Sarah had gathered herself enough to recall what had happened. She felt meek in a chamber, a dark place Hoggle had dragged her to when her body went into some bizarre form of shock. She had only opened her eyes a little, enough to watch Hoggle descend away into the darkness before she fumbled to the bed. The place seemed familiar but she supposed the angles of the walls and frame of the bed were just so Labyrinth that she convinced herself that that was the only quality of familiarity. The bed was built with a square frame and a canopy for a princess. It bore the same colors of her childhood room, but the shapes were out of place and crude. Still the creak of the mattress when she collapsed on the soft blankets was not a haunting groan. It seemed to echo the sigh of a lover upon embrace. She spent an undiscernible amount of time laying there; face down wringing the blankets in her fingers. When she finally pulled herself up from the bed, hair damp and tangled, eyes bleary from tears she looked around the room.
What first caught her eye was the ceiling, which vanished up and away from her in a cluster of glowing crystals. It was these crystals which lit the room, and they pulsed like a heart, their light growing stronger and softer with every beat. Sarah clambered to the edge of the bed to get a better view at them, hidden as she had been under the canopy of her bed. She realized that someone had changed her into a pink ridiculous nightgown, magically, she assumed, while she was crying maniacally on the bed. She lamented the abundance of lace and returned to her observation of the room after using the bottom of the gown to wipe her dripping nose. Dark as it was, the light of the beautiful crystals was enough to show her a delicate looking vanity covered in bottles and combs and ornaments. To the left of this were a wardrobe and a small table set with chairs. On this table was a tiny painted tea set. The other side of the room bore no evidence of the door she didn't remember using, but to her chagrin there was a disturbing piece of furniture rocking in the dark. Sarah inhaled shakily She moved to approach it.
"Oh god…" She croaked. It was an infant's cradle.
Her head felt numb and her hard heart rumbled in a disheveled pulse. She had only just registered the difference between reality and dreams, and now she was hit with an onslaught of whatever the hell this room was supposed to mean. She moved out of the bed, stepping delicately under the glow of the crystals to reach the cradle. Within it lay a remnant of her own childhood; a tattered blanket. Hands shaking she reached into the little bed and grasped the material, the springy soft fabric of the knitted memory cool to her touch. Her eyes caught something at the corner of her eye: a crystal falling slowly. She dropped her blanket back into the cradle to take the levitating orb in her hands.
"I wish…" At first it sounded like her own voice but the image in the crystal was someone different, sporting hair as dark as her own.
Sarah had the horrible sensation that she was falling when the crystal slipped free of her hands and she was spiraling forward. She crashed into the floor and let out a loud displeased groan. Her nose burned and she rubbed it furiously as she pulled herself up from the soft carpet. She had been transported.
The world was dim, lit by a soft lamp on a bedside table behind her. To her right a bed, blankets mussed and pillows slept on. The room was familiar, her mother's old bedroom in the home she had lived in after leaving her father. Sarah's own cradle rested on the other side of the room, that soft blanket sitting on the floor in a crumpled heap. The girl moved forward slightly, but stopped when a child's wail made her freeze.
"Sarah!" Her mother came into view, still young; long hair in a disheveled ponytail, thin, muscled arms protruding from a baggy stained t-shirt.
"Mom…" Sarah was cut off by the hand of the Goblin King, hard against her shoulder. She looked up and met his angry frown with confused eyes. Her mother at the other side of the room took a wailing child out from the cradle.
"Get up." The king commanded. Sarah was already on her way to stand, using the bed to hoist herself up on her wobbly legs.
"Whose memory is this?" Sarah whispered. "What's…?"
The king ignored her and stepped briskly toward Linda. As soon as he stepped away from Sarah his appearance changed, his dark leathers turned to bright blues, his hair was shorter, his voice younger when he spoke:
"The beginning of a wish I heard. From none other than spoiled little Linda." His voice was ice, but a smile was set in a smug line on his face.
"Oh," Linda sighed, a relieved smile on her face. "Thank God it's you! I'm glad you heard." She thrust the dark haired baby in her arms toward him, which signaled cries of protest from the little girl. Sarah winced in her place on the other side of the room.
"Take her please!"
Linda gave the king no time to protest and handed over the child like a sack of potatoes, a grunt of relief when the exchanged was made.
"What is this?" He fumbled with the tiny thrashing creature in his arms. When the little girl noticed who she was now in the arms of she stilled, a frown furrowing the soft skin between her brows. Her green eyes were fierce and she stared at him, as if to say you are not Mommy.
"Sarah." Linda said, rubbing her arms and settling down in the rocking chair near the cradle.
"What's a Sarah?" The king shifted the baby awkwardly and frowned back at her.
"I am done; I just can't do it anymore!" She whined. She rubbed her arms and stared at the floor.
"What do you want me to do?" The king's mouth was curled in a grotesque line, his eyes darting back and forth between Linda and the child.
"Take her, she yours." She spat. Try as the king might she would not receive his dark stare.
"You will regret this," He shifted the baby in his arms, and she grabbed a little skull ornament on his coat and tried to pull it free.
Linda rolled her eyes, but they sparkled wetly.
"Fine." Her arms, two sticks, came shooting out to take her back, but hung empty in the air.
"Linda…" The Goblin King refused release of her child. "Only take her if you want her."
"You know I don't," Her arms looked ready to drop.
"Is there anywhere else she can go?" He sounded impatient. The little Sarah in his arms abandoned the skull brooch in his coat in favor of the pendant around his neck. She grasped in firmly in her round hands.
"Nowhere." Linda said. Her hands finally fell away, fingers curling into tight fists and landing in her lap. "So, just take her."
The baby made the king startle slightly, an inward startle accompanied by a frown, when she placed a hand on his cheek.
"At least she likes you," The woman laughed bitterly. "Figures."
"You know I must give something in return for this exchange." The baby smacked playfully at his face. "Hush," He said to her.
His word was swollen with a little pinch of magic and it blew gently onto the baby's face.
Sarah, the elder, frozen in her place, invisible to all that were there could feel that breath of magic from his word. Hush, like a wave of gentle water blossoming across her face. It smelled like peaches
Sarah, the baby, let her eyelids droop and she sagged against the king's chest.
"What do you want, Linda?" His gaze never left the sleeping child. There was a tension around his eyes, something warm and dark.
Linda's peel of laughter made this look grow cold and he turned his face back to her.
"I want to be a famous actress," She joked, her voice raw. "I want a wonderfully handsome husband to act with me. And no children." Her voice wavered near the end, and she looked up at her sleeping daughter.
"Done." Jareth turned away.
"Wait…" She laughed nervously. "I didn't mean it!"
Sarah realized her mother was not calling for want of her daughter, but for want of a different wish. She had only been joking.
The image faded away in time for Sarah to watch the king vanish with the smaller version of herself in his hands.
The crystal fell from her hands and the room was dark again. She watched the small orb tumble downward and crash against the hard ground, splitting into a thousand pieces.
"Well, hello there." Jareth's voice was littered with ice. But when Sarah found him lounging on the bed there was a smile on his face, one she knew well. She pulled herself up, using the cradle to support her aching legs.
"Nothing makes sense." She muttered. He nodded with understanding, but the look on his face made her feel like he was disappointed in her.
Though she had just stood she collapsed again to the floor, thoroughly exhausted.
"How shall I tell you?" He said. His voice was compelling, something like dream, a voice familiar as her own. She wanted to move closer, to take the comfort he might give. But his wickedness kept her rooted to the ground. After all, she remembered, she had been prisoner for four years.
Was it longer? How much of her life was illusion?
"As bluntly as possible." She wanted the truth. She rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands, drawing wetness.
"Yes, well your mother grew to like her payment for you. But while raising you was extraordinarily enjoyable for me…"
Sarah snorted.
"I realized that your mother lied to me." He sat up in the bed and gave the room a dazed look. "Your father of course wanted you. Having no knowledge of him I had not wiped his memory."
Sarah gazed at the cradle.
"Since someone had a claim on you, a blood relation, I had to return you."
"Oh," She could not hide her relief that her life was mostly reality.
"You were with me only for a short time, but I grew to enjoy your company. I took liberties. I sought out your future and saw how well you would grow. I had a great deal in mind for your upbringing." He almost looked kind. Sarah imagined how the room might have looked lit by daylight, filled with child's laughter. Had he slept here during her stay? Vigilant over her cradle watching her future in a crystal?
"You're disgusting." She said.
"There was magic enough in you to become an Immortal. You were to be my companion. I might have let you be queen. I had planned to make you so much more than you are now." Bitterness hung in the air like a sour smell.
Sarah was fighting the urge to laugh, everything was sounding as ridiculous as a fever dream. She had never been drunk, but she was guessing it might feel like this; disjointed and silly.
Jareth continued, "I returned you to your father under the guise of a social worker. Then once you were safe with him… You cried for me bitterly… I went to your mother. Her punishment for lying would be that she would never forget you. Your loss would always follow her."
"Worthy punishment." Sarah recalled phone calls from Linda, pleading for assurances that she was happy. Her visits were brief and cold, as if she was being timed. Sarah thought that Jareth may have been the master behind the internal clock her mother ran by, always ticking and warning her.
"I felt the loss." He said. He stood, his clothes were uncharacteristically baggy dark robes, and they sagged to the floor around him.
His hands, she saw, were bare and the skin was blue in the glow of the crystals.
"What do you mean?" She looked again about the room, searching in her mind for the memories. She came up with nothing but blurred thoughts and hopes that she could know what she once was a part of.
"You were perfect. Spirit and wit. Magic from old blood that has carried in your family for many years. You may be watered down my mortality, but I could see the possibilities of you…"
She was standing before he could speak another word and running to him where he stood. She knew somewhere in the back of her mind that she had finally lost it all. This sick twisted man… Of all things this had to be her life!
She was twisted herself, as gnarled as he was in her own human way. Her fists fell down on him in a fury, but the air was all she touched. She stumbled forward with her own force, smashing herself into the mattress of the bed.
"I finally found a way to keep you." His voice was everywhere.
She grew warm with fear when his breath came hot on her neck. Ripping herself free of the bed she spun violently to search the room with her fists, swinging wildly.
There was no royal nose to punch.
Calmed by her own fatigue she stilled, a rumpled mess in the middle of the room. He came up behind her, his warmth overpowering and making her dizzy. He never touched her but she could feel him, a ghost moving behind her, pressing her boundaries but never indulging in her skin. His hand came forward, around her head, holding a crystal. It was a distraction from her anger, she knew, but still like the fire to a moth, she was drawn to it. Her finger came forward and touch it.
Slowly it took a new shape, the curves replaced by hard lines, folding out to produce a new object entirely: a small music box.
"Remember." He commanded. The little box was blue, shining golden flowers to decorate it sat in well placed patterns. He flipped it open with his thumb, and soft music spilled free, a gentle melody. Her lullaby. His spare arm wrapped around her to find her hand, a fist, and brought it to hold the box. His hand only touched her sleeve, flesh never met flesh.
"I played the role of caregiver, then the villain. I did everything for you that you needed. You were meant to be mine. When can I play the role of lover?"
"I wasn't meant for anything."
"Perhaps I am too far in love to know better." He said back, his voice dangerously low.
Sarah snapped herself out of her daze.
"You? Love?" She smirked and flipped the music box closed. "You would only ever know how to love yourself.
He laughed.
"Won't you give me a chance to set myself free?" She begged. Try as she might to face him, he was one set ahead and always out of her sight. "Please?"
The whine in her voice was so evident that she blushed in embarrassment.
"Do you really want to leave?" He asked. For once he sounded serious.
She hesitated. Hadn't he said something before that she would not survive the human world anymore?
"Where could I go?" She said. Looking down at the music box she pondered her future, once a happy dream, now wasted and full of questions.
"You're asking the King of Dreams." He said. "I could take you anywhere."
"Except where I wish to be most." She said, more to herself. "What has happened since I left?"
"A great deal, but it is mostly trivial." The king sounded bored.
"Show me."
Finally his face came into view, the glow of the crystals setting his eyes aflame with blue light. One pupil, engorged, pulsed while the other, small, was focused and unmoving.
"Say your right words."