Magic Dance

To Anne Boleyn (1528) My Mistress and Friend,
I and my heart put ourselves in your hands, begging you to recommend us to your good grace and not to let absence lessen your affection...
For myself the pang of absence is already to great, and when I think of the increase of what I must needs suffer it would be well nigh intolerable but for my firm hope of your unchangeable affection... Henry VIII

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Although most of them didn't see her, everyone in the ballroom sensed her arrival – the child/woman – the girl named Sarah. Dressed in a billowing luminous gown of silvery white with beaded strings adorning her thick long tresses the young girl looked out of place amid hideous masks and autumn colored frocks. "Like an innocent lamb among wolves." Thought the bone-masked man as he swirled his dance partner past her.

Sarah's eyes shifted around the room; she felt confused as though she had lost something – or perhaps someone. She didn't analyze how she got there; like in a dream she accepted that as a matter of course without question. All she knew is she had to find "him" although she didn't know who "he" was or even why. As she began to move through and scan the crowd the need to find "him" became more urgent – even imperative.

Small groups joked and laughed intimately, lovers pawed and dancers swirled while Sarah searched among them in the decadent seemingly endless room. Jareth smirked from behind her moving form, careful to stay out of her line of vision. "This is really too much fun," he thought as he moved fluidly to yet another place where she would not see him, even if she turned.

Weaving her way through the mass of merrymakers she felt she was being watched and turned her head around to see if she could spot the source of the feeling – she saw no one staring at her and turned away. Sarah was right in her assessment though– she was being intensely watched by two figures unknown to each other – a Goblin King and a man in a bone mask.

The masquerade was carefully staged to seem as if her presence was irrelevant – as though the event was being held for reasons unrelated to her. But that was far from the truth – this was a dream crystal that was carefully created from one of Sarah's most powerful fantasies - her fantasy of true love.

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It was not an easy fantasy for the Goblin King to recreate...the more powerful the emotions of the dreamer the more complex and intricate the dream crystal had to be. It had taken great energy for Jareth to conjure the all the details of the masquerade and summon his doppelganger to enter the illusion. Of course, he had to improvise some things from his own imagination – Sarah's dream, like most, was not complete in all its finer points.

But a dream contains great power – and the stronger the dreamer the more power it holds. In Sarah's case the fantasy was so powerful that in effect the crystal Jareth created was really a pretty oubliette – a place of forgetting Toby and the challenge. The Goblin King was confident that her strong desires and his double would distract her long enough for the allotted thirteen hours to run out before she understood what happened. Actually, in rare instances, the vision is so powerful the dreamer becomes the dream. Becomes lost in it forever, not long at all

Jareth lounged on his throne with Toby on his lap holding a crystal up for both of them to see. "There she is - see Sarah?" Jareth whispered into Toby's ear as the baby reached for the shimmering girl in the crystal. "Well, take a good look because she's forgotten all about you – and soon you will forget all about her and become mine." Not understanding what Jareth was saying but responding to the playful tone of the man's voice Toby looked at the Goblin King and smiled. Overconfident that Sarah would not escape her dream Jareth made the crystal vanish and smiled back canine. Time could be so cruel.

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"The Goblin King fancies himself powerful and clever," the bone masked man thought as he watched Jareth play cat and mouse with Sarah in the distorted dream. "We will see who is the puppet and who is the master."