There was something sharp in his shoulder, like pain but only almost. He looked and it was owl talons. The white owl looked at him.
"Hoo." He said, and looked back at his sister.
"Give me the child." She said.
"But there is no child, Sarah." Blue Eye-Brown-Eye winked at her, and sharp-teeth smiled. Toby pressed his face and the palms of his hands against curved iridescent-clear crystal, through which he could see everything, but everything looked unreal, dream-shimmer.
The Goblin King and his sister sat at an ivory table in a long dark hall made out of stones and bones burnt black, in-set with silver and something else that gleamed. Two goblets set before them, carved whitish, that looked alike at the first looking but were subtly different, somehow. A lit silver candelabra with white tapers in lit them both like an aureole and made their eyes seem to flicker in time with the flames. Sarah looked like a Queen in a white gown out of an old maid's wish, set about with pearls like the souls of saints and inlaid with silver and stars. They wreathed her hair and hung from her ears, and their dust shadowed her eyes and made her lips shimmer. Her lips were frowning, but the frown seemed like a thing of pure delight. The Goblin King looked like himself, night's guardian ogre in deep blues and purples; his stars made out of darkness and a single bright one of pure hope, hidden in his blue eye. He wore a crown of polished iron, and his look was one of extreme cleverness. He was waiting, of course, for Sarah to say something now, and it was taking her a very good deal of time. She was angry, it occurred to Toby, though it took him an equally long time to think so. Apparently, Jareth thought the same, for he spoke again.
"There is no child. There is a young man who belongs to himself only, and is perfectly capable of entering into bargains of his own free will."
"What could he possibly have that you would want?"
"Perhaps you could have thought of it, were you a trifle more perceptive. He, I have found, is far more adept at such things than you are. But perhaps, if you try, you will think of something."
Jareth smiled wider, and the white owl ruffled its wings and shook his head. It's shifting talons alleviated the pressure enough that when it stopped, it refreshed the pain of those talons anew.
"Ow!" hissed Toby sharply, but his sister and the Goblin King did not hear him, inside his crystal globe.
Sarah was looking at Jareth coldly. The silver on Jareth's eyelids seemed to turn to frost under her gaze.
"That is impossible. You never wanted him, and I am no one's to give away."
"And when, exactly, has such a thing as who does and doesn't belong to whom ever gotten in your way, Sarah? As I recall, it was you who never wanted him in the first place, and it was you who gave him to me with a wish. Tell me Sarah, did you fight so hard to steal him back out of love, or out of fear? Your quest was based entirely on a premise that did not matter—what would happen to you if your father and your step-monster found him gone. You never stopped to think that you needn't go back, there was nothing for you but things and ephemera in your other world. You would never have been punished, and you would have been wholly free. Did that never occur to you?"
"Free?" Sarah's hands gripped the lace of the tablecloth, "Free, with you? Free in a world of make-believe, with your traps and your crystals in a world where everyone is terrified of you and your bullying? What kind of freedom is that?"
"What kind of freedom is… haven't you seen it, or were you too wrapped up in the millions of little worlds you're created in your books and your poems that you never really looked at what was around you, in the mundane universe. You left my world, true—you left it, and me, and you took all of my subjects with you, leaving me alone, with only a handful of stories, some wishes to grant, and a bag of dreams all at loose ends. Did you never care what happened to me, Sarah? Did you think your little act of defiance destroyed me? No. It only broke my heart, and that is all."
He sipped some of the liquid from the cup on the left, then he closed his eyes and opened them. When he opened them Toby started, for the eyes were looking right at him, and it made him slip on the smooth crystal surface and nearly fall. But the owl with its pinching talons kept him upright. Blue-eye-brown-eye seemed to laugh, though his lips stayed tightly closed, and then they looked at Sarah again.
"Did you never stop to think what the consequences of your wish might have been for Toby? Yes, you took him back to your normal world and made him live your normal life, but I had seen his dreams by then, and I know what he has wanted, all of this time. You never gave me the opportunity to discuss it with you—his future."
"It didn't belong to you, or to me." Sarah protested,
"On the contrary, Sarah. You gave him to me, after all. Did you know he never dreams, anymore? That when you took him from me, you left his dreams behind? Did you never see the way that people never saw him? Did you never see they way he stood at forty-five degrees to the rest of the world, nothing but the fragile object of a quest? Did you never see the way he needed you, the way that the only dreams he had were ones he took from you, because he had none of his own? Because of what you did to him, when he was a child, something to be bartered for and coveted. Did you know that when you left him, you took his dreams away? Oh yes, he and I have more in common than you know."
"Where is he?" Sarah stood, fists clenched, fire-borne gaze darting about furiously. Toby wanted to say, "Here, I'm here!" But the owl's talon's tightened on his shoulder with a low, warning "hoo." He swatted at it with his other hand, but it didn't seem to mind. Jareth chuckled below them, folding his fingers together like paper cranes.
"I am afraid that he is dreaming, and that now, he will never stop. He will spend eternity in the night places, on the plane of unperceived reality. And by the way—that is your fault too."
"What? I…" She closed her eyes suddenly, remembering. "Oh, God. God dammit, the crystal."
"You always were too hasty. You never thought things through. Your predisposition to be a woman of action is, in some ways admirable, but this time I fear you have done your little brother a great disservice. But isn't that just like you?" He smiled cruelly, "All of your life, quite by accident, you have been hurting that boy. It stands to reason that he might want something for himself sometime. And why shouldn't he want to trade you for it, considering all the pain that you have caused him?"
Sarah slumped back into her chair, and Toby wondered if she really believed all the stuff that Jareth was saying. Or, further, if he did, himself. He wondered how the Goblin King had come to her the first time, and if he had come to Sarah's mother, before her? Either way, he decided that he didn't really think that the state of his dreams could really have been Sarah's fault. After all, she was the only one who really, really saw him.
"What did he wish for?" Sarah was saying.
"That, my dear, is between myself and my namesake. I cannot divulge the terms of a deal made in confidence."
"I have a right to know, if I am in the bargain."
"Very well. He wished to have his dreams back. He wanted people to see him. Something you would know nothing about, I'm sure."
"I always saw him." She said, defensively.
"Did you really? You may have looked at him, and perhaps you watched over him, but did you really see him, Sarah? What do you know about what he wants, or—I ask you again—his dreams? Rather, his lack of dreams. Or else, were you more concerned with protecting yourself and your sense of guilt than ensuring that he was—truly—happy?"
Sarah stared down at the base of the goblets before her, and then looked up at Jareth.
"You have no power over me."
Jareth blinked at her, twice, then threw back his head and laughed. It was a ringing, merry sound, but very unkind; the violin discordant. Sarah stared and stared.
"I certainly do not have any power over you at all, Sarah, as you and I both well know. I have no bargain with you, after all." He leaned forward across the table, "Likewise, however, you have no power over me. Or have you forgotten the real meaning of My Will Is As Strong As Yours?"
His words and his laughing were like a slap in the face to Sarah, and Toby was shocked to see how close she was to defeat. She was beginning to look it—tired and beaten. "What do you want from me?" She asked.
"So it's a question of what I want, is it? That does make things interesting." He folded his hands again and came up with a crystal, which made her start. He turned it over, and it was a peach. "When was the last time you thought of me, Sarah? Other than listening to your brother's music—though I will admit, the boy and his little band have quite a lot of talent, indeed."
Sarah clenched her teeth. "What is it I have to do, to make you release him?"
"You're assuming that I am holding him prisoner."
"Where is he?"
"What a remarkable lot of silly questions you ask, Sarah. Your brother is far more incisive with his. You could learn quite a lot from his manners. But…" He steepled the peach on two of his fingers, and then turned it over. Suddenly, Toby was looking up at the looming face grinning with brown-eye-blue-eye, large clawed fingers below his feet, and the astonished face of his sister staring wide-eyed over the flickering candlelight. The owl on his shoulder did not seem in the slightest disturbed by any of this, and only ruffled its feathers a little and whistled a soft, "hoo."
"You have two options, Sarah" Jareth said, "first, you can fulfill his bargain. Come back to me, let me into your dreams and live in mine, and I shall restore him his crystal, that he may dream and be seen. Or you can deny me again, and awaken."
"And what happens if I deny you?"
"You would really force your brother to continue in that mundane half-life? Of course you would not. Not even I am that cruel, especially not to such a good little goblin as he. I promised him dreams, and he shall have them, whatever you decide."
"You're trying to trick me."
"Perish the thought." He laid a finger aside his mouth. "I can't blame you for not trusting me. I am not at all trustworthy." The crystal raised out of his hand and floated in the centre of the table, over the candelabra. Toby worried that the bottom would get too hot and burn him, but it stayed blissfully cool. "Perhaps we should let the boy say a few words."
And then the bubble burst, and Toby was sitting in a chair at the table, dressed in strange fabrics and with a circlet on his head. He touched it in wonder, and looked from the taught, star-wreathed face of his sister to the smooth, imperturbable face of the Goblin King.
"So Jareth," Said the King to the boy, "what have you got to say for yourself?"
Toby blinked and opened his mouth. A crystal, round and beautiful as the moon transparent dropped out, and he caught it in astonished, ready hands. He blinked again and opened his mouth to make some exclamation, and two more dropped out and into his hands, one in each palm and the third one balanced on top of them.
"Stop it!" Sarah was on her feet, fists clenched and grinding into the table, "you have no power over him!"
"We had a bargain," Jareth rose to his feet as well, like the moon rising in a dark sky over dark earth. The crystals began to spin over Toby's fingers, and when he started to protest, two more joined them, "And You broke it."
He jabbed a finger in Sarah's direction, then stretched out his other hand to Toby. At once the crystals flew out of Toby's flying, dancing hands and came to him, framing his face with their orbit. He crossed his arms.
"Well?" He cocked a fierce, feathered eyebrow at Toby, "don't you have anything to say, my Goblin Prince?"
"Yeah…" Toby gulped air, at finding his voice. Sarah gave a small cry and ran to him, wrapping her arms about him protectively. It gave him comfort, but he still felt… oddly detached. And he didn't like the look on Jareth's face as he witnessed this touching scene. Toby gave Sarah a squeeze back, then gently removed her arms from around him.
"Sarah…" he said, "Why did you run from… him?" His tone was not accusing, but curious. Sarah still swallowed as if she'd been slapped.
"You couldn't understand… he was going to keep you and turn you into a goblin…"
It occurred to Toby that having been brought up a goblin wouldn't have been so horrible. It might have been better than being a ghost all of his life. But he didn't want to say it to Sarah, and it occurred to him that everything he wanted to say to her would hurt. He could tell from the guilt on her face and the concern. She really hadn't imagined that one day he could want something that she had refused. Jareth frowned.
"Why don't you ask her what it was precisely she wished for, so very long ago, dear Jareth." He blinked first brown eye, then blue at Toby and Sarah and smiled savagely. Toby looked into Sarah's ace without thinking of it was a little surprised to see her terror there.
"Stop," she said, "That's not fair!"
"You have to pay for what you did, Sarah," Jareth almost sang, "What you wished and what you wanted."
"Just shut up, Jareth, shut up!" That sounded nothing but lame, thought Toby, but it worked. Jareth shut up. Sarah was still terrified, however, when he looked into her face, waiting for his judgment. He sighed and hung his head.
"I don't know what it is that's between you two exactly," said Toby, "and I guess…" He could guess the story of what happened with him, how that went down, and he didn't know how he felt about it, exactly. She might have wished him away, sure, but she'd gone to get him back, she did… and it was a long time ago. As S.E. Hinton said in one of his more favorite books, That Was Then and This is Now. Now, he looked at his sister, "I guess you have to make your choices and I have to make mine, and I've been happier in the last week than I have ever been in my whole life." He looked at the grinning Goblin King, "I want the crystal back. I want to stay here."
"Ask the Worldshaper," said Jareth smoothly, "Sarah, you heard him. Are you going to give him what he wants?"
"I don't see how I have anything to do with it," She said, "I guess you're old enough to make your own decisions, Toby." He could see the tears on the edge of her eyes, how much that cost her to say, begging him to reconsider.
"You will be the Goblin Prince," said Jareth softly, "the Prince of Night Places for true. If this is the world that you want."
"It is." Toby closed his eyes and looked at his sister, "Sorry."
The tears spilled over the edges of her eyes and she closed them, and then she opened them again.
She was in Toby's bed, in a silent room free of dreams or goblins, and she was so awake that it hurt.