The End of Sleep
by Alison Harvey
Disclaimer: Characters from the movie Labyrinth belong to Henson & Co. All else is mine.
---------------------------------------
Cleopatra:
Courteous
lord, one word.
Sir, you and I must part, but
that's not it:
Sir, you and I have lov'd, but
there's not it;
That you know well: something it
is I would,
O! my oblivion is a very Antony,
And I am all forgotten.
--Antony and Cleopatra (I.iii.106-111)
---------------------------------------
Chapter 2: The Art of RememberingWaking up was difficult.
Sarah and Tommy used to give each other tours of ruined buildings on their wild runs around the country, making up stories of who had lived there and what they had used each strange machine for. They would hold up rotting dresses and suits and laugh, raid long-abandoned kitchens for still-edible stored mixes or canned foods. Sarah had taught Tommy about the sickness that came from eating what was in the odd-shaped, distorted cans. And in return, he had found the object.
Glass, she had guessed. With his instinct for truth Tommy had explained to her that the beautiful unfinished half-sphere, rough from only the barest of polishing, was crystal. Glass had little lead, if any; crystal had more, giving it the sounds of bells when it broke and a strange fine heaviness when lifted. The sphere had been cut in half as a paperweight of sorts. Rather than being etched and cut, someone had preserved it from the glassblower's factories. The top half looked like molten glass frozen in time. It was thick and wavy and nearly impossible to see through, turning Tommy's ragged overcoat--it had been the dead of winter--into a blur of muddy olive green.
She had been forced to leave it behind on a heap of collapsed furniture, reluctance tempered by practicality. Still, the mention of crystal had stirred something within her, made her remember a half-story about another land with a sky of brilliant orange. After their next escape from the attentive Mekuzae she had started to look for gateway spells.
President Chie forbade magic, like old technology, in Eamerica. Of course, Chie forbade everything remotely useful or good, so that hardly made a difference. But magic was a special province of the state, to be hoarded by the presidential magicians as another tool. Chie wanted to keep herself safe as long as possible, and her quintet of pet magicians--no one knew what hold she had over them, but most suspected hostage family members--had thwarted dozens of riots, civil rebellions, coups and assassination plots.
Sarah's parents had been killed in the periodic cleaning of treachery ten years back. She hardly remembered more than the way her mother's sleeve draped as she reached over to her younger self, and the thick smell of her father's cigarettes. She remembered the needles and the too high laughs of the parties more than well enough. Her parents had been too young for the unexpected child. They had sheltered her and let her grow wild until her eighth year, then set her free with their deaths. Kinder, stronger people had tended her then, until she had become a liability and had been pushed towards the life of a nomad, poking through odd technological rubbish in the hopes of selling it to the next person. It'd been more profitable to sell it to the rebels; he ones who sought to restore the Golden Age before the plague.
She had found Tommy on her trek back from scouring the abandoned ports on the Gulf of Mexico, huddled in a cluster of shacks somewhere near old Virginia. He could count his genealogy back seven generations, though none were distinguished, to Sarah Williams, an occultist whose works were prized among the rebels for their hints and recipes of small magics. He had insisted on becoming her companion, and his odd instincts and ancient blood had served them more than once. Sarah had been oddly compelled to keep him close, more drawn to him than any other person she'd run into in the living hell that was her country.
She had become prominent among the rebels for protecting him: Tommy had been stalked for reasons both of ancestry and of power. Together the pair were a prize, although she had been startled to realize how much more the magicians wanted Tommy. When they had started hunting him in earnest, she had fled with him to their chains of self-prepared safe houses, abandoning all plans of a fresh civil war in the hopes of making it to Canada or California. The two had shed the small, traceable mechanics they had unearthed, the ones that had kept them safe and clean, and ran with the Mekuzae on their heels and Sarah's nose buried in the grimoire that told of access to the otherworld. Stolen pages from the Williams book on the Underground gave her the rest.
Now she was here, and awake, and there was a supernatural being who claimed she was Sarah Williams.
Worse still, she knew it was true.
She kept her eyes shut, fighting the nausea caused by two sets of different memories dueling in her mind for prominence.
)/("It's crystal," Tommy said, holding out the glassy chunk. She took it cautiously, holding it in her hands like something precious to be admired. She hadn't seen something so fine since they'd poled a raft to the island off Cape Cod and wandered through forgotten summerhouses.
"It's so beautiful," Sarah murmured, cradling it gently. Something hammered at her memory, shoved to get in, but she couldn't get it yet. She held it and waited. A flash of orange from the crimson struck the piece and shone, turning each facet into a miniature glowing sun.
And she realized how she could protect Tommy from the next attack.)/(
Sarah gasped for air, helpless to stop the next upwelling of her mind.
(("Just a crystal, nothing more," whispered a voice of silk and shadows.
And Sarah Williams woke up in her empty house, punching the button on her bedside clock. She was unsurprised to see that it was three-seventeen in the morning.
Sighing, she turned on the lamp with a nudge and picked up the notebook on the nightstand. Flipping to the back of the densely scrawled-upon pages, she grabbed a chewed pencil from the nightstand and began to write. The cramped letters formed a name that she remembered even after twenty years.
The Goblin King can be cruel and capricious, she wrote, then stopped, trying to remember what the dream had said to her.))
That was not her life. And yet with the viewing, she knew that it was. It had already become a part of her past. She had written Of The Underground, could quote whole passages by heart, explain the twists and turns of the Labyrinth…
((Her face hidden from the sun under a floppy straw hat, Sarah clipped the last twig off the outside of the hedge.
"It's done," she said happily to the empty grounds. "Finally."
The notebook was leather now, the pen an expensive Swiss construction. Sarah gathered them up with an aged hand and pushed her hat back to dangle behind her from the string at her neck. She looked at the restored hedge maze in front of her. Her husband had helped her cut away the worst of the debris, shaking his head when she refused to hire an experienced gardener. But the last few weeks of clipping and pruning had been her own private affair.
She walked into the maze, having memorized the path to the center. There was a jaunty spring in her step that belied her seventy-odd years.
After all, she had nearly finished the work of her life. The book would soon be complete. Still, she wished she might see the Goblin King one last time.))
Judging from the lack of memories of a second encounter, Sarah realized that her last wish had never been fulfilled. She forbade herself from seeing her past time in the Labyrinth, although images of a dank maze and a decrepit castle swam before her eyes. And companions as well, something the books had never said. There had been a knight, and a beast…
((Sir Didymus, valiant fox, and his bearer, Ambrosius the Brave. Ludo, who sang to rocks and made them dance.))
…and a gardener who had both betrayed and succored her, defying his liege to bring her safely to her brother.
((Hoggle, my friend,)) her mind supplied with warm enthusiasm. It felt like a double echo--even the words sounder older and strangely accented. She held them both in one head, but they were two separate people.
Last of all, Jareth, the Goblin King. ((My adversary, I defeated him despite his tricks and promises,)) that other voice chimed, stubborn and victorious.
((The snowy owl flew from its perch to the tree outside the entrance to the overgrown maze.
"Do you like it, Ginevre?" Sarah called to the owl. "I do." She turned to the old mansion, then to her assistant. "We'll take it at sixty thousand under the asking price. Let me know when I need to sign."))
Shut up shut up shut up, she thought, dizzy from the feeling of being stretched into different lives.
Mercifully, no new revelations stirred. She felt curiously empty without that second set of feelings but grateful there were no more memories of the Goblin King.
Other than those of last night, of course. Jareth, greeting her. Jareth, telling her who she was, spelling her somehow to remember. Jareth, offering her a red-gold ring that shone like fire in her hand, telling her she had known him for centuries.
If he was right about her being Sarah Williams, it was possible that he was right about all the rest. That, above all else, terrified her.
Realizing she could never go back to sleep on that thought, Sarah opened her eyes. For a moment, she thought she was back in the memory of Tommy showing her the crystal; everything was blurred and distorted as if seen through old, wavy glass. She blinked rapidly and her eyes cleared. Hastily she pushed at sheets and sat up, looking around at the room as her vision sharpened.
The room was large, with pale blue walls and delicate red-stained wood furniture. In the corner was an oval standing mirror, tilted away from the bed to show a view of the blank ceiling. There was a large window to her right, covered with heavy draperies. No air or light came through the thick fabric, making it impossible to tell what time of day it was.
Instead, light came from a simple globe hanging from the ceiling that had brightened when she sat up. There were large double doors opposite to the foot of the bed, and a cushioned bench right beside it. To her left was a single door, open a crack. To the right was a nightstand, holding an empty mug and a plate with some crumbs. Beside it was a cushioned chair pulled close enough to the bed to touch. It prompted uncomfortable thoughts.
She looked down, taking in the oversized nightgown she wore and deciding it was best not to think about how she had ended up in it. Pulling her legs out from the sheets and kicking away the coverlet, she let her legs dangle from the tall bed as she slid onto the cool wood floor. Standing up brought a rush of blood to her head, darkening the corners of her vision. Alarmed, she sat down in the chair.
The soft fabric was warm beneath her bare legs, as if someone had vacated it recently. Surprised, she looked again at the empty plate and mug, realizing that she had had a visitor who had also eaten and drank while watching over her sleep. The uneasiness of earlier came back, stronger this time.
The double doors creaked. Sarah snapped her attention to the widening gap with frightened attention, adrenaline flooding her.
A short creature walked in, visibly double-taking when he saw the empty bed. His gaze immediately traveled to the chair, and he exhaled loudly.
"Whew. I thought you'd gone missing. He'd've had my head for that."
Sarah gaped at the stocky dwarf. Something was wrong about what he had said, not compatible with whom her heart told her he was. The voices in her head began to clamor.
"Hoggle?"
"You remember me!" he exclaimed, running over to her. "I was hoping you would, but no one knew for sure who you'd be when you woke up."
She crouched down to hug him, smiling so broadly she thought she might crack her face. There was still something different, but she couldn't tell what it was. And even if it was different, it was still familiar. "I never thought I'd see you again."
He pulled away to look at her critically. "You're different this time around, that's for sure, but not by much. I'm glad you didn't change."
"So you know?" she said hesitantly. If he knew, then he'd conveniently forgotten while helping her in the Labyrinth. She now understood the purpose of the ballroom. In the past, she had dismissed it as another trick to keep her from leaving. Now she recognized it as a delaying tactic, another chance to jog her memories and make her wake up from whatever amnesia she had kept.
She had no idea why she had not found on her own about her previous lives. Fantastic as the story was, she was forced to believe it. There wasn't another explanation for her sudden remembrance of a whole second life. From what she knew of the Goblin King, he had no reason to inflict a spell on her to make her believe that. He twisted the truth--and the rules--but always hesitated from speaking an outright lie.
She firmly shoved the more personal details of Jareth's explanation into a large mental box marked "Later." Next century wouldn't be soon enough.
Hoggle shrugged, embarrassed. The move tugged the crisp folds of material around his shoulders, pulling the garment out of place. "We all know. We weren't allowed to tell you the first time, we were. Helping you was nothing compared with what he threatened if you'd found out. He already knew you didn't remember him then."
She softened. Of course there was a reason. Suspicion lingered, then drifted away. She was more interested in what her friend was wearing.
Hoggle caught her glance at his peculiar new clothing and blushed, if such a thing was possible beneath his ruddy skin. "You like it?"
She took a step back and surveyed the dark grey double-breasted suit. His skullcap was gone, revealing a balding head with neat but sparse hair. Instead of jewels, an old-fashioned watch-fob dangled from his belt. The pants were slightly too long. Underneath them, she could see expensive-looking and highly polished black shoes.
The effect was both ridiculous and intriguing, but she knew how much it would hurt his feelings to admit the former.
"It's different," she said carefully. "What do you need to dress up for?"
Hoggle stared at her for a moment, then laughed. "I'm not dressed up," he explained. "This is what I wear everyday. The Labyrinth doesn't need gardeners now. His Majesty told me I could leave, or try something new."
"What is it that you do?" she asked, curious.
"Investment banking," he told her quietly, drawing himself up a little taller.
She gaped. Only after she considered what her shock must appear to Hoggle did she push
herself back into the chair.
"It's very important here, you know," he said quickly. "Things change slowly here, but as soon as the stock market arrived Underground, I knew I wanted to work with it."
She tried a different tack, still trying to picture Hoggle as a ruthless financier cutting deals between corporations and poring over financial records. It was easier to imagine than she'd expected, but still funny. To stop from giggling, knowing what it would do to his pride, she decided to ask more. The idea that the Goblin Castle could have a stock market was intriguing and downright mind-boggling. "So how long ago did the market arrive?"
Hoggle frowned as he tried to remember, tilting his head to the side in a look of confusion she remembered from her first time through the Labyrinth. "Funny, that. I never really noticed. After the first companies formed. Antiron Production, Illusion Sea Faerite, the rest of them. That's when we started to sell the shares, you know."
Hoggle had a somewhat dubious moral system--discounting earned loyalty--and a magpie-like greed for shiny objects, but he was not a fool. Sarah knew that he had dangled that particular bit of information in front of her in hopes of distracting her from the shadow that haunted the room. The annoyingly blond, annoyingly suave Goblin King.
Both Sarahs clashed in her mind when she thought about the Goblin King, creating a confusing mess of factual and emotional data that left her dumbstruck while her mind struggled to sort it all out. She was scared of what she remembered and had learned about the Goblin King.
What terrified her, though, was what Jareth had told Tommy when they had arrived in the Labyrinth. Cycles? Lifetimes? None of that sounded like he was referring to her past time in the Labyrinth.
Even the fact she remembered the complete life of Sarah Williams was beginning to drive her crazy. Who was this other person in her head? Why was the Goblin King acting like this? Jareth owed her an explanation, if she ever stuck around long enough to listen to it. All they needed was a few years' protection from Chie, enough time to gain the magic that could hide her safely.
Sarah had once dreamed of permanent asylum in some tiny part of the Goblin King's lands. She remembered the vast lands stretching beyond the Labyrinth itself, rolling red dust under a glassy sky. She had thought that she could make a life in this alien place. Now, after the Goblin King's frighteningly urgent offer, she knew she had to return. Jareth wanted more than Tommy, and she had never expected anything else to be on the table.
She ignored the pricking guilt when she thought of Tommy. He was meant to be here and guilt had no place in knowing that by sending them over she was sending him here permanently.
Changelings had no place in the world Chie was building. He was safer here with Jareth, even if Jareth had a new and different agenda.
Sarah didn't want to think about him right now. Maybe, she realized, Hoggle hadn't been distracting her from the Goblin King for Jareth's sake, but her own. The thought prompted a faint smile, which encouraged Hoggle's history lesson.
"We haven't had a mortal in a long time. Do you know anything about the stock market? In the beginning the Labyrinth had the advantage because we'd ask the runners questions, but it's been so long the others have all caught up."
Sarah considered this, using it as a chance to test her new memory. Sarah Williams remembered her father reading the paper and cursing the daily reports as this stock or that did poorly. Sarah Tomolino remembered reading a very old paper once in a safe house that documented the 50-year anniversary of the Great Crash of 2023.
"They're gone now."
Hoggle blinked. "How long ago?"
"About a hundred years, I think."
Hoggle looked down at his fingers and mumbled a few things, drawing each hand into a slow fist before opening it one finger at a time. She thought she saw the number fifty added several times, but wasn't sure.
Her head felt swollen and heavy, too full from the effort of holding two distinct personalities. She had once read--one of her, anyway--that sleeping allowed a mind to sort out a lot of information quickly. How long would she need to sleep before she became one person?
Both memory-Sarahs laughed inside her head.
Hoggle's fingers and presumably his thoughts had finished their frantic calculations. "So we're fine then."
"What?" she asked, and could have sworn she heard a dual tone. Hoggle gave her a strange look.
"We're about one hundred years behind the Aboveground, which means nothing strange has happened."
Still confused, she prodded him. "What do you mean by far behind? And why would something strange happen?"
He shrugged. "Takes a while for human ideas to come across into our world and be changed into magic. When antiron was found that made the time speed up a bit. When you visited we were maybe about three hundred years behind in ideas, I think, but antiron keeps us a bit closer."
He had only answered one of the two questions, but she had to follow it up. "Antiron?"
"Anti-iron. It doesn't block magic, but you can use it like iron."
She opened her mouth to ask if iron did, then closed it. A wisp of thought drifted up, offered by some part of her mind, explaining that iron ore was the most effective way to block magic, and could be deadly to those who drew on magic often.
Hoggle had clearly offered the information to bait her into another tangential discussion, and she wasn't about to let him succeed. She tried to figure out what to do before he could start an explanation. Fortunately, her stomach rumbled.
"Hoggle, would there be anything to eat around here?"
The dwarf brightened. He ran a hand through the sparse, wiry hair on his head, smoothing it down. "I can show you the dining room. I'm s'posed to give you a quick tour so you don't get lost. Follow me."
She was about to do so when she thought to look down at her nightdress. "Uh, Hoggle, I can't go out in these clothes."
He turned to look. "I was…that is to say, there's a dressing gown on the door. And slippers under the table. They're for you until we can get you clothes."
"What happened to my old ones?"
Hoggle grunted. "Gave 'em to the kitchen maids for rags, but they refused. They went on the rubbish heap this morning with the boy's."
"Tommy!" she said, realizing what she'd missed. "Is he all right? What happened to him? Where is he?" She didn't bother to mourn her clothes, although she wasn't happy to learn this was all she had in the meantime.
Hoggle held his hands up to fend off the barrage of questions. "He's fine, Sarah. He's in the dining room as well, eating as fast as the cook can bring it out."
She calmed down somewhat and looked around. Sure enough, by the side of the door, was a gleaming brass hook holding up a garment. She took the deep blue fabric in her hand, surprised at its soft feel, and shook it out to reveal a floor-length silk dressing gown embroidered with a silvery geometric pattern of overlapping rectangles and triangles. The sleeves were long, flopping over her wrists, but it tied securely around her waist with more than enough fabric to spare. The slippers were the same dark blue and at first looked too wide and too long for her. As she put them on, however, they rapidly shrank until they fit snugly from heel to toe. It was a shame the gown hadn't done the same, but she was happier with the baggier fit. No doubt a self-fitting gown would have its own ideas on what would suit her best.
She turned to find Hoggle waiting impatiently by the door.
"Done primping yet?" he asked gruffly, but she could tell he wasn't irritated.
"Yes," she said with a smile, smoothing down the edge of the robe. "Anytime you're ready."
Hoggle pushed open the double doors, one door for each hand, and graciously held one door for her. Cautiously, Sarah stepped through.
She was immediately reminded again of her trip with Tommy through the summerhouses. The hallway they stepped into was long, stretching down and to her right with at least ten doors on either side. At the far end she could see a landing, and the curving rail of what she guessed was a staircase.
As she followed Hoggle down the hallway, she looked from side to side at the doors. The first was dark mahogany, with a sculpted glass doorknob shaped like a gathering of woodland creatures. She bent down, marveling at the delicate fawn running ahead of the pack.
"Don't touch," Hoggle warned, and she snatched her hand away. Straightening, she continued, past painted doors and unfinished doors, doors with paneling and doors with scrollwork and one beautiful door that seemed to be entirely made out of a red gemstone. It was scored with deep, angular runes that spoiled the careful faceting of the edges. She paused in front of this one for a moment, then continued past marble, granite with stained glass panels and one arched door made of sandstone, small bits of orange sand swirling in the air around it. Hoggle looked back over his shoulder disapprovingly, and she walked faster to the plain wooden spiral staircase.
They descended down what seemed a hundred steps, until Sarah was dizzy with the twists and turns. Suddenly, Hoggle stopped; Sarah paused, mid-step, to keep from running into him.
"Always forget where it is," he said. "Mighta passed it."
She thought of climbing back up the steep steps and sincerely hoped they hadn't missed whatever it was he was looking for.
Hoggle poked at the center pole of the staircase. Looking at it, Sarah was surprised to realize it was a living tree. "Here it is," he said, fumbling around between the rough gray scales of bark.
There was a click, and a small door swung inward into a brightly lit room. He scrambled through. Ducking her head and bending her knees, Sarah clambered in after him. Her nightdress snagged on the bark, stopping her. Sighing, she reached behind her and gently tugged. There was a tearing sound and then it came free. She winced as she saw a small patch of fabric had been ripped from the hem. As she turned around to step out and retrieve the missing piece, the door closed,
"Fine," she said to the now-seamless wall. She turned around to find Hoggle at the far end of the room, looking intently at the only object in this new, empty room: a painting. Wondering why Hoggle had brought her to a room without exits, she moved to join him by the painting. It was hung at his eye level. Bending down, Sarah examined it.
It was pretty, though hardly a masterpiece. Hard, dry-brushed strokes depicted a still life of three objects: a key, a feather and a pomegranate, the last painted with special attention to the detailing of the hundreds of exposed seeds. Each had a healthy glow, nestled in the ripe red flesh of the cut fruit. One seed had already come loose from the pomegranate and lay temptingly on the flat surface of the painted table. Sarah's stomach growled again as she looked at it.
Hoggle reached up and touched the seed.
Vines burst from the painting with a harsh ripping sound, growing out of the table, curling out of the feather and through the key. Each pomegranate seed nurtured a tendril that waved in the light before shoving itself out to reveal the fat fully-grown vine beyond. Then each moved up and out towards the watchers.
Sarah backed away, startled. Hoggle stayed where he was, looking bored.
The vines continued from the painting where they had hidden, coiling up and around themselves and the painting as they streamed up towards the ceiling. The writhing ceased abruptly, unnerving in its stillness. Gradually Sarah began to see a pattern in their weaving: the disturbing mass of green formed an archway. The vines that covered the arch fell down nearly straight to the ground, although they still appeared to be tangled and knotted together.
"Go on," Hoggle said. "They were just showing off, them. Don't get much company around here."
She swallowed a desperate laugh, remembering the False Alarms and what had lurked behind them, and looked at the curtain in front of her. Reaching one hand out tentatively, she touched the nearest vine. It was cool to the touch and felt rubbery, snakelike. She stepped forward, closer to them, and tried not to think about how easily they could come to life and wring her neck.
She had no choice but to trust Hoggle. Taking a deep breath, she ducked through the vines, trying hard not to let the serpentine strands brush her face. The vines went back further than she thought, and she found herself in a ghostly fall of ropelike strands swaying in some unfelt breeze.
Just before she could start to panic in the gloom, she realized that there was light ahead, and heard the high sound of a boy singing. Tommy. She pushed through the last vines, shrugging off their lingering caress with a quick shake, and stepped through to the other side.
The singing stopped abruptly. Forcing her eyes open against the bright light, Sarah saw she'd entered a plain room with a small, intimate triangular table and three chairs. To her relief, Tommy perched in one chair, reaching for a sandwich, one of three or four scattered on a huge platter. He began wolfing it down as she watched, looking up in mid-bite to grin at her through a mouthful of bread and meat.
"Hi Sarah." He took bites from the sandwich between words. "Gonna eat?" He looked down at the platter and then looked up again sheepishly. "'Fraid there's not much left."
Tommy grabbed at a glass in front of him, filled with a blue liquid, and took a long drink. When he swallowed, he grinned again with a navy moustache. "Gotta hurry. It's good."
The smell reached her then, and she hungrily went to sit down at the table, snagging the platter from where it rested in front of Tommy. "No more for you. You haven't been asleep for..." she trailed off, realizing she didn't know how long.
"...two days," the boy finished cheekily. "When you get sick you don't do it half good. We were worried about you."
She gave him an arch look that melted into satisfaction with the first bite of what tasted like the best ham-and-cheese sandwich of her life. "And what have you been doing for those two days?"
Tommy shrugged in the frustrating universal manner of twelve-year-old boys. "Y'know. Stuff." He looked over her shoulder. "Hi Hoggle."
She turned around happily, glad that he'd at last made it through.
"I wish you could have warned me, Hoggle," she said lightly. "When those vines first started growing I thought you'd accidentally triggered a trap!" The food relaxed her, and a sip of the milky white liquid that had appeared in her glass went quickly to her head.
Hoggle smiled. "I didn't know that was going to happen, actually. You made it different."
"What do you mean?" She put the rest of the sandwich down, curious.
"Let me try," Tommy said eagerly.
Hoggle nodded.
What would Tommy know about it? She began to wonder what had happened in the past two days while she'd slept. Hopefully, from what she saw between her adopted brother and her friend, Hoggle had entertained him.
"Well," Tommy began, "The magic here's like water. It's still magic, but it shapes itself to you, trying to impress you or scare you or serve you. So what Hoggle's saying is that he didn't know the door would be like that 'cause he didn't know how it'd react to you."
Hoggle nodded, looking pleased at the answer. "Everything around you is a bit of a reflection of your own thoughts," he offered.
She picked up her sandwich again and took a bite thoughtfully, chewing slowly. "So we can change things?"
"Yeah, you can change things," Hoggle said, sending a warning look at Tommy that she missed. "But not everything. You see…"
Hoggle trailed off. Before she could prompt him to finish, Tommy broke in.
"Hi, Jareth!"
"What Hoggle means," said the Goblin King, "is that the magic of this place is ultimately mine to command."
Sarah paused in mid-bite. She forced herself to finish chewing and swallow the tasteless food before turning as casually as she could to face the direction of the voice.
The Goblin King wore a faded blue shirt over even more faded and frayed blue jeans. The jeans nearly covered his shoeless feet, but his bare arms did nothing to hide the cream gloves on his hands. A red scarf like draped a cascade of lace around his throat; loose red bracelets mimicked the piping of the wardrobe she had once associated with him...perhaps of an elaborate cuffed shirt. Recognizing some of
Jareth's older flamboyance, she relaxed a tiny bit. That Jareth, at least, she knew how to best.
She didn't know how to speak, or what to say. Something strong pulsed through her, but she didn't trust it to be love, fear or hate. It was dark and bitter and gripped her tightly no matter how she tried to pry it off. She had loved this man, and hated him. She had
wanted him and run away from him and ran back to him and been torn from his hands by her aunt's guards, by the priest, by her friends, by thousands of nameless faces that nonetheless had shape and associations and meaning, damn them, in her life.
And then she realized what was in the stream of memories that had hit her and leaned down to vomit on the shining floor. She heaved until her empty stomach only gave up dry retches. Memories beyond what either Sarah could have known retreated, swirling just out of her mental sight...but not far enough to disappear. She refused to explore what strange possibilities had suddenly opened, turning away from them and withdrawing into the person she knew best of all: Sarah.
A light touch on her shoulder make her look up from her palms, pressed against her face to block the light. She saw Jareth, bending over her in concern. A cool cloth pressed against her mouth and was removed, taking with it the taste of slick, sour bile.
"You have not remembered it all yet."
"I hate you," she spat out. "I don't care if I am Sarah! I don't want to be her! I want to be me! I don't want to remember this!"
She was now on her feet, and to her amazement Jareth backed away from her upraised hand.
Then she saw the red palm print on his cheek.
She didn't remember slapping him.
"Get away from her," Hoggle said angrily, holding his ground with his liege. "She needed time, I told you. You could have least explained why you knew her and what you did!"
In the middle of this, she realized who he reminded her of, why he didn't seem quite like the friend she remembered from long talks in the mirror. "And Didymus, Ludo? What happened to them?" she asked, knowing how absurd her timing was.
He looked away from Jareth, placidly waiting with murder on his face.
"Gone," Hoggle said curtly. "They had no place or wish to have one in this world. They faded as the Labyrinth changed."
"But some bits of them live in you," she said, reading the pain on his open face.
"They do in all of us," Jareth said, his mouth a thin, bitter line. "But perhaps it is Hoggle who has changed the most."
She forced herself to look at the man who was not human, pushing the pain it caused away. She read grief on his face, too, and wondered what the slow change had cost the king.
"Let me go back to who and what I was," Sarah pleaded as her anger faded away. Hoggle's grief was written too plain across his honest features. Near him, Jareth looked on impassively. She felt desperately out of place in the alien land. "I was happy in my life. Please send me back. You can undo this, I know."
Jareth narrowed his eyes. "And Tommy? You would have let him die rather than remember who you were?"
In the face of that cold assertion, she could say nothing. Of course she would have not let him die. He was everything to her.
"That's right," Jareth said, watching her hungrily. Hoggle's blunt presence between the two of them seemed the only thing that stopped him from reaching out to her again, although it was clear that the moment he left, that protection would be gone. "He was only your way into my realm. Sarah's blood. Your blood." He shook his head, the moment that had set adrenaline spiking suddenly gone. "If you only knew that your blood would have called me that much faster."
"But why!" she protested, again with that strange feeling of the older Sarah speaking through her. "Why am I back? Why this second life? I had a good life. I had a husband, a son, and a grandson. I had nephews and nieces and a comfortable living as a writer. I had a few spells and a major work on the Labyrinth. Why was I brought back to this broken, crippled world?" As she heard her own words, she could feel the history settling down in her mind, memories slotting into place in the old-young amalgam she was becoming. Blocking out the clamor of voices, it seemed, had dimmed the Sarahs in her mind to murmurs that offered helpful suggestions as one, not apart.
"I'm not sure why you don't remember, but I can only imagine why it hasn't happened yet. This is not your second life. The number is closer to thirty-two. I have lost count over the years I have sought you."
"You're lying," she denied flatly, chilled by the clear tone and open gaze that implied otherwise.
"I cannot lie," he said with a shrug of elegant shoulders. "And that was no twist of truth. You have been mine for nearly a thousand years, and I will not let you go."
"That's not quite honest," Hoggle said.
Jareth hissed slightly. Hoggle flinched, but continued. "He's known you for a thousand years, but you haven't been his."
"Is that true?" she demanded, watching Jareth closely.
"Yes," was his toneless reply. "You were mine, to be mine, but it has never been fulfilled." He shot a venomous glance at Hoggle, his gloved hands twisting against each other. A shimmer of light from a half-formed crystal filled the room before it was ruthlessly crushed by black leather.
"A thousand years?" she said in disbelief, her voice cracking on the last word as she realized what he meant. She looked at Hoggle, panicked, but he was studying the floorboards.
Jareth sighed, extending his hand. She stared at his leather-clad palm in a panic, thinking he meant to give her the ring again. "It was something I had planned to broach more carefully," he admitted, a stinging rebuke in his tone for Hoggle's blunt declaration. What the dwarf had forced him to admit clearly irritated him. A quick look at the spare table seemed to settle him. "Perhaps we could discuss this over dinner?"
She stared at him, still in shock over his words.
"Do try not to faint again," he said mildly, his hand still waiting for hers. "Concussions can lead to memory loss, you know."
His voice sharpened when it was clear she was still frozen. "This stubbornness does not become you. You have not eaten in some time. Your Tommy is waiting for us at the table. If you refuse to come I will spell you into eating."
She eyed his hand with distaste, not responding to his threat. With a sigh, Jareth dropped his hand. "Hoggle, leave us. Sed Cannick is waiting in the drawing room." The dwarf brightened, but his toothy grin faded as he looked quickly to Sarah. She shook her head, imperceptibly, motioning with the briefest flick of her finger that he should leave. With one last apologetic glance over his shoulder, Hoggle left.
She felt the sense of protection ebbing with each step, but was glad to distract Jareth from Hoggle's earlier actions. Besides, Tommy was still in the room.
"Still loyal after all these years," Jareth murmured. "You do have quite the ability to appropriate my servants." He turned to the table where Tommy was sitting quietly, poking at something on his palm.
"Little one," he said casually. "Will you take a message to Catsqueak the goblin? The guard who showed you around the castle yesterday?"
Sarah felt real panic well up within her, but Tommy refused to meet her gaze. He stood up, his eyes bright. "Sure, Jareth."
The Goblin King held out a crystal, which Tommy dutifully took. "It will show you the way to the barracks," Jareth explained, "and will tell you if you have taken the wrong turn. It also contains my message. He will know how to read it."
"Neat," the boy said eagerly. "Will you show me how to put two things together like that next?"
"What?" Sarah burst out, too horrified to keep silent. "What is he teaching you?"
Jareth smiled. "Magic."
"It's fun," Tommy offered, before leaving through the vine-door.
She turned to Jareth, indignant. "How is that possible?"
His answer took the wind out of her sails. "Toby, I believe."
She could believe it, too. Toby had always been different after the Labyrinth. It was no stretch to realize that it must have changed him.
She quieted, studying the polished, gleaming floor.
"Sarah," said the Goblin King, then stopped. He carefully took her arm in a gloved hand, looking at the robe as he did so. "I see you found something appropriate to wear while exploring," he commented, clearly amused. She bristled, not understanding the source of the humor. "Please, sit down and eat," he said, leading her to the table. A gesture of his hand brought a goblin dressed in a neat black uniform, who looked at Sarah, then the Goblin King, and then scurried through a half-door she'd missed in her first inspection of the room.
The goblin-waiter returned a moment later with a silver tray. Pausing in front of Sarah, he set out a bowl of broth and a large piece of dark, steaming bread. Another scurry brought her another glass of the milky liquid she'd drank earlier, but heated. A third and final silent visit left the Goblin King with a small plate filled with green slivers and a crystal wineglass filled with red wine.
She looked from his plate to hers. "Yours looks better," she said quietly, trying to break the silence she could feel settling around them uncomfortably.
Jareth responded with a slight smile. "I wasn't the one who fell asleep for two days and then vomited up whatever little she had left in her stomach."
He had a point. She supped the broth slowly, pausing to nibble on the bread. Jareth used both knife and fork to cut his food into even smaller bites, washing them down with long sips of the wine. He watched what she ate intently, clearly making sure she ate everything. Sarah realized he hadn't been joking earlier about spelling her into eating, and began using the bread to mop up the last drops of broth clinging to the side of the bowl. Some of the tension drained from his expression when she put her empty glass down beside an empty bowl and eyed his half-full wine glass enviously.
Lots of alcohol was a possible solution to the situation, but it appeared Jareth had already anticipated that.
He slid his chair back and offered his hand. Ignoring it, she slowly stood up, pushing herself away from the table in an effort to prevent any new conversation.
Perhaps guessing this, he was silent as he guided her to an empty wall. At the last minute she saw the flickering, wavering outline of a door, and walked through. The illusion of the wall was velvety against her skin as she passed under it, fading away before she could feel smothered.
She recognized, with a start, the room she had landed in the night before. It was warm, with a blazing fire. The heat was pleasantly soothing, enough so that she allowed herself to be directed without protest to the same chair she had seen him in the night before.
"I thought," he said, settling himself on the marble hearth, "that I would give you the opportunity to ask some questions. It has occurred to me that you might have a few, given my actions the night before."
As an apology, it wasn't much, but his solicitous behavior had calmed the primal part of her that felt like murdering him with her bare hands.
"After all, I presented you with such an extraordinary offer. I admit to being surprised at your attempt to run away from it. After Hoggle's comments this afternoon," his mouth thinned, the only sign of his displeasure, "I thought I would offer you this chance to dispel your doubts."
Mostly.
He looked down at a formless gray mass between his hands, balancing it lazily on a cream-clad palm. Against his pale skin, the near-white gloves should have looked effete, or subservient--but, of course, they didn't. Instead they called to mind the pearl-gray suits and watch fobs of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Greater Egg.
Did that make her Daisy, trapped now in the life of unending, life-draining gaiety and merriment?
He must have sensed her mood. His fingers moved rapidly in his palm, teasing the substance into a small figure--a doll with cascades of loose hair and a ridiculous fluffy layered dress. As he bent down and breathed on it, the small figure looked up and smiled, a Cheshire cat replica of the one on his face. The doll turned, pirouetting in her pink dress, her gold curls spinning out in charming disarray. She finished her turn and curtseyed deeply to Sarah. But as Sarah began to smile, the doll did not stop her forward motion, slipping further and further into her skirts until she was a puddle of mauve and peach and yellow. The warm hues seemed to leach away without staining the pure ivory of his gloves, as if the color simply had decided that it could not exist on that space of flawless neutrality. Soon it was the same gray material as before.
Sarah watched, fascinated, as Jareth closed his hand into a fist, then opened it.
His palm was innocuously empty.
"Should I applaud?" she murmured.
His face darkened momentarily, and the bright sunshine streaming through the windows seemed to dim.
Everything around you is a bit of a reflection of your own thoughts, Hoggle had told her earlier.
She tried to remind herself that while Jareth was no reflection to disappear at the right angle, the terminal distance, he could not spin a world for her without allowing her to affect it in some way.
She took a deep breath and wished.
The sunlight seemed, well, sunnier. She wasn't sure if it was a true change or just because she had hoped it would be so. Or wasn't that the same thing, here?
"Bravo," Jareth said softly, and she looked up. He was regarding her with taut concentration, head cocked to one side. Loose blond hair spilled into his eyes, veiling whatever she might have learned to read there.
She itched to push it away. Jareth was always impossible to believe, a creature of such intense magic that she felt a constant driving urge to touch, to feel, to prove to some hidden sense that it was not one wide dream.
The dark, ugly thought that the past day was some fevered dream in an Eamerica shack, or worse, a Mekuzae drug-induced haze, scared her.
The gentle heat warming her skin in the unreal house did nothing to reassure her. Neither did the figure opposite her, still as stone as he watched her with an unblinking gaze.
"Tell me that this is all real," she said, breaking whatever silence he had nurtured.
Jareth shrugged, drawing one knee up to his chest and letting the other rest on the floor. She was drawn to his bare feet, mentally cataloguing them as normal, human-looking feet. A quick flick of her eyes confirmed that his hands were still gloved.
Jareth's lazy smile confirmed he had followed all her movements. "I could tell you, but would that truly make a difference?"
She stared.
"After all," he continued blithely, "If I was a dream, telling you that it was real wouldn't confirm it either way." He paused. "Have you tried pinching yourself?"
She met his eyes evenly before snorting. "Yes. Much as I'd like to deny it."
"And?"
"It hurt."
"Good."
"Good?"
The smile deepened, turning what might have been a friendly expression into a mouthful of sharp edges and lines. "Pain tempers our existence to one of beauty."
Thousands of years, she remembered. She shivered.
"You tell me," she tried instead, hoping he would give her some advice on how to prove this real. "How can I figure it out?"
Jareth tapped his index finger thoughtfully against his lips, and her sudden familiarity dissipated into irritation.
"I can think of one method," he said in measured tones, "but I suspect that you would not be entirely pleased by it."
She ignored the warning, much more interested in discovering the truth. "I don't care," she said petulantly. "If this is all some dream, I need to know now."
He smiled bitterly. "I see that you do not change in some ways." Dropping his other leg to the ground, he pushed against the marble slab and stood up. Quick as thought, he was beside her, bending over the chair, blotting out the sunlight.
In that space of angled shadows, he kissed her, taking advantage of her open-mouthed outrage to invite himself fully into the kiss.
The velvet of the chair cushioned her head. All she could feel was the maddening itch of stray golden hair and the gentle pressure of his mouth on hers as he coaxed her to respond.
Lost to all else, she did. She leaned into him, face tilted upwards to him as the blood pounded in her head and dizziness swept over her. She felt gloved hands against the back of her shirt even as she pulled upwards, coiling her arms around him and drawing him closer and down, until he was half-sprawled across her on the chair, his mouth still searing hers.
They drew apart, lungs heaving for air in the same patternless rhythm. Separated from him by inches, Sarah realized the implications of what had just happened and immediately panicked. A shy look confirmed he was watching her, blue eyes glittering like stars.
All she had to do, she realized, was reach for him again and he would show her exactly what he had meant the night before.
A flood of crimson washed over her face. She trembled as she untangled herself from him and curled up into a tight ball pressed against the high back of the chair, ducking her head so that he couldn't read her face--and to prevent herself from seeing the satisfaction she feared was on his face. Her hair fell heavy around her, effectively hiding her from that frightening concentration. Cheeks burning, she closed her eyes.
A gloved finger swept her jaw line, disappeared.
"Did it help?" Not quite emotionless, but exquisitely controlled. "Do you believe this is real now?"
You foolish, foolish girl, she thought, still breathing heavily. He had all but asked for permission, and she had thoughtlessly let him. It had been another point proven--this was no dream, although she had no idea why kissing Jareth had served as such unswayable truth.
In more ways than one.
Hiding her face was useless. She could feel the fine tremors in her body, and he was not blind. Still screwing her eyes shut, she willed the frantic beating of her heart to slow.
She nodded in a quick, rushed movement.
Sarah felt the brush of air and the shift of padding as the Goblin King withdrew. She heard the soft whisper of bare feet against stone, then the quiet click of the door.
Only then did she allow the tears to drop, one by one, into the scarlet upholstery. Huddled into the safety of her own arms and legs, Sarah wept for once-forgotten lives, missed chances, and the Goblin King.
-----
Upstairs, in a darkened room, Jareth contemplated a crystal spinning in midair before him. Sarah shuddered in the tiny picture, still hunched over in her chair.
"Yer majesty," said a straight-backed goblin, hesitantly stepping through the doorway. He bobbed his head respectfully. "You summoned Catsqueak?"
The Goblin King closed his palm around the crystal before the other could come close enough to see the image. "I did," he said, looking out the window at the cloud-covered moon. It was a starless night.
It was always a starless night in the Underground.
"Inform the captain of the Guard to triple his patrols indefinitely." Jareth frowned, unseen by Catsqueak. "Tell him to request assistance from the hags. All squads must have a sniffer…and a mender. Any breaches must be repaired immediately and their location reported to me."
The goblin nodded. "Is that all, yer majesty?"
"I want the hounds free tonight."
The goblin stopped for a moment, mouth opening and closing in astonishment. "Right away, yer highness." He left with a hurried step.
When the dragging footfalls faded, the Goblin King opened his palm. The glowing sphere within drifted back to its former position before him. Sarah was still drawn up in the chair, her head hidden.
He lifted a hand to touch the crystal, then thought better of it.
"Sarah," he said quietly. "I will not let you be taken again."
Inside the crystal, Sarah looked up, her tearstained expression gazing into nothing. Emerald eyes shone in her swollen face.
Angrily, he waved his hand. The crystal vanished into the ether.
Jareth turned away.
---------------------------------------
---------------------------------------
Author's Notes: And to match last week's update of Sever, here is chapter two (of four) for End of Sleep. I've just noticed I published the last chapter in December--that means I'm just beating the six-month mark. Since I have until September to play around, I can promise you that the next update will be out by August. Honest. Thanks for all the lovely reviews I received on the first chapter: comments are always appreciated! I live for concrit and am happy to receive it on any bit of the story.
Before I forget, a great big thank you to neversaynever for her quick run-through before this posting. I owe her much chocolate and other good things.