Sarah deliberately stayed out of Jareth's way for the next couple of weeks. She occupied her time with books and Perrin's English lessons, and only saw the Goblin King at supper time and when they passed each other in the halls.
On those occasions, she hurried by him with her eyes determinedly fixed on the floor in front of her. She could feel him watching her but he did not try to talk to her, perhaps sensing that she did not want him to.
With her mind starving for stimulation of any kind, Sarah found herself turning, of all places, to the goblins for inspiration. She didn't start scrawling naughty words on the stone walls, as this had ceased to be entertaining for her sometime around the third grade, but after reading just as much as she could stand of Sir William Fig and the Mad Mookybun, Sarah was craving the literature of her home-world.
She stood before a blank wall in her bed chamber, considering it as an artist might consider a canvas before beginning a new masterpiece, then very slowly, and with infinite care, she began to write in the air with her finger. On the wall, the words she was remembering carved themselves deeply into the bare stone. She wrote everything that she could think of; her favorite poetry, the most beloved passages of her favorite books, lines from plays she'd seen, even a Shakespearian sonnet or two.
At first this went well, and the sought after words sprang instantly to her mind; She covered the walls in bits and pieces of Hemmingway, Twain, Carroll, Mallory, Frost, Dante, Yeats, Shelly, Masefield, Tennyson, and Dickenson. She wrote them down, and had no trouble at all remembering the words, but when she came to Shakespeare, she could not recall the last part of the prologue from Romeo and Juliet, which she had had memorized since the age of twelve.
"The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love," she muttered, unable to finish it. "Damn it, I know this!"
Distressed by her inability to remember things that had once been second nature to her, Sarah whirled away and stalked to another blank wall. With rapid gestures she began writing the words to Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress, but got no farther than, 'We would sit down, and think which way/ To walk, and pass our long love's day.'
She searched her memory frantically, but the rest of the words, which should have flown like music from her mind, would not come.
What was happening to her? She was an English teacher for Christ's sake, and a damned good one—or she had been. She could dismiss it if she had forgotten something by Houseman, or Plath, whose work she had never liked much anyway, but Shakespeare? Who could forget Shakespeare? These things did not just disappear from your mind.
Tears stinging her eyes, in a panic, she tried to write the words to The Tiger by William Blake, but could not complete that either. The same happened with Coleridge's Kubla Khan; she could not continue beyond 'By woman wailing for her demon-lover!'
With a hopeless shriek of despair, she slapped her hands against the cold, unyielding stone. She stood there for a long while, head hanging, desperately trying to control the fear that wanted to rise and smother her.
What was happening? Was it this place, this Underground? Could it be stealing her memories?
"That's stupid," Sarah said, scrubbing tears from her eyes and glaring at the offending wall in front of her. "How can a place steal memories?"
Then she remembered Jareth telling her to guard her tears, that the Underground would take them from her if she let it. Was that how it started then? Take away the memories of the things that mattered; leave her no cause for tears?
"No," she hissed. "I won't let that happen."
She thought of her father, and his beloved face rose easily to her mind. She thought of her mother, covered head to toe in sequins and lace in front of an adoring audience. Then she tried to think of Toby, and all she could think of was the baby in the striped pajamas. However, she figured this probably had more to do with the fact that she had rarely seen him in years, rather than her failing memory.
So she could still remember the big things, it was only the little things that seemed to be missing. But then, maybe that's how it started. Maybe it took the little things first, slowly eating away at the more important things until they were gone too.
Sarah pushed herself away from the wall and climbed up on her bed, glaring almost defiantly at the wall above the carved headboard. Very deliberately, she scrawled the first words of a poem there: 'O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms/ Alone and palely loitering?'
She sat back and studied these words. Perhaps, if she tried to go slowly, carefully, one line at a time, she could remember the rest. She wrote the next line flawlessly, then the next, and the next. She was beginning to feel confident that this time, with this one, maybe, just maybe, she would remember it all. She would keep just this one, and it was a start. Oh, please, let me just keep this one!
Then her hand stalled and her heart sank. What came next? What were the words? She knew them; she knew that she knew them.
"Goddamn it to hell," she choked. She stared at the last lines she'd written—'La Belle Dame sans Merci/ Hath thee in thrall!'—then covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.
That was how Jareth found her less than an hour later, arms around her legs, face buried against her knees, rocking back and forth, keening in misery. He paused in the doorway and glanced around the room, noting the words engraved into the stone, but saw nothing new that seemed any cause for such wretched weeping.
Without a word, he climbed up on the bed and reached out to touch her. His hand barely brushed against her back, but she felt it and whipped around in surprise, her palms instinctively pressed against his chest to brace herself.
Jareth tenderly brushed the moisture from the corners of her eyes with his thumbs. "What happened?" he asked.
Sarah's lips trembled and another tear slid down her cheek. "I can't remember," she whispered.
"What can't you remember?"
"The words," she said. "I know them. I do," she insisted as though he doubted her. "But I can't . . . I can't . . . remember them."
"What words, sweeting?" Jareth asked in a soft, calming voice. The words that sprang instantly to his mind were not lines of poetry or passages of literature. You have no power over me! But of course those could not be the words she meant. "What words can't you remember?"
Sarah sniffed and pointed to the poem over the bed.
"La Belle Dame sans Merci?" Jareth asked, rolling the strange words on his tongue with a puzzled expression.
"Yes!" she wailed. She hid her face in Jareth's shirt so he wouldn't see her crying. "I want to go home, Jareth," she said.
"That is not possible," he said, not unkindly. "You know that it would mean your death if you did."
"I don't care!"
Jareth brushed her hair out of her face and made her look at him. "I do," he said. "I do. And I'm sorry, but I will not allow it."
"I hate you," Sarah said, but the statement lacked the heat of real conviction.
"I know you do."
She gave a watery sigh and snuggled against his chest with her head resting on his shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean that. I don't really hate you."
Jareth smiled and stroked her back in a light, soothing pattern. "But you want to hate me," he said. "That's almost the same thing."
"Hmm." Sarah closed her eyes. She was suddenly very tired. Going into hysterics was exhausting.
Jareth eased her back on the bed, covered her with a sheet, and started to leave. Sarah opened her eyes and grabbed his arm. "Stay," she said.
He studied her intently for a long minute. "Sarah, you need to rest," he said reluctantly.
"I know. Stay with me." When he didn't move, just stood there by her bed looking down at her with his odd mismatched eyes, she gave a tug to his arm. "I just want you to sleep next to me. I don't want be alone right now, Jareth."
When she pulled on his arm again, he let her pull him back on the bed with her. "Are you sure you can trust me not to take advantage of the situation?" he asked, but there was a smile on his face.
"Probably not," she said. "But at the moment you're all I've got."
Jareth grinned as he stretched out against her back, wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her against him. Her hair brushed his face and he inhaled. It smelled nice; like ginger.
Sarah rested her head on his shoulder and sighed. "Nice," she mumbled, and fell asleep.
Nice? Jareth wondered. What exactly had she meant by that? Surely she wasn't referring to him.
He shifted a little and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering on the curve of her brow, and caressing the soft skin by her earlobe. He brushed his fingers over her eyelids, remembering the fantastic changeable color of her eyes; sometimes they looked green, and sometimes brown, and sometimes, in the right light, or in moments of deep passion, it seemed that both colors were battling for supremacy.
She made a sleepy, contented sound in her throat and wriggled against him.
Jareth went very still and gritted his teeth against the pleasurable little feelings her movements evoked. He put one knuckle in his mouth and bit down.
Hell, he decided, was a bed of silk and linen, and a dark haired sleeping damsel in distress.
There was a considerable amount of literature and poetry mentioned in this chapter. For those readers who do not enjoy this, that's really too bad. For those who are interested, I'm sure that you can find more information about anything cited here on the net.
For the purposes of this story, the only poem that will be of any importance to the plot is La Belle Dame sans Merci. It will appear again in a later chapter. For those who do not know, the English translation of the title is: The Beautiful Lady without Pity
La Belle Dame sans Merci
(Ballad)
John Keats
Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful--a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said--
"I love thee true."
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lulled me asleep
And there I dreamed--ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dreamed
On the cold hill's side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried--"La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!"
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.
And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.