DISCLAIMER - I don't own Sarah or Jareth or the Labyrinth (unfortunately) they belong to Jim Henson & Co, and I'm definitely not making a profit from this. (Bummer) All other NPC's are a figment of my own imagination.
Chapter 21 – Shayene
"Are you going to get out of bed today?" Jareth asked as he walked past the bed to enter the bathroom. Sarah moaned and rolled over, stretching.
"I don't think I can." She said as he reappeared, clutching a toothbrush. She found it oddly amusing that the King of the Goblins did such mundane things as brush his teeth with a green toothbrush. He grinned maliciously at her before disappearing into his cavernous dressing room and returning with a heavy fur cloak.
"You'll need this when you do." He said cryptically.
"It's the middle of summer…"
"And your point is?" Sarah sighed and crawled out of the bed, walking stiffly to the bathroom. Jareth couldn't resist watching her, admiring her naked body.
"Hey! Nothing to see here!" She cried covering her butt and flushing as she remembered what had happened during the night as she slammed the bathroom door behind her. Jareth laughed and opening the drapes, walked out onto the balcony to look over his Labyrinth, already baking in the morning sun.
She returned some time later having dressed in a dark grey satin gown and joined him on the balcony, feeling almost shy as she stood next to him squinting out at the single redwood standing in solitude in the middle of nowhere, wavering in the heat haze.
"I can only think of one place where I might need a fur cloak… am I right?" Jareth looked across at her and raised his brow.
"Wait and see. Are you ready?"
"I guess." She said walking back in and throwing the cloak around her shoulders. Jareth joined her and picked up her crown from where he had left it on the dresser the night before.
"You might want this." He said placing it on her head. She frowned and looked up at him.
"Why would I need this in a dead city?" He smirked at her and pulled her between the veils taking the opportunity to kiss her.
She gasped as the freezing air hit her uncovered face and hands, and she quickly wrapped the cloak tighter around herself, looking up into the snow-laden sky.
"Bbbbrrrr!" She said as her teeth began to chatter.
"You dragged me out of bed to come visit a snow storm?" Jareth ignored her, and taking hold of her hand pulled her further up the rocky path they had appeared on. Shortly, as she was beginning to run out of breath, the snow stopped falling, opening out the view as they looked down into a wide valley, its central expanse covered with tall graceful buildings and towers, all broken, their tops like jagged teeth biting at the low clouds.
"Oh!" Sarah gasped. Before Jareth could say anything she was walking down the path towards the snow shrouded city, tears forming in her eyes both from the cold, and from the wealth of memories that forced their way to the top of Jareth's mind, inserting themselves into her own as they did so. She saw how the city once looked, its towers topped with gold and silver domes, burning like fire in the sun as graceful and beautifully clothed Fae walked the tree lined streets.
The snows had only come after Tilingdor had destroyed her people, taking away the magic that surrounded the mountains and bringing back the snow and cold to cover the dead in a blanket of pristine white.
"Shayéne." Sarah whispered as she reverently touched a broken pillar that had stood at the entrance to the city, both hinges and gate gone, and its pair leaning drunkenly inwards towards the buildings. She ignored Jareth walking behind her and continued on, reliving his memories and comparing them to the reality.
She whimpered as her foot unearthed a white bone as she trawled her way through the snow. Swallowing anger and sadness she carried on, searching for something, anything that would give her hope that perhaps this once beautiful city could live again.
As the valley narrowed and the rocky hillside turned into towering cliffs on either side she admired the still perfect colonnades and walkways carved into the very rock, reminding her of pictures she had seen of Petra, the Rose City of Jordan in the far east of the Aboveground.
At the narrowest point, where the cliffs only left enough room from a single building to bridge the gap she walked through a thick stone archway and entered tranquillity. She stood and stared at the perfect courtyard and marble faced buildings surrounding it, backing away into the rocks as the odd snowflake fell from the sky like blossom. Her sharpening eyesight caught a small movement in an upper storey window, as though somebody had been watching her.
Across the other side of the courtyard, the crunch of snow beneath a boot caught her hearing and she began to back out of the suddenly menacing and enclosed space, stopping when she backed into Jareth who was stood behind her.
"There's something here." She whispered as he placed a warm hand on her neck.
"They have been waiting for you to return, just like I have."
"I don't understand." She said turning to face him.
"I did not tell you everything about the destruction of this city. There were… other children…"
"What?"
"You were not the only one hidden from Tilingdor's army."
"Some small few were secreted in the darkest and deepest mines. They have grown, they have been waiting for you… to release them from their hidden existence."
"You protected them." She said touching her cold hand to his cheek. He nodded.
"I did what I could in the short time I had."
"You are amazing." She whispered, reaching up to kiss him.
"I did it for you."
"You saved Shayéne. I will never be able to repay you."
"You already have in a way… they are waiting for you." He nodded in the direction of the empty courtyard and watched as she bit her lip, turning from the safety of his embrace to walk out alone into the palace courtyard.
"I have returned." She whispered into the eddying breeze. "Forgive me for my absence." She wasn't really sure if they could hear her, but somehow she knew she wasn't really speaking to those left alive. The breeze picked up her words and scattered them, echoing forlornly through the broken buildings like the wailing sigh of the dead, finally able to rest from their cold watch.
She stood and waited, catching occasional glimpses of movement in the corner of her eye until finally, they came, a young man, dressed in heavy boots and furs walking out of a doorway to her right, followed by a small child and a woman. She turned and watched them approach her, others slowly coming out from their hiding places to join the gathering. She looked back and noted in shock that Jareth was stood holding a young girl in his arms, her tiny hands trustingly encircled around his neck as she whispered in his ear making him chuckle.
"We never thought that Jareth would keep his word." The young man who had first come out of hiding said eventually.
"He doesn't make promises he doesn't intend to keep." Sarah said watching him curiously as he nodded.
"Have you come to stay? Have you come to take the ice away?" A woman to her left stepped forward, her hand lightly hovering protectively near her child who was walking unsteadily in the snow at her feet.
"I'm not sure… I don't know what I should be doing."
"He will help you if you ask." She said turning her head to glance at Jareth who was still talking to the child in his arms.
"He can't do it without you though. You have the bracelet." The young man said nodding to the visible jewellery on her arm.
"I can't believe you've all managed to survive up here. You must be so brave." Sarah said turning and looking at them all in awe. By her quick reckoning there were about 60 or 70 of them in total, not counting the children being held, or running amongst the feet of their parents.
"We did not desert our home like you. We learned to survive on our own." Shouted an older man, pushing his way through the crowd to glare at her.
"Shame on you Maddyn! King Jareth took her away to keep her safe. She had no choice." A tall dark haired woman punched the man in the arm.
"Forgive Maddyn Your Majesty. He is bitter about our plight." She said turning to Sarah.
"Please don't call me that. My name is Selindé. I don't have any right to ask that you call me your Queen. Shayene belongs to you more than it does to me, though I want to make the city what it once was… I swear that if I can change things to help you, I will."
"And what if Tilingdor returns?" Asked an anonymous voice from the back of the crowd. Sarah turned and looked for the speaker.
"Then I will kill him. He has already been warned. Right after I knocked him out."
"You knocked him out?" Sarah grinned and looked over at a teenaged boy at the edge of the crowd.
"I did. I also told him that if he dared enter Shayene again, I would cut him into very small pieces and send him back to his people in boxes." The teenager goggled at her and then shrugged.
"Will you resume trading?" The tall young man asked.
"As soon as we are able, if you are willing to help? I'm afraid you know more about Shayene's resources than I. I think I'm going to be learning about this for some time to come."
"I can help if you'll let me." Isenith said walking through the crowd that politely gave way to him. The darkling stood tall in his thick dark fur cloak, and Sarah realised that the others looked at him with respect. Sarah smiled and nodded.
"I'd appreciate that." She shivered beneath her cloak and Isenith noticing, nodded to the others.
"In, it's going to snow again." They all nodded at him and hurried off indoors; Isenith smiled at her and followed them, leaving her alone. She turned and walked back to Jareth who was once more watching her, the child gone from his arms.
"Why didn't you tell me Isenith was from Shayéne?"
"You didn't need to know."
"So he wasn't really your slave?"
"He was, until I released him. We have been friends for a long time. He had much to learn, and I had much to learn from him. " Jareth shrugged.
"The fastest way to do that was to bind him so that I could transfer what he needed to know quickly, he escaped the ambush since he was with me at the time. It was he who protected the others whilst I took you to safety." Sarah nodded thoughtfully.
"They want me to take away the ice, but I don't know how…" He looked at her blankly and she knew he was waiting for her to ask. She moved closer to him, and pushed her cold hands underneath his own thick cloak, finding his shirt and sneaking her hands under it to his warm skin. He shuddered and growled in her ear.
"Please Jareth, will you help? I want to do this for them. I feel like I owe them."
"You don't owe them anything, they are just bitter. They will learn to respect you, and will understand eventually why you needed to be protected more than they did."
"Why did I need to be protected? Other than being my fathers daughter?"
"You are one of the very few that Shayéne will respond to. Your royal blood built this city, forged its heart and kindled its soul, only you can set it alight again."
"Will you help me?" She looked up at him, and instead of answering, he kissed her.
"Your wish is my command. Come, I've stood about in the cold long enough, and I really don't appreciate having your freezing cold fingers on my back." Sarah smiled and kissed him again before removing her hands.
"Thank you." He grunted and followed her as she walked across the courtyard and into the gloomy depths of the central buildings.
They entered a darkened hallway and on into a domed room, empty and filled with dust and debris.
Small shafts of grey light filtered down though snow covered windows high up in the dome and highlighted the dust kicked up by the dozens of feet. They were all waiting for them, shuffling closer in curiosity and apprehension as Sarah and Jareth stopped in the centre of the tiled floor. Jareth turned and took hold of her hands, entwining her fingers in his own.
"It will be hard. The Labyrinth is elemental, and easily changes form to whatever you wish it to be, Shayéne is not ruled by magic, and you will have to force the nature of our surroundings into what you need it to become." He told her quietly as she shivered.
"How will I know what it should look like?"
"Use my memories. Concentrate, and begin when you feel you are ready." He said nodding. She closed her eyes and listened to him mutter an incantation, felt the first stirrings of a hidden breeze as the magic flux began to flow between them, and through the children of Shayéne as they also joined their energy to the spell.
What began as a trickle of magic, making her extremities tingle, soon became a raging flood, filling her and seeping out to the others. Faster it flowed, threatening to sweep her away into the flux, but she held steady, somehow concentrating the magic into a single beam that soared through the building above them and began falling back to the ground in a dome of golden magic softly covering everything in a sparkling light that refused to fade.
She could feel the faint throb of Shayéne's beating heart of black diamond touching her own, and felt the first glimmers of life returning to the veins of gold as her bracelet grew hot on her wrist. She caught the first of Jareth's memories without warning and was dragged into the strength of them. Battling against being lost in his mind she forced the magic touched land to conform to the memory, perspiration breaking out on her cold face.
The battle continued and as it grew easier to manage she drew more memories from him, snatching them from his grasp so that the magic she wielded could possess them also, tearing and reforming the very fabric of the land.
She could hear him faintly telling her that she had done enough, but couldn't stop. His memories were hiding the very things she truly wanted to have returned, and yet he denied them from her, fighting against him she finally won, tearing down walls and hidden crevices to dredge up images of her family, of her mother and sister and his brother, the magic screaming in her ears as it tore her visions away, she continued regardless, and forced the flux into the memories she had stolen.
The blow across the side of her face stunned her, and in the seconds of incomprehension she lost her grip of the twisting inferno of magic. It broke from her touch as she screamed and tore through them all, speeding across the lands, out into the other Fae kingdoms. She staggered and fell to her knees as Jareth swore at her in several different languages.
"You can not bring the dead back to life. The magic would kill you first and I will not loose you to a memory!" He snarled in her ear as she sobbed, clinging to him in terror.
"I just wanted…"
"Nothing! You wanted nothing… nothing you can have at any rate. If you ever dare to invade my mind like that again I will destroy you before I realise what I am doing. You have no idea how close you were to death!"
"Peaceful oblivion. How I have sometimes longed for that." She said without thinking. She gasped as he dragged her up off the floor and backhanded her hard across the face. She felt the hot copper of blood on her lip but could not find the energy to cry.
"I know." She said tiredly as he continued to glare at her. "No trying to kill myself, no bringing people back from the dead, no stealing your memories and more respect. I'll try harder, really."
"You'd better." He snarled before she blacked out. She never knew if he caught her as she fell, but had the distinct impression as she woke that maybe he hadn't, the palms of her hands felt bruised, and she had a graze on her knee and elbow, not to mention the painful cut on her lip and the swelling of his hand print across her cheek.