She woke up all at once, jolting from deep sleep into heart-pounding panic. It felt like all her senses had been switched on at the same time, and her mind was flooded—sweat-dampened sheets clinging to her body—dim shapes around her still blurry as she frantically rubbed her eyes—the flickering light of a fire—the crackling and snapping as it burned—the scent of woodsmoke, and underneath it a strange, woodsy smelling cologne.
She was back in the Underground.
She shrieked and launched herself out of the bed. Her legs tangled in the sheets and she dragged half the covers over the side with her and almost fell. Wild-eyed, panting, she clutched at a tapestry to try and steady herself as she scanned the room. No one on the bed—at the door—by the fire. It took several more passes of the room before it registered in her mind—he wasn't there. She was alone.
There will be another night, he had told her, when the spell had finally ended and she had started to disappear. Your nights belong to me now. But it had been more than a week. When he hadn't called her back the next night or the night after that, she had started to hope. Sarah swallowed hard, trying to clear the lump in her throat.
She needed to sit down. The bed was out of the question—she didn't even want to look at it—but there was a small table and chairs by the fireplace. She tottered over and sat heavily in the closest one, burying her head in her trembling hands and resting her elbows on the table and tried to take long, slow breaths.
Finally, when her hands had stopped shaking and it no longer felt like her heart was trying to burst through her chest, she was able to sit up and take stock.
She did not remember the table from last time. It was covered in a red cloth, and heavily laden with l covered dishes and patters, as well as silver plates and utensils—place settings for two. Her stomach twisted. A second chair, ornately carved from dark wood, sat on the opposite side.
As she looked around, she caught her reflection in one of the polished domes. She put her hand to her cheek, struck by what she didn't see rather than what she did. She could still trace the places where her injuries should have been—would have been, if they had not slowly faded away the morning after, disappearing within a few hours of waking up, leaving no signs of her harrowing experience the night before other than a dull ache where the marks had been. It had only been a week; there should still have been a livid, purple-blue bruise just under her left eye—the gash where his ring had torn the skin along her cheekbone, there should have been a scab there. Instead, all she saw in the reflection that looked back at her was pale, unbroken skin. Her eyes had dark, haggard circles beneath them and the nightgown she wore seemed to hang from her shoulders, signs of all the sleep and meals she had been missing lately.
A curled piece of paper on the table caught her eye, and she picked it up. It was a note, written on thick cream-colored paper in a spidery black script: My dear Sarah, it said, Forgive my absence. I will join you shortly. J.The letter "J" was larger and more embellished than the other words, with an ornate line and little curlicues underneath it. If she hadn't been so terrified, she would have rolled her eyes.
What the hell? A dinner invitation? She scrubbed angrily at the tears that had been beginning to form. No way in hell was she going to sit down to dinner with that monster. She crushed the note in her hand, flung it into the fire, then turned darted for the door.
It was large and heavy, thick beams of wood bound by strips of iron—and it was locked. She tugged and tugged on the metal ring that served as its handle, but the door didn't even move. She slammed the iron ring down and it clanked uselessly against the iron plate that backed it.
OK. She took a deep breath and turned to scan the walls. Everywhere, except near the fireplace, they were covered in thickly embroidered tapestries. There had to be windows beneath them, didn't there? As she got closer, she cringed as she saw the scenes the tapestries depicted—strange, morbid tableaus of battles, animals being hunted, and what looked like an execution. A headless body knelt before a block, it's neck spewing gouts of blood an improbable distance while a man nearby held up the severed head for a crowd to see. There were even little streams and drips of blood, carefully worked in tiny stitches, falling from the head. Disgusting—how could he stand looking at that stuff as he went to sleep?
Feeling a draft, she frantically rummaged among them and discovered a window—so long it stretched from the floor almost to the ceiling, and very thin. Far too thin for her to fit through, she saw the disappointment, but she could still look out. It was dark—she couldn't see very far, but she could make out the drawbridge and moat below her, lit up by flickering torches. His room must overlook the front of the castle. The moat looked much wider than the one she remembered, maybe as much as twenty feet across, and were those goblins patrolling the parapet a few stories down? They were not as small as she remembered either—they looked at least as big as she was.
Her breath caught in her throat when she caught a glimpse of the Labyrinth. As her eyes adjusted, she could see its tall stone walls in the moonlight, rising into the distance. It looked so beautiful. She felt a strange sense of longing; as terrified as she knew she had been all those years ago, the labyrinth now seemed to her to be a place much preferable to the one she was in now. Here memories of it were full of friends, adventure—victory. Simple challenges that, while difficult, she had known how to face, and had overcome. Her throat tightened when she thought of the friends she had made there. She was alone now—there was no one to help her here.
Just then, she heard a sound at the door—the rasp of a key in the lock—and whirled around, heart pounding. Her eyes moved frantically over the room—what should she do? Hide? Rush the door? As the door started to swing open, she darted for the table, snatched a knife from beside one of the covered dishes and held it at her side behind the folds of her nightgown.
The Goblin King entered.
"Sarah!" he called in merry voice, smiling broadly. He was dressed differently tonight, wearing an ornate belted tunic over his usual tights and white undershirt, and the way his blond hair hung around his face seemed carefully arranged. "I'm so sorry to have kept you. Did you get my…" he trailed off and Sarah followed his gaze to a smoking scrap of parchment at the edge of the fireplace. She tensed, fearing his anger, but he continued to start at the note, his face blank. He seemed to be deciding how to react. Finally, he smirked. "Ah. I see you did."
Sarah narrowed her eyes. There was something artificial in his manner; he was making a show of being amused, but underneath the merriment in his eyes lurked something she could not read. Stay calm, she told herself. Keep breathing. Stay calm. Remember last time—don't let him see that you're afraid of him.
Still smirking, he gestured to the table with exaggerated politeness. "Shall we?" He took a step towards the table—towards her.
Immediately she backed away from him. Stay calm, she shrieked at herself inside her head as her heart raced, and she forced herself to stop backing up after a few steps. She wanted to press herself into the wall and disappear. What the hell was she going to do?
The Goblin King stopped, tilting his head and looking at her from the corners of his eyes.
"I promise not to bite," he said dryly. Slowly, as though he was deliberately trying not the alarm her, he walked to the table and stood next to one of the chairs. He was looking at her expectantly. Stay calm, she thought. Don't make him angry. Just do what he says until you get a chance to… She squeezed the knife in the hand for courage. Forcing one foot in front of the other, still clutching the knife, she moved to the other chair.
Together, they sat down.
"Are you hungry?" he asked in a carefully casual voice as he removed the cover from one of the dishes. Steam rose, and Sarah smelled garlic and something green.
He was looking at her—she had to reply, but there was no way in hell that she was eating any of this food.
"Not really." The quiver in her voice appalled her. Keep it together.
He looked up, his eyes sharp. "Nonsense." There was an edge to his voice, too. She fumbled for something to put him off, some kind of stalling tactic—she could not eat that food.
"I thought humans couldn't eat fairy food," she said quickly, settling for the truth.
The Goblin King raised his eyebrows, lowering the serving spoon he had picked up back into the dish where it had come from. "Fairy food?" he asked, his voice carefully blank.
"Yes. That's what you are, isn't it? Some kind of fairy? It's the closest thing I could find."
He smiled. It seemed genuine—fond, almost, like she was a dog who had just performed an interesting trick. "In a way, I suppose. In a way, yes. And you are correct—in some circumstances, eating the food of this realm could, perhaps, have some...shall we say, less than desirable effects on you."
Sarah thought of the peach then, and suppressed a shudder.
"And in these circumstances?" she asked, keeping her voice light.
"As I told you…" he paused, seeming reluctant to reference their previous encounter. "…before, you are essentially in a dream. While the magic I have employed does give you the ability to act on the things of this world and be acted upon by them as though you were physically present, you are not, strictly speaking, really here." As he spoke, he began spooning portions of the dishes onto their plates.
"So…"
"'So,' by the magic that brings you here, you remain irrevocably tied to your own realm. Enchanting you with some other spell, while possible, would essentially be pointless. Inevitably you would return to your own realm and the magic would dissipate and have no further effect on you."
"Really?" she said politely. Her mind was whirring again, searching for some other excuse to avoid eating. It sounded plausible, but then again of course it would.
"I swear," he said grandly. "On my true name. Although I should add that, traditionally speaking, accepting hospitality does incur a debt of a kind." He eyed her smugly as he used a pair of ornate silver tongs to dish spears of some kind of green vegetable onto her plate. "Such as, for example, an obligation to be courteous to one's host."
Courteous? Really? "Does that apply to people you kidnap?"
The warmth vanished from his face like a candle being snuffed out; he studied her through narrowed eyes. Stupid, stupid! He'd been so gregarious—it had just slipped. She could feel the blood draining from her face.
Then the cold look vanished as quickly as it had come, and he was smirking again.
"I'm not certain," he said, pulling the cover off the largest dish in the center of the table. "I'll have to consult my etiquette manuals."
Then he froze, staring at the dish he had uncovered—a large cut of meat on a platter surrounded by frilly greenery. His eyes were fixed on the table just to the side of the platter.
The knife…