thinking, wondering how such a thing got to be there. Then to her amazement, she realized that there was an image in the crystal ball, not made into the glass itself, but an actual three-dimensional image floating within.
Looking closer, she gasped. It was her mother, looking as she had only known her in photographs, and younger than she herself was right now. She stood, staring out with a happy smile on her face. And she was dressed in a gown of unbelievable beauty, something the likes of which she had never even worn on stage. Julie looked into the crystal again, a part of her mind wondering how the image was sustained.
Suddenly an old story came to her mind, a story that had crystals and a ball gown in it. A story of a heroine, a quest, goblins, and a king. It was a story that her mother had told her many times as a child, one that she never tired of hearing, and one that her mother had never tired of repeating. She had always loved to tell that story. Julie had even heard it several times recently, when she had indulged her mother, who had seen her through confused eyes as a child. "You look so sad, Julie dear. Come here and let me tell you a story." She had complied, and sat curled up at her mother's feet, listening to and remembering that same story from her childhood.
She had never heard that story anywhere else, and her mother told it so certainly, never missing a detail or a line of dialogue. She told it like she lived it, like it had happened. Though there was one exchange at the beginning that her mother had always skipped over, merely relating, instead of speaking the actual lines. Julie remembered asking her several times, "But what did she say?" And the answer was always the same, "No, my dear. Those are words that shouldn't be spoken or known." And then they would go on with the story.
It was somehow comforting, that of all the things that her mother had forgotten, that she had not forgotten this. However, it had been now, during some of these recent tellings, that Julie had truly noticed the effect that they had on her mother. Whether her mother had known it or not, when she came to certain parts of her story, she had become wistful and dreamy, a faint smile playing on her lips and a faraway look in her eyes. Always when she spoke of the one she called the Goblin King, especially at the story's end.
Julie looked into the crystal again, to be met by her mother's youthful gaze--timeless, everlasting, like something out of a fairytale.
In an insane moment of idea, it suddenly dawned on her who Jareth was--who he had to be.
It dawned on her what had to have happened during the very night, though all reality and logic denied it. But this sparkling thing she held in her very hand was also denied by reality and logic.
Her mother was gone. Her mother was happy.
Holding the crystal, she cried and laughed until she couldn't anymore.
But finally she smiled.
Her mother was free.
--------------------
(Notes: I originally couldn't decide which ending I liked better for this, the sort of bittersweet one above (which also gives a little more history), or the sort of just "end" feeling of the one below. Someone told me I should put both up, so here's the other.)
Julie came down from her bedroom and started the morning coffee. Then she went into the living room.
She realized that she was completely alone. Her mother was nowhere to be found. She looked all over the first floor, then even checking the upstairs and the yard. But there was nothing, no one.
It was then that she noticed that there was something on the bed. It was a round glass ball. She picked it up without thinking, wondering how such a thing got to be there. Then to her amazement, she realized that there was an image in the crystal ball, not made into the glass itself, but an actual three-dimensional image floating within.
Looking closer, she gasped. It was her mother, looking as she had only known her in photographs, and younger than she herself was right now. She stood, staring out with a happy smile on her face. And she was dressed in a gown of unbelievable beauty, something the likes of which she had never even worn on stage. She looked timeless, everlasting, like something out of a fairytale.
Suddenly a distant story came to mind, a story that had crystals and a ball gown in it. It was a story that her mother had told her many times as a child, and one that she had never heard anywhere else. Her mother had loved to tell that story. And she told it so vividly, almost wistfully at times....
As Julie looked back into the crystal again, it suddenly dawned on her who Jareth was.