Chapter 17. Pearls before swine
Sarah arrived at home just as the sun was setting. Her father sat in the parlor reading his evening paper with Toby playing in the playpen at his feet. Karen was in the kitchen working on dinner. "I'm home." She called out wondering if she should tell her parents about her run in with the shrink, and if she did tell them, what would she say? I went to the park, had some kind of black out and woke up in the shrink's office, alone with him? No, she didn't want to say that.
"Did you have a good time skating?" Karen called out of the kitchen.
"Fine," Sarah sighed, putting her coat over her arm, panicking at the thought that she'd somehow lost her skates. She hoped that her father, if he even heard or registered that Karen asked about skating, would think that the skates were under the coat. "I'm going up to my room until dinner is ready." She heard no protest or objections, so she walked quietly up the stairs. Her room didn't seem as welcoming as it normally did. Right now she would have loved to go into to Toby's room and retrieve her bear, Lancelot. Sarah sat down on her bed and sniffed the coat. It did smell more like paint thinner than cleaning fluid. Could Mayfaire have been right? She tossed the coat aside on the bed and walked over to her windows. On the branch, just as she knew he would be, sat the barn owl that had been there for months. "Okay!" She said opening the window and speaking to the bird staring at her with a look of superiority on its face. "Okay, I was wrong! What do you want from me?"
The owl blinked once, and flapped his wings.
Sarah leaned on the window frame. "I don't understand any of this." She pulled back into to the room, shutting the window. "Why would Meg want to drug me?" She racked her brain seeking an answer. Meg had nothing to gain, did she? Or did she? Sarah began to remember there was someone else in the park, Hank. "Oh, shit," she exclaimed tightly.
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Meg dialed the phone and put on her sweetest voice, "Hi, Mrs. Williams. Is Sarah home yet? She is? Good. Can I please speak to her?"
She waited. "Sarah? It's Meg, what happened to you?"
Sarah was guarded and her voice sounded tense. "I'm fine Meg, don't be such a worry wart. I can walk home alone, I'm not a baby."
"Oh, can't talk eh? Well ok, as long as you're home, by the way, I picked up your skates. I'll give them to you Monday at school." Meg tried to sound like a teen-aged conspirator. "Look, I'll talk to you at school come Monday. I want to hear everything." She replaced the receiver after she heard the click on the other end. "She's fine," the girl said in a voice that reflected just how little she truly cared about Sarah's wellbeing.
Hank smiled at her and patted her bottom when she took a seat on his lap, "Damn lucky you are that she is." An expression of concern crossed his face. "What did you do with the scarf?"
"Tossed it in a fire in a trash barrel," she sighed.
"Good girl." He leaned back in the chair, "We've got less than three weeks until Christmas vacation, Meg. I want her for my early Christmas present."
"You'll have her, even if I have to hog tie her and drag her to Hazelcrest on a kiddies sled." Meg cooed reaching down to the growing lump in Hanks pants, rubbing it she moaned as it throbbed.
Hank looked toward the stairs that led to the kitchen upstairs. "You want to cut that out? The old man is home." He saw she had no intention of ceasing or desisting, he smirked. "Okay, spitfire, why don't we take this into the bathroom and you can blow me fast behind the locked door."
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A voice kept ringing in Sarah's ears. 'You take too many things for granted,' Sarah tried to shut the voice out. "I don't, I don't," she grumbled. "Maybe I didn't want to see." Twice now while in Meg's company, something had caused her to not be in control; Sarah hated that. She began to piece things together in the dark room. A tapping at her door and her father's voice telling her dinner was ready broke her concentration.
Her father looked at her when she came to the table. "Are you feeling alright, Sarah? You look a little pale."
Karen looked over at her, "You're not coming down with a cold are you? It would be a terrible shame for you to get sick now and not be able to go to New York for your break. I know your mother is looking forward to your visit with her."
Sarah looked up, "I'm just tired from skating and walking in the park." She lied, not wanting to make too much of what she thought could be going on. After all, there was the outside chance she was wrong. She tried to look more cheerful, "I hear they are going to have a puppet show in the park the Sunday before Christmas, I bet Toby would love to see that. They are doing a 'Punch and Judy' show, too."
"Don't you think that's too violent?" Karen asked in a shocked voice. Both Robert and Sarah looked at her and chuckled at her expression of horror. Karen shook her head; "Oh, you two! Well, if he has nightmares, it'll be on your heads."
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On Monday morning when Sarah arrived at the school, she made a point to be where Meg could not get her alone. She kept busy with her morning classes, and when it came time for lunch she didn't go to the cafeteria but rather went over to the Home Ec. class room. She was having a conversation with the department head when Terry passed the room. Sarah spent the rest of the day giving Meg and Lana the slip without it looking like she was doing just that. By the end of the day, Sarah found she was enjoying this game of cat and mouse. The rest of the week she continued to outwit the others without it seeming that she knew anything. Friday after school, she dreaded meeting with Mayfaire.
Sarah looked at the stairs going up to the floor his offices were on. She wondered why he'd pick this strange building. It was still unoccupied except for his office, and Sarah didn't see much hope of it being occupied anytime in the future. The angles of the winding stairs reminded her of the Escher print that had hung in her room. It reminded her of something else, something she didn't want to remember; it reminded her of the Castle beyond the Goblin City.
She entered the office. The older woman sitting in the waiting room smiled up at her. "Hello Miss Williams. The doctor is ready for you. Go right in."
Sarah looked at the door, her hand trembled as she ventured in reached for the door knob. She was there, but it was clear she would rather not be. She'd expected to see him sitting at his desk looking like a king on a throne. He was not at the desk and she felt a strange mixture of relief and disappointment. She moved forward, looking at the desk as if searching for some deeper meaning.
"Sarah." A voice behind her caused her to stiffen.
Sarah felt her pulse race. "Do you have to do that, just pop up behind someone?"
Mayfaire grinned. "Shall we pick up where we left off?"
"Sure." She moved toward the couch, "We were discussing my resenting my little brother, were we not?"
He was already behind his desk, leaning back gazing at her through his steepled fingers. He looked as if he were brooding. "We were discussing your encounter with the Goblin King in the tunnel under the Labyrinth." He murmured.
Sarah dropped down on the couch, harder than she'd intended to. "Let's not go there again."
Mayfaire shrugged, "We can move along if you like, but you have to tell me what happened next. "
Sarah wondered what he would do if she kicked off her shoes and curled her legs under her on the couch. "You asked how I was enjoying your labyrinth."
"And?" He smirked.
"I told you it was a piece of cake;" she looked away, not able to meet his eyes, not even now. Then, miffed, she looked at him with ire. "You sent the cleaners after me! You almost got me and Hoggle killed!"
"Hoggle again," he wrote down the name and something else on the yellow pad of papers. "You seem to spend a great deal of time with this person."
Feeling as if she now had the upper hand, Sarah rose and clasped her hands behind her back as she moved about; "Still feeling jealous, Goblin King?" The eyes belonging to the man behind the desk made her feel as if he knew what she looked like without her clothes. It was thrilling and frightening and Sarah was enjoying every moment.
"Do I have reason to be?" He asked.
Sarah paused, stopped pacing and shrugged; "No, not really," she whispered before she remembered not to say a word. She looked at him. "What do you want from me?'
"I could ask you the same thing." He said as he moved the eraser end of the pencil over his lips. "What do you want, Sarah?"
"Everything you offer carries too high a price." She pouted. His head rolled back along the back of his chair, he looked arrogant, and smug, and hot. His mouth formed a smug smirk that Sarah would have loved to remove.
"What price is too high?" He challenged.
"Isn't it enough that I've given up my dreams, Goblin King? Do you really have to take more from me? Leave me my pride." She walked toward the windows, pausing when she heard the wings above her. She looked up fearfully, but through the corner of her eye, seeing him still in his chair, she relaxed. The man behind the desk seemed to be considering the request, and then, as she knew he would, he rejected the appeal. He moved from the chair with an easy manner, closing in on her like a bird of prey on the wing. He didn't even have to touch her for her to know he was beside her. "Not even that? Fine, take it all. I suppose I owe it to you for rejecting you."
Mayfaire studied her profile, approving of what he saw. "No one likes to be rejected, Sarah."
"I know." She sighed. "But it was you or Toby, and I could not let you have him. It was my fault he was in your clutches at all." She placed her forehead once more to the cool glass of the window. "It should have been me, not him…"
"Do you resent him so very much?" The man at her side asked quietly, letting her ponder the answer.
"Not him. Not really," Sarah replied, pausing to think. "Then again, maybe I do." She brought her hands up to her temples. "Nothing has been the same since Daddy married Karen and they had Toby." She moaned. "I'm not the little princess anymore."
"Princesses have to grow up, Sarah."
He sounded so comforting with her eyes shut and Sarah needed to be comforted just now. "Everyone grows up, except for one boy? Is that what you mean?"
"Well, let's leave young Master Pan out of the mix for now;" teased the man at her side. "I never cared for his story."
Sarah laughed as the tear slid down her cheek. "Now, that's funny." She felt the hand at her elbow and allowed him to lead her back to the couch. She sat, and looked up at him. "I don't hate Toby. I don't even really hate Karen."
"What do you feel, Sarah?" The voice in the room asked.
"Frightened." She whispered back. "I'm frightened."
"Of what?"
Sarah leaned back, her head making contact with the back of the couch. "Of having to grow up, of the changes in me- my body-my soul, of having no fantasy or dreams left."
"Growing up does not necessarily mean having no dreams, my dear." He moved back to his chair. "It only means you have different sorts of dreams."
Sarah looked over towards him, his words were tempting. "But there'll be no more knights in shiny armor, or dark towers, or handsome Fairy Kings."
"Won't there?"
"No," she looked away; "And I so need that right now, I need a Fae King to sweep me up and save me." Her voice trembled, making her sound exhausted.
"You rejected the Goblin King, Sarah." He reminded her as he looked at a note he'd made.
Sarah shot off the couch, "You can not have Toby."
Mayfaire looked at the young woman, Amazonian standing her ground, defending her brother. "I don't want him." He said.
Sarah felt the tingle in her skin, moving though her chest cavity and making her breasts react. She crossed her arms across her chest tight to make it stop. "I'm not going to play your games. I beat the Labyrinth, fair and square, and there's nothing you can do about it. You cheated, and I still beat you."
"Cheated?" He raised a brow skeptically. "I wouldn't call it cheating." He goaded knowing she'd have no recourse but to give him information unwillingly.
"What do you call reordering time and taking away some of my thirteen hours?" She accused.
"Challenging," he replied. "After all you did say it was a piece of cake."
"Dirty Goblin." She snapped.
"You're no match for me." He said offhandedly.
Sarah's face dropped her eyes resting on the crystal on his desk, glinting in the light of the lamp that was nearby, "Goblin King." She whispered again, eyes wide and convinced.
Mayfaire stood, regarding her much with the look an adversary gives before the final battle. "Sarah, be careful." Moving closer he stepped through a shadow, looking so much older in the light that played on his features. "Think." He warned.
"Are you going to tell me how cruel you can be?" She asked with more sass than she really felt.
The door opened, "Doctor?" Agnes cleared her throat. "Didn't you hear me knocking?"
Mayfaire looked at her, "No, I didn't, Agnes. what is it?"
"Miss Williams' father is here." The elderly lady said quietly.
"Next week then," Mayfaire said, walking Sarah to the door.
"Yes," Sarah nodded.
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Meg stood with Lana in the narrow passage between the buildings that shielded them from the elements. Both were smoking and moved about to keep from taking a chill. Neither gave a thought to the surroundings; no one from the school ever came out here. Meg took long, deep drags on her cigarette, making it glow brightly each time.
"She must suspect something," Meg insisted. "She's giving us the cold shoulder and finding excuses to not join us even for lunch."
"She's not that smart." Lana stated with a bit of irritation.
Meg shook her head and leaned against the brick wall. "She is. That's the problem."
Lana sighed, crushing out her half smoked cigarette with her shoe. "Well, what do you want to do? You know Hank is going to be furious with us if we don't deliver the blasted girl to him. Though ( comma ) why I can't imagine. I'm rather bored with the whole thing."
Meg raised her hand, placing the heel of the palm to her forehead. "Sarah said something about going to New York for the holidays. That leaves us this last weekend. She's got her appointment with the shrink on Friday, and I over heard her telling the art teacher she was taking that brat brother of hers to the puppet show on Sunday. So that leaves us with Saturday. We have to get her to come with us somehow, last minute holiday shopping or some other excuse. This time I'm taking no chances, I've got something that will make it impossible for her to resist us. I'm not using paint thinner this time."
Lana laughed, "You plan on giving her a ruffie?" Her smile faded when she looked at Meg's face. "What have you got?"
"Something our vet gave us for the dog when he got sick." Meg said with a smile, "It'll knock the bitch off her pins long enough for Hank to dip his wick."
"Is it safe to give a human something for a dog?" Lana began to worry.
"Just think of her as a good bitch being brought to heel." Meg tossed her cigarette aside. "Just don't say anything about this to Terry. I don't want to hear her taking the moral high road. I've had enough of her already." She pulled the tie on her coat tighter. "Come on, I'm freezing and I want to get home. We have just a few days to plan." Her arm drew the other girl along the long passage and then out into the green area leading to the street.
In a room just one floor above where the two had stood, in the dark, sat a girl huddled to a wall. Fearing what that pair below were plotting, not just for Sarah, but for her. Terry began to wonder why she ever let Meg lead her down this path. All she could see was disaster.