Chapter Four
Squalls
Sarah had not remembered being so warm in any recent history. Or so comfortable. Her poorly insulated apartment released more heat from the radiator than prevented cold air from seeping in. Every so often she would flip her mattress, but the lumps never evened out. Displaced springs that pinched her hips and poked her shoulders at night still did not settle.
Not quite on the edge of full wakefulness, she snuggled deeper into the warmth, her eyes still closed. Yes, she thought, this is the comfiest bed ever.
"If this is what heaven is like, then..." she started, and then caught her words. Her eyes snapped open as she recalled her last memories.
The house party and Cassius' gift. The encroaching darkness and its potency once she lit up and the chilling realization that it was too late. How he showed up right as she slipped into darkness.
"Oh, god," she whispered. Cold fear trickled into her stomach, souring it. Sarah took in her surroundings: a crackling fireplace to her left, a heavy wooden door, a wardrobe across the room. Sandstone walls complemented a stone flooring, empty of any decoration.
A row of windows on the opposite wall poured morning light into the chamber, backlighting corners of the room the glow of the fire did not reach. Stiff wind and snow blew across the window openings. Isn't heaven supposed to be paradise? Sarah wondered.
She sat up on the bed and tenderly planted her feet. Sarah hissed as her toes touched cold stone. There is no way I could enjoy this for eternity, she mused. Maybe hell is frozen after all.
A nightgown hem fluttered around her ankles when she stood. She smiled. At least they were kind enough to get me out of that awful skirt...whoever they are. She tried to ignore the fact that the last person she remembered seeing was...him.
Gusts of cold air brushed across her face as she approached the windows and observed the outside environment. She looked over a serene, quaint town. Cottages and trade shops arranged haphazardly, as though only half a care was given to make any sense of the city's pathways. Children and families bundled in coats meandered through paths dug out of the snow.
It all seemed perfectly ordinary. Until Sarah noticed that, though several feet of snow blanketed the settlement, vivid green leaves on trees and full springtime blossoms peeked through the vast whiteness. The depth of snow easily reached the roof of some of the cottages, and now that she looked at them more closely, Sarah could not help a nagging feeling that she had seen them before. Grumbles and bits of conversation reached her from down below, but in a language she had never heard before.
The same feeling that something was gravely amiss when she inhaled on the last gram Cassius gave her pooled in her stomach. The sunshine and sparkling freshness of the snow disguised that something was not right.
When she realized the townspeople navigating the pathways were not well-fed, happy families, but instead squat, foul goblins, Sarah knew she was not dead. Worse, she was in the labyrinth. Beyond that, from her vantage point, she guessed she was in the Castle Beyond the Goblin City.
A wave of nausea rocked her. Cold sweat broke out on her forehead. Sarah ran back to the bed and buried herself under the dense covers.
This isn't happening!
Her pulse quickened, and nausea surged. After a few weak attempts to slow her breaths, bile stung her throat. When she threw off the covers in search of a receptacle, Sarah did not expect a pail to be at the ready, and especially not in the hands of a female goblin.
"Healer lady says you might be getting sick soon," she beamed, ignoring Sarah's retching. "She's smarts and I gots here in the nick of time!" Her pudgy hand not holding the pail patted Sarah's shoulder.
"You'll be alrights, Miss Sarah lady," she cooed. Sarah sputtered at the sound of her name. "Tak will make sure of it."
They know my name? Sarah shook her head. Of course they do.
Sarah added things up in her head. Between the nausea, light-headedness, and exhaustion: she was detoxing. She wanted to believe that her being in the castle, in the Underground, was just another hallucination.
Yet…
Sarah could not deny she felt a lightness underneath the grimy left-over feeling of detox and early sobriety. Regardless of the reasons she had been brought here and Jareth's involvement in all of it, Sarah felt a weightlessness in her that she never experienced when at any rehab facility, as though she had left behind a heavy load when she arrived here. And the only thing she could come up with that changed was the absence of Cassius—the weight she had carried around for so long.
Sarah closed her eyes and retreated back under the shelter of the blankets.
Sarah lay on the bed, her head swimming with malaise and the vertigo of bad memories and worse mistakes. She mentally ticked them off, counting them down one by one. Every wrong decision, tantrum, and poor judgment call she made over the years were attempts to find this, exactly where she was, right here and now. It all led her to a little less of the reality she had back home; the comfortable bed and worried but welcoming family—those who loved her but would never understand, and that she could not trust with her deepest secrets.
Most especially, this one.
What first started as a simple miscalculation of moving a little too far from home for school turned into a gradual but consistent downward spiral. Teary-eyed phone calls, usually past bedtime. Cash wires and whispered promises Karen made not to tell Robert. A yawning Toby wondering if Sarah was so sick then why didn't she just come home?
This time, Tak was not waiting with the bucket. Fortunately, Sarah had great aim.
Robert grimaced when her college board exams returned, poring over the results and reports. Piles of college brochures jammed the mail slot, envelopes stuffed fat with applications, just waiting for Sarah to choose their fine institution.
"I don't understand," he muttered over Monday morning coffee in March of her senior year. Sarah ignored him and ripped open packages, glossy photos of stately buildings nestled in majestic forests. "She gets 1850 on her SATs, can go into any field, a full ride anywhere—but she is dead set on acting."
Karen shot him a look over the table, her eyes as sharp as her shoulderpads. "Robert," she warned.
Karen turned her attention back to Sarah, whose eyes glazed over as she opened a CalArts brochure. The palm tree-dotted shorelines and campus basking in bright sunshine stood out far and away from all the other New England facilities. All of them within a day's drive of home.
The desire for adventure, the kind she had not felt in a few years, wedged into her chest. She was ready to try something new.
"Do you see one you like, dear? Set aside your favorites and I can go over them with you tonight if you'd like."
Robert glowered and took another swig of his coffee.
And now, she was here—in the labyrinth—and didn't know what to do or think. Escape was not an option. Sarah swallowed thickly and looked toward the window, bright sunshine peeking through a curtain of dense snowflakes. She squinted against the light, a dull headache brewing in her forehead.
Sarah wasn't sure if she wanted to escape if even she could at all. She burrowed further under the covers and snuggled into the warmth. At least comfort welcomed and nestled her; protected her from everything that had happened. Everything she remembered, that is.
A thought pricked into her mind as she remained buried in the blankets. Nothing is what it seems here. You remember last time. Is it now, or later...or back then? She thought of the snowfall again. No, that can't be right. You wouldn't feel so horrible if it was before. It must be now.
But, she panicked, when is now?
How much time had passed?
Use your brain, Williams. What's left of it anyway.
Sarah willed her heart rate to slow and inhaled deep cleansing breaths as she pieced things together. She did not doubt that what she last recalled until now was true—that Jareth returned and brought her back here. She remembered, vaguely, something about a potent dose Cassius had given her—
Oh, Cassius. The crusty orange rock, and all the visions. The house music and dancing—Sarah remembered all of it.
The nausea faded and a sensation of dream-like free-falling washed over her. The kind where one knew they were falling, but yet still safe within the boundless confines of a dream. Sarah fell back into the pillow and allowed the sensation to wash over her. At the very least, it distracted her from the nausea. She wondered: is this magic?
She wasn't quite sure how just yet, but Sarah knew her presence here had something to do with the snowfall. In the meantime, curling up for a nap seemed like the best course of action.
Sarah had always been a light sleeper. Bumps in the night did not scare her, because she could identify their source. But still silence and the inability to reasonably determine what interrupted her sleep—that unnerved her.
As the years wore on, moving from one bad situation to the next worse option, she found herself worrying less of goblins in her wardrobe and more of creditors who resolved debts with Louisville sluggers. As a result, some nights she did not sleep at all. The shifting of moods and varying schedules between her acquaintances and many-changing housemates nudged her to consciousness and hyper-awareness all night. Certainly, the drugs didn't help much either.
So when someone was in the room staring at her, in a place she associated with danger and destiny, the sense of eyes trained on her ripped her out of sleep. Sarah's heart tattooed a rapid tempo against her chest as she jolted awake to see a short, dark skinned woman draped in deep emeralds and blues staring at her. A large satchel, old and stained, hung over her shoulder.
Though her features were decidedly human-like, the vibrancy of her dark violet eyes reminded Sarah of the many gazes Cassius laid on her over the years. In particular, Sarah remembered the first night spent at his condo.
Under the stale sweetness of alcohol on their breaths, Sarah couldn't resist his dry, white musky scent. She couldn't quite identify it, but she smiled and snuggled in further, content, and ignored the slick sweatiness between their bodies. Home, she realized. He smells like home.
For the first time in many moons, Sarah fell into a heavy sleep, uninterrupted by intruders and invisible nightmares that could shake her awake.
She didn't know how long later, but she awoke with a start so violent she jerked and caught her legs in the covers. Cassius' steel grip around her waist didn't loosen. She turned to him.
Even in the darkness of night, with just a small glow of light from the clock radio behind her on the nightstand, Sarah found herself pinioned in place by the intense stare of his steel gray eyes rather than the arms wrapped around her. Something sparked in her core as awareness prickled into her mind: this is dangerous.
A heavy pause passed between them. She did not say anything; did not attempt to wriggle out of his steel strength clasp, did not acknowledge that she knew something was different about him, much different than any other man with whom she had negotiated.
Sarah returned to lie on her side and turned her face back into her shoulder, away from Cassius. A fortunate skill she'd gathered from her time as a light sleeper was also that she played an excellent opossum when the situation called for it, or when insomnia would not relent.
In the five hours between her sudden wake and when they arose for breakfast, Sarah never felt his gaze leave her back.
Sarah suppressed a gasp as she stared at the woman. Sarah blinked once, twice. The small, dark woman did not flinch away from her gaze. The pregnant silence passed like an eternity for Sarah, and only before she opened her mouth did it occur to her that because most creatures lived a very long time here that the awkward pause was not an unusual length of time for them.
What does she want with me? Who is she?
As though she heard Sarah's thoughts, the woman's round face and wide mouth opened to a joyful grin. The corners of her eyes crinkled into delicate crows' feet. Sarah's anxiety eased and could not help but return the gesture, despite her misgiving. She inhaled and prepared to speak. Now or never.
"I'm sorry for staring," the woman interrupted Sarah's intention to speak first. "We are rather pleased to see you return, even under these circumstances." She moved toward Sarah's bedside, extending her hands to grasp Sarah's own. Serenity washed over Sarah at her touch.
"Who are you?" Sarah asked when the woman did not offer her name.
She smiled and gently squeezed Sarah's hand. "I am Sélan," she said. "The chief healer of the Goblin City."
Sarah sucked in a breath; though Tak already confirmed her suspicions about having returned—an authority figure speaking of it so assuredly officially sealed it. A lump formed in Sarah's throat. Well, shit. Now what? She swallowed thickly and blinked back tears that pricked at her eyes.
If Sélan noticed Sarah's discomfort, she didn't say anything. She waited patiently, her hands still enclosing Sarah's. Sarah sensed this was the opportunity to ask questions.
"Why am I here?"
"I have never been a gossip, and I do not intend to change that. I imagine His Majesty will discuss that with you in detail."
"Oh." Sarah thought for a moment before continuing. She was relieved to avoid discussion about the Goblin King, yet she realized some topics would make it difficult to tiptoe around him. "May I then ask why you are here?"
Sélan beamed. "Of course. I have been assigned to restore your health." She stood and rolled her sleeves. "In fact, I am here to examine you. May I?"
Though many years had passed since her last visit, Sarah could not recall anyone or anything simply asking for permission in the labyrinth. She nodded. "I suppose so."
The healer began to work. She loosened the sleeves on Sarah's dressing gown and palpated Sarah's arms. Her fingertips glowed a warm golden white against Sarah's skin. The sensation comforted her, even as her hands and forearms twitched in reflex. The movements reminded her of long distant childhood memories of her mother and father; Sarah laid out with the latest strain of kiddie crud, feverish and miserable in bed. When Linda rubbed her back and whispered softly, Sarah would drift right off to sleep in minutes.
That did not happen this time. Instead, she felt something pop and spark to life within her. From her core, Sarah willed the spark to grow and warm further. It flowed outward inch by inch. Sarah smiled and relaxed in it. This feels wonderful.
Sélan continued working her way around her charge's body, hmm-ing and tsk-ing to herself. Finally, she finished and stood up straight.
"Well," she started, "You have certainly improved since you arrived."
Sarah did not respond for a moment, unsure what to say. "How long have I been here, exactly?"
"His Majesty returned you here the night before last."
"How have I been out for so long?" Sarah's neck bristled for a moment at the implication of Sélan's use of words. Returned you here; as though she belonged to the Underground.
Maybe I do.
"I suspect pure exhaustion and malnutrition. You are weak, and though the journey was short, it can take a toll on delicate humans. Even ones who have been here before. I supplemented your rest with a draught I brewed. It allowed you to sleep without interruption until you had rested enough."
Again, Sarah found herself at a loss for words. "Oh." Her mind felt both numb and alive with questions. The warmth in her chest cooled, but an ember remained, glowing within her. Sarah did not want to ask about it for fear of it disappearing; it felt as though it belonged all along. She wondered whether it was something she, a mere human, was supposed to experience here.
"The rest has done you well," Sélan said, and turned her back to Sarah and dug around in her satchel. "I am going to offer you a supplement to hasten your recovery." Various materials sloshed inside glass vials that clinked against each other as she rummaged.
Another long, but comfortable, silence followed as Sélan worked, mixing and pouring liquids and root powders. As Sarah watched, it occurred to her that Sélan was unlike anyone else she had encountered in the Underground aside from the Goblin King himself. She was not a goblin, or fairy, or a beast. Sélan was human—at least in appearances. What if she's like me?
"Sélan?" Speaking her name felt like shattering glass in the silence but was as comfortable as her own in her mouth. "May I ask you something?"
"Of course." The healer continued her work without breaking her rhythm.
Sarah thought for a moment, realizing she had not entirely formed the question she wanted to ask. "I don't want to be rude, but I've never seen anyone like you here except for..." She swallowed, Jareth's name caught at the base of her throat. "What I mean to say is, are you human, or fae? You don't look like a goblin...or a dwarf. What are you, exactly? "
Sélan paused and turned to Sarah. Her violet eyes flickered, but not, to Sarah's relief, with anger or annoyance. "It is not my place to say this, Sarah," she started, "But I must implore to you that nothing you request here is considered rude. Others with questionable intentions may try to convince you otherwise, but you must know that when used your words are used correctly, they are among the most influential in this realm." Sélan had grabbed Sarah's hand again and held it to her chest. She held her intense gaze, drilling her words into Sarah.
Sélan released her grasp and returned to her concoction. "To answer your question—" she paused to grunt, forcing a stubborn stopper into a vial "—I am neither human nor fae. I am what is known as a nefilae."
The word did not register with Sarah. She wracked her mind, trying to recall coming across a word or phrase in all of her time studying and learning about the fantastic, before she had lost interest in them. "I've never heard of it. Could you tell me more?"
Sélan chuckled. "I suppose you haven't. We are neither a well-known nor ancient species. I was wished away by my aunt. However, I was older than most wished-away children; old enough to remember."
Memories of Sarah's immature wishing-away of Toby returned afresh. As a teenager, she only felt immediate regret at the trouble she found herself in instead of remorse that, even for an instant, she had the selfish ambition to surrender her brother to a place where his safety was not guaranteed.
But as an adult, the wailing cries of her lonely and exhausted infant brother pierced her heart. She could only imagine how a child old enough to remember what happened went through. "I'm so sorry," she said. "That must be a terrible memory for you."
Sélan waved her off, her robes jingling when she shrugged. "My aunt meant well, but she was not a motherly figure. His Majesty took a liking to me and when my aunt failed the challenge, I was not transfigured into a goblin."
Sarah's interest was piqued. She leaned in to hang on Sélan's words. Momentarily forgetting her situation and malaise, she urged the healer on.
Sélan obliged her. "My aunt was a respected healer of humans in Pennsylvania, and I learned a lot from her. His Majesty took notice. One thing led to the next, and His Majesty finally decided to transform me, but I became neither fae nor goblin.
"After the transformation, it was agreed that the best use of my human genes and talents would be to learn human medicine. His Majesty bade me return Aboveground to receive formal training."
"You went to medical school? Aboveground?"
Sélan nodded once. "I attended the New England Female Medical College."
Sarah knitted her brow. "I don't remember hearing of it." The knowledge that she would have known of it tugged at her heartstrings; Robert recited the details of each medical and law school within a five hundred mile radius of their sleepy upstate New York suburb to Sarah starting from her first day of freshman year.
Sélan smiled again and patted Sarah's shoulder. "No, I suppose you wouldn't have. It closed in 1873 and the program migrated to what you know as Boston University."
The light and conversational tone of Sélan's voice fooled Sarah for just a moment. She gasped as she realized that Sélan said eighteen seventy-three, not nineteen. "You're—how old are you?"
Sélan smirked. "Not as old as His Majesty. I was born in 1831."
Sarah quickly counted back in your head. Sélan was north of a hundred and sixty years old. "Are you...are nefilae, I mean...immortal?"
"Nefilae are a hybrid species of fae and human. One is formed only as an incident of fae or goblin transformation gone awry. We are fully magical and as strong as fae. We have all aged, but none of us have yet expired." Sélan shrugged again. "We simply do not know."
Sarah heaved a deep sigh, suddenly aware she had been holding her breath and tensing her muscles during Sélan's tale. "Wow," she breathed and fell back into the pillows. "Thank you for sharing that with me."
The healer had already set back to work and distracted by her duties. She poured two dark concoctions into a vial, stoppered it, and meandered to the fire. She turned it over slowly above the flame, warming the glass.
"A curious thing about being a healer," she began, "Is the advantage of sensing what patients can not—or will not—describe." Her tone darkened as she continued, but lacked malevolence. The liquid inside the vial simmered, small bubbles dancing on the surface as they burst. "It allows me to assess their condition better and accurately treat them."
Sélan returned to the bedside and gently set the vial upright on the table. "Allow this to cool, and take one mouthful twice daily." Without further instructions, she closed her satchel and made to exit the room. When she put her hand on the door, she paused and turned back to face Sarah.
"The tonic will rebuild your immune system, the one damaged by all those years Aboveground. Do not fight what you feel inside you; you will need it more than you know."
Sarah knew time passed since Sélan departed with her warning, but as her room did not offer a clock and she was not quite accustomed to Underground time, she could only guess a few hours expired.
She stood and returned to the window. What sprinkled lightly in a gay morning shower now clouded the entire city. Though the snow remained pristine, a muggy grayness shrouded the buildings in a fog.
Her imagination roamed freely in the time she was left alone with her thoughts. So much had occurred in a very short period, and only now had she the opportunity to process it.
Why am I here? Sarah tried to piece together the events she remembered. The house party; Cassius' gift; everything went weird; and now here she was, back in the Underground. Sarah could not quite determine if this was a good or bad thing, or that whether she was rescued or kidnapped. Sélan did not indicate either way.
Sarah no longer doubted whether Cassius was involved in the Underground. The same scent she smelled on him, the one that lingered just above the threshold to sense it, permeated every inch of her room and beyond. It wafted with the wind gusts that blew in.
A mixture of guilt and panic tightened in her stomach and rose up her throat. I should have known. She turned away and looked toward the bed, longing to bury her head under the covers. It certainly worked when she was fifteen. Why didn't I listen to myself?
A sudden thought dawned on her. "Oh god," she breathed, fighting heaving hyperventilation. What if Jare—he, the king—had something to do with this? Am I a prisoner?
What if I was rescued?
The theories raced through her head. Sarah started pacing as though she chased each one. Who colluded with whom? Why was she here? Did the Goblin King come of his own volition, or did she call him? Why was he in the house that night? Why or how was Cassius involved? What did she want from her? What if they are working together?
Nothing added up and but as she turned it around, everything seemed to fit.
She willed herself to get a grip. "No! Think, Williams. Think." She breathed deeply, refreshing her mind and slowing her racing heart. "Go back to the beginning."
Sleet pounded Sarah's face, freezing her tears and battering against her old coat. She sniffled, a vain maneuver against the torrent of snot pouring from her sinus.
She meandered the streets, her only aim to get away from the busy boulevards and into more quiet and less visible areas.
Home, she thought. Call Daddy.
Sarah fought with herself, stubbornly refusing to find a payphone.
If she called home, she shed self-responsibility placed the burden on her family—again. If she continued on, she could find herself in a worse situation than she already put herself in. She burst through the first door she found.
A bar. Of course, the first place I find is a fucking dive bar.
As she beelined for the payphone across the room, only a few heads turned in her direction. Most of the trucker hats and three-piece suits focused on the game playing behind the bartender. Either the game was riveting or the sight of her tear-stained and mucus-smeared face was commonplace. In either case, Sarah was thankful for the anonymity.
She dropped the first quarter she fished from her pocket, but couldn't tell whether her hands shook from nerves or warming from the cold. She succeeded on the second attempt. Never had the dial tone sounded more welcoming despite its tritone interval. She punched the number in with her thumbs, hands braced around the phone to still them. Each ring pulled a lump up her throat close to breaking the surface.
She broke into sobs the second Robert answered the phone, his voice thick from sleep. Damnit, she thought. I forgot it was a school night.
"Sarah? Is that you?" Although she knew her voice would not be welcome—particularly at this hour—her father's rich tenor eased the tension in her heart. "What's wrong?"
Sarah pressed her fist to her face to muffle her sobs. "Dad," she whimpered. Her voice broke. "Daddy."
A long moment hung in the air. At first, Sarah thought the line disconnected; or worse, that Robert had hung up on her. She didn't have any more quarters to call anyone.
Instead, he did something far worse.
"Sarah," he sighed. "I can't do this. We can't do this anymore." He did not anger easily; instead, Sarah heard determination build in his tone, anchoring each word.
He doesn't mean it. He's just trying to be tough.
"I can't even bear it to hear what happened. I don't want to know why you left rehab again."
Tears dripped onto her hands, pulling her from the sincere finality of her father's words had punched her heart. At the time, Sarah did not want to admit that the reason she recognized it was because she had used the same resolve when Jareth made his final offer—and she turned him down to save her own sanity.
She had not seen or spoken to her family since that evening. Though only a couple of years had passed—Sarah did not dare recall exactly how many days—it felt as though she had ached for eternity.
The worst of it was that it was also the same night she met Cassius. Within ten minutes after she had hung up the phone and inched over to the bar in a zombie-like state, frozen and numb, he'd sidled up and slid over to her. His words were kind and flirtatious. His dark olive skin was not quite like any shade she had seen before. His hands were as warm as his bed, just enough to help take the edge off from the cold inside her.
She went home with him that night—with nowhere else to go—and never exactly left. Even with her own apartment, and phone line, and what little money she could scrounge, he was always just around the corner or demanding her time.
Sarah shook her head, exasperated with her own naivete. How did I not see this?
Anxiety rose in her throat as she considered the full weight of her situation. She choked back a mixture of sobs and vomit as she realized that whatever Jareth or Cassius' intentions were—neither of them were likely to let her go. And after all the years of feeling that she was missing a part of herself, all the time she suspected Cassius' true origins and convinced herself she was crazy, she was finally back in the Underground with even less guidance and fewer resources she had before.
And the worst of it all, she realized, was that not only was she now trapped here, but that she had never truly left it the first time.