Chapter Sixteen

Sarah

When you can't hold on

When you're strength is gone

When all that you can manage is sending up a cry

I'll be standing right beside you, till you reach the other side

- The Other Side, Philip Larue

Faerie.

Sarah groaned. Shards of glass ground between her eyelids and her eyes, but when she attempted to press the heel of her palm against the sensation, she found that she could not move her hands. Something burned around her wrist, and when she twisted it, she gasped as sharp pains shot up her arm.

"Fia, it sounds like our prize is awake," hissed a nearby voice. A familiar voice.

Sarah was still blind, the pain in her eyes enough that she wanted to weep in frustration, but when tears began to form, the grinding, shattered sensation only strengthened. Her heart started to speed, and her stomach twisted in response to the agony of it, her breaths leaving her in shallow gasps.

"Your venom is still at work," another voice spoke, this one sounding like the crash of waves on a pebble-strewn beach. With it came the stench of rotting seaweed and saltwater. "You're sure it won't kill her?"

Snatches of memories came back to her. Stepping into the pressing dark of the mirror and cold, taloned hands closing over her bicep, yanking her so violently that she feared her arm would come off. She had tried to scream, but when she opened her mouth, the solid shadows flooded in, choking her.

"I'm sure," the first voice said, the 's' in each word it spoke elongated, like the sound of a snake. "She may not recover her sight, but she will live."

Sarah moaned at those words, the sour tang of fear sliding across her tongue. Blind? I'm going to go blind? She was still scrabbling at her memories, trying to recall just how she had ended up here, her arms tied behind her back. They had apparently been that way for quite some time, for they were cramped and tingling, her shoulder blades burning. At her back was the rough scratch of bark. She drew her legs up, knees to her chest, which shifted her enough that it made another gasp of pain escape her lips.

"No one needs her to see," the second voice rumbled. Fia. "It may be to our benefit. She could turn more docile."

"I did not sign up for this to train some half-feral, stinking human. I only want what you promised me."

"In time, Khana, in time. We have to get through the wilds and the wastes first."

Khana hissed again, and something dry and cold brushed against Sarah's arm. "I would rather take it now."

"You would break your word, lamia? What would that mean for your people?" Fia sounded like they were scolding a child, almost. "You've already damaged the human." There was a rustling, and Sarah felt it as someone knelt next to her. "I know you can hear me, mortal. I'm going to untie your hands. Do not attempt to do anything rash. You are valuable, but you don't have to have all your pieces in place to retain that value. Remember this."

She swallowed and managed to ask in a rasping voice, "Who are you? What do you want?"

The lamia—and Sarah had a sudden image in her mind of a serpentine body with the head and torso of a beautiful, flame-haired woman—let out a laugh. "Who are you?" she mocked. "Your time as a pampered pet of the fae is at an end, mortal."

Sarah did not answer except to exclaim as her hands were released from their bonds, the scent of ozone accompanying the use of magic. Moving her arms was torture, and she winced as she slowly pulled them into her lap. She could feel only the very tips of her fingers. Everything else was numb, but as blood began working back into the area, it burned like fire.

"My name is Fia. I am a selkie. My companion here is Khana. You met her when we snatched you from the portal. We are taking you to the grand market beyond the wastes, where you will fetch us a pretty price."

"Fae touched," Khana spat. "There's fewer and fewer of you as time goes on."

"Yes," Fia agreed. "And we would never have attempted to steal you from a fae if times were easier, but we have not seen one of your kind in over a decade, and hunting you is my life and my trade." She let out a sigh like seafoam against rocks. "Or it used to be. You may be my last quarry. Come," She pulled on Sarah's arm, but dropped it when she gave a cry of pain. Fia swore. "You tied her too tight, Khana."

"You should have checked the bonds yourself if you were so worried," the lamia snapped back.

"Well, now you'll get to carry her. We have to move. I don't like staying in one place longer than necessary."

Sarah opened her mouth to protest that she could walk just fine, but then she was unceremoniously yanked upward. She let out a yelp and thrashed a little, but the hands holding her ended in taloned points that she remembered from the portal mirror. Those tips dimpled into the flesh of her stomach, and she ceased her movements. The lamia laughed again. "That's right, no more fighting. Though if you wanted to give me a treat, you could anger Fia enough that she lets me eat one of your fingers. Your kind always tastes the sweetest."

Sarah shuddered, finding herself cradled against the lamia's chest, arms still too weak to move, and her eyes full of fire, darkness the only thing she could see.

They began walking or, in the lamia's case, slithering along what sounded like a forest with a carpet of dried leaves to wade through. Branches snagged on her shirt or scratched at her feet while she worked on flexing and massaging sensation back into her hands.

The selkie hummed while they walked. Sarah pressed her hands against her eyes, trying to ease the burn there. Every blink was like sandpaper, and even with her eyes open, she saw nothing but charcoal gray fog, with occasional darker shadows within.

In the lamia's arms, Sarah remembered the moment she had been yanked from the darkness of the portal. She had sucked in a breath, eyes wide, taking in the lamia for a split second before something hot and searing splashed across her eyes. The venom.

"I need water," Sarah said after a time. "Please." She did not know how long she had been with these creatures, but it must have been several hours as her body was screaming with thirst.

Fia let out a long sigh. "Very well."

A soft skin of water was pressed into Sarah's hands. She fumbled at the mouth of it while the lamia stood still. Then she tipped the skin back and immediately choked, spewing saltwater while she coughed.

Fia and Khana were laughing, the arms holding her shaking in mirth. Sarah sputtered, still gagging, and fury rose in her, setting her limbs to tremble. She threw the water skin as hard as she could and heard it smack into something a few feet away. The laughter stopped.

Then there were fingers on her face, turning her head. They were as cold as ice water and damp. The scent of rotting seaweed grew stronger, and Fia was speaking. "You hit me, little mortal."

Anger still surged in her. "I can't survive on salt water. Do you want me to die?"

"More and more, when you open your mouth to speak. Perhaps I shall have Khana eat your tongue."

"She doesn't need it," Khana purred. "Our buyers might appreciate her silence." The arms holding her tightened, and Sarah stiffened. The fingers on her face withdrew, and eagerness crept into the lamia's voice. "May I, Fia? Oh, please let me."

She began to struggle, but it was like fighting against a stone statue. One that breathed and laughed at her attempts to get away. And then something struck her across the face so hard that for a moment she could not breathe.

"That is repayment, mortal. Don't try something like this again, or I really will let Khana eat your tongue."

Sarah's ear was ringing, and something wet trickled out of it. A moment later and there was a hot breath on her neck, and a tongue scraped across her flesh. "Waste not want not," Khana whispered, then trembled a little. "Oh, I had almost forgotten how your kind taste."

"Remember your vow, snake," the selkie snapped.

"You were the one to draw blood. What would you have me do? Let it go to waste?" They began moving again, Sarah's head spinning and throbbing from the blow. "Consider the taste a bonus, Fia."

The selkie snorted but said nothing.

Sarah did not know how long they walked. She lost consciousness twice, jerking awake both times to a rumble of laughter from the lamia. Feeling her face, she could tell she was swollen on one side, her cheekbone so tender that she worried the bone had broken. She cleared away flakes of dried blood from her ear and tried not to think of the thirst that was consuming her every thought.

The saltwater had made it worse by an order of magnitude Sarah had not anticipated. Her mouth burned with the need for liquid, and she soon found tears falling down her cheeks and hitting her chapped lips.

Desperation made her speak once more, though her voice was unrecognizable to her ears. "Please. Water."

Fia stopped her soft singing, which Sarah had been too distracted to notice. "Did you hear something, Khana?"

The lamia laughed. "Perhaps another demonstration is in order, Fia? This one does not seem to understand."

"Spoiled by the fae, most like." There was the snap of a breaking branch, and the fluttering of bird wings as several took flight high above them. "Listen to me, mortal. I want you alive. I want you in mostly one piece. But my interest in your well-being extends only so far."

"I'll die," Sarah rasped. "Without water."

"So you will, which is why you'll have some when we make camp. No sooner. I won't let you die, human, but don't expect to be pampered every step of the way. Now, that was your final warning. The next time you speak out of turn, I will rip your tongue from your head myself."

###

They did give her something to drink that night. Not much, but it tasted like heaven though it smelled like old pond water. She was also given a slice of bread and a shred of meat from whatever animal they had killed to roast over their campfire. Sarah devoured the bread but nibbled at the meat, uncertain until a snort of derision came from the selkie. "It's a squirrel, your highness."

After that, she slept, and the next morning they did the same thing. Her sight had not returned or improved in any way, and so the lamia carried her, at first in her arms and eventually with a sling that left Sarah clinging to her back like a baby monkey. Whenever she attempted to walk independently, she stumbled and fell on the uneven ground, causing Khana to grumble in frustration.

They did not talk to her, but they spoke around her. Sarah learned that a lamia was a rare thing, incredibly strong, and difficult to kill. A bruiser with an insatiable appetite for raw flesh. Typically they were territorial and stayed in their own range, but when Fia had found out that there was a fae touched human in the Underground, she had little trouble convincing Khana to be the muscle of their two-woman operation.

Fia was several hundred years old from how she referred to events from long in the past, asking rather abruptly of Sarah one night, "Whatever happened to that Napoleon fellow in the Aboveground?"

Despite that and a few other questions about Aboveground history, they rarely spoke to her. The selkie sang and hummed to herself most of the day, and the lamia occasionally hissed out a threat if Sarah moved too much in her attempts to get comfortable.

Days passed in this manner. Walking through what seemed like an endless wood, with the strange ocean songs of the selkie winding through the air, and the odd, slippery sensation of the lamia's scaled skin beneath her fingers as she gripped its shoulders. A large cup of water at the end and the beginning of every day. Bread and meat, meat and bread. The further they got from wherever they had started, the more cheerful Fia became.

"We're almost to the wastes," she said on what Sarah calculated to be the fifth day. "A few more days and we'll have you at market, my prize."

She said nothing. Her jeans and blouse were filthy, her skin itching, and there was a hollowness to her stomach that only echoed when she fed it. She still could not see more than vague dark shapes in a hazy cloud, but the pain in her eyes was gone. She wanted to ask if it would be permanent but feared the answer.

That night the lamia dumped her by a tree as usual, and after her meager meal, Sarah curled around herself, chilled but unwilling to come closer to the fire burning several feet away. She could feel each one of her ribs, and her stomach cramped after she drank the water so fast. Closing her eyes, she slipped off into sleep.

###

Sarah opened her eyes, and color greeted her. It was the first indication that this was a dream. The second was Jareth, his face a mask of concern a moment before he grasped her, pulling her flush against his chest. She clutched him, overcome as he started to speak. "Aldric is coming for you, Sarah. We'll find you."

Her throat was so tight that her words were barely a whisper. "I can't see, Jareth. When I'm awake, the lamia—she hit me with her venom. I'm blind."

"I know," he said, stroking her hair. She leaned into the sensation, and he tightened his grip around her. "Once you come home, we'll see what we can do. I have healers, and Aldric has his own abilities."

"I'll be able to see again?"

He was silent for long enough that she pulled back. Their surroundings were strange. Shifting landscapes of mountains and corridors, one thing blending into the next in the way of dreams. But he was so real that when she touched him, she felt the fever heat of his skin. It's because he's really here.

"Jareth?" she asked, tears springing to her eyes. "Please tell me I'll be able to see again."

He smoothed the hair back from her face, and his voice was gentle. "Lamia venom is potent. It is both poison and magic. I am not a healer, Sarah; I do not know how easy it will be to restore your sight."

The tears fell, and he brushed them away with his thumbs, leaning down and placing his mouth against hers in the gentlest of kisses.

"I am so sorry, Sarah. We'll find you. I promise."

###

Someone grabbed a fistful of her hair, yanking her up to a sitting position. Sarah screamed at the sudden pain and was rewarded with a blow across the face that had her tasting blood. "Shut up," Fia snapped. "I can smell the fae about you, human. Where is he?"

"In my dreams," Sarah gasped, her scalp screaming from where the selkie still held her hair tight. "He just visited me in my dreams."

She was released with a sudden hiss. "You belong to the Goblin King?"

The lamia slithered across the leaves, the sound familiar to Sarah's ears. "Kill her now. We'll move faster without her, and dead mortals tell no tales."

"I will not give up my prize because you're afraid of a single fae," Fia snarled. "And as soon as we sell her, the Goblin King will have no claim to her."

Sarah doubted that but held her tongue. She had no desire to lose it. Or to say anything that would tip them in favor of homicide.

Khana's sharp talons closed around Sarah's upper arm, and she dragged her upright. "We need to move. If he could find her in dreams, he could find her here."

"Agreed," the selkie said.

They broke camp and began moving once more. There was no singing this time and no grumbling from the lamia.

Sarah started to fall asleep, lulled by the smooth movement of their walk, then something sharp jabbed her in the side, and she jerked. "No dreaming, little mortal," Fia said. "You'll get no more sleep before we take you to market."

Khana was still trying to convince the selkie to kill her, describing all the various uses different creatures had for the bones, blood, and flesh of a fae-touched human. Sarah's stomach roiled at the descriptions, and she grew increasingly worried about the creature she clung to hour after hour.

The sun rose, its rays barely penetrating the chill in the air. It still heated her skin and made her more drowsy. Every time she began to nod off, however, pain greeted her until Fia snarled and shoved something acrid and rotten smelling under Sarah's nose that made her reel. "Eat this," the selkie demanded.

Sarah reached up, fumbling with the creature's clammy fingers before grasping something that seemed for all the world to be made of cold mud. When she hesitated, the selkie began to growl a threat, and she quickly shoved the foul concoction into her mouth.

She almost threw it up but managed to swallow down the lump of whatever it was. Coughing and eyes streaming, she felt a surge of alertness a moment later. Her heart sped, and all her senses heightened. Even the shadow-shapes were more numerous. She could hear the creak and groan of branches rubbing against each other, feel the subtle shift in the wind, and smelled—

She tried not to let her reaction show through, holding her breath for a moment before leaning back into the lamia. Her heart was a pounding rush in her chest, but neither Khana nor Fia noticed her sudden stiffening.

Aldric.

It had to be him. Jareth said he was coming.

But hours passed into another day, and there was no further sign of the fae warrior. Sarah had begun to think she had imagined the scent of vanilla brandy in the air when the lamia declared her need for rest. "I don't want any of that foul paste," she said in her slithering voice. "I just need an hour, maybe less."

Fia grumbled, but soon Sarah was being deposited on the ground. She was wired, alight with whatever substance the selkie had given her. The stimulant reminded her of a beefed-up version of certain sinus medications. She wanted to ask how long it would last and if there were any side effects, but all her curiosity was tamped down by the very real threat of losing her ability to speak.

Some minutes went by, and a soft snore began to rise from where the lamia had been. Sarah felt a hand slide over her mouth. It was hot, and the scent of Aldric came to her, her heart picking up a faster rhythm. "Stay calm," his voice breathed straight into her ear a moment later. "When I let go, I want you to get up and run as fast as you can."

Sarah shook her head. She touched her eyes, slashing the air with her hand to try and signal that she could not see.

There was a slight intake of breath. "They blinded you," he said, his voice holding a rage she had never heard from him before. He swore and said. "Crawl, then. When I let you go, start crawling this way. I'll keep them from you."

A movement, a brush of cloth against her neck, and his hand was gone.

Sarah pulled in a deep breath, shocked still, and then rolled to all fours and began to move. Fia sent up a cry, but Sarah did not stop. Even as she heard Aldric's voice behind her, booming like thunder, she did not stop. "You dare touch her? She is mine."

Twigs snapped under her palms and knees. Beneath the carpet of leaves was hard, cold ground littered with small, sharp rocks. A few times, she shouldered or went head-first into a tree, having to reorient herself before continuing on. Behind her was the sound of a battle. She heard the lamia's high-pitched screech, and a song came from the selkie that made her limbs heavy, her head swimming as it conjured images of a gentle seashore, beckoning and welcoming.

She stumbled and fell to the cold earth, cradled in the rocking motion of the sea.

There was a low cry and a thump, and the singing came to an abrupt end. Sarah staggered back up, standing this time, feeling around her for a tree and then clutching it, the ground still seeming as though it rocked beneath her feet.

Far off, she heard Aldric calling her name. A warning shout. The sound of crunching leaves grew to a crescendo, and taloned hands were around her throat. The lamia's stinking breath on her face a moment later. "Come near me, and she dies!" Khana shrieked, so loud that Sarah winced, ears ringing.

There was nothing but a sudden silence that followed this demand. She licked her lips, and her palms began to sweat. "Have him swear," she croaked.

The lamia hissed. "What?"

"Have him swear not to hurt you, in exchange for letting me go," Sarah said. "He is a fae. He cannot break a bond."

Khana hummed. "I have heard this before. Will you do it, fae?" She challenged. "Swear to me that you will allow me to go from this place in peace, and I will give you back your precious pet."

Aldric's voice was closer than she had imagined he would be. "Do not harm her, and you have yourself a deal."

"Swear it."

"So long as you do not damage her, I will grant you your life back. No further injury will come to you. This I swear by my heart's blood."

As soon as the scent of ozone reached her nose, the lamia released her, and there was the rushing, crashing sound of the creature fleeing through the woods. Sarah collapsed back against the tree, and Aldric had his hands on her shoulders a moment later. She raised her head. "The selkie?"

"Dead," he said, and magic laced the air again. "I'm sending you home."

"Is the portal safe?"

"It is, pet. I made sure of it this time." A warm, gentle brush of fabric against her cheek, and she leaned into the feeling to find his hand cradling her face. "I will never let this happen again," he whispered. "Now go."

Before she could say anything else, he had turned her and propelled her through a portal mirror. She felt the strange gripping sensation of the space between, and then she took a step and was pulled from the mirror by a familiar set of arms.

Sarah felt the heat of the sun on her face, and the next thing she knew, she was being clutched hard against Jareth's chest, and he was trembling in a way she had never felt before. "You're back," he whispered against her hair. "You're safe."

Her own limbs began to shake, and he followed her when her knees grew weak, slowly lowering them both to the floor. A sob fell from her lips, and his grip around her tightened as she cried out the fear and fury, his voice a gentle murmur as he stroked her back and rocked her.

"I'm so sorry, Sarah," he said again and again. "I'm so sorry."

She said nothing.

Hi everyone,

Real quick note: I see all your reviews and love the hell out of them. Sometimes I don't respond because either A.) spoilers, or B.) my social anxiety has been on a frolic recently and I am spazzing out that someone is talking to me even on the internet.

So thank you for this sometimes one-sided conversation. I appreciate all of you.

As always I hope you enjoyed. Thank you for reading.

Xoxo,

CrimsonSympathy

P.S. – I did start a sketch of Aldric but it's in the very beginning phases and, knowing how long it takes me to do a piece of artwork, probably won't be ready for another few weeks.