The Homecoming King (LABYRINTH)

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The Homecoming King
LABYRINTH -- a different Sarah


Sarah slammed down the phone in fury and flopped onto her bed. That was too much to take: it was five-thirty in the afternoon; the Theatre Department's Oktoberfest Dance started at eight o'clock tonight; and her date had just cancelled out on her.

She pounded on the pillows to relieve some of her frustration, and then had to make a grab for the small crystal ball that rolled off the shelf above the bed. She weighed the ornament in her hand a moment, contemplating the wonderfully noisy crash it would make if she flung it against the wall - but she put it back, forgoing that extravagant but fleeting satisfaction.

Instead she got up again and went to the mirror to look herself over. Okay, so she wasn't beautiful. Pretty, yes, she acknowledged without conceit. Well, without much conceit. Her fellow drama students kept telling her she was the Brooke Shields type; she got the sultry roles instead of the ingenues. But apparently it wasn't Benedict Wilson's type, since he'd just turned down her long, dark tresses for a dinner invitation from a willowy blond called Robin.

She looked away from her glum face to the dorm room reflected behind her. There wasn't much room for self-expression in her half of the cramped space, but there were a few touches to make it her own. Some pictures were tacked to the wall, of Toby as he grew from baby to sturdy little boy; of her father and stepmother, with whom she'd finally achieved a cautiously friendly working relationship; of her actress mother in her latest play with her latest boyfriend. The crystal ball stood on its curiously-carved gold stand and a couple of Escher prints hung on the wall above the bookshelf. Her copy of an old fairy tale called The Labyrinth stood with her textbooks, and a bangled bracelet from Hoggle's hoard hung by the window: souvenirs of a journey that often seemed a bit unreal, but the memory of which she still hugged to herself. It had been awhile since she had called on her old friends to come through the looking-glass for a party - the mirror in her room at home was the only gateway she'd ever tried. She wouldn't dare use this one, not with a nice, unimaginative roommate and the thin dorm walls.
Not that her old friends could help her out of the present mess, she remembered, the reminiscent smile fading again. Not even brave Sir Didymus - she needed a different sort of knight errant for this adventure.

"I would do anything for a date tonight," she declared dramatically to the mirror. Ben, a lofty senior, might consider college dances a juvenile pastime, but sophomore Sarah still cared about them; and she'd be willing to bet he'd care if she went without him. Benedict wasn't the only fish in the sea and certainly not the only cute guy at the college - the problem was finding a substitute on such short notice. "I'd go out with the dumbest jock on the football team. I'd go with King Kong. I'd go with anyone, as long as I could walk into that room and show Mr. Thinks-He's-Hot-Stuff Wilson that I don't need him."

“’Anything’?” repeated a mellifluous, mephistophilean voice in her ear. "And 'anyone', Sarah?"

"Umm, let me rephrase that..." There were suddenly two faces in the mirror and the second was uncannily familiar. It hovered a bit behind hers in the reflection, a thin face with one eyebrow raised in a mocking salute, framed not by the dorm walls but by the stones of a castle window. And when she spun around to check, he really was there, crowding the narrow room by sheer force of his personality as much as by the flowing cape that brushed both beds at once.

"What's said is said," Jareth pointed out. "You did say 'anyone'." He swept a low, flourishing bow, cape and all. "You need a prince from a fairy tale to rescue you tonight - will you accept the services of the Goblin King?"

Yes, she would. There was no way she was going to let that twerp Ben win this round by skipping this dance or going dateless - she had her pride to consider! But what she wasn't about to acknowledge to Jareth (or to herself) was that she'd have considered this new offer even had the case been far less desperate. "It's a different sort of party than you're used to," she temporized.

"Ah, but that makes the game all the more interesting. Rematch, Sarah?"

For a moment their eyes met and held, silver-blue and hazel, and for that moment they were in the center of a tangled labyrinth, renewing the challenge that she'd just barely won the last time. 'My kingdom is as great as yours,' the words echoed in her head. This time the challenge was laid in her territory rather than his, and that knowledge brought her chin up as she faced him. "Very well, you're my date for the dance."

He bowed again - and she was back in the familiar dorm room and suddenly beginning to realize the practical implications of her decision. "We have to come up with a cover story for you. If I tell a bunch of college students you're the Goblin King, they'll take me in for a drug test." Careful strategies were needed here: the bigger an impression she could make on her fellow drama students, the better the victory would be when Ben heard about it. She eyed the unexpected substitute up and down, taking in the considerable distance from his outrageous shock of hair to the tips of his pointed boots. She didn't think there was any way to transform him into the semblance of a fraternity man. Even if they plastered down the hair, there were still the eccentrically tilted eyebrows, the feral grin he was giving her. "I think we'd better say you're a rock singer."

One of the wicked eyebrows danced upward. "Anything to please you, my dear Sarah."

"It'll give you an excuse for that hair and those clothes. But the cape and gloves have got to go."

"Your wish is my command." He swept off the black cape with its high, curling collar, flourishing it at her feet; drew off his black leather gloves.

She eyed his clothes narrowly, considering their appropriateness for the role he was supposed to play. He was wearing a white shirt with full, Byronic sleeves that ended in bedraggled lace cuffs, ruffled collar open to the laced black waistcoat. His pants were of a form-fitting grey material, ending in the high black boots that reached almost to his knee. A silver-fanged pendant with a gold medallion hung from a chain around his neck, and carved rings glittered on his long-nailed fingers. The effect was... well, she'd seen worse from the punkers. "I'll tell 'em you're into heavy metal. At least you look more or less human - as much as any other rocker I've seen."

"I was human," Jareth said casually.

It arrested her for a moment. "You were a stolen baby?"

"Of course."

"But I thought... don't the stolen babies turn into those ugly little goblins?"

"Some do. Some don't. It's as the King wishes. Now your brother - ah, it was half-brother, wasn't it? - I had a fancy to turn him into a prince. Just think, Sarah, if you hadn't taken him away, he would even now be learning to follow me, and to command all the power that befits a king!" With careless sleight of hand her crystal spun to rest on his outstretched palm: in its depths she saw an upside-down image of Toby sitting on Jareth's throne, dressed in royal purple with a silver crown slipping sideways on his fine hair. Between his hands floated another crystal into which he stared in crowing delight. "But... you brought him back here to be just another child."

She looked from the crystal picture to a snapshot on the wall: Toby in prosaic red shorts, reaching with no less delight for the soap bubbles blown by his adored big sister. "He's my brother. And I think he's better off where he is," she averred, the momentary doubt dissolved but the anger that followed it prompting her to carry the war into the enemy's camp. "Do you ever wish that someone had come to rescue you, when you were stolen?"

If he did, she couldn't read it in that exquisitely enigmatic face. "Who wouldn't be a king? Or a queen, for that matter, if given the choice? Confess it, Sarah, royalty has its uses." He spun the crystal back to its shelf. "Where would you be without a prince tonight?"

She'd be dateless, that's where, and Cinderella's watch showed it was pushing six o'clock - which meant she only had about two hours to coach her substitute prince in his role. This was no time to start bickering with the gift horse. "Are you hungry?"

"Frequently," he replied, accepting the non sequitur with an ironic smile.

"I haven't had supper yet and the dorm kitchens will be closing any minute now. Do you like pizza?" she asked the Goblin King, and had the satisfaction of seeing him look quite blank for a moment. "Never mind, you'll have to like it. Frazetti's is the only place around here that dares deliver to the dorms." She put in the call, thanking heavens that her father sent her extra checks now and then to cover the frivolities of life, and that her roommate had gone home for the weekend. Not that she didn't like Mary Beth! But Mary Beth was not the sort of person you could explain magic to. She had a hard enough time with the normal eccentricities of theatre majors.

And at that, two hours weren't nearly long enough to play tour guide to an otherworld traveller. It was fun to watch his reaction to pizza! As he picked up the first piece, he got tangled in the clingy strings of cheese that trailed it, and his face was a study as he took the first bite. "My goblins would love this," he declared.

"It isn't great pizza," she had to acknowledge.

"They are not," he said, "particularly good goblins."

But they finished the whole thing, over a lively discussion of acceptable behavior at college dances and the background accompaniment of Sarah's favorite rock station, piped in to give him a nodding acquaintance with the art form of which he would be posing as a proponent.

At seven-thirty she dashed down the hall to dress in the community bathroom. It was a risk to take her eyes off him, just in case he disappeared again or he decided to do something outrageous, but the alternative... She changed in one of the stalls, muttering under her breath, "I'm never going to get undressed in front of a mirror again." It was the fastest change she'd ever made, even counting the plays she'd been in. In less than ten minutes she was dressed, though she had to go back to the room to do her hair and makeup.

She'd never tried to apply mascara before with a masculine audience older than Toby, and it spoiled her aim a bit. Under his interested gaze she added powder and lipstick, silver eyeshadow and a spritz of perfume, brushed her hair smooth over her back and shoulders. The dress was new, a silky vivid red that she'd bought to knock Ben's socks off. Her shoes were red to match, with patterned black stockings showing off rather good legs, if she did say so herself. The ensemble was fashionably modern, it was dramatic, and it ought to be noticeable - that’s what the game plan called for. She stood back to view the effect, trying to decide if she'd gone a little too far over the top. "Do I look okay?" She'd planned this for Ben, who didn't share her own taste for old-fashioned romance, and she was suddenly shyly curious to know what it looked like to Jareth.

"I see that tonight I have a red rose rather than a white one," his deep voice echoed behind her shoulder. For a moment, memory or magic flashed a different image before her, of her hair pulled back from her face and laced with silver vines, her dress the Cinderella gown of filmy mother-of-pearl that she'd worn in a dream ballroom. And for that moment behind her stood the Goblin King she'd danced with when she was too young to know why he frightened her the most when he wasn't trying to terrify her.

"You'd better bring your cape after all. It's cold out tonight," she said a bit breathlessly. "Shall we go?"

"I stand ready to do your bidding, a king or a - rock star, was it?"

It was flattering to have a king obey your commands, no denying that. "Remember, this is my world, not yours. There's no magic here - you have to play by different rules."

And their entrance was worth every minute. Walking into the decorated hall with her very tall escort, Sarah had the satisfaction of knowing that a dozen heads were turning their direction. Benedict would hear about this, she could bank on it! In no time she was surrounded by her fellow theatre majors, greeting her cheerfully and waiting for the introductions.

"Jareth, these are my friends: Tony, Mark, Jennifer, Heather, Mike, Corey, Susan... Boy, am I glad to see you, Susan," she added under her breath to her best friend among her colleagues. "Folks, this is Jareth, er... King, from L.A."

"What's with the new flame, honey?" Susan asked privately. "I thought you and Benny were booked for this gig."

"We were. He developed a sudden case of other plans, so I conjured up an old friend for the occasion." That was the truth anyway, though she couldn't tell even Susan how true it was.

"Rad outfit!" Tony was saying as the crowd clustered around Jareth.

"He's a rock singer," Sarah explained to them.

"Ooooh!" squealed Heather. "I never met a rock singer before."

"What band are you with?" Jennifer cooed.

"The Goblin Band," Jareth said, cocking a wicked eyebrow at Sarah.

"Never heard of 'em," Mark said.

"They're not very famous yet," Sarah interrupted ruthlessly.

"Well, he looks famous," Heather dismissed that caveat, smiling up at Jareth. "Like Sting, or somebody."

"Love the costume," Susan told Sarah sotto voce, eyeing Jareth's tight trousers. "Rather Shakespearean effect. I'd love to see him in a codpiece. Or out of one... Does Benny know about this?"

"I'm sure he'll hear about it soon enough. Make sure he gets all the juicy details, will you, Sue?"

"It'll be my pleasure! D'you suppose we can get your cutie to do a couple of numbers for us later?"

"Maybe," Sarah temporized hastily. "But after I get a chance to dance with him, okay?" With luck, the idea would be forgotten after a couple of beers...

...No such luck, of course, though rather more than a couple of beers had gone goblinward before the subject was broached again. When Susan and Heather and Jennifer proposed the idea to Jareth, he was more than happy to try. The school band, composed of off-duty orchestra members, was taking a rest while the students crowded around the buffet. Jareth reached over to take the guitar the lead player handed to him. Sarah held her breath as he took it: her hasty lessons had not extended to this. He held the unfamiliar instrument, twanged each string experimentally, played one cautious note and then another... and then an expertly extended riff that took her totally by surprise.

"You never trust me, Sarah," he complained softly.

"I know better!" she muttered back.

By the time the band members were ready to start again, fortified by beer and sausages, Jareth mounted the stage with them. She stayed watchfully by the front of the stage with Susan, still not sure whether he was going to do something outrageous. He'd danced with her and her friends, flirted with the girls who were thrilled at seeing a star, won over the band with his own brand of careless charm - His Royal Lowness was clearly having the time of his life. He was taking to center stage like a duck to water now, introducing himself to the students, parrying their questions. Somebody asked him how long he'd been into heavy metal - he inspected his rings and held out the massive pendant on his chest.

"I've been collecting it for years," said Jareth, and the students groaned appreciatively. A positively blissful look spread over the Goblin King's features as he gazed out over the faces turned toward the stage. After all these years, an audience that got his jokes!

He turned and spoke briefly with the members of the band, who grinned and nodded. Jareth came to the front of the stage, the microphone swept negligently out of his way. He looked out over the expectant crowd, basking in the limelight for a second before he dropped his hand abruptly and the band swung into familiar set of chords.

"'Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray, South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio . . .'"

To Sarah's shock and the students' applause, Jareth launched into "We Didn't Start The Fire". Word perfect, tune perfect - a song he'd heard only once, while they were eating pizza and talking non-stop. Her open-mouthed astonishment delighted him as much as the enthusiastic response from a crowd that also knew most of the words.

He and the band swung from that to "Light My Fire", as extravagant as Morrison in his heyday. "Pork on the hoof," Sarah muttered to Susan, watching the big ham play the crowd for all he was worth. As the song progressed, Sarah saw with a gasp of dismay that there was a gap between Jareth's feet and the stage, and the effortless leaps were getting a little out of hand. She caught his eye and gestured emphatically. "Keep your feet on the ground!" she mouthed at him, warning and entreaty mingled in the desperate signal. He executed a graceful pirouette, but his boots did connect with the stage again and stayed there. She was relieved enough at that concession to ignore the gleefully evil grin slanted at her. She hadn't reckoned on quite all the differences between the worlds of magic and reality.

But when the number was over and the delighted crowd of students begged for more from a Jareth only too happy to oblige, she had to remind herself of her own advice. This time the deep, husky voice and the smile that went with it were directed straight to her. "'You know darn well when you cast your spell that you'll get your way; when you hypnotize with your eyes, a heart of stone can turn to clay.'" The ruler of the magic kingdom was looking straight into her eyes and singing, "'You can do magic - you can have anything that you desire. You can do magic - don’t you know you're the one who can put out the fire...'" She could feel her own feet beginning to drift from the floor.

Beside Sarah, Susan heaved a happy sigh, pulling her back to the present moment. "Can I go with you next summer to look for another one like him?"

"I don't think I could take two like him."

"No? Then why are you dating Ben?" Susan grinned sardonically at her friend's startled face. "Peas in a pod, honey child - only this one's got a few years' edge on our Benny."

"Thank you, thank you," His Majesty was bowing to the applause that stormed around them. "You're the most intelligent audience I've played to for much longer than you can know! And thank you, gentlemen, for allowing me this privilege." Noblesse oblige bowed to the band. "But enjoyable as this has been, I have a preference for the more elegant dances of a more leisurely age. It takes at least one waltz to make a ball, don't you think?" And such was his air of casual command that his amused audience agreed to it.

"Cripes, who do you think you are, the Homecoming King?" Sarah demanded acerbically as he descended from the stage in all his effulgent glory.

"Merely your knight for the evening, my lady," he bowed. "May I have this waltz?"

She took the long talon of a hand held out for her, surprised that its touch was so delicate on hers. And after all, it wasn't an impossible request from the orchestra members who'd played for the Music Department's staging of "Sleeping Beauty" last spring. Perhaps Tchaikovsky's music wasn't intended for violin and drum and guitar, but there were enough couples to follow Jareth's lead as he led Sarah onto the floor. Neon sneakers and sequined suede pumps moved in three-quarter time, no less incongruous than the Goblin King's Byronic boots or Sarah-Cinderella's scarlet slippers.

Five bars into the dance she was wishing they'd picked a different waltz. The words from the old Disney version of the fairy tale always ran through her head when she heard this music, singularly apropos: 'I know you, I waltzed with you once upon a dream. I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam...' The gleam in the silvery eyes had been there when she faced him in the labyrinth. She hadn't recognized it then, but she knew it now - the promise of something that might give her power over him, but surely put her into his.

She knew this had happened before. Now, as then, dancing with him seemed so natural that she was all the more wary of the uncharacteristic gentleness. Now, very much as then, the room around them faded as their bodies kept perfect time. But this was her world, a small college campus - she didn't dare let herself forget the eyes all around them, no less curious than those of the other masked dancers, if not (perhaps) as cruel. Sarah forced herself to concentrate on the prosaic to keep from being swept away with the romance. "Are you having any trouble keeping up the cover story?"

"I'm still not exactly sure what I was supposed to be doing in this 'L.A.' place, or what you were doing there last summer?”

"I was visiting my mom and you were there because it's where a lot of rockers hang out. It was the best story I could think of. You're definitely an out-of-towner and you look too old to be a college kid."

He winced briefly. "Unkind, Sarah! True, of course, but that makes it all the more so."

Looking up at him, she saw the silver streaks in his blond hair. "How old are you?" It wasn't a question she would have dared ask in his world, but they were in hers now.

"It depends on how you measure time," he answered, smiling down at her as he guided her through the motions of the dance. "By your world, very old indeed - I remember a time when magic existed and humans still believed in it."

"And in your world?"

"Ah, in my world I can order Time as I wish. It has its advantages."

The lilting music swirled them along the floor, swept Sarah past a late-arrived Benedict who was ignoring the blond beside him as he stared open-mouthed at Sarah's partner. She saw him and forgot him, not even remembering the sweetly triumphant smile she'd planned to favor him with.

"Why did you answer me tonight?" she asked the Goblin King.

"I was listening. I've often listened to you when you spoke."

"Why?"

"You know the Words. There are not many who recognize me in this day and age, Sarah, and life gets dull with only my goblins to talk to. They no longer amuse me."

"And I do?"

"Let us say rather that you interest me. I'm not used to being challenged."

"Or bested?" she reminded him. "I frighten you too."

"As I do you. But you've never bored me."

Her pulse was tripstepping in time to the beat. "Are you sure it wasn't just for the beer?" she parried lightly.

"It is good beer," he acknowledged. "Curiosity, perhaps, to see the human world again."

"And the chance for a rematch?"

"A rematch on very different terms, my dear. This time there are no children involved."

'I know it's true that visions are seldom all they seem...', the music played on around them - but the visions were enchanting while they lasted.

But the main disadvantage of her world was the inexorable progress of Time, beyond anyone's reordering. Long before Sarah was ready for it, the dance was over and they were walking back across the campus. She stopped a little way from the dorm doors, where the full moon shining through the bare tree branches cast a veil of silver lace over them. Around them were couples and groups of people walking toward the dorms, but in this alcove they were alone and remote from the other voices.

"Thank you for coming to my rescue," she said. It had had the desired effect of salvaging her pride, whatever his motives had been for the offer.

"Once again, Sarah, I have done what you wished."

"You were just in the nick of time, too. But time's up now.”

"You're not going to exile me back to my dim little goblins yet! I've been willing to learn your rules - there’s so much more I could learn from you, and so much that I could teach. Aren't you here for the pursuit of knowledge?"

"I don't think magic is on the curriculum yet. This is an unromantic kingdom. I have to wake up in the morning and study for an algebra test." It was her least favorite subject, and not much of an inducement to abandon romance. "Anyway, where am I supposed to put you? My roommate will be back tomorrow and you're too big to fit in a closet. No, you have to leave now." She dug back into her memory, summoning up the words of the spell. "'My kingdom is as great as yours. You have no power -'"

"No power?" he interrupted softly, one long finger tracing the curve of her lip. Looking deep into his eyes, her breath and pulse quick, Sarah thought about that.

"Yes, some power," she acknowledged honestly. "But only as much as I grant you. You cannot stay here with me unless I let you."

"Don't you want me to stay, my lady?"

"A little," she said, still being honest. If the wistful note in that seductive voice wasn't belied by the arrogant confidence... or maybe it was the confidence in the Goblin King's smile that intrigued her. "But I do not choose to let you stay."

"Sarah, Sarah! I've been willing to obey you! Can't I stay in your dream?"

He'd offered her everything once, in his kingdom. 'Fear me, love me, and do as I say, and I will be your slave...' She caught herself wondering if the offer still held. "Would you come again if I call you for the next dance?"

"I might, for pizza and a waltz - and a kiss."

She was willing to grant him that concession (okay, so she wouldn't have missed it for the world), tipping her face up for the kiss she'd wondered about since they'd danced before in her dream. The teeth of the sickle-shaped pendant pricked her skin as his arms pinned her close to him. For this one moment, she let enchantment hold her in its sway.

"Goodnight, Jareth," she whispered, keeping her eyes closed even when his lips left hers, so he couldn't shake her resolution with those hypnotic silvery eyes. "'My kingdom is as great as yours and my will as strong'," even if her knees were weak from his kiss. "'You have no power over me.'"

He bowed, deep and sweeping, over her hand - and then he was gone, with a rush of cool evening air on her face and a white owl's feather drifting down to lodge in the ruffle of her skirt.