Chapter 3
Sarah lay in the state of awareness that was halfway between awake and asleep. She could smell the musty odor of earth and felt the constricting discomfort of stale air - it was a combination that she'd known only once in her lifetime, and it wasn't a very fond memory.
She was in an oubliette.
"It's a place you put people… to forget about them," a friend had said once upon a time.
But Jareth had promised to let her say good-bye to Toby and if the Goblin King was good for anything, it was keeping promises. So she really wasn't meant to be forgotten here until she said good-bye to Toby…
She hoped.
Sarah opened her eyes and realized that she'd been laying flat on her back. She could see the vague outline of the door, at least twenty or thirty feet above her, and the little holes that'd been stabbed through it so she could breathe. It was like being caught in an earthen bottle, being in an oubliette. In here, she was just a piece of Jareth's collection. God only knew who else he had trapped in one of these...
She turned to the side and slowly sat up. Her head was pounding and her body was aching… had he actually just let her fall, unconscious, all that way? It was such a long drop that Sarah was lucky she didn't get any permanent damage. But he probably cushioned her landing somehow… He didn't want her dead, after all… At least, not yet.
Glancing around, Sarah noticed that this oubliette wasn't like the one she'd been in before. That one had candles, some furniture, and a door (though the door wasn't always attached to the wall) in it. This one was nothing more than a hole in the ground; the only light coming from the punctures in the door above her. In that light (or lack thereof) Sarah could see the real roughness of the oubliette – rocks, roots, and even the skeleton of some creature or another dappled the earthen walls.
She just had to wait. Sarah stood up and tilted her head back, staring at the little holes that were so far away. White light filtered through them, enhancing floating dust particles and only making a few splotches of the oubliette visible to Sarah's eyes. How long would she have to wait? Surely, with all Jareth's powers, he knew she was awake by now?
"Hello!" Sarah croaked. Her voice was muffled from the tight space and all the earth around her, and even if she screamed on the top of her lungs she doubted anyone up there would be able to hear her.
With a half-hearted desperation, Sarah struck at the packed, dry dirt with her fingernails, trying to carve handhold into the clay-like earth but to little avail. She attempted to use a root as leverage and pull herself up, but it did little more than displace some of the sand. Climbing up an oubliette would be like climbing up a sheer rock face, only less secure and less friction. Impossible.
Sarah sighed and dropped her gaze, tossing the root she'd pulled out onto the ground and scuffing her feet in the little piles of loose sand. She looked back up and spun around, squinting into the seemingly eternal darkness and past the shafts of light. Straight ahead of her, on the other side of the oubliette, she saw a dull shimmer beyond the swirling dust particles that filtered through the light beams. Curious, Sarah took the few steps it required to cross the width of the hole and touched the area where she'd seen the glint.
A bright, blinding light erupted from what looked to be a perfect orb that'd been shoved halfway through the soil. Sarah shut her eyes tightly as a tornado-like wind began to spin around her, the shifted earth creating painful sandstorms that raked across her skin. She remained still out of instinctive fear as her sense of direction disappeared - there was no up, or down, or left or right, but all of it was happening to her at that moment. She could feel her hair stand on end, her feet leave the ground, and the sensation of falling, falling, falling…
Then, nothing. She sat, her legs splayed in odd directions and her arms covering her head protectively as she braced for impact, but there wasn't an impact at all.
It was then that Sarah realized her jaw was clenched so tightly that her headache had worsened. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and it wasn't until she opened them that she could tell that tears blurred her vision as well as clumps of sand. She rubbed her face, brushing away dry sand and the mud created by a mixture of her own tears and the sandstorm of the oubliette.
She sniffled and looked at her hands - her fingernails were broken and her fingertips were cracked and slightly bleeding from her attempt at climbing out. The palm of her left hand was scratched four or five times (presumably from the root she'd tried climbing with) and still bleeding, though some areas were clotted with sand.
"Sarah!"
She sat up slowly, only to be bowled over again in a comforting hug. Sarah wrapped her arms around her brother and almost broke down sobbing… How could she leave him again? They'd grown so close in the past five years. She'd become more of a mother to him than their own parents – how could she just leave him here, in a completely foreign world with Jareth?
But Toby was ecstatic. He broke away from Sarah's hold and it was then that she saw the elaborate robe her wore over his jeans and striped polo shirt. There was a small sword at his belt, edge dulled but surface polished to mirror-perfection. If he'd been wearing a crown, Sarah would've really thought he was a prince.
"Sarah, look at this sword! Isn't it cool? One of the servants gave it to me. They said it was a gift from the King. Isn't that cool?"
Sarah wiped the tears from her eyes and sniffled again, putting on a wavering fake smile for her little brother. "Y-yeah. That's… great, Toby."
Toby was unaware of her little lie as he was too busy stabbing at imaginary foes with his very un-imaginary sword. He made sound effects and his own theme music, which was incredibly off-beat, and faked killing an entire imaginary army before finally falling dramatically at the hands of some lucky opposing force.
Sarah smiled sadly and looked around the room. She couldn't watch him. She was afraid she'd break down crying in front of him if she did, and she didn't want to do that. Instead, she took in the elaborate gold and green decorations of what looked to be a small throne room. She sat on several embroidered pillows while Toby had been fighting over mountains of them, as well as a golden throne that he'd used as a shield while attacking his imaginary enemy. Sarah sat in a circle in front of the throne that was about a foot lower than the rest of the room and everything was finely polished and draped in exotic fabrics like velvet and silk.
If this was the inside of the Castle beyond the Goblin City, it was nothing like what Sarah had seen during her brief look inside. Then, it'd been all dirty sandstone walls and ugly goblins living in filth and squander… Unless, of course, Jareth really had changed a lot of it once she'd left.
"Sarah," Toby said before tapping her on the shoulder, "were you watching me? I did this really cool dive when I fell this time!"
"Don't do any dives with that sword around you, Toby," Sarah said in a mothering tone. "You'll stab yourself."
Toby rolled his eyes, "It's not a real sword. I can't actually stab anyone with it."
"You'd be surprised, Toby. Be careful."
"Did you just come to yell at me or something?"
Sarah's mood dropped considerably as she pulled Toby close in a one-armed hug. "No," she said, trying to keep her voice from breaking, "I came to say good-bye."
"But you just got here!"
"I know, Toby, but I can't stay. You didn't make the wish for me… I have to go back."
"What if I make the wish for you to stay, too, then? I wish-"
Sarah clasped her hand over Toby's mouth, "No!" she shouted. She calmed down a bit before adding reassuringly, "I can't stay here, Toby… Not forever."
In truth, Sarah just knew she wouldn't like being the property of the goblins and the Goblin King. Jareth had already put her through hell – what would he do if he practically owned her? He wouldn't hurt Toby, because the six-year-old was meant to act like a son to the King and meant to be the heir, but Sarah had crossed him multiple times since they first met, and she doubted he'd feel any sort of remorse at turning her into a goblin, or banning her to an oubliette forever.
Sarah heard a humorless chuckle from the corner of the room and turned to find Jareth leaning against one of the highly embellished walls. The sight of him made her scalp prickle with fear and she clutched Toby closer to her out of protective instinct.
"No, Young Tobias, your sister can't stay," Jareth said with an amused grin at the look on Sarah's face. There was a lilt of mockery in his voice before he added, in a much colder tone, "She gave up that right a long time ago."
Toby stood up, wrenching himself from Sarah's grasp. "I want her to stay!" he said loudly. "You said that I could have anything I wanted here, and I want my sister!" He brandished his harmless sword at the Goblin King and Sarah suddenly felt a new streak of fear cross her heart at what Jareth might do to him.
There was silence for a while as Jareth looked at Toby contemplatively. Toby's sword lowered curiously as the Goblin King didn't react to his half-threat. In the way of a six-year-old boy, Toby's initial anger dissipated and his attention turned to more demanding things, such as trying to spear one of the many pillows with his sword.
But Sarah's fear of Jareth ran deeper than Toby's and she watched carefully as the King pushed himself away from the wall and flicked his wrist, making one of those dreadful crystals appear on his fingertips. Sarah gulped – what if Toby wasn't as protected here as she'd thought? Would Jareth use that crystal against her brother?
"Remember this, Sarah?" Jareth said lowly as he edged closer. His eyes weren't on Toby, and Sarah figured that was a good thing.
Despite the fact that pillows appeared to have been tossed haphazardly about the room when Sarah first arrived, there was now a clear path of polished wooden floor where Jareth was walking.
He glanced at the crystal, "I told you this was your dreams. I offered it to you and you threw it in my face like the ungrateful wretch you are…" He stopped a foot or so away from Sarah and looked at her sharply. She could see the glint of anger in his eyes, but he suppressed it. She supposed it was for Toby's sake, though the boy had moved further away and was ignoring the Goblin King's low, threatening voice altogether.
"And now your brother wants you to stay," Jareth said, his knowing smile escaping into his voice, "and I can't break a promise to him... So I suppose you have to stay... But, dear Sarah, you won't be staying in the world of your dreams."
With a quick, lightning-flash motion, Jareth's smile turned to a snarl and he tossed the crystal into the air. It hovered several feet above Sarah, glinting in the light that shone through the tall, elaborate windows before it began to expand then drop, slowly, until Sarah was encased entirely in a glass globe.
Sarah looked at Toby, who had turned from his latest game to stare at her with mouth agape, and then back at Jareth. The Goblin King's smile was sly and his head was slightly tilted as he waited for his spell to fall into place.
It didn't take long at all. In a heartbeat Sarah could see nothing but white, fiery light and in another, the light was gone. The globe was gone, and Sarah inspected herself for any changes. At first, when she saw that Jareth hadn't turned her into a goblin or something worse, Sarah thought the spell hadn't worked, but then she looked at her clothes.
While she'd been wearing jeans and a t-shirt upon her arrival in the Underground, Sarah was now wearing what looked to be a long, dingy pillowcase made of a thick muslin material that reached a little past her knees. A coarse rope tied around her waist and a dirty-feeling bandana kept her long, dark hair from her face. Her feet and legs were bare except for a strip of leather around her left ankle, though she didn't know why.
Jareth chuckled, moving to circle around her like a cat staring down its prey. "To think that you could've been a Queen," he said quietly so that only Sarah could hear, "and now you're a servant… A very pretty servant, mind you, but a servant nonetheless… I could have turned you into a goblin, but I didn't want to mar that beautiful face of yours."
He reached out to touch her cheek and Sarah flinched away. His only response was to drop his hand and frown at her, a dangerous though indiscernible sparkle in his eyes.
"What did you do to her?" Toby said with awe. His sword had dropped onto one of the pillows and he stared at Sarah a child would stare at a particularly fascinating magic trick done at his birthday party.
"I didn't do anything to her," Jareth responded, glancing at Toby for a moment before turning sharply back to Sarah, his voice low again. "I just… outlined her true place in this world. The beautiful girl that I'd chosen to be my queen… The girl who I offered everything to, only to have it thrown back at me without as much as a second thought."
He edged closer, tilting Sarah's chin up as he looked her straight in the eyes. She didn't flinch this time, but she glared at him and clenched her fists at her side, fighting the urge to strike him simply because she knew it would be pointless.
"You could have been everything, Sarah," the Goblin King whispered, "and now you're nothing."