Sarah stood stunned, caught off guard by Jareth's abrupt departure. No, more than that, caught off guard by his unexpected candor that, in a strange way, laid clear all of his hostility, his vulnerability, and even his fears. Once she would have said that she could spend a whole lifetime with the man and never really know him; now that had changed, though she wasn't sure in which direction it had shifted. Did it make him more knowable, more human, somehow? Or did it merely make him more alien? She shivered.
She had learned more than that as well. Despite the way in which her heart was still pounding wildly from his presence, Sarah grinned a little. She'd found out that Toby was somewhere in this very castle, presumably safe and unchanged from the last time she'd seen him. And of course, she would start looking for him almost immediately.
"Well," she amended softly, "as soon as I get a bath. And some fresh clothes and food. And maybe a short nap."
Though she felt slightly guilty about making Toby wait for even an hour more, she quickly convinced herself that getting some food and some actually restful sleep behind her would make her search for him quicker and more efficient.
With that in mind, Sarah took a last, lingering glance at the ballroom. It truly was a beautiful room. Maybe someday, if she succeeded, she would be able to dance in it again. Slowly, but without a second glance, she squeezed through the opening in the door and pulled it tightly shut behind her.
After the brilliance of the ballroom, the halls of Jareth's castle looked darker and drearier than ever. The cold stone felt harsh and rough when compared to the smooth marble brilliance of the floor on the other side of the now-closed door. So soon after leaving, Sarah already yearned to be back inside.
"Feh," she muttered. "Probably just another one of his tricks. He likes to keep me off-balance and to make me forget what I'm really here for."
What was she really there for? She frowned. She'd come for Toby, hadn't she? Not just for Toby, of course, but had he not been stuck here, she would have just stayed at home… Wouldn't she have? Or would she have come back regardless, rather than spend the rest of her life with unspoken regrets?
Sarah shook herself like a wet dog, breaking away from her short reverie. There was no time to stand around and stare at the wall; she had things to do!
Moving purposefully, she grabbed a torch out of a nearby sconce to light her way back to her room and to make the endless hall seem less oppressive. With a firm stride, Sarah set off back to her room.
To pass the time as she walked, she sang under her breath. Though she started off quietly singing rock songs, as she went along, she realized that the halls had incredibly good acoustics; by the time she could see the large double doors that led to her room in the distance, she was belting out arias from operas at the top of her lungs. At any other place or time, Sarah would have been far too embarrassed to sing loudly, despite the fact that everyone had always told her that she had a lovely voice (likely inherited from her mother). Here, however, the only one even remotely likely to hear her singing was Jareth, and she told herself resolutely that if her singing annoyed him, well, he likely deserved it.
The little voice inside her head whispered that she should be nicer to him since, after all, he had saved her life when he might have just as easily watched her fall to a gruesome death.
"Oh, yeah?" she muttered at that little voice as she stepped into her room. "Well, what else has he done for me la—" Her voice trailed off as she looked around her room.
To say that it had changed would have been an understatement.
Though the opulent bed and furnishings had not changed, most everything else had. Beautiful dresses and swatches of fabric now lay draped over every available surface. In the corner of the room, a large circular table now stood, and upon that table lay a silver platter. On the platter were plates containing generous portions of all of Sarah's favorite foods, ranging from beef stroganoff to macaroni and cheese, all still piping hot.
But the biggest change was the appearance of a door next to the bed. Sarah could have sworn that it hadn't been there before. When she hesitantly opened it and craned her head around to peek on the other side, she gasped involuntarily.
If her bedchamber here could be said to be fit for a princess, then behind the door was a bathroom fit for a twentieth century girl. Sarah's eyes lingered with appreciation on the porcelain toilet and sink, as well as the full-length mirror, but none of those were what really caught her eye. She couldn't help but stare longingly at the enormous bathtub in the corner of the room. Not only did it look big enough for her to practically swim in, it was already busy filling up with hot water. What looked to be pink, scented bath soaps had been added, and the tub was brimming with pink bubbles. Next to the tub hung large, fluffy-looking towels.
It was probably the nicest gift anyone had ever given her. Though her stomach was rumbling and the bed's softness called to her, Sarah unerringly tossed her nightgown over her head and immediately sank into the bath.
She moaned softly as the water caressed her skin, kneading muscles she hadn't even known were tense. It had been a very, very long time since Sarah had taken a bath instead of a shower, and an even longer time since she'd taken a bath with only relaxation in mind.
As she lay in the water, completely limp, letting the bubbles tickle her, a frown creased her forehead. Why was Jareth being so nice to her? Sometimes she started to think that she had a handle on him, but then he did something like this, and landed Sarah right back at square one. For a moment, Sarah was actively frustrated; then she remembered that she was lying in bubble-filled hot water, and that there was hot food waiting for her as soon as she decided to get out. With that in mind, she closed her eyes, cleared her mind, and just let herself enjoy the bath.
She must have drifted off at some point, though, because when next she opened her eyes, the light spilling through the windows had changed considerably. Somehow, though, the water hadn't chilled at all. Sarah stretched drowsily and slowly climbed out of the bathtub, noting that she looked like nothing so much as a big, pink raisin.
"Well," she said aloud, ruefully, "at least I don't need to nap now." She quickly reached for a towel and wrapped it around herself; the air wasn't that warm, after all. Combing her hair with fingers (apparently, Jareth had forgotten one or two amenities), Sarah tucked the edges of the towel in so it formed a makeshift robe, and wandered back into her bedchamber, curious as to whether the food would still be hot.
Back at home, she would have been amazed to discover that, after the hour or so she'd spent in the bathtub, the food was still steaming, but here, she only raised an eyebrow and smiled upon seeing it. After all, it seemed that Jareth could do nearly anything; how hard could it be to keep food hot?
With a grin that couldn't be described as anything but impish, Sarah pulled up the nearest chair, dumping the blue velvet fabric that was lying on it onto the floor, and plunked herself down in front of the food.
She was, after all, starving.
Sarah was nearly halfway through the beef stroganoff and had started in on the pepperoni pizza when there was a quiet knock at the door. It was so quiet, in fact, that had she not been taking a two-minute break from stuffing her face to digest, she never would have heard it.
Glancing over at the door, which was already open a crack, she called, "Come in!" already wondering who could be on the other side. Jareth certainly wouldn't knock like that. Jareth wouldn't even bother to knock. He'd simply stride into the room, assuming that anyone and anything in it already belonged to him, so why should he worry about knocking? So it couldn't be Jareth on the other side of the door.
A small head peeped around the edge of the door. "I can come in? That's what you said?"
"Yeees," Sarah said slowly, mentally running through her list of every goblin she'd ever met and trying unsuccessfully to identify this one. As it scurried through the door, shutting the heavy mahogany slab tightly behind itself, she examined it as closely as she dared.
It couldn't have been any higher than her knee. Like Hoggle, it had leathery skin and a bulbous nose, but it also had enormous, pleading eyes, a tiny petulant mouth, and small, stumpy, withered wings that hung limply from its shoulder blades. All in all… It was one of the cutest-looking goblins she'd ever seen, as well as one of the most pathetic-looking.
And it was currently looking around the room as though it expected some demon – or at least, Jareth – to spring out from a dark corner and scare it.
"Hello," Sarah said softly, and in as comforting a tone as she could manage. It did no good; the goblin still jumped several feet in the air at the sound of her voice. "I'm sorry for startling you… Can I help you with something?"
The goblin scuttled over to her and clutched at her towel-clad knee. "You!" it said. "You… came before?"
"What?"
"You were… here before?"
"Um, yes," Sarah replied finally. "I've been here before. Twice, actually."
"The boy, he belongs to you?" It looked up at her desperately.
"The boy?" Sarah bit her lip. "Is… is the boy sort of tall and skinny with… reddish hair?"
The little creature nodded vigorously. "He yours?"
"Yes!" Sarah exclaimed, still careful to keep her voice low. "He is. Please can you tell me—"
It cut her off. "You want to find him, you go left from this room and he's up two floors. In the big room."
Sarah was quite still for a moment, then she grabbed the goblin's tiny hands. "You're sure? Left, up two floors, and I'll find him?" She knew quite well that she probably shouldn't trust this creature, but as she had no reason not to, and as no one else had volunteered any information whatsoever as to Toby's whereabouts, she didn't see what it could hurt to at least check it out.
The goblin nodded again. "Promise. He's there. Please, lady, take him."
Now she was confused. "Take him?" she repeated. "Why? Why are you doing this?"
If it had looked frightened before, now it looked positively petrified. "Because," it whispered, staring at the floor, "because of him."
"Him? Him wh—" Sarah cut off her own question. In her experience, there was only one capable of inspiring such fear in the goblins. "Because of Jareth."
"Y—yes!" The goblin firmed its small chin and looked back up at her. "Since the boy came, he – His Majesty – he's been angry. Restless. Pacing at nights. Scaring us all. Short temper – shorter. You take the boy away, His Majesty gets better. See? Take him!"
"Really?" Sarah asked. "Ever since the time the boy came, Jareth's been in a bad mood? Are you sure that it's because of the boy?"
It nodded sharply. "'Course it's the boy. Nothing else it could be, is there?"
Sarah had her doubts, but of course she nodded gravely and agreed with the goblin that it had to be because of the boy. "Do you work in the castle?" she asked curiously.
"Yeah. Work here. Small so I can keep from being underfoot. No one wants to be underfoot when he's about." It cringed. "Or we get tossed in the Bog."
"I understand," she said with sincerity. "I wouldn't wish the Bog of Eternal Stench on anyone."
"And since the boy… More and more of us getting tossed. So you see? You have to do it. Take the boy."
"Okay," she replied, squeezing its tiny hands. "I'll get the boy out of here. I promise." Looking only slightly relieved, the goblin extracted its hands from hers and hurried towards the door, but was stopped by Sarah's, "Wait!" She smiled at it. "I don't know your name."
For the first time, it looked distinctly annoyed by her questions. "Grunt. All goblins in the castle are Grunt. So he doesn't have to remember names. He calls, we all answer."
"Not very nice of him, is it?" She smiled lopsidedly down at the small goblin.
Grunt clapped its hands over its mouth. "Don't say that! Could be worse!" Without another word, and without even giving her a chance to say goodbye, Grunt opened the door with astonishing dexterity for one so small and awkward-looking, and squeezed out into the hall.
Sarah leapt from her chair and dashed over to the door, but by the time she glanced out into the hall, Grunt had already disappeared without so much as a sound to betray where he'd gone.
She sighed with a hint of frustration. "Everything changes so fast around here, how can I ever keep up?"
Of course, she wasn't that frustrated. After all, now she had a clue as to where to start looking for Toby. She drew her head back into the room. With only the smallest of longing glances at the pepperoni pizza back on the table, Sarah fell to her knees and started digging around in the piles of dresses for something in which she could actually move.
It wasn't as easy as she'd hoped.
While the dresses were all incredibly gorgeous – just the sort of thing that every small girl, at some point, dreams of wearing – they were not terribly practical or even very comfortable.
In the end, Sarah had to compromise and pick a dress that was decently comfortable, if lacking in maneuverability and durability. She ended up wearing a dress with a satin, dark blue, cinched corset top and a billowing blue velvet skirt, embroidered here and there with tiny, twinkling diamonds. It was definitely flattering, and low-cut enough that Sarah blushed upon seeing her reflection in the mirror.
"I've worn bikinis more modest," she muttered to herself while pulling on a pair of high-heeled lace-up boots that had appeared to complement the dress. In contrast to the soft, feminine opulence of the dress, Sarah pulled her hair back in a tight, ordinary pony-tail. That, at least, was practical. She could hardly be efficient if her hair were hanging in her eyes and blocking her vision, could she?
Finally she was fully dressed… Or as fully dressed as she could get, in any case. She took a deep breath. Finally, after over two months of waiting, she was going to find her brother.
Stepping out into the hall, Sarah resolutely turned left, trying to ignore the oh-so-feminine clicking of her heels against the stone floor. It wasn't such an easy sound to ignore, though, mostly due to the echoing acoustics in the castle hall. After several moments, it was not only distracting, it was downright annoying.
Sarah merely firmed her chin and kept going. Much as she'd have killed for a simple pair of sneakers, they had not been made available to her, and given the choice between using the warm boots and going barefoot against the cold stone… Well, it wasn't much of a contest, really.
All the same, she was relieved when she walked through a large portrait gallery that was carpeted, and the ubiquitous clicking was silenced, at least for a moment or two. Looking up at the portraits, Sarah paused. Though there could have been no less than at a hundred paintings lining the walls, and though she half-expected to be greeted by the faces of Jareth's forbearers, what she was seeing was, in many ways, so much more disturbing.
Every single painting in the hall was of Jareth. Jareth, seated on his throne. Jareth, standing proudly amidst various portions of the Labyrinth. Jareth, gazing out of a window. Jareth, twirling glass spheres in his hands. Jareth, wielding enormous power. Jareth upon Jareth upon Jareth stared down at Sarah, and though his settings and activities varied, it was always the same, vaguely bored expression, the same haughty mismatched eyes.
Shivering, feeling as though she were actually being watched by every single Jareth in every single painting, Sarah started moving again, and quickened her pace. For the first time, she started to wonder exactly how old Jareth was. Some of those paintings had looked downright ancient, but the Jareth in them didn't look a day younger than the Jareth she knew.
Too, the look in his eyes in the portraits was haunting her. She had left the portrait gallery behind before she realized exactly why. It was, she realized, because it didn't vary, didn't change. It seemed as though for Jareth – at least, the Jareth in those paintings – one activity was much the same as another, and none of them held any particular joy for him.
His words from that day, months before, finally began to make sense: "Are you completely daft, or are you just not listening? I was born to this. There are times that I would rather be doing something else, but I am the Goblin King. It's my job."
He'd been telling her this all along, but she hadn't listened really. Sarah had just assumed that of course he actually enjoyed what he was doing; after all, he'd treated her with a certain amount of sadism. But now, faced with evidence to the contrary, she felt embarrassed for accusing him so vehemently.
Finally, Sarah halted in front of a giant staircase. Glad to have something else to occupy her thoughts, she whispered, "Up two floors. This shouldn't take too long."
As was quickly becoming common practice, however, Sarah spoke too soon. Far too soon.
Though she could have sworn that it was a normal length flight of stairs, five minutes later, she still hadn't made it up one floor. Already feeling the burning in the back of her legs, Sarah glanced back, wondering. She groaned. Though the ground floor was clearly a distance below her by now, she didn't seem to be any closer to the second floor than when she started.
"Real nice of you, Jareth," she muttered darkly, slightly out of breath. "Had to put all sorts of fun little booby traps in place for me, didn't we?" Despite her annoyance and the pain that came of climbing far too many stairs, Sarah shook her head and started climbing again. She couldn't stay trapped in between two floors forever, after all.
Another five minutes passed. And still, she hadn't seemed to move at all.
Now she had to sit down and massage her calves, hiking her full skirts above her knees. "Goddammit," she muttered, her annoyance growing to anger. "Why would you want to stop me? Don't you want Toby and me out of here?" He probably wasn't listening, but it felt so good to shriek at Jareth that she raised her voice and yelled, "Just let my find my brother and finish this, damn you!"
Suddenly, there was a creak from the wall next to her. As she watched with a strange sense of déjà vu, a small panel opened in the wall itself and a small, pointed face with huge eyes peeked around to stare at her.
"So loud," it said.
Sarah's response was a puzzled blink. "Grunt?" she asked slightly cautiously.
"Yes. Same Grunt as before. And you, lady… So very loud. Trying to bring the castle down around us all? Like you did before?"
"No!" she exclaimed, blushing a dull red. She hadn't thought that anyone besides Jareth would have known or remembered the conclusion of their first confrontation. "I… How long have you been in this castle?"
"Long time. So. The problem?"
"Huh?"
Grunt gestured. "You. Sitting on the stairs and shouting. Why not going and taking the boy?"
"I'm trying." Sarah frowned. "No matter how high I climb, I don't seem to… Well, get any higher. And I'm sure that there's something I'm just missing or not seeing or something, but… How do I get to the third floor? So I can, uh, take the boy."
Grunt rolled its huge eyes. "Walked right up the stairs? Stuck now, lady."
"What?" she snapped. "No. You can't mean that. I'm not stuck here."
"Well. Unless…"
"Unless what?" she asked, tempering her irritation. "What can I do?"
"See this?" it asked, motioning to the small panel and to the small tunnel from which, presumably, it had come. "Can you squeeze?"
Sarah stared in horror at the tunnel. Though she wasn't claustrophobic, nobody would have liked the prospect of wriggling through that, particularly not in this dress.
"Is that… is that the only way?" she asked with futile hope that maybe Grunt would shake its head.
"Only way. Come now… or stay."
"Okay, I'll come." She groaned, but thanked her lucky stars that she was naturally skinny, and followed Grunt into the tunnel.
Almost immediately, she regretted it. It was black as hell in there. For Grunt, it must have been relatively easy to move, but for Sarah, it was a very tight fit; she could feel the dirty walls scraping against her sides.
"Grunt?" she asked, her voice sounding surreal in the incredibly close blackness. "Are you still there?"
"Yeah. Still here, lady. Keep moving."
Sarah would not have thought it possible, but this was worse than climbing stair after stair after stair. She had to fight for every single inch, digging her fingers and feet into any crack or hole she could find, pulling herself up. It was exhausting and not a little frightening.
Time seemed to compress to a single moment: find a handhold, move another few inches, and start all over again. Her breath rasped in her ears, but she could still hear Grunt scrabbling along in front of her.
"Almost there now. Just a little further."
"Thanks," she replied breathlessly, then continued struggling for progress.
At long last, she could see a little light silhouetting Grunt's skinny form, and then there was more light, enough so that she could see the shape of her dirty arms in front of her.
Finally, a little dazed, definitely grubbier than when she'd started, but not actually that much worse for the wear, Sarah crawled out of a hole in the wall, and onto a solid floor. For a moment, she just lay there, her feet still dangling in the tunnel, pressing her damp forehead against the cool floor. Then there was a slight nudge against her elbow, and she glanced up.
Grunt was standing there, and had clearly tapped her with his foot. "Third floor. Find the boy."
She nodded breathlessly with a grateful smile. "Thank you, Grunt. I will, I promise."
"…Get out of way."
"What?"
Grunt frowned (at least, she thought it did, but with its small mouth, it was difficult to tell). "In my way. Can't go back into tunnel."
Sarah turned around and looked back at her dangling feet. "Oh. Oh… Sorry." She pulled her feet away from the tunnel, and Grunt immediately hurried back into the tunnel and was gone before she could thank it again.
She groaned, hoping that she didn't have much further to go to find Toby. After another moment lying prone on the floor, Sarah felt strong enough to sit up. As she wobbled upward to a sitting position, she noted that her dress was, in fact, surprisingly resilient, and was only slightly frayed at the bottom hem and dusty.
Then, finally, she looked up and at the room in which she found herself. And she couldn't stop herself from groaning. Like the ballroom, she had seen this room before, definitely, but this room she had never wanted to see again.
There were staircases everywhere she looked, in all directions and dimensions, and she knew from experience that she could, simply by going through one door or another, step onto all of them. This was the room where it was too easy to lose orientation and perspective. This was the room where she and Jareth had come head-to-head when they fought over Toby.
"Oh no," she moaned. As she looked upwards in the massive room, further and further, she craned her head all the way back to the ceiling… Where a skinny figure was sitting in apparent dejection.
Even from that unnatural angle, and even from a distance, Sarah recognized it immediately. She'd seen it thousands of times.
Tilting her head back, Sarah screamed at the top of her lungs, "Toby!"
…
Author's Note: Yeah, so I apologize for the relative boringness of this chapter, and by "boringness," I mean, "lack of Jareth." He was supposed to show up, I swear! Unfortunately, it took Sarah longer to find Toby than it should have. Dammit. But I promise, promise you all more Jareth in the next chapter, and I also promise that there will be arguing between Sarah and Jareth. Of course. Because that's what they do. And because it's so fun.
As always, thanks for reading!
