It was a profound relief to Sarah that she was able to slip back into her normal everyday life so easily. Jen not only managed to save Sarah's job, but give her back all her old shifts as well—which, considering she had seniority on most of the other servers, were mostly nights and weekends. She traded a few of her busier shifts for daytime hours with the servers who had covered for her while she was gone, trying to use the prospect of better tips to make amends for the inconvenience she had caused them. She picked up a few extra shifts as well, covering for anyone who needed it, to try make up for the money she hadn't earned during her week-long absence. She exchanged pleasantries with the other waitstaff and bitched in a comfortable, good-natured way with Shana, Shana's boyfriend John, and their other friends Becca and Erin. She flattered, harangued, or bantered with the line cooks depending on who was on schedule that night. Whenever her shifts overlapped with Brennan's, she steadfastly ignored his mooning stares and awkward attempts at conversation, dropping off her drink orders and picking them up with crisp and courteous efficiency. She smiled sweetly at her customers, enduring the obnoxious drunks, picky eaters, and bad tippers with impeccable grace and patience, saving up her bile to unleash later in kitchen.
To anyone who asked about her absence, she smiled sadly and said "family emergency." No one asked her any questions.
On Tuesday, Shana arranged a night out. They went to Central to see a live show (half-price, because it was Tuesday), and then, at John's urging, went bowling. They drank pitchers of beer and slid around on the polished wooden floors with their smooth-soled shoes. The only two of them with any real skill, John and Becca, focused mostly on bowling and trash-talking each other. Between frames, Shana scrolled through Instagram while Sarah pumped Erin for details on her recent role as an extra in a fast-food commercial.
"$150!" she said triumphantly, texting Sarah the phone number and email for the casting company that had hired her. "I had to hold a French fry in my hand and laugh for almost seven hours."
"Did they feed you?" Sarah asked.
Erin made a face. "More French fries," she said grimly. "The talent got Olive Garden."
Shana got into a raging fight with John over something he had posted on Snapchat (Sarah missed the details) and walked home with Sarah. Shana ranted about the male gaze most of the way home before declaring abruptly, as she been doing lately whenever she got really drunk, that she was going to miss Sarah when Sarah finally moved to New York. Sarah spent the last ten minutes of the walk to Shana's apartment consoling her, assuring her that she was at least going to stay the next six months until the latest season of community theater was over. By the time they got to Shana's apartment, both of them were sloppy-crying. Rather than walking home, she collapsed on Shana's couch and slept until almost noon the next day.
It was a life she had loved, a life she had spent the last two and half years building since college, just one more stepping stone on the way to achieving her dreams. And yet, something was wrong. Nothing about it had changed—but still, Sarah felt different. When she served her customers, chatted with her coworkers, hung out with her friends, she didn't feel quite herself. It was as though she was playing a part; like part of her, the important part, was standing off to one side and watching a replica of herself live her own life. She found that the feeling eased somewhat when she was drunk, and after her night out with Shana and the others she rummaged around her kitchen, found a dusty, half empty bottle of vodka on top of her fridge, leftovers from some long-ago party, and started keeping it by her bed. When it ran out, she walked down to the gas station on the corner and got more.
All in all, facing real life did not turn out to be as difficult as she feared. She still become very nervous when people wanted to touch her or when someone stood directly behind her, but, as far as she could tell, she hid it well. Several times throughout the week she was disoriented by the powerful feeling that she was looking out at the world through someone else's eyes. The feeling vanished as quickly and inexplicably as it came, leaving her with a faint feeling of nausea and unease. Luckily, no one seemed to notice.
There was a little awkwardness, a little distance the first few days she was back at work, but it faded quickly in the face of her impeccable performance. Aside from a few comments that she needed to get some sleep, which tapered off after she started really laying on the concealer, the only person to express any real concern was another server named Debbie, a middle-aged veteran of the restaurant industry verging on elderly, very Christian and a bit nosy.
Debbie pulled her aside during a Wednesday afternoon shift, peering at Sarah through her thick glasses, and asked her how she was sleeping.
Sarah faltered a little at the directness of the question. "Oh, um—ok, I guess." Even to her, it didn't sound very convincing.
Debbie looked at her sympathetically and patted her shoulder. "Bad dreams?"
Sarah looked over Debbie's shoulder—Shana was smirking at her from the bar.
"Yeah," she said. The quickest way out of this conversation was to just admit it—Debbie was a dog with a bone whenever she thought she saw an opportunity to do good.
"Poor thing," Debbie reached into her apron pocket, drew out something covered in white feathers and offered it to her.
"Here," she said. "Hang this over your bed—it'll help you get some rest." She patted Sarah's shoulder again. "You take care of yourself honey."
"Thanks," Sarah said automatically as Debbie bustled away. She shoved whatever it was into her pocked and didn't look at it again until she slipped outside to talk to Shana while she was on her smoke break.
"Oh my God," Shana said in a mix of horror and wonder. "It's a dreamcatcher."
It was. It had a web woven of out of white polyester cords, and hanging from the hoop were bright bleached-white leather thongs strung with pink and purple plastic beads. Clumps of fluffy artificial white feathers had been stuck into the gaps between the beads and along the outer edge of the hoop. There was a little card attached to it that said "The Legend of the Dreamcatcher" in a long, looping light blue script, and an Angelfire URL was printed on the back.
"I haven't seen one of these since I was a kid," Shana marveled. "Are they supposed to have this many feathers?"
"I don't know," Sarah said nervously, trying to snatch it back. "Give it! If Naomi sees it we'll be getting lectures about cultural appropriation for a week!"
"We'll deserve them," Shana snickered, balancing her cigarette in one hand and holding the dreamcatcher out of reach with the other. She fingered the plastic beads. "God, look at it. Do people really still use Angelfire?"
When she'd finally gotten the dreamcatcher back from Shana, Sarah stuffed it into her apron pocket and promptly forgot all about it in the chaos of the dinner rush. When she got home that night and emptied her apron onto her bed, she'd stared at it doubtfully before looking up at her walls, already covered in symbols and talismans belonging to at least five different cultural traditions that she knew next to nothing about. She looked at the dream catcher again, wincing a little, but shrugged, got a thumbtack from the kitchen, and hung it from the wall just above the headboard of her bed, underneath a Celtic triple spiral and beside a crude drawing of the Norse rune "Algiz" that she'd done in black sharpie.
Whether it worked or not, she couldn't say. Most nights she slept fitfully, and she did not remember her dreams.
All throughout that week, as she kept herself busy doing everything she could to get her life back on track, Sarah steadfastly avoided thinking about the Goblin King and the bargain she had made with him—there would be time for that later, she reasoned. This was her week. But the time seemed to pass so quickly, and suddenly the week was over, the sun was setting on the night she was to return to the Underground, and there was nothing else for her to think about. She looked longingly at the bottle of vodka on her nightstand, but taking the edge off was not an option tonight. She needed to be sharp.
The night she'd returned, she had written down everything she could remember saying during her last visit. Sarah burned with humiliation as she re-read it, remembering how easily she had been drawn into making the bargain with him, but she had been so tired, and so desperate. And now, as she looked over the conditions of the bargain with fresh eyes, she had to admit that she hadn't done too bad. She had given him power over her, no doubt, but he had already found a way around that anyway. And he had to behave himself now—he couldn't hurt her anymore.
Despite that, she couldn't suppress a shudder as she considered what might await her when she returned. No matter what temporary security the bargain offered her, she couldn't forget what his ultimate goal was. For you to stay. This wasn't like the Labyrinth, which, though dangerous, was an ordeal with a clearly defined task and a time limit—and she'd had friends to help her. Now she was alone. The bargain they'd made had no expiration date, and she had no idea what she would have to do to keep herself safe from him. How was she going to get out of this?
Sarah looked over the protective symbols and charms that covered the walls of her bedroom. She thought about the night she had decided to take it all down when she was younger—about what had convinced her that she no longer needed it.
It had been near the end of her 10th grade year. The school had hired a part-time drama coach to help the elderly drama teacher, Mrs. Stokes, with the spring production of "Our Town." Sarah was immediately drawn to him. Mr. Mark, as he'd asked the students to call him, was handsome, so mature, and, although he was old enough to be her father, he seemed to genuinely enjoy her company. Her friends were jealous—he was very well liked by virtually all the female students—but they were used to Sarah getting a lot of the attention in drama club, and did not see anything unusual in the warmth in his voice when he complimented her reading or way his eyes followed her across the stage.
When he asked her if she would be willing to stay after hours for extra practice, she'd agreed immediately, eyes shining. But when she'd shown up in the auditorium after her Speech and Debate meeting, he seemed preoccupied, almost like he was angry with her. While the drama teacher, Mrs. Stokes, moved around back stage noisily organizing the props, he took her through a few simple exercises, stuff she had worked on as a freshman. He kept glancing backstage toward where Mrs. Stokes was working and barely looked at her. After only fifteen minutes, he abruptly declared that practice was over and left out the side door without another word.
As she stood on the stage, confused and feeling like she wanted to cry, Mrs. Stokes came out from behind the curtains, very gently sat her down, and in her quiet, sweet Texas accent, told her that she was concerned. That she'd noticed how the drama coach spoke to her, how he looked at her. She asked Sarah if he had ever asked her to do anything that made her uncomfortable. And just like that, Sarah knew. She understood why he'd smiled at her the way he did, why he'd been complimenting her, and she shook head, her cheeks burning with shame at how foolish she had been. I fell for it again, she thought, though she wasn't even exactly sure what she meant.
"Honey," Mrs. Stokes said, taking her hand. "Don't you let him make you feel bad for one second. This is not your fault. Men like him, they're tricky. You need to handle them carefully or they'll try to get away with just about anything." She explained to Sarah that she could report what was happening, but told her that she didn't think anything would come of it. There was no guarantee that the principal would believe her, and Mr. Mark hadn't done anything yet, not anything that would get him into real trouble. She would recommend to the principal that they not hire him again next year, but in meantime they were stuck with him.
"You're a smart girl," Mrs. Stokes said. "You'll be able to manage him just fine. And I'll be here—I won't leave you alone with him for one second. You think you can handle that?"
Sarah had nodded, her cheeks still flaming.
"If he tries anything else, if you get scared, you go straight to your parents," Mrs. Stokes told her. "They'll be able to kick up a bigger fuss. Your daddy's a lawyer, right?"
Sarah nodded.
"You'll be fine, honey." Mrs. Stokes had patted her hand. "Just remember: men like that, they try to suck you in. They try to make you feel silly, make you think that the way they see things is the only way. You just have to stand on your own two feet and stay true to yourself. You can't let them make you forget who you are."
A few days later, Mr. Mark approached her again about private lessons, this time when Mrs. Stokes was at the other end of the auditorium helping another student. She'd smiled sweetly and looked down. Her father had been very angry, she said, when she'd gotten home so late the other night. He'd made her promise to come straight home after rehearsal from now on. After that, Mr. Mark pretty much left her alone. When she noticed him paying special attention to another girl, a freshman this time, she'd taken a few of her more talkative classmates aside after rehearsal and whispered confidences into their ears. Before long, about half the female population of her high school had dubbed him a "creep." The other half, of course, still passionately defended him, but he was on his guard after that, and he had lost a lot of his easy charm. On the last day, he'd walked out of the school minutes after the last bell rang, skipping the Hamlet cast party, and did not return the following September. She'd been giddy with relief and triumph that evening as she'd broke down the set with her friends, giggling and prancing around the stage as she ate far too much pizza and drank can after can of soda.
That was the night that she'd packed it all away. When she got home that night she had sat soberly on her bed for a long time, working up the courage. When she was finally ready, she got out of bed and calmly took down all the protective symbols that hung on the walls. The jewelry and other odds and ends she gathered from wherever it lay: the bathroom, her dresser, and her nightstand.
Karen had come in while she was taking it down and, trying to hide her delight, asked her why. "I don't need it anymore," Sarah said truthfully.
She packed it all up in her wooden jewelry chest and stuck it under the bed. Magic wasn't going to help her, but she didn't need it anyway. She'd defeated the Labyrinth—and she was more than capable of taking care of herself.
Now, ten years later, sitting on a different bed in a different bedroom, she stared at the yellowed, much-creased drawings and charms that covered her walls once again: pentagrams, eyes of Horus, six and eight-pointed stars, a smattering of Nordic and Celtic runes, triple spirals and triquetras. Try as she might, she couldn't summon that same iron-hard confidence in her own strength that she remembered feeling the night she'd decided she didn't need magic. Mr. Mark had been laughably easy to deal with compared to what awaited her on the other side of her dreams tonight.
Sarah gripped the cross made of iron nails that she wore around her neck, twisting it in her hands over and over. Maybe if she never went to sleep at all, he wouldn't be able to take her. Maybe it only worked at night. If she only slept during the day, she might be safe—she could quit her job, find one where she worked nights only…
She checked her phone—10:37—and sighed in resignation. Between the lack of sleep and the constant, low-grade anxiety of the past few weeks, she was exhausted. She put it off too long—she couldn't make a plan now. She was so tired she could barely thing; and besides, she didn't know enough.
As she lay down, fully dressed in leggings and a long t-shirt, she caught sight of the dreamcatcher hanging over her and cringed, but did not take it down. It wasn't as if anyone else would see it. And maybe it would help. Her time Underground was essentially a dream—at least that was how the Goblin King had explained it. Maybe it would keep anything bad from happening to her while she was down there.
Sarah closed her eyes and fell almost immediately into a restless sleep.