The throng assembled in the wide roofed room settled into an attentive hush. The crier stood poised to attention, toes straining to raise his height. The doors were flung open with a tremendous force, and so it began.
"His Royal Highness, King Jareth, Lord of the outer reaches, the Goblin realm, Overseer of the Dukedom of the Bogland Marsh," the callers mouth was open, poised to continue, until Jareth shot him a glare, and his words faded to meet the hush.
Jareth settled on his throne, as the titles of his sisters and their consorts were read out in succession as they trailed into the room behind his steps, as elaborately gowned as Jareth himself was attired. He had changed to evening dress, donning an elaborate frock coat painstakingly embroidered with diamantes and the colour of a brooding night sky. He surveyed the scene, so long since this stage last saw life, the guestshad already began their dancing, the first dance in honor of the king. The ladies were dressed beautifully, in silks of all colours, draped with jewels, rubies, sapphires, diamonds, the room had a hopelessly fantastical air, as if a dream-world leading a fragile temporal existence, but my was it living it to the full.
The first stage of events was the most drawn out of the necessities of the evening, a series of introductions, whereby all guests would bow or curtsy dependent on sex, and pass pleasantries and pretty talk, before Jareth would move on to the next faceless guests. This, in accordance with custom occurred in order of rank, Oberon, supreme ruler of the entire land of Sidhe, was of course occupied with other matters of greater magnitude and had in his stead sent his henchman and general troublemaker, Robin Goodfellow, infamous to all as Puck. Sending Puck as an emissary was generally considered to be a snub, there was no love lost between Oberon and Jareth. An exemplary example of Puck's misconduct was the time when he inadvertently managed to steal all the clothes from the guests at a lavish costume party, leading to much hilarity.
"My lord Jareth." Puck jiggled his head slightly before his face broke into a broad, manical grin, "your fortunes fare well m'lord? You appear in good health, I am assuming you have disposed of your unruly, drunken lot manifested in the form of the Goblin kingdom?"
"No, I fear not my friend Puck, send my kindest regards to Oberon and his fair Titania, and leave my sight. The purveyor of intoxicating substances passes behind ye." Puck eagerly chased after a Golden skinned girl pouring drinks from her slender willowy fingers, promptly leading for her to throw the tray into mid-air when Puck pulled the back of her dress off, leading to her running screaming promptly from the hall, with Puck in close pursuit.
"Good tidings to ye Jareth, I have a gift for you." The Elfin king Alberich bowed low, relations had always been good between the two realms, leading to the marriage of Anastasia to one of the lords of a local province, an arrangement Anastasia had not been particularly content with, in an expression of her chagrin with the situation, she had locked herself in her chambers and refused to leave them for ten years, when she finally emerged stating, 'I got bored.'
"A gift from you is sure to be a worthy one, Uncle." Jareth had always referred to him as Uncle, as a term of endearment, just as close friends were 'cousin' though Jareth had little opportunity to exercise this term.
"My younger daughter, Grimelda!" Alberich reached his hand out for that of his daughter, Jareth could see why the poor girl was being given as a gift, no man would pay for such a wife. She was possessed of blotchy flaking skin, straggly hair and an unpleasant demeanor and manner. Now, to refuse a gift is a great insult, gifts has to be accepted unless you are possessed with very sound reasoning, improvising, Jareth stated hastily yet with eloquently as is expected from a man of his standing:
"I am greatly honored and awed by your generosity, bountiful Alberich, it is with deep regret I must inform you that I am already bound to another in matrimony, but I would be happy to establish your fair daughter with a gentleman of good background and repute from my own lands." Thank Scrabbelscruff, I managed to escape that one, I despise such awkwardness. After a few more words, and a gaze of crushing disappointment from Alberich, they made their leave and retreated to the busy hub of the floor. There was a whole series of guests that followed, taking hours of his time, many a lady would smile alluring, made thinly veiled allusions to intimacy, which Jareth would politely disregard and reward with a slight upturn of his lips. Before Sarah, he would take such women to his bed, no longer, the allusions and innuendo continued, but went no further.
After the tedious introductions reached their end, the dancing commenced fully, it was customary for Jareth to dance with his sisters foremost before other ladies of court, and so he dance with each in succession, with grace and competency but all moves were made from a long stifled sense of duty, his eyes were ever watchful for the step of another. Dancing with Olga is not dissimilar to waltzing with a piece of stiff and stubborn cardboard, cardboard that whispers a torrent of nauseatingly dull political advice. Tatyana was little better, though a dance with her is like dancing with an unsmiling matron of honor, an old maid as opposed to a lady still in the flush of her youth. Anastasia could not be more different from the others, she danced energetically, almost overpoweringly, she lacked all sense of grace or form, but got far more pleasure from the twirls and steps than either elder sister. Maria was by far the most competent, dancing pleasantly using the steps that she had been taught – she remembered well, and to dance with her was a pleasure.
After his sisters, Jareth danced with the other ladies who lined to take his hand, all were stunningly beautiful, and all enamored by his charm and handsome features. They would spin round with him gazing enraptured into his eyes lusting for his love, all were married, but nearly all were loose open marriages that required no commitment from either partner, loveless marriages. Beneath the beauty and the glitter all led, sad, sad lives, living in a constant excess of glamor and intrigue to escape the devastating truth of their immortality. All left his embrace cold, broken, by his absolute sense of distance.
Puck would occasionally apparate by Jareth's side at intervals during the proceedings, once displacing a lady from his arms, resulting in a bizarre and gruesome pairing, the stunted malformed Puck with the elegant figure of Jareth, the Goblin King. "You have someone on your mind Jareth – a girl, ohh a pretty girl! Will it be in the reach of your boundless generosity to introduce this fair maiden to my sight?"
"No it is not, leave to torment another wretched soul, Puck." Puck with an almost insane energy, gave a deep exaggerated bow, dropping his head to the floor, before disappearing from view with a high pitched shriek.
After the first bout of dancing, when many had become heavily embroiled in the lures of liquor, and Puck was busily ravishing the elaborately laid out feast, it was time for a poetry reading. Jareth had chosen some earlier pieces to read out, mainly ones that dealt with 'happy' matters such as depression and sadness. Jareth's reasoning behind the choice of work was that he had access to a bottomless supply of words that rhymed with 'sad.' Here is a taster from the evening:
Life is rather depressing
Life is sort of sad
As your probably guessing
I am feeling kinda bad
One of the better (and the term is used loosely) examples of Jareth's skill is one of the scores written of Sarah, he had given up coming up with names for his many hundreds of compositions, so when reading the title, it was referred to as 'Poem 1334.' Included here are the first two stanzas of fourteen, though the general themes of the poem can be easily attained from the following excerpt:
I would liken thee to a summer's day
Though summer wouldst pale in comparison
I would state that your hair is like the midnight sky
But the sky is dim to compare
Your eyes, I would dare to say your eyes are like the moon
But the moon is so flat, so cold in contrast.
If any would dare to deny such contrasts
I would brand them a liar
(etc. etc...)
It was for Jareth's fortune that most of the guests were intoxicated at this point in the proceedings, if he had been an ordinary soul, he would have been likely to be pelted with oranges and rotting, fermenting vegetables, but being a king, and a handsome one at that, he escaped such critique. His rhymes were greeted with polite spurts of clapping, though sly murmurs and jibes were audible to the attentive members of the audience.
It was after this and a greater portion of the congregation surrounding the figure of Jareth enthusing over his poetic skill had lost consciousness that the dancing resumed once more. It was now late into the night, many had taken to their chambers for privacy, to escape from the boiling overpowering atmosphere of the place. The musicians were busily strumming tirelessly in the distance, as Jareth stood inattentively with his sister Anastasia, who was busily enthusing over the merits of women in the socio-economic structure, "I've told you time and time again women are perfectly capable of accounting, Jareth? Jareth? Where are you going?" Anastasia and her exasperated spouse turned to Jareth who was staring transfixed at the door, enraptured by the vision of a lovely girl, gowned entirely in white.
Phew, another chapter, down. Once again, this one had to be split, it was getting too long. I've updated my profile with (provisional) titles and summaries for my stories now, so if you're interested, you can take a look ;).
I hope you all enjoy this chapter, and in case your wondering the poetry is by me, and is mainly derivative of the kind of endlessly monotonous and dull romantic poems I had to study at school.
Anyway onwards to my reviewers!
InuLvr7 - I'm really pleased your enjoying it! And your welcome for the explanation, History is one of my interests so it's nice to include some of it here. I'm also especially pleased you liked chapter 8, cos that was VERY experimental, a try out for the sequel really. You're right about chapter 10 being a filler, it was one of the chapter's I didn't really want to write, but had to to explain some things, this one was a lot more fun!
Irresistible Malaria – Hi, I'm glad you liked the story, and the sisters, there were twelve sisters, but I had seven of them die in the first chapter (mean me!) which leaves me with the far more manageable number of four (one didn't come.) As for chapter 8, I know what you mean about it being solemn, if I gave the chapters name that one would be called 'ventures in prose' as it's basically me trying out the things that my teachers (try) to teach me in English! Hope you like this chapter!
Please, please review everyone! All reviews are very much appreciated!