As soon as Jareth disappears, I take Faust by the collar and walk him to the door. One handedly, I withdraw a key that hangs from a chain on my neck and shove it into the lock.
The twisting dusty hallway of the castle doesn't wait for us on the other side, only darkness and stars. Faust is rather reluctant to step out into the sky, but he'd follow me to the end of time if I asked him to.
"You're back," Janus says as our feet—and paws—hit the marble floor of his temple. He has switched his face, no longer young and dark haired, his second face wears a flowing white beard and the wrinkles of a being who has spent too long looking back over the long years behind him.
"How long were we gone?" I ask anxiously.
"It's dawn," he answers.
My heart skips a beat. I left the girls for an entire day—an entire night.
"We have to go," I say unnecessarily as I head back down the row of columns, searching for the place where the sky lightens to pink and gold.
Before I make it far, something stops me in my tracks. Faust skids past me and Janus nearly knocks right into my back as my head swivels around to face the darkness between two columns.
There are no strains of pink or purple here. Dead leaves and loam flavor the air that whistles past the marble pillars as a blood chilling howl reaches my ears.
Faust draws near, his own ears flat against his head, his lips pulled back in a snarl as a dozen identical voices join the first.
"This door leads to the Autumn Court," I say to no one in particular.
"It does," Janus says giving me a gentle push. "That is certainly not a door for you."
"No," I shake my head and command my feet to go on but a fear has taken root within me.
My problem is Jareth. Jareth who sings to the children he takes, who plays pirates with his child-like charges, who sidetracks girls with dreams of ball gowns and chiming clocks. His cruelty is much like that of a child's—a rockstar Peter Pan. He is forever young. Something tells me that Gwyn is not. I tend to think that all the fey are like my own—even thought I know better. Cruel, yes, powerful, yes, but playful and charming as well. Jareth can be dangerous, he has all the power and potential for it, but not necessarily the predilection.
That portal is not the least bit playful. It is all danger.
"I did the right thing, Janus. You have your understandable misgivings, but I did the right thing," I say before taking my place before the space that would return me to my own little copse of trees.
"Hope you're right," he says before Faust and I step out into the summer heat.
In minutes we are rushing through the back garden still buzzing with fairies. The sight makes me smile even though I'm anxious to be back inside, to see my girls and be reassured of their safety.
"Sarah?"
"Clair? What are you doing here?" Faust passes me on the steps and paws open the screen door, obviously eager to check on girls. Clair holds the door out for me as I follow him.
"Emma called when you didn't come home last night," Clair answers. "Roselyn agreed to check on my house while I stayed here. Where have you been? We were worried." Clair always worries. Hell we all do, but she's the worst.
"I was searching for answers to my problems and lost track of time," I say turning toward the kitchen. I need a cup of tea.
"Where did you go?" She asks plucking a white feather from my hair which I snatch from her fingers and place on the counter before filling the kettle.
"The Twilight Court," I answer, my back still turned toward her.
"You didn't!"
"I had no other choice," I whisper and launch into the story I pulled from Asher.
"You should've come to us," Clair answers automatically. "Roselyn, James, and I could have helped you figure something out. Or, we could've at least tried to come up with something better than that! Your plan goes against every tenet of this campus. We're supposed to help these people move on, not entangle them further into the worlds beyond."
"You don't understand. I don't understand," I lean against the counter and cross my arms over my chest as the water begins to simmer. "This girl is already entangled with a seasonal court ruler, the leader of the wild hunt. He's not going to pester us with bad poetry etched in ice across the windows. Come Hallows Eve, he'll be here, ready to claim that girl. I don't even know what kind of foolishness landed her in this position. Did she pledge herself to serve him? Make a deal? Heavens forbid that she bound herself to him!"
A startled intake of breath pulls my attention to the hall. Asher is standing in the doorway, her face white as snow.
"Asher," I say dumbly, "I didn't see you there. Come in," I pull five mugs out of the cabinet and quickly fill them all with tea before placing the entire tray of tea things on the table.
Emma and Rachel are right on Asher's heels as I suspected they would be. We gather around the table as Rachel hunts around for a box of short bread cookies and takes her own seat. Faust slinks into his customary spot beneath the table, waiting for crumbs to stray.
Emma's hand flies toward my hair—which must be a complete mess—and she begins to pull out twigs and feathers. Nothing stays pristine in the Labyrinth…except its king.
I quickly pick out the white ones and pull them toward me, leaving her the black ones and twigs.
"You saw him again didn't you?" Rachel asks in her whisper soft voice.
"Again?" Clair jumps in.
I take a sip of my tea and think over my answer as my free hand idly toys with one long white feather.
"The Goblin King has agree to hide the girls within the Labyrinth on Hallows Eve if I can't think of something else," I reply. Better to be direct and get the craziest bit out in the open.
Silence.
In a house full of girls it is an unsettling thing and so my words just tumble out into the sun filled kitchen with its herb scented air.
"Janus, the god of doorways, let me into the labyrinth after Asher told me her story. Jareth had already warned me that I wouldn't like it. He was right. And, he knew I'd come looking for him," I stop long enough to take a sip of tea.
"You shouldn't have gone to him," Rachel whispers.
"It's not the same…" I turn to her to explain but Asher interrupts.
"We have to do this together. That's what you said. You can't stand on a podium and lecture us about facing problems as a team and then run off and make deals with fairy kings on your own!"
Clair has the audacity to smile.
"You're absolutely right," I throw my hands up in the air. Oh, how often people use my own words as weapons against me.
"We should talk with Roselyn and James," Clair says.
"I'm sure we should," I agree, shoving a cookie in my mouth and collecting my feathers. Without a word I turn to the shelf against the wall behind me and open a jar. It is already full of similar feathers. Feathers left on my windowsill at night or found along my favorite walking trails. I add the new ones and close the lid. This is the great secret I keep from the others—I am not willing to move on—to leave the Labyrinth.
"Sarah, that was a foolhardy move," James says in his condescending accent. It only reminds me a little of the Goblin King's.
"James," I smile sweetly across the wrought iron table out in the garden below the weeping willow, "I know that you are the expert of foolhardy moves, having spent three years as a mer-king's enthralled concubine and all but…"
"Sarah," Roselyn chides. She is the oldest of our quartet being somewhere in her fifties, however, you'd think she was much older. She mothers all us. Of course, her father crossed a rather nasty witch back in the 1600s who trapped her as a statue for over three hundred years. That may have had something to do with her increased level of maturity. She woke up still in a teenaged body and naked in a millionaire's conservatory in Rhode Island during the 70s.
"Well," I shrug, "he's acting like I was being completely thoughtless."
"No, just foolish," James smirks.
Clair rolls her eyes at us as Roselyn rubs a hand across her face.
"I've already admitted that I should have waited and talked with you all and the girls first. My actions were rash…but you should've felt the vibes of that passageway into Autumn," I shiver. "I was certain I was right after encountering it."
"That's another thing altogether," Clair jumps in. "You have no business running off to other places with a god!"
"Janus is my friend," I snap.
"A friend you didn't tell us about," James adds.
"I have a feeling Sarah has hidden a great deal from all of us," Roselyn says as she adds some mint to the lemonade Emma had brought out for us earlier in the evening. The shadows in the garden are growing long now, the sun riding low in the western sky, the first stars popping up on the horizon.
I feel beleaguered. And, I suppose it is my own fault. We four founded these houses to protect and nurture people with similar experiences to our own. There's camaraderie here, understanding, and acceptance. No one has to pretend to be perfectly normal, but in someways I am not like them. My experience with Fairy was not traumatizing. It altered my life, but in ways that I'd never change. My only regret is that my pettiness nearly cost me my brother.
"Hiding things is all Sarah can do. Anyone who knows her could tell you she's a gods awful liar," an amused voice comes from behind me.
James, Roselyn, and Clair are staring past me, shock clearly written across their faces.
Jareth collapses into the empty chair beside me immediately pillaging my plate of cookies and hijacking my glass of lemonade.
No one speaks.
"Have any of you met the master of the wild hunt?" he asks between bites of cookie as if this is the most normal thing in the world.
Everyone shakes their heads.
"If you had. You wouldn't be so cavalier. Sarah did the only thing she could to protect the girl, and that was coming to me," Jareth slouches back in his chair and smiles at me. "I brought you a gift."
My heart stops.
A crystal appears in his hand. There's a terrible gleam in his mismatched eyes as he tosses it into the air and the world breaks apart around us.
Dun Dun Duuun!