Thy Bog Overfloweth

Chapter 15

Each morning from May fourth through May twelfth, Sarah woke cautiously, half expecting to find herself in another hers-not-hers body, one achingly familiar and bizarrely different like the Kelpie form had been.

And as Jareth would say, dear deities, that one day had provided her with enough fodder for her Re-imagining writing class to last... probably long past her college career, actually.

It had also given Sarah the weirdest dreams, even by her standards; in the last one, Jareth and she had been arguing (not very unusual, dreaming or awake) and the Goblin King had been angry enough to threaten Toby. She, in all her infinite wisdom, ignored the King's warnings, and Toby turned into the oddest Goblin, somewhere between a mouse and a llama... Then he started wailing. Well, it was more of a screeching bagpipe cry. Toby-llama-Goblin started yodeling in this awful noise, pausing regularly for breath...

Sarah'd jerked into consciousness and slapped off her alarm clock. Jareth shot her a very peculiar look as she rolled out of bed, dodging Faolan and scooping up Izzi as she stumbled into the bathroom.

Jareth glanced down at Faolan, noting the wolf's confused expression. "Damn her writer's hide and mind, the blasted girl projects her dreams as loud as a person shouting through a megaphone. If she keeps this up, I doubt I'll get any rest."

Truly, the Goblin King did look unrested. There were faint shadows beneath his eyes, and a rather sleepy cast to his face, and a stiffness of the back that comes from an uneasy, awkward sleep, and he had bed head. For the Jareth, this meant that half of his hair retained its usual shape as a fluffy crown while the other half was plastered to his head.

Sarah noticed his odd demeanor when she returned from the bathroom. A rather damp Izzi floated through the air to perch on her tree as Sarah made the Goblin King sit down and get his temperature taken via digital thermometer. One hundred and nineteen point three, Sarah read with shock. Is that a fever or just a quirk that comes from living Underground?

"Jareth, what's the healthy body temperature of the Fae?" She tried to keep her voice neutral as she stared at the thermometer.

"Dunno," he told her candidly. "Why?"

"Because according to the thermometer, you should be denaturing. You would be dead if you were human, and I really need to know you aren't about to drop dead."

Jareth rubbed tiredly at his temples and pointed to the bonsai tree Izzi sat on. "Send my mother a message through the tree, she'll know."

Sarah eyed the tree questioningly. "How do I do that?" Izzi's head bobbed up and down, expecting a note to teleport to the Queen. Very subtly, Sarah shook her head at the little drake, who proceeded to sulk in her tree.

"Write a note, I'll fold it for you and you'll tie it a certain way on one of the tree branches. Then you write the recipient's name on the note and tell the tree where they are. Mind you, this only works with some people. My mother is of the deepest forests, so she'll get the note, and even if she doesn't, one of her courtiers will."

Sarah penned the note quickly, hoping Chame would read between the lines and see Sarah's rather pathetic query, "what do I do now?" Jareth folded the letter with a few practiced twists before handing it back over to Sarah.

"Twist it as you fold it under," he instructed, "and then you just loop it through. Did you get it?" When Sarah nodded, Jareth continued. "Use one of the many multiplying pens you keep--"

"They don't multiply!"

"Sarah, you had three pens when we came back from Toby's party. You now have nineteen. They've multiplied. Anyway, write down Chame Yasei... Do you need help spelling it?"

"Jareth, which one of us took four years of Japanese in high school, you or me?"

"You did..."

"I don't need help spelling your mom's name. What location do I say?"

"Dryad's Thicket, I should think. The note won't leave if it's the wrong place, so don't worry about the wrong person getting the message." Sarah repeated the location, and the note faded into the bonsai's bark with a sucking sound. Jareth slumped down on the bed.

"I predict a very embarrassing spectacle approaching," he drawled. Indeed, the words had barely faded from the air when Chame shimmered into view, a sprite hanging over her shoulder.

"Jareth, what's wrong? Are you really sick? Have you been getting enough fiber?" Chame fussed over her son as the sprite flitted over to speak with Sarah.

"Is there anything I can do to assist you and the Goblin King, Lady Sarah?" Sarah shook her head, staring at the sprite.

It's not fair, she thought sullenly. All these Fae creatures are supposed to be tiny little things, and they're all taller than me! Aloud, she rectified her previous assessment. "I need to know how to keep his fever down, if he has a fever," Sarah told the sprite. "And if you could inform a couple of Goblins, I'm sure they'll head on over to help me... and tend to His Majesty while I'm in classes."

"He has a fever," Chame called from where she was bullying Jareth into returning to bed. "Use ground poppy seeds to make a tea and sprinkle in chamomile leaves; it'll help with the headache. Valerian will help him sleep, which will help break the fever." Chame set a satchel of herbs on Sarah's desk chair, greeting Izzi as the drake poked her head out from the weeping boughs of the bonsai.

"I'll get going, then, and leave Her Majesty to explain," the sprite said as he flicked his translucent moth's wings about him like a cloak and disappeared.

"Just keep a window open, let him rest, and make him eat vegetables and proteins. Actually, make him drink milk-- it'll be good for him, protein and calcium, it'll get him better in no time. Unless he develops a cough, in which case he shouldn't have lactose at all and you should call for me immediately. Be careful, though, he's faked coughs in the past to keep from drinking the medicinal brews, which tend to make coughs worse--"

"Mother, I was fifty-two the last time I did that," Jareth protested. His arguments were cut off by Chame's continuation of medical advice and by the arrival of the Goblins.

Sarah passed on Chame's instructions to the Goblins and promised to return at noon with food. She then left for class, leaving Jareth to the tender mercies of Goblin nurses.

Sarah listened half-heartedly to her algebra teacher's droning lecture. She'd left her textbook at home, anyway, so it didn't really matter that her thoughts were on the busy times she would have in the next two weeks...

Jareth was still blissfully (and blessedly, Sarah thought) unaware that his attempts to "rectify" the mistakes in the book on medieval castles were being converted into the floor plans for his new castle. His family had overseen the deconstruction of the original Castle and the City around it with the help of the Goblins, the Earth-callers (beings that varied, being confined to no single species but brought together by a similar calling, pun intended), trolls, and anyone else the family of royals could convince, black-mail, or otherwise rope into helping.

This brought Sarah's wandering mind to Jareth's family. So far, she'd only met Chame, Fletcher, and Ravyn; Chame had shown her a family portrait. In addition to raising Jareth, Fletcher, and Ravyn, Chame had raised triplet boys and two more daughters. The triplets, Keenan, Rory, and Ahearn, were the masters behind the stone-smithing that was raising Jareth's new Castle. Ravyn's husband, Aodhan, was an architect by trade when he'd met the eldest of Chame's brood, so he was in charge of the others. Aibhilin and Emer were overseeing the reconstruction of the Goblin City; as the youngest siblings, the others had some doubts about the quality of the new City, but Chame had shown Sarah their blueprints and Sarah thought it was genius.

"Miss Williams, if you'd be so kind," the professor called out, snapping Sarah's mental meanderings.

"Three x squared root four of nine," she replied, hoping to hell and back that she was answering the right problem. The professor gazed at her a moment longer, waiting for her to revert to her slacking, his demeanor accusatory. When Sarah continued to pay attention, the professor continued the lesson.

Safe once more, Sarah regressed to her trip down Things I Should Have Riddled Out Ages Ago Avenue. It's really quite easy to get there, you know. Take a left down Memory Lane, head straight past Regrets Road, take a right off Troublesome Stuff; the Avenue is the second street after Problems I've Had Cul-de-sac and the first street after What I'm Dealing With Now Boulevard.

Goblins, it should be known, are generally not good nurses. They're amazingly resilient, and they tend to get sick 1.8 times in their life (number courtesy of The City Courier, Health and Sports section, volume 3,427,659,778, Sun's Day Edition).

So it just stands to reason (if one even wishes to attempt applying reason to any of the Fae folk, especially the chaotic Goblins) that the Goblins don't have much use for gentle bed-side manners that many doctors have. In fact, they make damn lousy doctors for the most part, and the four attending to Jareth were no exception.

"She said poppy tea for sleep, ijit," Roffle growled.

"Nuh-uh," Gupple argued. "Chamomee for sleepy!"

"For sleep? Never! It's valerian!" Yrrile snarled.

The scholar sat on the bed and sighed. "So sorry for their idiocy, Majesty. I'll brew some valerian for you; do you want something to read while you wait?" Jareth scanned the shelf above Sarah's desk. One book in particular stood out to him, and Jareth pointed to it. The scholar, Timbrou, nodded and gestured; the book flew off the shelf to rest on the bed beside the Goblin. "Happy reading, Majesty. Should I dismiss the others?"

Jareth glanced at the bickering three. He considered the thick book that he now held in his lap. He considered the raging migraine he had. He considered the noise the clueless (but rather amusing) Goblins were making. He considered how long it would take for Sarah to get back and dismiss all four Goblins...

Jareth nodded firmly, and Timbrou shooed the other three Goblins away before scampering off to brew valerian root tea.

Satisfied with the silence, Jareth pushed himself up to sit, resting his back against the wall. He cracked open the book and nearly fell over in horror.

What in the Underground is she learning? He thought, alarmed. Jareth glanced at the clock, estimating that it would be another two hours before Sarah got back. Morbidly curious, he flipped to a random chapter and started skimming the words in the book. When Timbrou returned with his tea, Jareth quietly thanked the Goblin scholar and let his scholar fuss over the pillows and whether or not the King was hungry and if the tea was helping his majesty and...

An hour later, Jareth shut the book and got situated to nap. I'll have a talk with Sarah later, Jareth told himself as he let the valerian do its job.

((Early author's note: I could have ended this here. I was sorely tempted to do so, but one of you lovely readers should know what the book is, and it really wouldn't be fair to the rest of you to cut it off here. And yes, I do have a basis for comparison, thank-you-very-much. I'm just not telling you what that basis would be, so nyah.))

When Sarah knocked on her dorm room door, it was Timbrou who answered. The little Goblin kindly held the door open so Sarah could enter without trying to juggle the bulky bag of food one-handed.

"Do you want to stay and eat lunch with us, or do you have somewhere to be?" Timbrou informed her that, sadly, he had to get going. The Goblin woke his King before he left, letting Sarah dump the food on the foot of her bed; she called for Izzi and woke Faolan as Jareth blinked sleepily at the bag and its contents, spread at his feet.

Something must have clicked in his mind, because suddenly, Jareth looked up at her angrily. Sarah's mental voice (a rather unhelpful, sardonic voice that sounded suspiciously like a cross between Sarah's aunt and... Chame, now that she stopped to think about it) sang under its breath, adapting the beginning of a song. The color of his eyes were the color of insanity... The voice supplied in response to Jareth's sudden mood change. Ignoring the voice, the rest of Sarah's thoughts wondered if her last dream was an omen. She hoped not-- Toby couldn't sing for anything.

"Since when do you learn killing spells and necromancy, Sarah? I expected better of you." When Sarah just gazed back at him, nonplussed, Jareth held up the book he'd been looking at earlier. "These runes at the beginning kill most lower classes of the Undergrounders," he continued, furious. "The later chapters are instructions for resurrecting and controlling those killed. Why do you have a book like this?"

Sarah looked at the cover of the book and blinked sharply. She took a deep breath and reached for the book. Jareth didn't let it go, and after tugging at the damn thing for two minutes, Sarah gave up and reached instead for a plate and a calzone.

"For your information, Jareth, Algebra is a required course in college. Those are math problems, not... not... killing curses!" That sounded so Harry Potter that Sarah's mental voice laughed at her.

Faolan rumbled as he watched Sarah and Jareth argue about the effect that negative inverses of square roots would have on dwarves; Izzi (being more of an opportunist) stole half of Jareth's sandwich. She would have taken all of it, but Jareth had lunged for the rest of the sub sandwich and swatted at the loaded drake when she flew closer to try and steal the other half. he drake responded to Jareth's defensive maneuvers by throwing cheese at him.

Sarah, being the nice person that she was, shared her calzone with Faolan so Jareth got to keep the rest of his decimated lunch. Then again, she also laughed at Jareth for having cheese stuck to his face; her laughter only increased when the Goblin King started grumbling about getting slapped by cheese.

Oro: Tech is going, again, so I'll be updating on Saturdays and Sundays until it's over. Actually, I doubt this story will outlast Tech-- the play is mid April, and there's not that much left, only three weeks to go. Huh.

Quill: Forgetting something?

Oro: Of course not! I'm merely... conviniently misremembering!

Quill: She doesn't own Labyrinth, its characters, or the song Devil's Dance Floor by Flogging Molly, which inspired (i.e., she took most of it) the line by the mental voice. Personally, I think she's mental...

Oro: Yes, well, I have Tech to blame for that. One of the other Techies put the song on while we were working and it got stuck in my head.