Chapter Two: Introducing the Williams
The storm clouds had mostly cleared by the time Sarah returned home, just in time to reveal the dimming of day into twilight. Aaron had to race home, so Dinah drove her back. The girl looked around hopefully for a rainbow as they drove; off to the east she could see faint traces of something that, with a bit of imagination, might have been one. Or maybe not. It was hard to tell. Sarah decided without any real conviction that it was one.
"Almost seven o' clock," commented Dinah as they pulled up in front of the old Victorian in which Sarah had lived most of her life. "Is Karen going to pop a blood vessel?"
"Doesn't she always?" asked Sarah wryly. Her tone suggested that maybe she didn't care very much. "I had a great time, Dinnie. Thanks, really. And tell your dad that I love his pizza. If he weren't already married, I'd propose and make you my step-daughter."
"Aaron will be hurt when I tell him how easily you forget him," replied Dinah with a laugh. "Do you have everything gathered up? Don't forget your presents. I'm counting on you to wear that shirt to school tomorrow."
Elllie had given her a brilliant yellow shirt with a picture of a green cartoon dragon on it; it read, in jagged crimson letters, 'Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for humans are crunchy and taste good with ketchup'. It was cute, but a little bit... loud.
Sarah made a ladylike snort. "I'll consider it. Bye, then."
"Happy birthday, love, and adieu; I will see you on the morrow." Sarah climbed out of the car, laden with her backpack and coat and bags, and began staggered towards her front door. Dinah honked her horn, blew the other girl a flamboyant kiss, and accelerated off down the street. Sarah smothered a grin as she thought, 'And people call me a drama queen'.
The evening was calm and quiet, chilly after the rain, but not uncomfortably cool. The air had that fresh, green smell that always emerged after a good downpour; strangely, Sarah had always associated the smell with the earthworms strewn on the pavement. The air smelled like tree buds and chirping crickets and crushed worms. Frogs peeped somewhere, unseen, in the trees. It was spring, spring, spring; dropping her things on the wooden porch floor, the girl stared off into the distance. Above the rooftops, the tips of the park trees could be seen. Sarah suddenly, desperately, wanted to run off to the park like she used to, and sit beneath the leaves and the moonlight until the fireflies came out.
It was too early for fireflies.
Sometimes life exhausted her.
Sarah retrieved her bags from the ground and opened the front door with a barely audible sigh. Her spirits always came crashing to the ground if she spent a long time in a very good mood; returning to the endless tedium and routine of daily life left her despondent. Once she had retreated to her oak tree whenever this mood hit her, but she had learned to be responsible. Little good had ever come from following her impulses.
Karen, with the strange sixth-sense of mothers, was in the foyer immediately. She had a perpetually harried air around her that Sarah, after years of cohabitation, had learned had little to do with her actual mood. Karen was a moving bundle of nervous energy trapped in the form of a blond, middle-aged woman.
"Sarah! You're finally home, I see. That friend of yours said you'd be back here by six-thirty, but I should have guessed that it was unlikely. We've already eaten, she said you were getting pizza, yes? Your father came home early for your birthday, surely it wouldn't hurt you to try to be on time for once. We have a cake too, I hope you didn't eat too much at your party."
"Hey, Karen," Sarah said, tired but unfazed. It had taken awhile, but she was used to Karen. Her stepmother was, to use an old cliché, all bark and no bite. No harm was meant, usually. "I need to put all my junk in my room, but I'll be down in a minute. You better go back into the kitchen or Dad'll be licking the icing off the cake."
"He better not be," she replied ominously, forehead furrowing into an expression that often frightened dogs and small children, not to mention her husband. "He's supposed to be on a diet." She strode back down the hallway towards the kitchen, as if suspecting to find him in the act. Sarah sighed again and started lumbering up the staircase, gravity pulling at her heavily-laden backpack. Up the stairs, down the dark hallway, through the door and into the quiet sanctuary of her bedroom. There was her old dresser, there the worn canopy bed, there the vanity she had possessed since childhood. The walls, once hung with shelves full of stuffed animals, were empty but for an Escher poster and a few prints she liked: a Degas pastel, Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss", and a Waterhouse painting of the Lady of Shalott. The vanity, once plastered with pictures and newspaper clippings of her actress mother, was now empty but for a few pictures of friends. She hadn't forgotten her mother, but she had been downgraded to a drawer. Reality was reality, and Linda Carlisle (once Williams) did not play a large role in her daughter's life.
The backpack, the windbreaker, and the gift bags were dropped unceremoniously on the floor. Maybe tomorrow, thought Sarah, I'll have the energy to put everything away. Her eyes fell on a strange article lying on her bedspread; a package wrapped clumsily in roughly-tanned hide of some sort. The girl did not care to guess what kind of creature it had come from. Walking over to glance at it closer, she smiled. Her friends had stopped by. Not the ones from school, but some that were far stranger, if that was possible. She decided to leave it for later. Filial duty called.
Sarah left the calm of her room for the ground floor again, which was practically bursting with noisy boisterous life. Karen was running the dishwasher in the kitchen, her father had the television turned up far too loud in order to hear over the appliance, and Toby was making sound effects to go along with whatever game he was playing. It sounded like something, or many somethings, were exploding. Perhaps Power Rangers, or transformers, or his little Matchbox cars. Toby had a lot of toys, most of them with sharp edges that practically impaled one's feet when trod on in the night. No, Sarah was not bitter. Not much, anyway.
"Sarah!" cried the little boy excitedly as she appeared in the family room. He dropped his toy (a transforming Power Ranger car, strangely enough) and half ran, half squirmed his way across the room to give her knees a vehement hug. At four, Toby was a roly-poly preschooler with a head of wild blond curls. Sarah was reminded, as she often was, why she put up with his unnecessarily pointy playthings. Unconditional love was hard to pass up. Long ago, she had promised herself to always, always remember that.
"So, where's my present, you little monster?" she asked playfully. "I've been waiting all day, so it better be good."
"Is that my daughter that I hear?" A voice emerged from a large blue recliner. Robert Williams' face slowly came into view as he bent forward. "I was beginning to think she had left us for good. I was hoping that I would be able to eat her piece of cake."
"Sorry Dad. I've come back, you see. I hope you aren't too disappointed."
"I'll survive. Happy birthday, dear. Did you have a good time? Karen said that there was a surprise party involved."
"Something like that. I had a pretty good idea that it was going to happen, so I don't know how much of a surprise it was."
"You have to open my present, Sarah!" put in Toby firmly, from her feet. "I made it myself. In school today. Miss Liddie let me use the good crayons, 'cause I told her it was for you."
"Before or after dessert?"
"Uh." Toby frowned. It was too much for his mind to compute.
"We're opening presents first," said Karen briskly, coming in from the kitchen. "I want the cake to cool a little bit more. Robert?"
"Here you go, Sarah." Her father reached towards the coffee table to retrieve a square package covered in balloon wrapping paper. She sat down on the sofa and took it from him, surprised by the weight of it in her hands. Toby crawled up next to her as she began to rip off paper. Their were two boxes inside. One, opened , revealed a thick, finely bound book. Her fingers traced the gold letters on the leather cover.
"The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Wow, this is beautiful." Her father beamed at her happily; she smiled back.
"Some of your paperbacks were getting a bit worn, so I thought you could use something nicer."
"This is a big improvement, trust me." Sarah laid the book on her lap and moved on to the second box. Under a layer of tissue paper was... Sarah blinked and lifted it out of its wrappings carefully. It was a dress. But that was putting it mildly. It was a short-skirted affair with a halter neck, done in a painfully-mod print of turquoise and green concentric circles. It was terribly fashionable and would probably look stunning on Sarah's slim, long-legged frame. It was completely not her style.
"I remember when I turned eighteen," said Karen brightly. "I couldn't wait to go clubbing; that was practically all me and my friends thought about for all of senior year. I thought that now you have a boyfriend, you might want to go out dancing some night. Boys like to have fun every now and then."
"Thanks, Karen, it's very pretty," replied Sarah with wide eyes and a beautiful, completely artificial smile that didn't reveal her gritted teeth. 'Now that you have a boyfriend. Boys like to have fun every now and then.' She knew Karen thought that she was being friendly and understanding of her teenage stepdaughter. She knew Karen didn't mean any insult, any implication that Sarah was a lame person for going on her first date at seventeen, any insinuation that she was a boring person.
She knew that Karen didn't know her at all.
It still hurt, though.
"Now me, now me!" yelled Toby. Chubby hands thrust folded white construction paper at her; she took it and unfolded it carefully.
"That's you, and that's me," he explained, pointing at stick figures with the gravity of a modernist explaining the concept behind his work.
The stick-Sarah had a head, full of brown hair, that grew directly out of her long red skirt. Two orange arms seemed to be coming out of the same skirt at knee height. Toby was about half her size, with yellow corkscrews coming out of his head and blue pants and gloves on his orange stick-arms. He might , with a lot of imagination, been dressed up as a Power Ranger. It wasn't unlikely.
Her eyes traveled to the other, unexplained figures in the picture—figures about Toby's height, but done in green instead of orange. Some had on black hats (or were they hair? Ears?) and some were carrying long brown poles of some sort. There were also a few indeterminate birds scattered around.
Sarah's breath caught in her throat.
"What's the rest supposed to be, Toby? Your friends at preschool?" Her voice didn't shake, much to her relief.
"I don't know. It's from a dream." A little surrealist, then. The girl tried to ignore how much they looked like goblins. Toby couldn't remember... could he? Or was this actually just some dream, of Martians or of the denizens of the Emerald City? They had been watching The Wizard of Oz on television the other day.
"It's great," she said after a pause. "You're going to be an artist someday, right? Or a superhero?"
"Yes. Or both. You can be both." Her brother appeared to be perfectly serious. Sarah grinned at him with some relief. Toby had a wild, wild imagination, fed by movies and the T.V. He was perfectly capable of inventing little green creatures without the benefit of any sort of real life experience. And if he didn't remember, then Sarah would have an easier time believing that her nightmare was behind her.
"So. What about cake now?"
If Karen had any redeeming factors, it was that she made good cake. Usually she wasn't much of a domestic source, but her recipe was a family secret, passed for more than four generations (with some modifications for modern conveniences, like electric ovens). She had offered, early on in their relationship, to teach it to Sarah. Fourteen and angry, she had refused. Eighteen-year-old Sarah had some regrets about that as she ate her piece of gooey chocolate cake, but she still had too much pride to ask again. Maybe she wasn't quite comfortable with getting that close to Karen.
The phone rang as she was polishing off the last few bites; Toby was still eating messily in the kitchen under Karen's watchful eye, and her father was in his study, long finished. Sarah paid little attention to the noise; Karen picked it up after the second ring. A brief pause, and then...
"Sarah! Phone!"
The teenager set down her plate on the coffee table and pulled herself to her feet. She was sauntering towards the kitchen when Karen, holding the phone to her chest peeked around the door frame into the family room. Her expression was some cross between bewildered and troubled.
"It's your mother," she said quietly, as if to keep her husband from hearing. Sarah blinked at her, mouth opening involuntarily. Her mother never called. Or hardly ever, anyway.
"Here, I'll go up to my room." She grabbed the cordless out of her stepmother's outstretched hand and started bounding upstairs.
"Mom?"
"Sarah, darling. Did you get my card?" Linda's voice was melodious and effusive, affected but not artificial. Her pleasure to talk to her daughter was real; it just wasn't a pleasure that was necessary to her everyday existence. Linda was remarkably self-sufficient in her self- absorption.
"Yes. It was cute."
"I'm sorry I couldn't come visit you, love, but you know how busy I've been lately. The play's almost finished its run, though."
"Yeah?" The girl reached the door of her room; she twisted the knob hurriedly and closed it behind her before throwing herself down on the bed.
"I understand your spring break is in another three weeks."
Sarah's eyebrows rose involuntarily. "Yes... how did you know?"
"Research, of course. I do have my channels. So, you know, I think I can make this up to you." Her voice was tinged with mirth, practically begging her daughter to ask.
"How so?" It had taken years, but Sarah had finally learned not to count too much on her mother. All said and done, no matter how much she seemed to love her... Linda had walked out on her.
"I was wondering if you might be willing to come spend the week up in New York with me and Jeremy. For a special occasion, you could say. You see, Jeremy and I have just decided to get married, and we thought that if we held it at the end of your break, you could come up and stay with us, you and I can get you a nice dress, and you could attend before you came back. What do you say to that?"
"I..." Sarah was speechless. The ideas of 'Mom and Jeremy are getting married' and 'she wants to spend a week with me' were warring in her head for dominance. The two people had been living together for years, so marriage was not so drastic a step. But Linda had never before expressed a desire to spend so much time with her, not since before she left. The old, familiar pain and hope mingled in Sarah's chest, bringing an ache to her throat, the oft-challenged thought that maybe her mother did love her like a proper mother should.
"Yes!" exclaimed Sarah with enthusiasm, "That would be so great."
Linda laughed her elegant silvery laugh, , made tinny over the phone.
"Why don't you put your father on so I can explain everything to him?"
That stopped Sarah cold. Obviously, and unsurprisingly, Linda didn't consider that perhaps her ex-husband wouldn't take the news of her remarriage too kindly. Sarah didn't know exactly how her dad felt about Linda. He was undeniably happy with Karen, but that didn't mean that he didn't still have feelings for his first love. Sarah's mother had left him; it hadn't been his decision, or even much of a mutual one. He still didn't like talking about her too much.
"Um. I think he's kind of busy right now. What about I tell him and call you tomorrow?"
"Oh, sure, whatever. Just leave a message if you don't catch me. Or talk to Jeremy, he can work out the details. Look, I need to go now, love. Later, then?"
"Bye, Mom."
"Ciao, darling. Happy birthday."
A clink as the telephone was hung up. Sarah pushed the 'off' button on hers, sighing, a moment later. Her mother was unpredictable as ever. She dropped the phone on her bedspread, next to the leather package she had noticed earlier. She picked it up, turning it around in her hands curiously.
"Hmm. I wonder..?"
She untied the twine around it and began to slide the wrappings off. Underneath were some broad, glossy leaves in an unlikely shade of purple. Sarah grinned involuntarily, wondering what kind of plant her friends had plucked them off of. Inside the leaves lay several things. The first one was a egg-shaped stone, about fist sized; it was a pale rose with vibrant green veins, almost like marble. Definitely not a kind of marble found in her world. A closer look revealed tiny crystalline speckles.
Next there was a small knife in a plain leather sheath with two slits; Sarah decided that a belt could be threaded through it. She slid it out carefully, examining the shiny, gray metal blade. The hilt was a dark brown wood, almost black, with red glints; it was carved into the shape of bird, very simple and stylized, but still beautiful.
The third object was a circlet, just the right size to sit atop Sarah's head. The main material in its construction seemed to be feathers; long purple-black tail feathers that shone iridescent in the light, small downy feathers of a deep red, even small wing feathers of cream and black. Tucked among the feathers were little sprigs of dried flowers, strands of violet and forest green ribbon, some interestingly-shaped seed pods, even a few tiny seashells. It was exquisitely delicate, as if wrought by tiny hands.
Sarah sat and marveled over the treasures in her possession. Than she bounded off of her bed to her vanity, where she peered into the mirror intensely. She didn't watch her reflection; instead she peered dreamily past the surface of the glass.
"Hoggle, Ludo, Sir Didymus, I need you." She waited a moment, and then, a voice spoke up from behind her. Perhaps the mirror wasn't necessary, but it helped her to concentrate.
"Well, missy, a happy day to you."
She turned around with an enormous grin on her face, seeing three unlikely figures standing before her: a short, lumpy little gnome of a man, a hulking furball with soft eyes and sharp horns, and a fox dressed rakishly in armor and an eyepatch.
The girl had know them for nearly three years by then; it seemed like so long ago. One dark, stormy night, clichéd as it was, Sarah had done a stupid, horrible thing.... she had wished her baby brother away to the goblins. Or maybe that wasn't fair; after all, who would've expected that the goblins would actually respond? That night Sarah had learned a lot about fairness. She was forced to find her way through a gigantic labyrinth in order to win Toby back. Hoggle, the dwarfish creature, was the first of her friends she had met, followed soon after by furry Ludo and the diminutive Sir Didymus. They had shown her the way through the maze, bringing her to the castle beyond the Goblin city to fight the Goblin King. She had won, but her mind still shied away from the thought of Jareth. Their confrontation hadn't been quite what she had expected.
Sarah had kept in contact with her Labyrinth friends after the ordeal was over; she had the power to call them into her world when she needed them, and sometimes they could cross over on their own. Obviously they had done so that afternoon.
"Thank you so much, you guys!" Sarah beamed at the others with an intensity that seldom lit up her face, eyes shining brightly and mouth open enough to show teeth. "You gave me the best gifts I got all day. You know me better than my own family does. Where did you find everything? Let me guess; the stone from Ludo, the knife from Hoggle, and the circlet from Sir Didymus."
"Indeed, milday, the pleasure was ours," replied Sir Didymus loftily, whiskers quivering with pleasure. "And you guessed rightly."
"Ludo call rock for Sawah," rumbled Ludo happily. "Find special one."
"An' I've been working on my whittling lately," added Hoggle. "Since I... well, I've had more time on my hands, past few months. Got me an apprentice, so I've not so much work gardenin'. Thought you might like this little thing."
"They're both gorgeous, really. And Sir Didymus, did you make the wreath yourself?"
"Not quite so, lady Sarah. I but collected the supplies, and petitioned a dear friend to perform the actual, er, creation. My paws are not so deft as to manage such fine work. I did plan the design according to my knowledge of yourself." He lifted his chin proudly.
"Thank you too, and tell your friend that I liked it."
"How was the birthday, missy?"
Sarah's smile faltered a little before regaining strength.
"My friends from school threw me a really wonderful party, I had lots of fun there. And my stepmom made a really yummy cake for me. But my mom... she actually invited me to come stay with her in a few weeks. It should be lots of fun. I haven't seen her for nearly a year."
"And yet something troubles milady--"
"Sawah sad." Ludo spoke almost simultaneously with the fox, his self- proclaimed brother. Sarah sighed.
"I don't know. I think I'm confused. I don't know what I feel. My mom also said that she was getting married again, that's why she wants me to visit. To see her wedding. I'm surprised; after she left us, I wouldn't think that she would want to get married again."
"Why not?" asked Hoggle curiously.
"I always thought that she felt too tied down by it; she got too restless to stay in one place. I thought it was marriage she disliked, not-- " Sarah didn't finish her sentence. It wasn't something she was willing to say out loud.
"Don't let her trouble you, missy." Hoggle patted the back of her hand gently. "You can worry 'bout it tomorrow if ya want, but today's special. Why don't you go back down and have another piece of that cake? Cake always makes me feel great."
"Tempting," admitted Sarah, smiling weakly. "Maybe I will. I'll be fat, but at least I'll be happy."
"Fat Sawah?" Ludo's voice sounded disbelieving. That won a laugh from the girl; she leaped forward to give him a hug.
"You're a great friend, Ludo. All of you are."
"Aw, don't embarrass us." Hoggle scratched the back of his neck. "Maybe we better be going."
"If you need to."
"Well, always work to be done in the gardens. Damned fairies are multiplying somethin' awful down by the hedge maze. I'll be seeing ya later, Sarah."
"Farewell, Lady Sarah," piped Sir Didymus, with a bow and a flourish of his hat. "I hope that I shall have the pleasure of looking upon your fair face before very long."
"Farewell, my brave knight. Bye, Hoggle. See you later, Ludo,"
"Bye..." Ludo's rumbling voice faded into the distance as her three friends faded out of sight.
Sarah picked the phone up off of her bed and watched it meditatively for a moment. Then she strode out of her room, toward the stairs.
The storm clouds had mostly cleared by the time Sarah returned home, just in time to reveal the dimming of day into twilight. Aaron had to race home, so Dinah drove her back. The girl looked around hopefully for a rainbow as they drove; off to the east she could see faint traces of something that, with a bit of imagination, might have been one. Or maybe not. It was hard to tell. Sarah decided without any real conviction that it was one.
"Almost seven o' clock," commented Dinah as they pulled up in front of the old Victorian in which Sarah had lived most of her life. "Is Karen going to pop a blood vessel?"
"Doesn't she always?" asked Sarah wryly. Her tone suggested that maybe she didn't care very much. "I had a great time, Dinnie. Thanks, really. And tell your dad that I love his pizza. If he weren't already married, I'd propose and make you my step-daughter."
"Aaron will be hurt when I tell him how easily you forget him," replied Dinah with a laugh. "Do you have everything gathered up? Don't forget your presents. I'm counting on you to wear that shirt to school tomorrow."
Elllie had given her a brilliant yellow shirt with a picture of a green cartoon dragon on it; it read, in jagged crimson letters, 'Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for humans are crunchy and taste good with ketchup'. It was cute, but a little bit... loud.
Sarah made a ladylike snort. "I'll consider it. Bye, then."
"Happy birthday, love, and adieu; I will see you on the morrow." Sarah climbed out of the car, laden with her backpack and coat and bags, and began staggered towards her front door. Dinah honked her horn, blew the other girl a flamboyant kiss, and accelerated off down the street. Sarah smothered a grin as she thought, 'And people call me a drama queen'.
The evening was calm and quiet, chilly after the rain, but not uncomfortably cool. The air had that fresh, green smell that always emerged after a good downpour; strangely, Sarah had always associated the smell with the earthworms strewn on the pavement. The air smelled like tree buds and chirping crickets and crushed worms. Frogs peeped somewhere, unseen, in the trees. It was spring, spring, spring; dropping her things on the wooden porch floor, the girl stared off into the distance. Above the rooftops, the tips of the park trees could be seen. Sarah suddenly, desperately, wanted to run off to the park like she used to, and sit beneath the leaves and the moonlight until the fireflies came out.
It was too early for fireflies.
Sometimes life exhausted her.
Sarah retrieved her bags from the ground and opened the front door with a barely audible sigh. Her spirits always came crashing to the ground if she spent a long time in a very good mood; returning to the endless tedium and routine of daily life left her despondent. Once she had retreated to her oak tree whenever this mood hit her, but she had learned to be responsible. Little good had ever come from following her impulses.
Karen, with the strange sixth-sense of mothers, was in the foyer immediately. She had a perpetually harried air around her that Sarah, after years of cohabitation, had learned had little to do with her actual mood. Karen was a moving bundle of nervous energy trapped in the form of a blond, middle-aged woman.
"Sarah! You're finally home, I see. That friend of yours said you'd be back here by six-thirty, but I should have guessed that it was unlikely. We've already eaten, she said you were getting pizza, yes? Your father came home early for your birthday, surely it wouldn't hurt you to try to be on time for once. We have a cake too, I hope you didn't eat too much at your party."
"Hey, Karen," Sarah said, tired but unfazed. It had taken awhile, but she was used to Karen. Her stepmother was, to use an old cliché, all bark and no bite. No harm was meant, usually. "I need to put all my junk in my room, but I'll be down in a minute. You better go back into the kitchen or Dad'll be licking the icing off the cake."
"He better not be," she replied ominously, forehead furrowing into an expression that often frightened dogs and small children, not to mention her husband. "He's supposed to be on a diet." She strode back down the hallway towards the kitchen, as if suspecting to find him in the act. Sarah sighed again and started lumbering up the staircase, gravity pulling at her heavily-laden backpack. Up the stairs, down the dark hallway, through the door and into the quiet sanctuary of her bedroom. There was her old dresser, there the worn canopy bed, there the vanity she had possessed since childhood. The walls, once hung with shelves full of stuffed animals, were empty but for an Escher poster and a few prints she liked: a Degas pastel, Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss", and a Waterhouse painting of the Lady of Shalott. The vanity, once plastered with pictures and newspaper clippings of her actress mother, was now empty but for a few pictures of friends. She hadn't forgotten her mother, but she had been downgraded to a drawer. Reality was reality, and Linda Carlisle (once Williams) did not play a large role in her daughter's life.
The backpack, the windbreaker, and the gift bags were dropped unceremoniously on the floor. Maybe tomorrow, thought Sarah, I'll have the energy to put everything away. Her eyes fell on a strange article lying on her bedspread; a package wrapped clumsily in roughly-tanned hide of some sort. The girl did not care to guess what kind of creature it had come from. Walking over to glance at it closer, she smiled. Her friends had stopped by. Not the ones from school, but some that were far stranger, if that was possible. She decided to leave it for later. Filial duty called.
Sarah left the calm of her room for the ground floor again, which was practically bursting with noisy boisterous life. Karen was running the dishwasher in the kitchen, her father had the television turned up far too loud in order to hear over the appliance, and Toby was making sound effects to go along with whatever game he was playing. It sounded like something, or many somethings, were exploding. Perhaps Power Rangers, or transformers, or his little Matchbox cars. Toby had a lot of toys, most of them with sharp edges that practically impaled one's feet when trod on in the night. No, Sarah was not bitter. Not much, anyway.
"Sarah!" cried the little boy excitedly as she appeared in the family room. He dropped his toy (a transforming Power Ranger car, strangely enough) and half ran, half squirmed his way across the room to give her knees a vehement hug. At four, Toby was a roly-poly preschooler with a head of wild blond curls. Sarah was reminded, as she often was, why she put up with his unnecessarily pointy playthings. Unconditional love was hard to pass up. Long ago, she had promised herself to always, always remember that.
"So, where's my present, you little monster?" she asked playfully. "I've been waiting all day, so it better be good."
"Is that my daughter that I hear?" A voice emerged from a large blue recliner. Robert Williams' face slowly came into view as he bent forward. "I was beginning to think she had left us for good. I was hoping that I would be able to eat her piece of cake."
"Sorry Dad. I've come back, you see. I hope you aren't too disappointed."
"I'll survive. Happy birthday, dear. Did you have a good time? Karen said that there was a surprise party involved."
"Something like that. I had a pretty good idea that it was going to happen, so I don't know how much of a surprise it was."
"You have to open my present, Sarah!" put in Toby firmly, from her feet. "I made it myself. In school today. Miss Liddie let me use the good crayons, 'cause I told her it was for you."
"Before or after dessert?"
"Uh." Toby frowned. It was too much for his mind to compute.
"We're opening presents first," said Karen briskly, coming in from the kitchen. "I want the cake to cool a little bit more. Robert?"
"Here you go, Sarah." Her father reached towards the coffee table to retrieve a square package covered in balloon wrapping paper. She sat down on the sofa and took it from him, surprised by the weight of it in her hands. Toby crawled up next to her as she began to rip off paper. Their were two boxes inside. One, opened , revealed a thick, finely bound book. Her fingers traced the gold letters on the leather cover.
"The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Wow, this is beautiful." Her father beamed at her happily; she smiled back.
"Some of your paperbacks were getting a bit worn, so I thought you could use something nicer."
"This is a big improvement, trust me." Sarah laid the book on her lap and moved on to the second box. Under a layer of tissue paper was... Sarah blinked and lifted it out of its wrappings carefully. It was a dress. But that was putting it mildly. It was a short-skirted affair with a halter neck, done in a painfully-mod print of turquoise and green concentric circles. It was terribly fashionable and would probably look stunning on Sarah's slim, long-legged frame. It was completely not her style.
"I remember when I turned eighteen," said Karen brightly. "I couldn't wait to go clubbing; that was practically all me and my friends thought about for all of senior year. I thought that now you have a boyfriend, you might want to go out dancing some night. Boys like to have fun every now and then."
"Thanks, Karen, it's very pretty," replied Sarah with wide eyes and a beautiful, completely artificial smile that didn't reveal her gritted teeth. 'Now that you have a boyfriend. Boys like to have fun every now and then.' She knew Karen thought that she was being friendly and understanding of her teenage stepdaughter. She knew Karen didn't mean any insult, any implication that Sarah was a lame person for going on her first date at seventeen, any insinuation that she was a boring person.
She knew that Karen didn't know her at all.
It still hurt, though.
"Now me, now me!" yelled Toby. Chubby hands thrust folded white construction paper at her; she took it and unfolded it carefully.
"That's you, and that's me," he explained, pointing at stick figures with the gravity of a modernist explaining the concept behind his work.
The stick-Sarah had a head, full of brown hair, that grew directly out of her long red skirt. Two orange arms seemed to be coming out of the same skirt at knee height. Toby was about half her size, with yellow corkscrews coming out of his head and blue pants and gloves on his orange stick-arms. He might , with a lot of imagination, been dressed up as a Power Ranger. It wasn't unlikely.
Her eyes traveled to the other, unexplained figures in the picture—figures about Toby's height, but done in green instead of orange. Some had on black hats (or were they hair? Ears?) and some were carrying long brown poles of some sort. There were also a few indeterminate birds scattered around.
Sarah's breath caught in her throat.
"What's the rest supposed to be, Toby? Your friends at preschool?" Her voice didn't shake, much to her relief.
"I don't know. It's from a dream." A little surrealist, then. The girl tried to ignore how much they looked like goblins. Toby couldn't remember... could he? Or was this actually just some dream, of Martians or of the denizens of the Emerald City? They had been watching The Wizard of Oz on television the other day.
"It's great," she said after a pause. "You're going to be an artist someday, right? Or a superhero?"
"Yes. Or both. You can be both." Her brother appeared to be perfectly serious. Sarah grinned at him with some relief. Toby had a wild, wild imagination, fed by movies and the T.V. He was perfectly capable of inventing little green creatures without the benefit of any sort of real life experience. And if he didn't remember, then Sarah would have an easier time believing that her nightmare was behind her.
"So. What about cake now?"
If Karen had any redeeming factors, it was that she made good cake. Usually she wasn't much of a domestic source, but her recipe was a family secret, passed for more than four generations (with some modifications for modern conveniences, like electric ovens). She had offered, early on in their relationship, to teach it to Sarah. Fourteen and angry, she had refused. Eighteen-year-old Sarah had some regrets about that as she ate her piece of gooey chocolate cake, but she still had too much pride to ask again. Maybe she wasn't quite comfortable with getting that close to Karen.
The phone rang as she was polishing off the last few bites; Toby was still eating messily in the kitchen under Karen's watchful eye, and her father was in his study, long finished. Sarah paid little attention to the noise; Karen picked it up after the second ring. A brief pause, and then...
"Sarah! Phone!"
The teenager set down her plate on the coffee table and pulled herself to her feet. She was sauntering towards the kitchen when Karen, holding the phone to her chest peeked around the door frame into the family room. Her expression was some cross between bewildered and troubled.
"It's your mother," she said quietly, as if to keep her husband from hearing. Sarah blinked at her, mouth opening involuntarily. Her mother never called. Or hardly ever, anyway.
"Here, I'll go up to my room." She grabbed the cordless out of her stepmother's outstretched hand and started bounding upstairs.
"Mom?"
"Sarah, darling. Did you get my card?" Linda's voice was melodious and effusive, affected but not artificial. Her pleasure to talk to her daughter was real; it just wasn't a pleasure that was necessary to her everyday existence. Linda was remarkably self-sufficient in her self- absorption.
"Yes. It was cute."
"I'm sorry I couldn't come visit you, love, but you know how busy I've been lately. The play's almost finished its run, though."
"Yeah?" The girl reached the door of her room; she twisted the knob hurriedly and closed it behind her before throwing herself down on the bed.
"I understand your spring break is in another three weeks."
Sarah's eyebrows rose involuntarily. "Yes... how did you know?"
"Research, of course. I do have my channels. So, you know, I think I can make this up to you." Her voice was tinged with mirth, practically begging her daughter to ask.
"How so?" It had taken years, but Sarah had finally learned not to count too much on her mother. All said and done, no matter how much she seemed to love her... Linda had walked out on her.
"I was wondering if you might be willing to come spend the week up in New York with me and Jeremy. For a special occasion, you could say. You see, Jeremy and I have just decided to get married, and we thought that if we held it at the end of your break, you could come up and stay with us, you and I can get you a nice dress, and you could attend before you came back. What do you say to that?"
"I..." Sarah was speechless. The ideas of 'Mom and Jeremy are getting married' and 'she wants to spend a week with me' were warring in her head for dominance. The two people had been living together for years, so marriage was not so drastic a step. But Linda had never before expressed a desire to spend so much time with her, not since before she left. The old, familiar pain and hope mingled in Sarah's chest, bringing an ache to her throat, the oft-challenged thought that maybe her mother did love her like a proper mother should.
"Yes!" exclaimed Sarah with enthusiasm, "That would be so great."
Linda laughed her elegant silvery laugh, , made tinny over the phone.
"Why don't you put your father on so I can explain everything to him?"
That stopped Sarah cold. Obviously, and unsurprisingly, Linda didn't consider that perhaps her ex-husband wouldn't take the news of her remarriage too kindly. Sarah didn't know exactly how her dad felt about Linda. He was undeniably happy with Karen, but that didn't mean that he didn't still have feelings for his first love. Sarah's mother had left him; it hadn't been his decision, or even much of a mutual one. He still didn't like talking about her too much.
"Um. I think he's kind of busy right now. What about I tell him and call you tomorrow?"
"Oh, sure, whatever. Just leave a message if you don't catch me. Or talk to Jeremy, he can work out the details. Look, I need to go now, love. Later, then?"
"Bye, Mom."
"Ciao, darling. Happy birthday."
A clink as the telephone was hung up. Sarah pushed the 'off' button on hers, sighing, a moment later. Her mother was unpredictable as ever. She dropped the phone on her bedspread, next to the leather package she had noticed earlier. She picked it up, turning it around in her hands curiously.
"Hmm. I wonder..?"
She untied the twine around it and began to slide the wrappings off. Underneath were some broad, glossy leaves in an unlikely shade of purple. Sarah grinned involuntarily, wondering what kind of plant her friends had plucked them off of. Inside the leaves lay several things. The first one was a egg-shaped stone, about fist sized; it was a pale rose with vibrant green veins, almost like marble. Definitely not a kind of marble found in her world. A closer look revealed tiny crystalline speckles.
Next there was a small knife in a plain leather sheath with two slits; Sarah decided that a belt could be threaded through it. She slid it out carefully, examining the shiny, gray metal blade. The hilt was a dark brown wood, almost black, with red glints; it was carved into the shape of bird, very simple and stylized, but still beautiful.
The third object was a circlet, just the right size to sit atop Sarah's head. The main material in its construction seemed to be feathers; long purple-black tail feathers that shone iridescent in the light, small downy feathers of a deep red, even small wing feathers of cream and black. Tucked among the feathers were little sprigs of dried flowers, strands of violet and forest green ribbon, some interestingly-shaped seed pods, even a few tiny seashells. It was exquisitely delicate, as if wrought by tiny hands.
Sarah sat and marveled over the treasures in her possession. Than she bounded off of her bed to her vanity, where she peered into the mirror intensely. She didn't watch her reflection; instead she peered dreamily past the surface of the glass.
"Hoggle, Ludo, Sir Didymus, I need you." She waited a moment, and then, a voice spoke up from behind her. Perhaps the mirror wasn't necessary, but it helped her to concentrate.
"Well, missy, a happy day to you."
She turned around with an enormous grin on her face, seeing three unlikely figures standing before her: a short, lumpy little gnome of a man, a hulking furball with soft eyes and sharp horns, and a fox dressed rakishly in armor and an eyepatch.
The girl had know them for nearly three years by then; it seemed like so long ago. One dark, stormy night, clichéd as it was, Sarah had done a stupid, horrible thing.... she had wished her baby brother away to the goblins. Or maybe that wasn't fair; after all, who would've expected that the goblins would actually respond? That night Sarah had learned a lot about fairness. She was forced to find her way through a gigantic labyrinth in order to win Toby back. Hoggle, the dwarfish creature, was the first of her friends she had met, followed soon after by furry Ludo and the diminutive Sir Didymus. They had shown her the way through the maze, bringing her to the castle beyond the Goblin city to fight the Goblin King. She had won, but her mind still shied away from the thought of Jareth. Their confrontation hadn't been quite what she had expected.
Sarah had kept in contact with her Labyrinth friends after the ordeal was over; she had the power to call them into her world when she needed them, and sometimes they could cross over on their own. Obviously they had done so that afternoon.
"Thank you so much, you guys!" Sarah beamed at the others with an intensity that seldom lit up her face, eyes shining brightly and mouth open enough to show teeth. "You gave me the best gifts I got all day. You know me better than my own family does. Where did you find everything? Let me guess; the stone from Ludo, the knife from Hoggle, and the circlet from Sir Didymus."
"Indeed, milday, the pleasure was ours," replied Sir Didymus loftily, whiskers quivering with pleasure. "And you guessed rightly."
"Ludo call rock for Sawah," rumbled Ludo happily. "Find special one."
"An' I've been working on my whittling lately," added Hoggle. "Since I... well, I've had more time on my hands, past few months. Got me an apprentice, so I've not so much work gardenin'. Thought you might like this little thing."
"They're both gorgeous, really. And Sir Didymus, did you make the wreath yourself?"
"Not quite so, lady Sarah. I but collected the supplies, and petitioned a dear friend to perform the actual, er, creation. My paws are not so deft as to manage such fine work. I did plan the design according to my knowledge of yourself." He lifted his chin proudly.
"Thank you too, and tell your friend that I liked it."
"How was the birthday, missy?"
Sarah's smile faltered a little before regaining strength.
"My friends from school threw me a really wonderful party, I had lots of fun there. And my stepmom made a really yummy cake for me. But my mom... she actually invited me to come stay with her in a few weeks. It should be lots of fun. I haven't seen her for nearly a year."
"And yet something troubles milady--"
"Sawah sad." Ludo spoke almost simultaneously with the fox, his self- proclaimed brother. Sarah sighed.
"I don't know. I think I'm confused. I don't know what I feel. My mom also said that she was getting married again, that's why she wants me to visit. To see her wedding. I'm surprised; after she left us, I wouldn't think that she would want to get married again."
"Why not?" asked Hoggle curiously.
"I always thought that she felt too tied down by it; she got too restless to stay in one place. I thought it was marriage she disliked, not-- " Sarah didn't finish her sentence. It wasn't something she was willing to say out loud.
"Don't let her trouble you, missy." Hoggle patted the back of her hand gently. "You can worry 'bout it tomorrow if ya want, but today's special. Why don't you go back down and have another piece of that cake? Cake always makes me feel great."
"Tempting," admitted Sarah, smiling weakly. "Maybe I will. I'll be fat, but at least I'll be happy."
"Fat Sawah?" Ludo's voice sounded disbelieving. That won a laugh from the girl; she leaped forward to give him a hug.
"You're a great friend, Ludo. All of you are."
"Aw, don't embarrass us." Hoggle scratched the back of his neck. "Maybe we better be going."
"If you need to."
"Well, always work to be done in the gardens. Damned fairies are multiplying somethin' awful down by the hedge maze. I'll be seeing ya later, Sarah."
"Farewell, Lady Sarah," piped Sir Didymus, with a bow and a flourish of his hat. "I hope that I shall have the pleasure of looking upon your fair face before very long."
"Farewell, my brave knight. Bye, Hoggle. See you later, Ludo,"
"Bye..." Ludo's rumbling voice faded into the distance as her three friends faded out of sight.
Sarah picked the phone up off of her bed and watched it meditatively for a moment. Then she strode out of her room, toward the stairs.