Note: This was originally posted under another author name. For several reasons, I had to delete all stories posted under that pseudonym. Chapter 3 is new. This is very much a work in progress, and comments/suggestions are appreciated.
Walls
by Tichfield
Written for Pika la Cynique's 'Here's the day you hoped would never come' challenge.
(It'll be apparent in Chapter 3)
Disclaimer: The characters and situations associated with the movie Labyrinth are the property of their copyright holders (The Jim Henson Company), and not mine.
"Shall two knights never tilt for me
And let their blood be spilt for me?
Oh, where are a maiden's simple joys?"
-Guinevere
This is a tale of blood, and changes. Of the coming of the walls and binding of the seal which keeps us here.
It starts not many years ago - a night with rain, a world which you have never seen.
They have their masquerades, as we do ours. The dance of lies, where costumes build false figures over true ones and the pain of that-which-is may be relaxed afloat in that-which-never-was.
You may well frown, for I have warned you from our bubbles. There, the boundaries of fantasy are not so clear. An audience may watch a masque protected by a second blanket lie - that nothing matters but the story, predetermined in a script. That painted lines betoken a true frown or smile, and outward signals always speak an inner truth.
Betimes, the actors wear these lies about them off the stage, and know it not...
"Toby, I told you not to call me here." Sarah dabbed at a reflected spot. The dressing-room mirror must be dirty. Did she really look that old? "I don't care if you're waiting. Look, it's just rain. Call a cab. ... what money? I don't know, just... steal some." A quick rummage in the nearest drawer and... there! a scrap of cloth. Left over from 'Pygmalion', to be sure, but it passed the sniff test. "Yes, I DID go there. It's what you do, isn't it? You and your friends? ... How should I know who your friends are?" She wiped a week's accumulated talc from her reflection, and gave a short approving nod at the result. No more spots. Age fell with the dust, and there she was - the actress known to hundreds of adoring fans.
Well, twenty. For now. But it would be hundreds after tonight.
A knock at the door.
"Delivery, miss. And curtain in ten."
"Thank you, I'll - no, of course I'm not thanking YOU, Toby, why would I ever - look. Just GO, okay? I don't care how, just GO." She snapped the cell-phone shut and turned to unlock the door, careful to avoid adding wrinkles to her costume.
It was Jim. Or maybe Jake. Was it a rule that stagehands had to look alike? He held an envelope, bouquet of dahlias and the veil she needed for her final scene.
"Thank you, Jjjj-"
"John, m'am."
"John. But you know the flowers are SUPPOSED to go with the others - up front?"
"So sorry, m'am, but these were to be given special in your hand, like." John grinned from ear to ear. "From a mister, m'am."
Sarah sighed and found a place for the flowers between Leticia's Act Two costume and the case holding her street clothes. The letter, she left on her dresser.
"That will be all, Jim."
"John."
"John, then."
"Uh... break a leg miss? I'm a big fan." She glared at him. He didn't take the hint. "Listen, could you sign my-"
"That will be all." Sarah searched her repertoire and settled for a look she had once used as Lady Macbeth, while engaged in stain removal.
"Really? Oh, right. You're busy. I'll go now, then. I'm... well, should you ever need me..."
There were thirty-two ways in which she could break his nose with an inappropriately slammed door. Sarah considered it a credit to her virtue that she avoided all of them.
"For any reason at all," he continued.
Make that 'barely avoided'. The door's closing 'whoosh' ruffled her hair, but she considered an extra twenty seconds with the hair brush a fair price to pay.
Sarah put her ear against the door.
"She broke my toe! Bloody starlet broke my toe!" The yelps continued down the hall.
So very satisfying.
Fans were troublesome at the best of times. Mysteries, on the other hand...
Sarah held the envelope to the light. Heavy cream paper, not watermarked. And not sealed, to her great disappointment. Not knowing was half the fun, but to guess when one could just pop open the flap seemed like... cheating, somehow.
There was paper inside, folded or sufficiently thick that no writing was plain through the lamp-glow. Unscented, but the courier must have stopped at the curry house next door.
No stamp, no seal or emblem, so no official recognition... though there was always the chance of a lord courting her in secret, hiding his desire in plain but well-chosen materials for the sake of his reputation...
She allowed herself a few moments of reverie before exhaling and opening the message.
Two tickets to Diana's that evening, after the show. A short, scribbled note on the back of a business card - 'I love you almost as much as you love their dinner show and peach souffle.'
Trevor.
It was sweet, and thoughtful, just like everything he ever did. Now that she thought about it (with a brow wrinkled enough to threaten the makeup artist's handiwork) she'd made a comment about the dahlias in Harrod's display window, and how pretty they looked.
Once, quickly.
Two weeks ago.
He'd remembered.
Knights waited months for Friday tickets to Diana's. If he had them for tonight, of all nights, then he must have known that she would be here. He must have believed she would land the part, when she herself was thinking of nothing more but whether to send her resumes next to the curry house or the fried chicken stall.
Sarah was fortunate to have him. Everyone told her so. It had been love at first sight, on his part, and a fairytale courtship. A sunlit tale of meadows, without storms or poisoned apples.
"M'am?" Muffled, urgent voices from behind the door. "Two minutes to curtain."
The stage was hot as sunlight, lights blinding her to everything past her fellow actors and the first few rows.
Trevor was there, in an aisle seat. His eyes and rapt expression were not to be mistaken; he followed every movement and she swore his face grew dim when she was not in scene. Though it's true the small monitors backstage were poor substitutes for eyes.
"I do love nothing in the world so much as you," an actor said, and nudged her foot with his too gently for the audience to see. "is not that strange?"
Blast. She always forgot this line. Strange, strange... is not that strange... her colleague did his best to make the pause seemed planned, but even his famous gesticulations would only buy a few seconds.
She looked away from the disappointment in his eyes, and turned to Trevor's smiling, trusting face. There was no strength to be gained from it, no impetus, no extra energy or goad to remembrance. Strange... she didn't...
Oh. Right.
"As strange as the thing I know not. It were as possible for me to say I loved nothing so well as you, but believe me not. And yet I lie not; I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing"
She scanned the house as soon as she dared. Of those patrons she could see, most were satisfied. A few were sleeping. A few children whispered to their parents.
Only one of them had noticed. One member of the audience, with an empty seat beside him and a mocking smile.
"I am sorry for my cousin," she finished.
He continued to taunt her for the rest of the play. Feigning sleep, wincing when she missed a line, laughing into his fist at her pronunciation. Every wordless heckle made her heart beat faster, melted concentration and brought a tightness to her skin with anger.
Who was he? A critic? Member of the peerage? Both, perhaps?
He judged her, that was certain, and he felt entitled to.
Trevor noticed nothing of this interchange. Acceptance and trust were written in every line of his face. Or they would have been, had his baby-soft face any lines at all. No doubt he thought her gaze determined from prior blocking.
"Foul words is but foul wind," she declaimed, "and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome. Therefore," and she did not know if she spoke to the actor or some other man, "you shall depart unkissed."
There was applause, at the play's end. Several ovations.
The critic left before the first.
"...so you see, I do need you after all."
John was suspicious. Intrigued, and freshly bandaged, but suspicious. Despite this, Sarah knew he would cave in, just as she knew that Didi (her puppy) would eventually eat a bitter pill when coated with pate.
"You'll autograph my cast. You promise."
"Yes."
"And all I have to do is... keep that man out?"
"The blond one, yes. In the navy blue suit. The one who gave you the flowers."
"Why? I thought you-"
Sarah raised her palm in interruption, and smiled to see John flinch at the motion.
"No reason at all. It's just... a whim."
"A whim. Like slamming the door on my toe, whim?"
"Y-yes, a little like that." Sarah brought a stage blush to her cheeks. "Why harbour a grudge, Jim?"
"John."
"Whatever. Why harbour a grudge? You WILL enjoy the cast." She added just the slightest hint of suggestion to the final word.
"I... guess it'll be.. nice." He swallowed and licked his lips. "With the autograph and all, I mean."
"Good boy, John. Oh," she added quickly, as if on the spur of the moment. "There's this... other gentleman. In a black suit, dark-haired and clean shaven with sky-blue eyes. His cufflinks are silver and his shirt has an odd triangular collar. He might have gone to the lounge after the performance. If you should see HIM..."
"Yes, m'am?"
"Send him in."
"Yes, m'am. Shall I give him a message?"
"Tell him.. the wind is changing."
What's that? You are confused, you say?
I spoke of love and here she bars him entry, granting access to a stranger.
She is an actress, thus a creature of two parts. An inner self that speaks the truth, and outer shells that always lie.
Why, yes. Exactly like the Jacks that guard the well of hands. You're quite precocious.
If you've spoken with them, then you know they speak the same, for all they're different. Two views, a positive and negative. The object does not change, just its description.
So it was.
You do not understand. I see it. Well, you are too young.
Perhaps this way - the stories, Theseus, the Minotaur and yarn. Rapunzel in her tower.
The loved one's always guarded. By a challenge... or a monster.
The mermaid turned to sea-foam for her prince. Would she have loved him half so much if she had known him, had him, with no risk or dream, denial or danger?
Good. You nod. I may continue.
Now to the frigid man. John found him in the lounge beside a glass of whiskey and a bill he did not wish to pay.
It did not take too much to bring him to the rooms backstage, to talk with Sarah.
And what a talk it was. Confusion, irritation on both sides as each one tried to use the other.
She suggested something, he demurred. And yet a calculated glint of greed forbade him to say 'no'.
He didn't want to go. He didn't want HER.
But then, that was the point.
He was a social climber, a reference seeker, the sort of professional hob-nobber who goes grocery shopping at the parties of the gentry.
To be seen at Diana's with the actress of the moment would keep him in stale canapes and pilfered wine for half a year. She made him see that, and so he agreed.
But he looked caged when she took his hand, and like to run when first he saw more tempting morsels.
A foul wind.
Of the meal, I will not speak. It is part of another story, the tale of a man who slew a giant, and the bird that came to earth.
Why? The tales each bear a different point. To mix them, though they happened at one time and in one place, dilutes their purpose. Strains their being.
There is a reason that few singers mention Snow White's nemesis once wore glass slippers. Or that they were fashioned by the very hands that made a casket, also out of crystal. Though this is true, the knowing of it spoils the narrative.
Such a secret is this meal.
No, not even if you urge me, little one. Not even if you bribe me with your kisses, or your smirk, which looks so very much like that your father wears.
Hrm?
Oh. No.
No, his kisses are... quite different. They bear the taste of peaches, and of dreams.
A taste which, curiously, was also present at the ending of the meal.
End Chapter 1