Chapter Eight: No Escape From Reality
Sarah awoke in a darkened room, feeling disoriented and vaguely sick. Her mind processed information slowly—she was on a couch. There was a pillow under her head. No lamps—she could hear the crackle of a fire, and felt a warm glow coming from behind her. She felt stiff and wrinkled, as though she had slept in her clothes; which was exactly what she had done, she saw. The girl didn't quite feel ready to sit up. She spit dark hair away from her mouth, where it had fallen over her face, and glanced weakly at the piece of furniture she was resting on. It was a spindly wooden affair, perhaps mahogany, covered with undecipherable carving. It was upholstered in a stiff green brocade. The pillow stuck behind her seemed to be of similar fabric.
Where am I?
She cast her eyes upward. It was a tall room, and the ceiling was unaffected by the fireplace's flickering light. She couldn't see through the shadows. The walls were well-cut gray stone, smoothly polished. Not her house. Not Dinah's house. Nowhere that she recognized at all. She searched her memory for clues.
Music, she remembered music. The concert. Okay. Talking with Aaron—Beltane? They started playing, and she had seen—many things, scaled women and strange-eyed boys, floating lights and a person-who-was-almost-a-tree. A wild burst of something, running, and—
she was trapped stuck lost in a misty place that wasn't quite the park but wasn't quite anywhere else where she could see everything but not quite touch and then she called HIM because she didn't know what to do and then they fell into something awful that she couldn't name not soft mist but a deeply disturbing rush of everything imaginable and some things that weren't
Sarah sat up in a rush, and then groaned as she felt nausea overcome her. She held herself very still for a few moments and it faded. Then, carefully, she turned her head.
There was a table in front of the couch, as low and spidery as the couch was. Across the table were two chairs. One was occupied. There slouched the Goblin King, head propped up on his hand and legs stretched out over the table. He was watching her with interest. He might have been suppressing a smile.
She couldn't think of anything to say.
"Thank you would be a nice start," he commented. Sarah made a rude noise.
"...thank... you," she said grudgingly, as if it hurt. Which it did. Her pride was smarting something awful.
"Such an ungrateful girl. I see you haven't changed."
"You're still a self-righteous jerk. You haven't changed either."
"Where does that leave us, then?" Jareth sat up straighter in his chair. "You are in the Labyrinth, if you were wondering."
"I figured that."
"However did you manage to get stuck halfway between planes?" he asked, voice bored but eyes alert.
"I hoped you could tell me."
"I am no expert in divination—my talents lie in other fields." He grinned mischievously and Sarah tried to squash all the images that rose in her mind. Bad. Nuh-uh. Not going there.
"Tell me what you do know," he prompted. "What happened before you trapped yourself?"
"I was at a concert. I danced for awhile, and just listened for awhile. Then I noticed. Um. Some of the people at the concert weren't, er, human. It was unnerving, especially after all the crap I've had to put up with since..." She trailed off and glared at Jareth halfheartedly. "Well, I think you know what I mean. I wanted to get away from it all, so I started running to my bench—this spot in the park I always go, with a big oak tree. I had to run through more of the faeries to get there. They were... amazing. Scary, but cool too." Sarah was silent for a beat. "Eventually I noticed that I was still running, but I wasn't going anywhere."
"I see." His eyes became hooded, thinking. "Yes, it is Beltane, isn't it? That would explain the fae appearing in your park. I never paid much attention to such times. The fabric of the worlds grow thin, then, as it does on certain other days. Midsummer, Samhain, others. It makes it easier for everyone to cross over, if they know how."
"I don't know," she muttered petulantly. Jareth snorted.
"Obviously. If Pidgin's reports to me have been accurate, your powers seem to react disproportionately to your emotions. If you were agitated enough, then it might have caused an outburst of magic without your knowledge."
Sarah considered this. First there had been the euphoria from the dancing, followed by shock and fear, and finally awe. And as she ran, she had felt something come loose...
"How did I get stuck?" she asked. "In dreams, I always traveled fine."
"Several reasons, I would think. First of all, you started on your journey without any picture of where you were going—that's a problem. Secondly, you traveled through the waking world. In sleep, you have instinct to guide you. Awake, reason alone isn't enough. That aside, though, you actually have mass when you travel through the waking world. My kingdom is tied closer to dreams than others are. I doubt that you could travel anywhere else while asleep." He stopped, looking thoughtful. Sarah studied him with some surprise. This was a side of him that she had never seen before: Jareth the sorcerer, contemplating the science of magic. It dulled his sharp edge. At least momentarily.
"I had to take you the long way, to get to the Labyrinth," he continued. "You didn't react well."
"No." She still felt sick. "How long was I asleep?"
"Nearly five hours."
"Five hours!" Sarah tried to get up, but fell back weakly when the nausea rose again. "I have to get back! Dinah and Aaron and Ben are... my parents will be furious!"
"Go back?" Jareth lifted his eyebrows and spoke in a mock-surprised tone. The scientist was gone, and the Goblin King was back. "You want to go back home now, with no idea how to keep this from happening again?"
"I--" she stuttered. "I don't have time. God, Dad and Karen will think that I was out with Aaron--" She shut her mouth abruptly. "They'll jump to conclusions if I'm gone all night."
"I can imagine," he murmured. Sarah felt her cheeks redden involuntarily. Damn him and his suggestive tone.
"So. Please, take me back?" She forced her voice into something resembling polite. Jareth chuckled and stood up.
"Of course not. Do you seriously think that I would let you go, now that you're here again?"
The girl's jaw dropped.
"You c-can't just keep me here."
"You will stay until you can figure out how to leave on your own. It's only fair,don't you think?" Oh, he was enjoying this. Far too much. Sarah would have jumped to strangle him, if she could guarantee she wouldn't fall over and throw up in the process.
"You bastard," she spat. "You were just waiting for this, weren't you?"
"I have only your best interests at hand, dear child."
Right. Like she was going to believe that, with the shit-eating grin on his face. She was so angry that she was speechless.
"You can stay in here. It's one of the guest rooms, not that I ever have many guests. Perhaps you should spend the rest of the night on the couch—I don't think you could handle much movement right now."
Sarah hadn't noticed the canopied and curtained bed on one side of the room. It was a large room, and it was dark.
"You can't imprison me here against my will!"
The smile faded from his face. "Don't be difficult about this," he said shortly. "You asked me for help and I brought you to the Underground. Because I am such a wonderful person, I will take it on myself to teach you not to hurt yourself."
"Fuck you," Sarah muttered.
"How kind of you to offer," he shot back. "Maybe some other time. I think I'll leave you to get your rest now."
And.... he disappeared, as he was so apt to do. The girl punched the couch with one fist, hard. That asshole. That smug, overbearing, conceited asshole. She couldn't believe that he was doing this. She couldn't believe that she had been so stupid as to ask him for help.
She wanted to get up. She wanted to stomp around the room, throw things, bang on the door. No doubt it was locked. Unfortunately, just the thought of rising made her feel sick to her stomach. Apparently she had contracted a severe case of motion-sickness. Traveling-through-dimensions sickness? Something.
"There are few things more miserable," Sarah said to the couch, "Than being absolutely enraged and unable to do anything about it."
Sarah lowered herself back down and eased her head onto the pillow. It was a nice pillow. It was a nice couch, a nice room. Much better than her room at home. Small consolation for being stuck in the Goblin Kingdom. Her rage slowly melted into a cold, miserable puddle of worry and unease. Five hours was bad enough. But how long would she be here now? Days? Weeks? Months?
...forever?
Sarah squeezed her eyes shut. The Goblin King was a jerk, but she didn't think he was that malevolent.
He would have kept Toby forever, she reminded herself. She hoped that was different, though. She had wished Toby away. This time, Sarah had only asked for a bit of help.
Thirteen hours in the Labyrinth had translated into three or four at home. That was still too much. Her dad and Karen would have enough time to notice she was gone, to be angry and then worried and then terrified. She would miss school. The police would look for her. Then, when—if—she returned, what could she say? How could she explain?
Would her mother and Jeremy hear? Would he guess, when she vanished without a trace? Would Angharad Dara's emissary be unable to find her?
The girl chuckled humorlessly. A cold comfort, that was. Angharad couldn't whisk her away to court because Jareth had whisked her away first.
Eventually she must have fallen asleep.
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When she next awoke, Sarah's first thought was that she had been transported once again. The room she was in now was light and airy, with two tall window-doors on one wall. They appeared to open to a balcony. The walls were still stone, but it was pale. And there was the canopied bed, but it didn't look nearly as ominous.
Then she realized that she was on the same spindly couch, in the same arrangement of furniture. My, how daylight made a difference. It would almost be pleasant, if she hadn't been forced into staying there.
Gingerly, Sarah sat up. She was stiff and her mouth tasted horrible, but otherwise okay. She swung her legs off the couch. Still okay. She stood. Still okay. She sighed in relief. Last night had felt like seasickness x10... this was much better. Jareth better watch his back now.
There were three doors in the room, both identically made of heavily carved dark wood. The closest one was right next to the fireplace. She walked around the couch, grabbed the handle, and pulled gingerly.
It swung open with little effort. The girl peeked around the edge of the door and jumped. It was a closet, and there was a goblin inside. Several goblins, actually.
"Pidgin!" exclaimed Sarah, recognizing one of them. Pidgin bobbed his head. "What are you doing in here?"
"Waitin' for you," it muttered. The two other goblins nodded rapidly. They were normal goblins, small and wrinkled and big-eared.
"What do you mean? Are you still supposed to spy on me?" Pidgin was cute as a button, but she was too irritated to let that halt her anger.
"Not spyin'," it grumbled. "Just waitin'. Midge and Rickle too. Show ya where to go."
"Hmm?" Sarah had trouble understanding its fragmented speech. Pidgin made a sighing noise and hopped past her; the other two skittered after him. No question who the leader of this expedition was. Sarah brought up the rear, curious to know what it was talking about. The goblins stopped in front of one of the other doors.
"Go on," said Pidgin. Sarah opened this next door. It revealed a stony spiral staircase, lit from above, that twirled down and out of sight. Sarah went down the first few steps and peeked her head around the corner. The stairs ended on a stone floor. Another doorway was veiled with a cloth hanging. She looked back at the goblins behind her. They scrambled down the steps and flew past her, pushing the cloth aside. Sarah followed again, apprehensively, and went through the doorway.
It was a bathroom.
There was a large bathtub sunken into the stone floor, square and perhaps hip-deep. An archaic looking toilet sat primly against one wall, and it was joined by a washbasin on a pedestal. Everything was hooked into rickety-looking copper pipes, old but still shiny. A slightly tarnished mirror, full-length, occupied one corner. The room was simple and not very big, but it had an aura of spare, spartan beauty. It looked like the sort of bathroom that artsy people in high-rise apartments might commission. The ceiling was high. There was no visible source of light.
"Wow," the girl whispered, looking around. "I hadn't expected... this didn't seem like an indoor-plumbing kind of place."
"The wizard did it," replied Pidgin cryptically. It grimaced to itself. "Wash—we will see to things up the stairs."
Sarah glanced around again—a pile of fluffy towels hung on a rack. Were those there before?
It would have been nice to have been able to hang on to her rage and resentment a little bit longer, but she really wanted a bath. She could be angry at Jareth later. He certainly made it easy.
"Alright," she said to the goblins. "I'll try to hurry."
They bobbed their heads in unison and loped out of the room, feet pattering lightly as they climbed the stairs. Sarah turned her attention to the bathtub. Smoothly-hewn steps led into it and, there, were two knobs to let water in. Sarah bent down and gave them both liberal twists. They made a strange popping noise, but water ran into the tub quickly enough. It was even warm. Well. A pleasant surprise. She stripped off her day-old clothes and waited.
It was a glorious bath. It was heavenly. Few things feel better than a warm bath when you've been battered about space and time, and left unwashed for over a day. Sarah found a jar of something like soap that smelled like roses, and scrubbed it liberally through her hair. When she was done, she donned her old clothes again reluctantly.
Up the little staircase, through the heavy door. She emerged into the sunny room, still bright and quiet. Pidgin, Midge, and Rickle were nowhere to be seen; she even checked in the closet again. Empty. There was clothing laid across the bed, through, a pile in various shades of green. Sarah took a few steps closer and examined it: a cream-colored shift, a mint green underdress, and a forest green overdress. The cloth was soft and vivid but free of ornamentation, and the cut was simple. It may have looked rich to a denim-and-t-shirt wearing society, but Sarah recognized it as plain garb.
Does this say something about my position here? she thought. No matter. It was clean. Sarah shucked off her grubby Aboveground clothes again and pulled the new ones over her head. The overdress laced up the front, leaving paler green to peep out at the collar and sleeves.
So. She was washed and dressed; if only... oh.
A bowl of fruit sat on the low table in front of the couch. It definitely had not been there before. It was laden with apples and oranges, grapes and strawberries. No peaches. Thank God. Sarah took a couple of apples, vaguely thinking of Snow White, and wandered over to the tall window that led outside. She pulled on the handle and was surprised when it actually opened. She stepped outside gingerly, looking back and forth at her surroundings. No other inhabitants to be seen. Her balcony overlooked a garden, from rather high up; in the distance, she could see a familiar-looking fountain. Beyond that was the Labyrinth, twisting wildly across the horizon. She averted her eyes from it, sitting down on the stone and leaning against the railing. It was pleasantly warm. She ate her apples and let the sun dry her hair, feeling all too peaceful.
Yes, it was a beautiful day. Yes, she had a huge room and a bathroom to herself. Yes, she didn't have to go sit through a tedious 90 minutes of precalculus class. But Sarah had to remind herself that she couldn't meditate there, alone, forever. There was a Goblin King lurking somewhere close-by, and he had stolen her away to this place. He needed to learn that he couldn't just do that to people.
She had finished the apples and her hair was mostly dry. She pulled it back into a ponytail, her own schoolgirl version of girding her loins. She stood, shaking her skirts out and straightening the layers. Time to go forth into battle.
It was the third door, unopened, that she strode toward, that door that she cracked and peered through. She slipped into the long hallway that it revealed, nervous but determined. It was tall and narrow, light pouring in through diamond-paned clerestory windows on one side. There were a few other doors in sight, but they were firmly shut. She didn't open them. The atmosphere was one of unbroken serenity and dust lay thick in the corners. Life rarely visited this corridor.
To her left, the hall merely ended. To her right it turned a corner. Sarah went right, feeling as though she had yet another Labyrinth to solve. More doors, another straight and quiet passage. Where were all the goblins? It took her almost five minutes to walk to the end. She turned left this time, and there was a wide staircase. A tall window decorated the landing, lancet-shaped but huge. It was filled with stained glass: the scene showed a slim, dark-haired girl holding something. A maze winded around her feet.
It looked very, very old. Sarah was disturbed.
She moved quickly on.
When the girl reached the bottom of the stairs, she finally heard a sound that she hadn't made herself. There was a light pinging behind her. Turning around, she saw a small crystal come bouncing down the staircase; it starting rolling when it hit the floor beside her. Sarah made a face but followed it. Improbably, it rolled around a corner and stopped in front of a doorway. This one had a carved goblin head at its center and leaves making a border around it. Looking down, Sarah saw that the crystal disappeared. She knocked at the door with a sigh. It opened silently. She would have liked to slam it.
"There you are," said a masculine voice. Jareth sat behind a desk, the wood darkened with age. He was leaning back in a chair, feet propped up on the tabletop and a sheaf of papers in his hand. A fireplace took up much of one wall, but the rest were lined with full bookshelves. A rug patterned in blue and maroon lay on the floor. An armchair occupied the space in front of the fireplace, but a couple of smaller chairs sat in front of the desk. Sarah did not sit down.
"Here I am," she repeated sharply. "Since you have so kindly prevented me from going anywhere else."
"I trust you will forgive the inconvenience. Did you rest well?"
Sarah ground her teeth. She hated how blithely he ignored her anger. There was a glass paperweight on his desk—it would be so lovely to throw it in his smirking face.
He caught it neatly before it hit him.
"That is exactly why you're here," he said chidingly.
"So I can give you a concussion?" Sarah asked in a mock-hopeful voice. Jareth snorted.
"How would you like it if, someday, you were being scolded by your employer and the ceiling came crashing down on his head? Or on one of your teachers? What if you killed them?"
Sarah had no response to that.
"Here we are, then. If you can, please try to put aside your contempt for a time. I will attempt to be civil. Will you agree to that? Temporarily, at least?" His voice turned sober and he held her gaze. After a long pause, Sarah nodded curtly. He waved his hand at a chair and she sat down. The king swung his feet off of the desk and scooted closer to her, sitting up straight. He steepled his hands in front of him.
"Can you make anything happen on purpose?" he asked. Sarah shook her head. He nodded.
"Once you learn to make the power come at command, you can prevent it from doing anything unexpected. It's just a matter of muscle control, if you will, like learning to raise one eyebrow at a time."
He made it sound so simple. Sarah frowned.
"How do I do that?"
"Practice. First, you must find the place in you where your magic lies. It seems to rise in response to emotions—can you remember feeling anything when you started that fire, for example, that was more than simple rage? You've felt anger many times, but you don't always burn things."
Jareth's voice and face had turned serious, an almost abstracted look in his eyes. This was the scholar-Jareth, then, that she had glimpsed the night before, emptied of mischief. She felt more comfortable around this person who didn't bait her endlessly; she answered more candidly.
"I don't know," she replied honestly. "When I got stuck in the hazy lands, it was like a switch was flipped in my head. Like something just turned on."
"Can you duplicate the feeling?"
"...maybe." She considered this. "I don't know what would happen, though."
He looked around and fixed his eyes on a candelabra perched on his desk. Jareth picked it up and placed it in the fireplace before sitting back down.
"Try to light the candles."
"Why the fireplace?"
"Just in case you explode it instead." He grinned broadly before flickering back into the scholar. Sarah shifted uneasily.
"Okay. I'll... try." She closed her eyes and tried to remember the other times she had used her magic. There was the regular feeling of anger, or fear, or happiness. The emotion had welled up inside of her like rising water, until it nudged something at the very heart of her... prodded it, waking it, urging it on. And the feeling had touched... right... there....
She jerked upright as something suddenly fizzed and she directed it instinctively toward the candelabra. All six candles burst into flame simultaneously—and literally burst, tall and bright, immediately melting each one down to half its size. Sarah gasped, hands clutching at the arms of her chair.
Jareth burst into a peal of hearty laughter, bright and full of true surprised delight. It was a startlingly appealing sound, for all that it was directed at Sarah herself. She shook herself and stared at him.
"What?" she squeaked, disconcerted. "That was not funny."
He wiped his eyes, still shaking slightly. "I do not know what I have done," he pronounced wryly. "I do not know what you have done."
"What does that mean?" she asked edgily.
"It means that you are a creature unique in the world." He sighed and became serious again. "I suppose that you found the right spot. Do you remember it?"
"Yes," she said after a moment's thought. "Yes, I do."
"Good. Firstly, then, I would ask that you not practice on your own. You might pull the castle down around you--" an ugly frown at that "--as you have already done, partially, in the past. Which I do not appreciate. Secondly, I think it would be best that you learn to form crystals next. They will... contain... any spell until used, which should prevent any dangerous flare-ups. Any unexpected magic can be dissolved."
"How long will that take?" she asked. He raised his eyebrows.
"As long as it takes. We will have to find more clothing for you—I doubt that Meggedy would be willing to loan you the rest of hers."
"Meggedy?"
"One of my subjects, and the only one roughly your size and shape. New clothes could be prepared in a week, at most." He said this musingly. Sarah's jaw dropped.
"I cannot stay here for a week! My parents will think I've been kidnapped, which, incidentally, I have been!"
"Don't be difficult. A week is nothing. If you're lucky, it will take you most of that to form a good crystal. It will take much longer to school you fully."
"No."
"No?" asked Jareth dangerously. "I don't think you're in a position to be saying 'no' to anything."
"Send me home. I'll survive. If I don't, it's none of your concern." Sarah spoke with all the bravado of a wronged and furious teenager, and a brashness that had always been her own. She had never responded well to autocracy.
"You little brat, it is entirely my concern," he said sharply. "You will stay here if I say so, which I do. I am the ruler of this land, and I will not be defied in my own library. I don't care what your precious parents worry about you; if you act like this at home, perhaps they'll be grateful for your absence."
Sarah was so angry that she couldn't speak. Tears pricked at her eyes but would not fall. She staunchly avoided the tender area of her mind that produced fire and flowers. Jareth stared at her fiercely, sucked in a deep breath, and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. He closed his eyes.
"You can go to your chamber, now," he said in a level voice. "I will not have you wandering about and getting into trouble. A meal will be sent up to you. Later this afternoon, a seamstress will come and take your measure. After that, perhaps, we will have another lesson, though the gods know that we may not survive it. Somehow we always manage to prod each other into a murderous rage. It can't be healthy for either one of us.
He opened his eyes again. Sarah opened her mouth, as if to argue, but he shot her a venomous look.
"Go," he spat, "Since you so hate being here."
She went. She walked very quickly out the door and back up the stairs, past the stained glass and down the halls. She broke into a run at the final stretch, fleeing into her own quiet room. She shut the door gently behind herself.
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A/N: Well, that took awhile, but finally done. More actual plot next chapter, I think, which hopefully will be out soon. Definitely more Sarah/Jareth action! Perhaps they'll start to get along better. Meanwhile, thank you once again to the reviewers, new and old: Mystic Catface, Aowyn, Kathleen, draegon-fire, Velf, Amazonian21, BOWIEgirl, Moonjava, Cyber Keiko, CrimsonSympathy, Tellergirl, Lhiata, Alissa7, and Cariah Delonne. Comments, compliments, constructive criticism are much appreciated. Yes, I'm a feedback slut. Hopefully people enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoy writing it.