Chapter Eight: The Chariot, Reversed
Soundtrack for Chapter Eight:
"I'm Deranged"—David Bowie
"Too Late for Goodbyes"—Julian Lennon
"Somebody That I Used to Know"—Gotye feat. Kimbra
Jareth stood at the battlements in the predawn light, dressed for the cold. His mouse-colored velvet coat was lined along the sides and tail with a patchwork of bright songbirds' wings, and a thick neck gaiter of soft brown wool protected him from the amulet over his breastbone to the edge of his lower lip.
He stared out into the Labyrinth. Covered with snow, it looked like a wedding cake. A cup of coffee from the metal thermos at his wrist steamed and slicked the stone ledge with a layer of ice from melted snow. His lighter clicked as he lit a cigarette.
"You'll have to give those up," Sarah had said. "Smoking is not good for you."
"I don't care if it's good for me," Jareth had returned.
"Secondhand smoke isn't good for babies," Sarah had said, leaving the suggestion open-ended.
He inhaled carefully, letting the smoke roll down his philtrum and between his lips, a circular breath that saturated his mucous membranes with the calming drug, insubstantial, yet steadying. He took another sip of the scalding hot coffee.
"What about you?" he asked the Labyrinth in the dark light of the morning, with the silent snowflakes drifting inexorably down. Not a wedding-cake, or a veil—a burial-shroud. "Are you as mortal as I am now? Do you have the ability to die?"
The sky was so dark, and the Labyrinth, in its gown of white, reflected what little light there was from the inconstant moon. It was beautiful, and cold, and gasping for breath. Every day, it seemed, it bore fewer signs of life.
Young Shiprah had delivered the bad news in certain terms. "I think there was a placental abruption. A very minor one. They're not uncommon in the third trimester."
"I'm only in my second," Sarah had insisted. "Twenty-three weeks."
"Hm. Fetal development suggests you're further along. Which is good, because the survival rates of the fetus don't come to fifty-fifty until week twenty-five." Shiprah had held up her hands together in a plate, thumbs crossed. "This is about the size and thickness of your placenta. It provides the exchange of gasses, nutrients, and antibodies to the fetus." Zoe folded down her pinky and ring fingers. "Judging by the amount you've bled so far, this much has probably detached. I don't know what caused the abruption. It might be toxemia, or the result of some sort of trauma. But I can't be sure."
"What's to be done?" Jareth had asked calmly, turning and turning her wedding ring around her finger, polishing it against her skin. This gold is hard gold, adulterated gold. Mixed with something more base to give it strength and lasting form. And I am like this ring, myself mixed and forged twiceover. Not pure anymore, but stronger and better for it. This ring is a circle, eternal. As is my love for you.
"The placenta can't be reattached. What we have to do is keep it from tearing away any further, entiendes? You mustn't move. At all. I'm advising complete and total bedrest. Unless you're eating a meal or taking a trip to the bathroom, Your Majesty, you should lie here and be still. From this point forward, every week, every day, every hour we can keep that baby growing inside you is a victory." Zoe's frown of professional concentration had broken, and she looked as bewildered and upset as Jareth felt. "If there's no movement by morning…" Zoe's hands had fallen to her sides, helpless.
"What danger will there be to Sarah," Jareth had asked coldly, so coldly that Sarah had looked at him as if he were a stranger to her, "If the baby dies?"
One week ago, at dawn after that terrible night, Sarah had opened her eyes and proclaimed she felt movement from the baby again.
"Jareth," she had said quietly. "I dreamed she was born."
"Yes," he had replied, just as quietly, kissing her forehead and her eyes. "A girl, then."
Mine. Mine! he had thought fiercely, stroking her belly. I want you, he told his daughter-to-be. Mine.
He remembered Finnvarrah as a baby, carefully nameless. He hadn't wanted to hate Robin's child, but as the days and weeks had gone by, he had begun to see the mother in the boy-child's face, and had disposed of him before the ache of affection could turn to poison. When more fae-touched children had come into the world, squalling for his attention, blaming him for their life, he had quickly gotten rid of them as well. Young Shiprah had been among these.
Prickles of hair caught in the fabric as he drained the last sip of his cup. If it got any colder, he would let nature take her course and give him a chin-pelt. Perhaps Sarah would relinquish the interdiction on facial hair if he quit smoking. He flicked the butt out into space.
Jareth thought about blood, and sacrifice.
He had so little power now, and over a realm he had sacrificed so much of himself to possess. Each inhabitant who had chosen to leave had left another tear in the fabric of his power, and the whole cloth was now tattered, hanging in threads. Each and every one of them had sworn an oath to serve him, and he had promised, in return, to protect them. A nisse's absence here, a troll's there were all a gap in his awareness, a place missing an occupant, a shelf missing a toy, a toy minus a battery. Those that remained… were weak, all their power turned to their own survival.
There was a way around this problem, Jareth knew. And although he couldn't have articulated exactly how or from what source he knew it, he knew that a sacrifice made of blood would have served to patch over his power, maybe even enough to give him back control over his kingdom.
His own child's death would have been an infinite spread of magical wealth and sustenance, but he didn't plan to give her up, not on purpose. He had had pleasure in her making, and she was coming as a gift, one Sarah had given him on their wedding-day. No, he didn't plan to give her up, not even for the sake of the Labyrinth itself.
So. Not from his child, but life-blood was needed. Someone who belonged to him, but to whom he owed no obligations. Someone with fae magic coursing through their veins, someone accessible. Someone, preferably, that he disliked. It hadn't taken him long to decide on the appropriate victim. It was pleasing to know that the universe still ran on congruencies.
His ear twisted as he heard the sounds of snow-muffled footsteps coming toward him, young Shiprah going carefully in her thick boots on icy snow. She came to him, very near, at his left side, and stared out with him for a few minutes, blessedly silent.
"I got your note."
"Good."
"You should wear a hat," she ventured eventually, in her half-defensive, half-arrogant way, probably in Spanish.
"Hats are terribly unfashionable," he returned. He unscrewed the thermos, pouring out another hot tipple.
"Is that coffee?" Zoe said, longing in her voice.
"Yes. Have some," he said, putting the cup into her hands.
"It's yours," she said dubiously.
"I'm done with it," he said calmly.
"Be nice to Zoe," Sarah had said to him yesterday, shuttering her eyelashes to oblong catty slits. "Pretend she's Finnvah. You love Finnvah."
"I love Finnvah because he's mine."
"Finnvah's yours because he loves you," Sarah had countered.
He wondered if Sarah would forgive him for what he had to do. She was marvelously good at forgiving him. And in any case, he'd read all the books. He could take care of Sarah just as well as young Shiprah, now that he knew what the danger was.
Shiprah smelled the coffee, enjoying it, drinking in the rich aroma before she took her first sip. He looked at her as she drank, letting her know how completely he was scrutinizing her.
"How does it taste? Good?" he asked. She flicked a nervous glance at him, and nodded. Scratch the bravado, and underneath she was terrified of him. That pleased him.
It's fine, he reassured himself, feeling the knife-handle press against his ribs. One quick movement, and he'd slit her throat clean as clean. It would be almost painless for her. But he hesitated, just a bit. The sky needed to be lighter. Dawn, or sunset, that was the time for such things. The cup trembled in her grasp. Her animal instincts understood that this was some sort of trap, even if her quick and clever mind refused to understand. It would be best to engage her in some conversation, to calm her. Killing her might be emotionally upsetting, and he was determined that both of them should feel as little as possible in the whole business, himself particularly.
"Tell me why you were wearing that glamour," Jareth demanded. "The old woman."
Zoe pursed her lips together, considering. "Nothing is as invisible as a woman," she said. "Fat old women doubly so."
"And it had nothing to do with this?" he goaded. He reached out a thumb and traced the shape of the twisted scar on Zoe's forehead. "Using glamour to cover your scar, the little reminder against impudence?"
The frown on her face became anguish. "Don't," she pleaded, twisting her head away.
Ah, when she had been young, she'd been fierce, demanding to know where she came from, demanding to know the names of the mother and father who'd made her. Jareth himself by that time had forgotten. "You belong only to me," had been the answer to the question that had brought the scar. "You may feel any way you like about that, but it is absolutely so. The ones who bore you forgot you. Reality forgot you. You, and your brother. You would have died alone and starving to death in your crib, your body rotting under their noses, and they wouldn't even have known to mourn. Be grateful, and thank me."
She had slapped him with an open palm containing a church-nail, cursing him, trying to use his name against him, trying to have power over him. Well, she had gotten a reaction, but not the one she'd wanted. The pain of the iron had been exquisite and deep, and in agonized surprise he had lashed out with his ungloved hands, raking one long jagged wound down the center of her forehead. He had only felt a momentary regret about hurting her, and that regret was mostly for marring something otherwise aesthetically perfect. His wound had healed in a matter of hours. Hers, perhaps never.
She belongs to me, Jareth reminded himself. I gave her life, her and all the other nephilim, my un-children. I may dispose of them as I wish.
Magnesium flares of flash-bulbs sparked through the party like lightning. Once or twice a photographer caught him in the evil eye of the lens, an unusually good-looking man in the black-tie-tuxedo-jacket uniform of an invited guest. They all assumed he was someone famous. In that, they weren't incorrect, though it was the fae who all knew of him. Any of these human beings, even the strongest, would have died under the weight of such notoriety, died screaming their lungs out.
He smiled to himself, hating them all equally, hating the flesh he had in common with them. This smile, true, seemed charming and affable. He had practiced it in the mirror until it was second nature.
He had come to this party to wage war. His opening gambit was to steal a glass of champagne and sidle in close to Linda, who looked every inch a pampered slave to art, in her black velvet dress and her vast collar of paste diamonds which resembled nothing more than a halter.
"Linda Sophia Williams," he said to her, slamming his glass against hers so that the foam mingled between them. In a dream of her own importance, she smiled up at him, ready to receive compliments. He stared down at her until he felt her feeble soul quail. She looked down at her glass, and it was that moment that a stray photographer decided to commit to film.
"You…" she said, daunted. "I know you."
"I should hope so, Linda Sophia Williams." He clamped down on her soul with the nails of his will and the power of her name, but not enough for her to feel it yet. "I truly would think so. I read the playbill. Not even an author's credit for me, with half of my own words in your tatty little play? I'm insulted."
"You're that lunatic," she said, backing up a step, drinking her glass down in one go. "The one from Radamanthus Asylum."
"Yes, I suppose I am. Don't steal my scene, little actress." He squeezed her soul, just enough to be felt, just enough to hurt. He compelled her to come close to him again and set their glasses down on one of the white-draped tables.
"What do you want?" she asked, all a-tremble, understanding that the danger he posed wasn't just physical. Her eyes flickered over his shoulder, looking for help that wasn't there.
"I came to speak to Jeremy. Where is he?" He kissed her on her jaw for the audience's benefit, just a fan of the performer, perhaps a fan of the more intimate persuasion. Linda Sophia Williams already had a reputation for sexual scandal. She flinched under the kiss, as if it were a slap.
"He's not here," Linda gasped. She was lying, he knew, but he chose not to punish her for it. She was, after all, trying to protect her lover. It was an admirable, futile gesture. He held her at arm's length and smiled his practiced smile on her.
"When you see him again, Linda-Sophia-Williams, tell him the Goblin King is waiting to speak with him, in his dressing room at the theatre. Tell him to come alone, or I will do things to you both that neither of you shall relish." His talons bit into her soul again to drive his point home, and then he left.
His appearance at the party left no trace on the world except for a single photograph and a captioned article in one of the arts gossip rags: Linda Williams: "On-Off" Romance? Back Together? The audience had, as usual, misunderstood everything.
Fifteen minutes later, Jeremy had knocked tentatively upon the door of his own dressing room in the decrepit theater where the wretched play was performed nightly. Jareth was waiting for him, resplendent in his formal dress, pleased with the setting.
"So. Goblin King," Jeremy said, making a mocking bow that ended in uncertainty as he heard the goblins whispering and muttering to themselves behind props and curtains. "You wanted to talk to me?"
"Jeremy Lys. I am here because your play's words tug at me, and demand my attention. Stop performing it."
"Why?" Jeremy asked, innocence incarnate. "You gave the poetry away. Now you want it back? Why should I?"
Jareth frowned in severe displeasure, all the more so because Jeremy spoke true. "I don't know why it's happening, but something of my essence is leaking out through your production. It's like an open wound for me. You must stop." He hadn't meant to appeal to Jeremy's compassion or to admit to his own weakness. Nonetheless, the play was both potent and damaging.
He had felt the seeds of his own unwillingly-bestowed magic working and germinating the world when it had been performed in the smaller confines of the Triptoleme University theater department a few years ago. His words, and the magic in the words, had been meant to knit life back into a human woman's womb, to wake the stillbirth she carried. The words still had that potency and that potential, and the magic did what it did without his wanting it to be so. The play infected the few pregnant women in the audience with fae magic when it was performed. Some of pregnancies had come to term in unexpected ways. These children were fae-touched, like Robin's son. They had to be collected and placed with his allies in the mortal world, lest either they die or be discovered by his enemies and used against him.
For himself, with few exceptions, he cared for none of these children. He wished them unborn. Once the play stopped, he would never be forced to commune with humanity again, or need to relive his humiliation and defeat by stealing children from oblivious parents. He would never have to collect another child with the ghost of Robin in its infant face. He could be done with them.
"You could have just asked," Jeremy said, again acting as though they were peers, as though the Goblin King was some commoner. "You didn't have to frighten Linda."
"Linda has the good sense to be afraid of me. I don't know why you don't." Jareth put his hands on his hips, striking an intimidating pose. "The easiest way for me to have what I want is to kill you both. Unfortunately, the play exists now and could exist again. It would wait for someone else to pick it up and use it, especially if it bears the scent of the creator's romantic tragedy. What I need is your cooperation. You say I should have asked? I am asking now."
His hidden goblin chorus laughed, and Jeremy swiveled his head, trying to clap eyes on them, unable to see them. Jareth smiled his unpracticed smile, the one that showed all his teeth.
"Please," Jeremy stuttered out, "Tomorrow is important, the most important night. There's a producer coming, he could really advance my career—" Jeremy reached out a hand, as if to touch him, to actually touch him! Jareth caught his wrist in his sleeve and twisted it.
"Jeremy Lys, you are in grave error, refusing me. You are reckless, playing around with power you don't understand. You steal from others without a thought to the damage you might do. Borrowing Linda from Robert, for example, even though she wears his name."
"They're separated, planning on divorce. We belong together. And the play belongs to me now, Goblin King. I've changed it. I've made it into something new." He tried to shake off Jareth's grip, wincing at the pain, but keeping his eyes fixed on his, defiant.
"Here are some words for you, Jeremy Llys, since you like my words so much," Jareth murmured in low and intimate tones. "Here's a curse I set on you. You will have great success, but your genius will never again overcome your own mediocrity."
He dropped Jeremy's wrist. Jeremy rubbed it resentfully.
"As for Linda, I have her name. I can do anything I want her. I could bend her heart back to her husband, and leave you aching and alone. I could crush her down," and he demonstrated his strength by cracking a palette of makeup in neat halves, "to bone and sinew, warp that flesh you like so much, and make her a dwarf's doxy." He threw the resultant powdery mess over Jeremy's shoulders, besmirching his black tuxedo with the color of flesh.
"Don't hurt Linda," Jeremy said in a cringing tone, and Jareth knew he had finally gotten through to him. "Please, we didn't mean any harm. We just wanted… something beautiful in the world. Please don't hurt her." He clasped his hands in supplication, eyes full of the fear he craved, and Jareth felt himself mollified.
The 'please' made him consider other options—that and his obeisance, that and his obvious willingness to sacrifice himself for Linda, mirror to her earlier attempt protect Jeremy.
"I have never seen your play entire," Jareth admitted. "Perhaps it's time I gave myself the pleasure." He tapped his chin, considering. "Robin's words, my words transformed by the alchemy of your genius… my own power, amplified by your soul. I'll offer you a bargain. I will come and watch this play of yours, tomorrow night, at its last performance. If there's anything in it that moves me, or compensates me for my pain, I'll revoke my curses and ignore you both in the future. If it fails to move me…" Jareth shrugged indifferently. In one more performance, how many nephilim could possibly be engendered? Three? Five? Surely not more than that, and then wound would finally close. "If it fails to move me, I'll teach you the nature of anguish so thoroughly that you won't need to borrow mine."
"I agree," Jeremy said with haste.
"Good." A fell wind blew through the closed room, disturbing script-pages, brushes, and masks. The goblins scampered through the room, diving into the ragged holes through reality and back to the Labyrinth. "But now a warning. I have no soul in my body, and I hate all your kind. My heart is difficult to move. It would have been better to have submitted at once." He backed up one step, and then another, and vanished into his own reflection in the mirror.
"Whose picture was that, in your bag? The one you kissed." Jareth smiled to himself as he saw Shiprah wince.
"My brother. And one of my adoptive mothers."
"How is your brother, by the way?" Jareth asked, pouring young Shiprah more coffee. "Of the two of you, I seem to remember he was the more obliging."
"Dead!" she said, giving him a look of intense fury.
"What?" The thermos dropped from his hands in shock. The dregs of the coffee steamed and scoured the snow. "What do you mean, dead?"
"I mean dead," she said. Her green eyes were balefire as she threw the cup away. "Didn't you know? Aren't you God? House Crocus is gone! One of your kind ate them up. They're all dead. Fuck you!" She tried to run, but her feet slid out from under her. He caught her easily, a snatch of the hands, a twist of the arms, and she was bent backward over the edge of the battlements. The position of their bodies gave him a moment of deja-vu, but he didn't care to decipher why.
One hard shove, and he could snap her spine. Or perhaps he would throw her off, and let her head crack open on the stones below. Or the knife. There was still time for the knife, though it would be awkward to pull in this position. Poured out as a human sacrifice, the fae ichor running through her human veins would contain magic enough to give him what he needed. Her hands, gloved, clutched at him, struggling. His hands, naked, slapped her across her face.
"Fuck me? Fuck me?" He laughed, trying to decide which death to give her.
"You think God doesn't see you?" Zoe gasped, still trying to break his hold on her coat. "You think you won't be judged for what you do?" She kicked out at him, and her center of gravity tipped further out over the edge. All he would need to do at this point was … let go.
"You think God won't scruple to punish your wife and your unborn child for your sins?" She was calm now, though crying, the tears freezing on her face. "And me too," she whispered. "Go ahead. Let me go."
Jareth watched the play in semi-seclusion, in a theater-box overstuffed with sound and light equipment. From this perch, he could command a view of both the performance and the audience. He was greatly bored with most of it, and where he wasn't bored, he was almost physically irritated. Robin's poetry was all encased in scenes too apt, too direct, to give him any pleasure. However, the emotional tension between the Goblin King and Meander's Queen kept him from summarily leaving. Jeremy, Linda. Bronze mask, white dress. The energy which crackled between them was almost tangible. They yearned for each other across a vast gulf, souls longing to touch, and could not quite meet.
"Give me my husband. Give me the child. Through dangers untold, and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the Castle beyond the Goblin City, to take back the ones you have stolen. For my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom is as great."
Linda's tears were genuine. They dripped down her face on cue, more precious than the plastic pearls and paste diamonds that dotted her hair.
"You have no power over me," the Goblin King said, cold and implacable. In those words, Jareth heard an iron door shutting forever.
They had to know that the Goblin King himself was watching this farce, that their fates would be decided by the content of the performance… and yet, they were as ritually precise as a priest and priestess, enacting some beneficial rite. White dress, bronze mask, the power of their love for each other and their art humming like electricity in the air. Like lightning about to strike.
Robin, he thought. Robin. I wish you hadn't left. You should have gone with me. I would have been your husband. Your son would have been my son. But you left me alone. You left me with Channard. Overbrimming with pain, Jareth looked into the audience.
Channard was there.
Jareth secluded himself more securely in the shadows of his gilded box. He had told him on their parting, "You will want me, and seek me, and need me, but you will never find me." Either the subtle magic of the play had drawn him to this place, like spoor, or more likely he had seen his picture in the papers, and made inquiries. It came down to the same thing. Here Channard was, wanting and seeking and needing. Jareth felt the fear and the pain and the hate for him come to fruition in the place where his heart was.
The doctor's handsome face was as cold as the bronze mask of the Goblin King, as immobile. Closer to forty now than thirty, impeccably dressed, his sandy brown hair had grown down low to his shoulders. Jareth stroked his amulet, two fingers pressing in under his boiled shirt, remembering, remembering everything.
Jareth tried to turn his attention back to Linda and Jeremy on the stage, but he'd lost the thread of their narrative. It was the doctor's performance that held him.
Channard's face was streaming with tears. Jareth didn't want to look at him, but he couldn't help himself. He had cursed Channard most thoroughly. He had cursed him to endure flesh and life, without hope of love or delight, cursed him to end in pain and bound by fear and madness. And yet there that vile creature was, and the play had brought him a semblance of comfort. What was the nature of this comfort? Why was his enemy taking what he himself couldn't find?
Even now the doctor had to know that Jareth would never forgive him, and never take back his curse. Yet for the first time, Jareth scented the emotions of guilt within him. In this moment, Channard was living his sentence, and acknowledging it well-earned… and yet he was somehow able to find peace and comfort by seeing the Goblin King on stage granted the unearned mercy of the Queen he had ruthlessly tormented.
Under the lights, Meander's Queen had freed the Goblin King from his heavy bronze mask. His blond hair floated down free. Exhausted, mortal, surrendered.
Could this also be the way for me? Jareth wondered. Could I also go to Channard and forgive him? If I granted him mercy, would I feel any better?
Meander's Queen stroked the Goblin King's head where it lay in her lap, murmuring words of love and forgiveness.
It was such a calming thought, like mist creeping up over a field at night. Almost, he let it take him. But then he remembered Channard's face, his touch, his power wielded without mercy, and worst of all of these, his cowardly, human tendency to make others pay for what he wanted to acquire. The cool mist broke under the fire of his hatred.
No. He took his pleasure from my pain. Now I'll take mine from his. He'll never be free. Not until he dies.
He turned and groped for the exit, finding it hard to see. His face was wet.
Jareth felt Zoe under his hands. There was fear and defiance and terror and the anticipation of death in her face, and he'd put it there.
He had become Channard.
"Oh," Jareth said. "No."
He pulled Zoe back and set her on her feet. His legs felt boneless, weak. He slid in the icy patch of frozen coffee and landed with an undignified bump.
He asked her the question Channard would have asked him, if he'd been wise. "Will you forgive me?" Jareth asked. "My behavior is inexcusable, and I feel ashamed."
"You're not going to kill me, then?" Zoe asked. Her voice was as breathy and light as a terrified child. She was a child, still. Had she known all along what he'd intended to do, summoning her out here in the hour before dawn? Yes. Yes, she knew.
"No," Jareth said. "I promise, I'll never knowingly try to hurt you again." He drew his knees up to his chest and buried his face in his hands. The bones from the birds' wings stabbed him uncomfortably in the buttocks, and the wind was cold.
He wasn't sure when, but her mittened hands lifted his off his face, and she helped him stand up, with an amount of strength he hadn't suspected she'd possessed. "Why?" she asked. "And why didn't you?"
"Because the Labyrinth is dying. Because I'm desperate, and I'm not a good person. But I'm trying. I'm trying not to be a bad one."
"I suppose I forgive you, then, Goblin King," Zoe said shakily, but with a touch of her personal dourness creeping in. "But I still don't like you." He smiled a little at that.
He picked up the thermos and the cup and screwed them back together. He would have to carry this thing back to its place. He was excellent at summoning things, but rubbish at returning them to their proper places. The Wide Tract of Rottenness was testament to that. As, technically, was young Zoe.
"I am sorry to hear about your family, young Shiprah. Truly. It's a blow."
"Yes," she whispered. She scrubbed the edge of her mitten against her eyes. "I want to—" but he never learned until later what she meant to ask, because the ground trembled under their feet.
"What was that?" she asked, holding to the stone lip of the battlements.
"Oh. That?" Jareth looked out into the Labyrinth. The mountain in the distance was shedding its snowcap in a slow avalanche, visible by its brightness in the darkness. Light ruptured the clouds, forking lightning, three simultaneous levinbolts. He kept his voice calm. I've been expecting this, haven't I? It's time. I've chosen. Too late to stop it now. The lightning seemed to trickle down the rockface and pulse in white rivulets that tore and cracked at the earth. "That's a visitor I've been expecting."
The pulse of the tremor came again, stronger.
"Who is it?" Zoe asked. He pushed the thermos into her hands.
"Go inside and stay with Sarah." The wind whipped his hair around his face. Cold before, now it was cold enough to cut and shatter.
"Who is it?"
The last words John Company had spoken came to him: "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."
"Disaster," Jareth said. "Disaster and ruin. Run along." He threw himself into the air and became an owl. It was time to meet with the King of Winter once more.
Next… Chapter 9: "The Hanged Man"
Thanks to my beta, Frances Osgood, who makes considerable sacrifices to edit this hot mess for me.
I've made a few little literary references here and there, but I don't recall what they were any more. If you recognize one, please mention it in a review (Did I mention I love reviews, always?).
"Nephilim" is the third in a series of related longer works related to Henson's Labyrinth. The character of Channard can be found in the Labyrinth prequel, "Exile from the Labyrinth: The Lament Configuration." More information about Sarah and Jareth and Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix can be found in the Labyrinth sequel, "Labyrinth: Kingdom Come." Just, you know, if you like what you're reading but are sort of confused about who all these original characters are and where they fit. :D
Fanny: All is not well with Egg, no. But maybe it will be. It's a girl! Or it will be. Or might be. So much depends on the choices people make.
Jetredgirl: Glad you liked it! Jareth is a bit of a bastard in this story, though I think most people would be willing to forgive him for that. He IS trying.
Panda: Delicious and nutritious, your reviews. Thank you so much. I'm exhausterpated. This chapter was a rough write.
comical freaka: I feel only slightly bad about the cliffhanger, since I've gone and done it again this chapter.
Zayide: So: worth her weight in gold, hmm?
irgroomer: Yeah, it's not good.
brylcreem queen: we finally get to meet an antagonist in the next chapter. Disturbing messages will be explained in greater detail.
Sonata IX: Finn's a sexy cowboy, howdy-howdy-howdy. His nearly unflappable good humor makes my day. Glad you're fond too.
Jalen Strix: There's definitely something going on with Egg, but perhaps it'll all work out okay. Hopefully. Loving your "Quirrell Drabbles and Short Fiction;" I'd ask you to write more soon, but I'm starting to get a heady feel for just how awful it is to write tragedy. Emotionally expensive, is what it is.
Whyndancer: I so totally enjoy your Bits & Pieces. Jimmy-Jack-John and Hoggle are definitely coming into this story. Oh yes. Your instincts do you credit, but they could be made to serve the King of Winter Be very careful what you spell into the world.