Chapter Two: The Empress
Soundtrack for Chapter Two:
"What I Am"—Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians
"November Rain"—Guns N' Roses
"Announce thyself, varlet!" barked a familiar voice as Finn entered the antechamber to the Queen's apartments, and he felt a knobbed staff poke threateningly into his ribs. "None may pass without my permission!"
"Sir Didymus!" Finn said with genuine delight. "It's me!"
Didymus lowered his staff carefully, tilting his head to stare at Finn with his one good eye, brows lowered in concentration. "Ah, yes. Sir… I can't quite place the name." He clipped his weapon back to his baldric, livery now green and gold with a golden key embroidered over a peach, Sarah's coat of arms.
"You don't remember me?" Finnvah said, so disappointed that the reproach came out before he could stop himself. The little knight's loyal steed, the sheepdog Ambrosius, remembered Finn better, jumping up and pressing his paws against Finn's chest and giving a low, delighted woof. Finn ruffled Ambrosius's ears before stepping back and getting on one knee to talk to Sir Didymus. "Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix? I was seven years your faithful companion. You remember how we pushed back the great Night Troll incursion into the Goblin Market?"
"Sir Finnvarrah!" Didymus exclaimed, eye lighting with recognition. "Of course, of course. The dim lighting plays havoc with the eyesight." Ambrosius pressed against Finn's side, and he patted the dog.
"You've come up in the world, Sir Didymus," Finn said respectfully. "My compliments."
"It is an honor to serve. Truly, Queen Sarah is the most gracious and noble lady who has ever drawn breath."
"She would have to be, to have the valiant Sir Didymus as her personal guard. May I have your permission to see her?" Finn's plan had been to pump his sometime brother-in-arms for information regarding Sarah's health and wellbeing. But Sir Didymus, who in their early days together had suffered the occasional lapse in memory, seemed to be growing increasingly senile. Fortunately, Finn thought, unconsciously rubbing his ribs where the little knight had bruised him, he's still strong in body. Ambrosius might be more helpful, but Finn didn't speak dog.
"You wish to enter my Lady's private chambers?" The little knight looked slightly outraged.
"On the command of His Majesty," Finn said firmly. It wasn't even a lie. "May I have your permission?"
Sir Didymus gave him a fierce look. "You must swear to treat her as the apple of your eye, precious and fragile." Finn repressed a snort. Sarah Williams might be many things, but fragile she was not. But then, Sir Didymus always did have a blind spot for the less-than-gentle attributes of the gentle sex.
"I do so swear, Sir Didymus."
The little knight gave him an evaluating look. Senile doesn't mean stupid. Finn remembered, and wondered if his vagabond lifestyle had left him looking disreputable to his old friend.
"Yes, you may have my permission. Only you mustn't wake her if she sleeps. Their Majesties have been very clear on this point. Her delicate condition..." Sir Didymus, if he could have blushed, would have been blushing. "Ahem. Enter." The little knight reached up and pulled back the great door for Finn, who felt some pride in being found worthy. Ah, Sir Didymus, Finn thought. How terrible it must be, growing old. How can anyone stand it?
But all other thoughts left his head as the door closed behind him and he saw the queen.
Sleeping under satin bedclothes under a canopy of gauze and silver stars, Sarah Williams looked every bit a fairy-tale princess, waiting for the handsome prince to come and kiss her awake. Finn approached her diffidently, circling around the perimeter of the room. Her dark hair was spread thick as jam over her pillows. The down coverlet and sheets had been pressed down to her hips, and the thin cotton nightgown she wore couldn't conceal the rounded dome of her pregnant belly, or the pink blush of her breast-tips.
Finn felt shaken by her loveliness, and rejoiced in her tranquility. In all senses but one, he felt himself swell with love at the sight of her, and all that she kept his breath quiet and his footsteps quieter as he approached, remembering Sir Didymus' instructions.
The fairy-tale illusion was shattered when she broke wind. Finn pressed his fist to his mouth but couldn't keep his outraged laughter in. She opened one thick-lashed eye and glared at him. "What did you eat? The Bog of Stench?" Finn asked, coughing the words out between hysterical whoops of laughter.
"You'd better hope I'm still dreaming," Sarah said serenely, voice full of loving fondness. "Because I'm going to murder you for waking me up." She threw a pillow at him with deadly aim from prone position.
"I didn't wake you up. You woke you up, Tooting Beauty!" He tossed the pillow back at her and dissolved into giggles. He had to bend over and rest his hands on his thighs to catch his breath.
"It wasn't me, it was Yimmil," Sarah said, yawning and sitting up.
"No-Sir-Lord!" piped up a familiar voice, its owner excavating himself from the bedclothes. It was the little goblin. Sarah made a face as she helped him, folding the satin comforter back, dislodging a few books in the process. A Chirurgeon's Compendium of the Functions of Women. What to Expect When You're Expecting. Yimmil bounded forward, radiating stink-lines.
"I miss you, and then I remember your skills at diplomacy," Sarah said, languidly stretching. "Is this any way to greet a Queen?"
"Yeah!" Yimmil agreed, as if he weren't the maker of loud and rude noises, moving over to the cavernous fireplace and moving a kettle onto the hob.
"Gracious madam, no. My sincere apologies." Finnvah sobered and performed the complicated bow given to nobility in their own domains. It required quite a lot of gluteal fortitude, but Sarah only looked him over with satisfaction as she slithered off the bed and wrapped herself in a green dressing-gown. Her round little belly peeped out through the folds like an egg in grass. When he felt he'd bowed long enough, he attempted to rise, but Sarah's expression turned to irritation.
"Not yet," she said wickedly, moving over to the grate and settling herself comfortably down in an armchair. "You stay just where you are for the moment." Yimmil brought her a mug of tea and a doll's cup for himself, and sat on the ottoman between Sarah's feet. They sipped at the same time, giving Finnvah identical looks of gleeful opprobrium.
Finnvah gritted his teeth, hoping his endurance was stronger than Sarah's patience. It wasn't a near thing, but she had had finished her tea before she allowed him to stand. Sarah held out her mug. "Arise, and fill this cup for me, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. And top off Yimmil's too. And then you can have some for yourself and talk with me."
"Us!" declared the little goblin, scratching at his furry ear.
"Us," Sarah said fondly to the goblin. "Unless you'd prefer to go get breakfast." Yimmil shoved his teacup at Finnvah.
"Breakfast, Yes-Ma'am-Lady! For him too. I get!" Yimmil left through a goblin-sized judas gate in the doors.
"The Goblin King lets goblins into his bedchamber?" Finnvah asked, as he refilled Sarah's mug. There was only one other cup available on the mantel, incongruously banal against the marble carvings of shela-ne-gigs and green-men. Yellow with red letters: "BIG BAD DADDY." Obviously Jareth's mug, but seldom used. Finn blew a thin film of glittery dust out of it and poured himself a hot drink.
"The Goblin King does whatever his queen asks," Sarah replied smoothly. The expression on her face was strange. It was not a smile. "He's spoiling me rotten. He gives me practically anything I want." She put down her mug and squirmed against her chair. Finnvah reached over and adjusted the pillow at her back. And no wonder, Finn thought. You've given him more than he ever hoped to ask for. Sarah leaned back and sighed with comfort. He took note of her skin and her nails, her hair, her flesh. She glowed with life and health, and the smug satisfaction of a woman who knows herself to be truly beautiful.
Sarah interrupted his train of thought. "Where's my brother, Finnvah? Why isn't he here, too? You promised to keep him safe."
"I left him in the rather capable hands of his brother-in-law," Finn replied. He unbuckled his sword-belt and hung it over the second chair, and sat in it, sipping his tea. "You look marvelous, Queen Sarah. It does my eyes good to drink you in."
"Fresh," Sarah said, batting Finn's feet with hers. "Don't change the subject."
"Which subject was that, Your Radiance? The gloriousness of your beauty, like May-Day in November? The green of spring in your eyes? Your belly, a ship that sails stately over dry land? Verily, even trumpets announce your presence—"
"The king delivers whatever his queen asks, and that includes your head on a platter, No-Sir-Lord. Or your dick in a box." Sarah's grin became wicked. "How's Toby? Is he well? Unhurt? …Untouched?"
"Yes, yes, and literally no but figuratively yes," Finnvah replied. He eyed his tea speculatively. Uncaffeinated. He might as well be drinking hot water. He sneered down his mug. "But that last's getting harder to handle, pardon the phrasing."
"He's a child," Sarah sternly reminded him. "You're old enough to be his father. You should be able to manage just fine."
"Frankly, Queen Sarah, I'd rather face down another knucklavee with nothing but a garden hose than head Bee off anymore. Hell might have no fury like a woman scorned, but Earth knows no desire like a teenage boy who wants to fuck. It's not…"
"Were you about to say 'fair' to me?" Sarah said with dangerous sweetness.
Finn sighed. "Touché. But I was going to say 'fair to Bee.'"
"He's not ready," Sarah said. "He's not old enough."
"Both he and I would disagree," Finn said, "I wish you'd change your mind. Speaking of mood swings and abruptly changing the subject, how are you feeling?"
"Good, but very tired. I'm tired all the time. I feel… full. Like… I'm running a race and winning. But… it's definitely hard work," Sarah admitted. "Harder than I thought it would be. And my moods are all over the place. The goblins are terrified of me. I think Jareth is, too." Finn stood up and refilled her mug with the last of the kettle. "I'm sorry I made you bow so long. I was mad that Toby didn't come to see me right away and I took it out on you." She sipped her tea gratefully and Finn shrugged. "No, it's like that," Sarah said, frowning. "I can see how utterly insane I am, and know I'm acting like a crazy person, but it's like I can't stop myself. I've got no self-control. And I'm crackling with power. I feel like I should be on fire. Like I could do anything. Anything at all. Except…"
He squatted down by Sarah's chair and looked up at her face. "Except what? What can I do for you, Queen Sarah? Anything on Earth or Under."
"I'm afraid," Sarah said flatly. She gave a thousand-yard stare, and in that moment Finn could see what she would look like when she was fifty.
"Well, what are you afraid of?" Finn asked, trying to keep his tone jovial. In himself, he felt some unease, as if her fear were contagious.
"I don't know, I don't know!" Her eyes filled with tears and Finn patted her knees, feeling helpless. "I ask Jareth if there's anything I should know, and he gives me some sort of fantastic present or brings me food… or he disappears. And I stay here in this room and rot, when there's always something in the back of my head telling me to put on shoes and run and run away from here! But I can't run. I'm too fat." She snuffled a laugh and Finn gave her his second-best handkerchief. She daubed her eyes and blew her nose, and twisted the cloth between trembling hands.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" Finn asked, reminding himself to make sure he double-folded the handkerchief when she remembered to give it back to him.
"An OB-GYN?" Sarah said wildly, as if it were a funny, impossible joke. "That'd be good."
He suddenly remembered the books that had tumbled out of the Goblin King's side of the bed, and dismay punched him so strongly in the chest that he rocked back on his heels. "Sarah… Gog-Magog, is your husband intending to deliver your baby himself? Or getting some halfassed goblin quack to play midwife?"
"I think the goblins reproduce by budding," Sarah said wearily. "And every time the word 'doctor' gets brought up, Jareth looks like somebody pinched him, so I stopped asking."
Fin stood up, swearing a blue streak, looking for something to kick or throw.
"Are you finished?" Sarah asked sternly. "The walls have ears and I don't need the goblins learning that kind of language!"
"Apologies," Finn said abruptly, his mind still turning this problem over. He folded his hands behind his back. "You never wanted to be pregnant," he said, as diffidently as he could manage. "You have some store of magic at your disposal. If you wanted, you could…"
"No," Sarah said passionlessly. "I already decided against that." She hitched a sigh, and the glow that emanated from her seemed to fade a bit. She looked Finnvah in the eyes. "You said… you told me, it might be something that I had to do, to save Jareth. And you were right." She looked down at her belly as if it were an uncomfortable piece of clothing she couldn't remove. "I thought about … getting rid of it. But I decided it wouldn't be fair. I owe this baby life. I bought Jareth's life with hers. Or his. A life for a life." She looked at Finnvah again. "He wants this baby so much. It's too late to turn back now." Her belly visibly jumped from a kick, and then another, as if the life inside were aware of the conversation, and wanted to be present. Sarah rubbed her bump, wedding-ring glinting on her finger. "Shush now," she told it. "Nobody's turning you out, and breakfast is on the way."
"I'll go right now," Finn said, standing up and buckling his swords back at his hips.
"I don't want you to go now!" Sarah shrieked. "You just got here!" She leaned back in her chair, exhausted. "Sorry. That was the hormones." She put her face in her hands. "I've missed you," she explained. "Please stay. How long can you stay?"
Finn looked at her with only a little bit of pity and dose of generosity. "We can stay as long as you like," he said soothingly. "Until you're sick of looking at us, we can stay." He smiled at her.
There was a knock at the door. Finnvah opened it for Yimmil, who was laboring under a covered salver as wide as a cart-wheel. Sir Didymus and Ambrosius followed.
"Breakfast, Yes-Ma'am-Lady!" Yimmil shouted. He humped the huge platter indelicately atop a low table. The cover came off with a puff of bacon-scented steam. Eggs, pork products, grits, scones, balls of fruit in separate ice-nestled dishes, juices and sherberts, potatoes, clotted cream, toast and marmalade were packed together in glorious display.
"Ooooh," all of them said, worshipping the feast.
"Sweet Betty Sunshine!" Finn said. "Now that's what I call a breakfast." They descended on the food like locusts on wheat.
"The thing to understand about the Labyrinth," Jareth said, as he led Bee through the Goblin Market, "is that it is in some sense, alive, in the same way I am." The crowd at the market parted before them, some bowing low in the way Finn had. The plaza was full—goblins, dwarves, tall veiled figures with delicate wrists which pointed at what they wished to acquire. Many of the vendors brought the best samples of their wares to Jareth's attention. It was a little like a scene out of one of the Godfather movies, only none of the people were human, and Jareth's long coat was black and he wore his sigil-necklace instead of a flower in his lapel. Very soon he looked like a peddler at a country fair, his pockets full of "taters and funyuns" and shoulders and sleeves pinned with brooches and earrings and posies and ribbons.
"You're only alive in some sense?" Bee grinned impudently at the Goblin King.
"That talent for parsing words runs in the family," Jareth dryly returned, pausing in front of a mirror at a secondhand clothing stall to preen and rearrange some of his coat's décor. "How much have your sister and your travelling companion told you about what your sister did to me?" He tightened his gloves over his fingers and admired himself, striking a pose.
"Not much," Toby admitted, and Jareth's face fell.
"Not much?" he said, clearly disappointed.
"I mean," Bee said, attempting some retroactive diplomacy, "I know you're not quite human, and I know there are a lot more weird magical people hanging around the world than any human person but my sister probably ever notices. And I know you were feeling depressed about… not being able to change. And Sarah cast some sort of spell on you that helped you change."
"Not much, then," Jareth said with some irony. "So you know then, that I used to be immortal, and now I'm mortal."
"Yes, sir," Toby said.
"I will grow old, and someday, I will die of old age," Jareth said with particular relish. Jareth paused to look over an ancient wooden merry-go-round being turned by harnessed ostriches. Toby watched, too. The painted horses spun very fast; those bustards were kicking up a full head of steam and the goblin riders were shrieking with joy. "You see the axis, where this wheel turns?" Jareth asked.
"Yes," said Toby, not sure where the conversation was going.
"The Labyrinth is like that contraption. The inhabitants are the riders. And I am that rather solid and necessary axis. The axis mundi." He gave a raucous laugh that harmonized with the goblins' screams of pleasure. "Nothing turns without my presence. Now, let's say the axis were moved. Let's pretend it changed. Just very slightly moved, off its base. Not completely off. What would happen?"
"It wouldn't be as easy to turn. It might even break," Toby suggested. "You think the Labyrinth is going to … break? Because you're mortal now?" Toby pondered that. It sounded pretty serious, but the Labyrinth seemed so ancient, so stable, that he couldn't imagine it growing old, or dying.
"That is exactly what has me worried. The cycle of the seasons is returning to the Labyrinth, just as the cycle of human mortality is weighing on me. And Winter is particularly worrisome." They had paused at a stall and Jareth was investigating a tennis racket, plucking at the catgut as if it were a guitar. He laid it down among the higgle-piggle of ancient sports equipment piled on a board, disappointed with its soundlessness.
"That sounds bad," Toby replied, but unable to keep up any more, mentally or physically.
Jareth scowled at him, hands on hips. "Why do you lag behind?"
Toby's empty stomach gurgled audibly, and Jareth laughed. "Oh. Oh! That's right. Food." He said the word with disdain and meandered Bee aside the market and over to a fenced-in beer hall, "The Swishy Fish," according to the sign and the lipstick on the trout. "Breakfast for the boy, please, and two pints." The diminutive proprietor almost fell over himself in a hurry to get their order in, bowing all the while.
"Aren't you going to eat anything?" Bee asked, as he tucked into an insane-looking but tasty traditional English breakfast—traditional except for the kippers, whose mouths had been roughed and their eye-sockets filled with googly-eyes. Jareth titled his chair back and watched the throng at commerce and popped his coat collar against the chill and damp.
"I have a complicated relationship with food, but if you like, the four of us can take dinner together tonight." Bee grunted in the affirmative around a mouthful of beans and washed them down with the beer. It felt strange to shovel down all this food while the Goblin King ate nothing, and only toyed with drinking. But a few months living rough in the streets had taught him the value of wasting no time with a hot meal on someone else's dime. Compared to lukewarm containers deli meals scavenged from dumpsters, or the even more rare pleasures of quickie-mart nachos and chili-dogs and slushies, this breakfast was a feast.
Jareth, meanwhile, had plucked a crystal out of the air and was passing it over and over his palm and knuckles. He caught up the whirling bauble in his gloved hand and stared through it into the market.
"So why does Winter have you so worried?" Toby asked between bites of revivifying eggs and fish.
"Nobody here, not the goblins, or the trees, or the fairies, or boggarts or bears or fieries or fauns or any other creature that lives here has seen a winter in…. " He kilted his head to one side, indicating an indefinitely unknown period of time. "Few of them have anywhere else to go, and it's not certain how long Winter will last."
"Yeah, but it has to end eventually," Bee said confidently, mopping up his bean-juice with the last of his toast. "Cycle of the seasons, one thing follows another—right?" He glanced up at Jareth. "Right?"
Jareth clutch the crystal so tightly it seemed to smush down to nothingness in his palm.
"In normal circumstances, yes," Jareth said, avoiding his eyes. "But the King of Winter is imprisoned here, in the Labyrinth. Sarah trapped him in the Observatory during her… latest adventure in my kingdom."
"So, I guess the King of Winter might work to keep it cold, since he's here… against his will?" Bee suggested. The title conjured a bushy-bearded Father-Christmas figure of the type that appeared on higher-quality greeting cards, wearing furs and surrounded with lanterns and charmed sparrows, but he had the feeling this was probably the wrong impression, based on the Goblin King's mood.
"No, he's not inclined to do me favors," Jareth smiled a cruel smile. "He owns what he owns, and owes what he owes, and if he can do me, or my kingdom, or my family any harm, be assured he will do it."
"Kill him," Bee advised him, flat mouthed with the ugliness of his own suggestion. Jareth arched a sculptured brow at him, but Bee shook his head at it. "That's something I've learned with Finn. You ask once, and you ask politely, but if a monster wants to be a monster, you have to kill it. A cage teaches nothing but to hate, and to wait…" he trailed off, unable to read Jareth's expression.
"To hate, and to wait," Jareth said quietly. "And when have you ever been put in a cage?" He gestured dismissively at Bee's attempt to explain himself. "You're right, though. Perceptive little chap. I cannot kill the King of Winter. Cannot. For you see, he is stamped in the same immortal mold I myself wore until very recently. The King of Winter is impervious to death."
"Well, maybe Sarah should marry him," Bee suggested. "That'll settle his hash."
Jareth had grinned at him then, looking a mischievous ten years old, and they both began to giggle hysterically. The frenzy was cut short by Toby developing hiccups, and the arrival of the Swishy Fish's proprietor.
The Goblin King effusively thanked the be-aproned goblin chef, while the latter refused even the mention of payment. Borne up by the laughter, his hiccups subsiding, Toby went back out with his escort into the swirl of the Goblin Market.
"I wish I could help you," Bee said, "But Finn's right, I'm just a kid."
"You're less child than man these days," Jareth said affectionately. He paused at a stall full of pet shop junk and took two birdcages off the hands of the proprietress and gave them to Toby. When he had the cages well in hand, Jareth stood in front of him, blocking his view, eating up all the attention in the peculiar way he had. When he stepped away, the Goblin Market was gone and Jareth and Bee were alone outside the very gates of the Labyrinth, in the blink of an eye. Snow was falling in gentle lazy spits from the dark sky.
"Wow," Bee said, incredibly impressed. "Can you teach me how to do that?"
"Yes, when you can hold your right elbow in your right hand, I'll teach you."
Bee looked around at the clusters of wilting white flowers climbing the walls, and the sluggish fairies fluttering to them, sipping at the nectar. "So what are we doing here?"
Jareth crossed his arms over his chest. "You are going to help me. I'm granting your wish. Collect the fairies for me. All of them." He nudged the nearest cage with his boot. "Though it's not too late for you to turn back. It's not an easy task."
"They don't look so tough," Toby said. He had faced shucks and werewolves and grindylows—pixies seemed like small potatoes.
"They're tougher than you think," Jareth warned grimly. "And I would prefer them to be collected alive, please. Let's see if I can't find you some tools." He walked over to a little cottage snuggled up close to the walls, the size of a child's playhouse. A garden of flowers and vegetables had all gone to untended ruin, and he crushed the dying plants under his boots. Jareth threw open the door of the cottage and ducked low to enter. Toby put down the cages and followed.
"Whose house is this?" Bee asked. The whole cottage looked like it had been abandoned for months. The bed was neatly made, but a chest of drawers stood open and empty, and it felt strangely emptied of purpose, like all personal items had been stripped.
"That miserable dwarf," Jareth said, not quite in answer to Toby. He reached out over a weentsy wooden table and picking up a gilt-edged envelope. Toby recognized it as one of the invitations for the wedding party last August. "He never even bothered to say good-bye to Sarah, or take his formal leave of me. I tell you now, young Toby, never trust a beardless dwarf or a bald lion. Wretched creatures." He dropped the unopened invitation and exited in a huff. Outside on the back wall of the cottage were a series of gardening implements. Jareth handed down a heavy brass sprayer to Bee. "This will stun them."
Bee nodded.
"Stuff these cages as full as you can, and I'll be back to pick you up in time for dinner."
"But—" Toby thought to protest being left out here alone all day doing the equivalent of rounding up stray kittens, but buttoned his lip,. He had offered to help, after all. "Okay."
Jareth rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a potato and an onion and a shiny green apple and laid them on the lip of a small green pool by a water-pump. "If you get hungry before I fetch you, there's that. If the weather gets worse, take shelter in the cottage. Bring the fairies inside with you. Oh, and Toby?"
"Yeah?"
"Be careful. They bite!" Jareth laughed like this was a joke as he faded from sight.
Under the world, under the earth, under the mountain underground, the Observatory waited. It was meant to be neutral ground, the place where kings could speak together on affairs that touched on their mutual kingdoms, but John Company had always used it as a chessboard, a stage for political games between the world above and the world between. Jareth couldn't remember if the place had ever been in any way pleasant, but the King of Winter had slowly but methodically transformed it into a place most unbearable, and it had become less a parley seat and more Company's embassy as time went on.
Jareth had always come here only reluctantly, only at utmost need. It stank of the rage of its prisoners—for it was a prison, too, housing beings and forces the Kings of the Labyrinth and of Winter wished to hold in check. Sarah had changed that, too, the way she had subtly changed so many things, when she had returned to the Labyrinth searching for the Goblin King. She had locked the King of Winter away in the very cell that John Company had long promised to pen Jareth in.
The last time he had come here had been only a few months ago, when he had been so suffused with bliss that it seemed no harm would ever touch him again. He had come out of pity, for whatever else John Company might have been or done, he was also the closest creature Jareth had to blood kin… or would be, following the birth of his child. It was for the baby-to-be's sake, and for Sarah's, that he had come, in August, with his offer.
"Hallo, John," he had said, standing before the iron door of his cell.
"Hello, Jar'eth," John Company had replied. The King of Winter, though not young, had always had a look of juicy vitality to him, like a plump snake digesting his dinner. Confined, however, he had seemed rather shrunk, his skin the flabby deflated looseness of a lanced blister.
"I've come to grant you amnesty," Jareth had said. Usually their meetings would have commenced with fencing and subtle insults, but Jareth had been in no mood to play. He had intended to make his offer, see it accepted, and leave. He had expected only that.
"Amnesty. Such a generous offer, one might wonder why." The King of Winter had stroked his amulet, an oblong of flat obsidian hanging around his neck, voice fruity and playful. Still, there had been hunger and anticipation in that voice, and Jareth had known to be wary.
"Tomorrow is my wedding day." Technically, it hadn't been his wedding-day, but it had been the day on which he and Sarah had mutually agreed to celebrate their nuptials for friends, family, and kingdom. It was a day to give gifts and receive them, and a day to be at peace with family. "The terms are simple, and not to be put for negotiation. You will leave the Labyrinth and never return. You will take no revenge and work no harm upon myself, or my family, or any of those who live under my protection. In return for this promise, I grant you your freedom."
"And how do you intend to make me keep my promise?" Company had smiled a ghastly smile and straightened his ragged cuffs.
"You leave your amulet," Jareth had replied.
The King of Winter's response was a gale of insane laughter cutting as December.
"Oh my," he said, giggling compulsively, wiping his streaming eyes on his sleeve. "Ah me, no." He vomited forth another hysterical chain of laughter. "Let me tell you something, un-brother, as it seems you have forgotten essentials. I am the King of Winter, and King Over the World. I am the king of locked doors, king of wealth accrued from the starving child, the barren womb, the suicide. I have been King Over the World for generations unto generations of mortal men. And who are you? I do not bargain unless I profit. Take your offer and shove it up your arse. It should just…about…fit."
Truly, Jareth had thought, we are brothers.
"John," Jareth had said, surprised by his own compassion, or foolishness, "It will not be pleasant for you, waiting for your freedom. I doubt you'll ever have it again. Accept what I give, and let there be peace between us."
"Peace between us, Jare'th, will be the peace of your grave. Let your wife come and make this offer. Yes," and here the King of Winter had flung out his arms and made a snowstorm of his narrow cell, "Let her come to me, and beg my pardon, on her knees, and then..." Beards of frost spiked out from the door's iron rivets. "Then I shall repay her, and you, for your hospitality."
Jareth had backed away, as much as from dismay as the icy cold.
"Think on this, Jare'th. Where winter is, there am I. In the screen and ice I lie. When the days in your kingdom grow short, and the nights turn cold, come to me again, and we shall bargain on better terms. Now leave," John Company commanded. "My palace now is somewhat smaller than it used to be, but it's still mine, and I'm bored with your face."
"Goodbye then, John," Jareth had said, dismayed. He had gone directly to his room in the Castle, and locked himself in, but it had been an hour before the heated water of his bath could take the chill out of his bones, and another hour before he felt calm enough to go to Sarah and lie about where he'd been.
I should have given in to her at the very beginning, when she came here wanting me. I should have never let the King Over the World so much as see her face, Jareth thought to himself. But I was angry, and a liar, and bent on having my own way. Her will was stronger than his, and her courage greater than mine. Now we'll see what we will see.
And now here he was again, with the days gone short and nights gone cold and winter breathing down their necks, and he understood the prediction John Company had made. With Bee safely managing the fairies, and his wife tucked into her green bedroom plump with their baby, Jareth came back to the Observatory, and observed.
All was silent and dark as a tomb. He raised his hand and summoned a crystal, lit inside with bright fire. The iced-over walls flickered with reflected light. He made his way down into the silent space to where locks held prisoners tight.
All the doors stood open. All, to a one, all empty.
"John Company," Jareth whispered to the empty space. "King of Winter. Where have you gone?"
Next… Chapter Three: "The Lovers"
A/N: There's a nice stinger for the close of this chapter. Many thanks to my beta, FrancesOsgood, for feedback and assist with the usual grammar and spelling bits, but also for helping with the construction of the plot. "Plot?" you ask, true believers? "It's not going to be romance and sex and babytimes fluff from beginning to end?" D'accord, there will be all that good stuff, but with plot too. We've already begun. Special prize to the reviewer who figures out how the King of Winter got out with all the prisoners in tow. Double prizes to those who guess where John Company and Co. have gone.
Chapter titles are taken from the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck. Just FYI, If you want to look up the symbolic meaning attached to the applicable card.
Fanny: But you KNOW. :D
Kwizzle: Ain't Toby-in-love GREAT?
Jetredgirl: Strap in. It's going to be a (baby) bumpy ride.
Panda: If there's an accident, Toby will have a new entry for dead things starting with "F."
J Luc Pitard: Toby's definitely a major POV character. It's fun.
irgroomer: 'Ello! I'm so psyched to write it!
Jalen Strix: House Stark comes a little closer to the mark than I'd like to discuss. There may indeed be a Red Wedding moment sometime in the near future.
Galileo: Welcome! Here you go, poppin'-fresh chapter ready to read.