Doctrine of Affections
by Alison Harvey
Disclaimer: Labyrinth is not mine. Some dialogue from the movie appears here: it's
certainly not my work and I wouldn't be so silly as assume you'd believe me if I did
claim it was mine. Author's notes are posted at the end of the chapter.
-----
Doctrine of Affections: theory of musical aesthetics, widely accepted by late
Baroque theorists and composers, that embraced the proposition that music is capable
of arousing a variety of specific emotions within the listener.
"Doctrine of the Affections." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2004.
-----
You have no power over me!
Those six words said, she was back in her house, in the place where everything was
blissfully, wonderfully and utterly normal.
Except for one last, lingering reminder of the last thirteen hours.
Feathers floated upwards in the air towards the ceiling, ignoring the mundane
concept of gravity. Still dazed, Sarah watched the last few rush past her, caught in
a breeze that had no beginning or end in this world. She reached up one hand,
trying to snag one last feather as it danced madly towards the light. The wind
snatched it from her grasp, driving the white fluff up and away.
The breeze died; the feathers vanished with it. They belonged to another place,
after all.
Pain rose within her, racing along neurons and ganglia and receptors faster than
she could beat it back, lost in the kiss of down marking Jareth's abrupt departure.
She could not forget his voice, or his terrible last words.
Everything!
She could still see the shining crystal in his hand, no more than a soap bubble as
it burst against her skin. Even now, there was still slippery wetness on her
fingers.
She rubbed her fingertips together as she turned in a circle, looking around the
room as if seeing it for the first time.
The stairs, every inch of painted wood familiar, every creak and protruding nail
memorized. The wood grain of the banister, slick and smooth to the touch. The
carpet, worn to the nap by the slow years of feet from entrance to second floor. The
desk table by the door--Karen's--she recognized with sudden anger, monstrous and
ugly in Sarah's eyes.
She ached all over.
Her mother would never have chosen something so plain and...practical.
Everything that you wanted I have done.
The Goblin King, only footsteps away in the broken castle, offering her dreams in a
cracked voice that promised lurking, darker worlds. She remembered, wistfully, how
he had seemed when he had swept into into her world hours before, crowned in night
and cloaked in shadows and mist.
She half-sat, half-fell onto the carpet, pretending it had been her idea rather
than her numb legs as the pain came again. It washed over her, beyond her, seeping
into the woven rug beneath her, slowly draining away. She gratefully let the floor
take her weight.
In the fallen archways, he had been so much more diminished than that first
entrance. The thought prompted a little smile that faded as she remembered the sweep
of emotion across his face as she won. The Goblin King had been beaten, and that
dulled the victory somehow, made it seem a petty thing. She had wanted her brother
gone and then demanded him back. The price for her wish was the king's realm.
Was it meant to be that way?
The grandfather clock chimed quietly in the corner. The tones rang through her
head, bringing another round of dizzying pain. The brassy pendulum marked the
moments she twisted on the rug, praying for the pain to leave.
I have reordered time.
For the last moment, pain flared so bright she could see it, hanging in a haze
around her as she clenched her fingers in the red Oriental-patterned pile--"Just a
touch of class, Mark. Really, why did you let her keep all the floors bare?"--and
wished for it all to go away.
And I have done it all for you.
-----
Shadja
//base chakra/survival/self-sufficiency/need to possess//
-----
The casket hit the opposite wall with a thud, its contents spilling down the floor
in a tangle of radiance and light. Gold coins chimed together as they fell into
messy heaps; gems that shone like stars, the light inside them pulsing softly,
scattered across the floor.
Riches beyond imagination lay in the room, which stretched so far into the distance
that it began to curve at its edges like the horizon. Not a single patterned and
hand-cut tile was untouched by some rare wonder of the world: gems and precious
metals competed with beautiful objects of twisted wood, ivory and sculpted marble,
cold and dull next to the hothouse flowers blooming in the unnatural place. In the
corner, amongst an astonishing menageries, a horse-like animal whinnied softly,
tossing its grassy mane as its long-eared handler turned a soft, round gaze to the
fallen casket.
"Bring it here," said the girl. She was not a woman, not a child, caught in her
skinny, androgynous body with clear dismay. She wore a confection of lilac frills
that was more the idea of a fancy dress than the reality, as if a rough sketch had
been animated before any gentle improvements could be suggested. She wore a corset
underneath the layers of lace and organdy, which went some way towards giving her
the hips and breasts she wanted. No amount of fabric or trimming or pearls laced
around her throat and hips, however, could disguise that she was still very young.
The handler looked nervously from his charge to the box, its lid nearly severed and
dangling from one twisted hinge. He whistled a short tune that ended on an
interrogative note. The creature beside him stamped its hoof in a negative against
rare living stone spread out for Her Majesty's examination.
"I'm afraid he won't come," the handler said, cringing in anticipation. He did not
have to wait long.
"Bring it here!" she shrieked, a wild wind rising in the chamber. "Jareth!"
The handler cried out as he was caught in the whirlwind, grabbing for the safety of
his untouched charge. The wind saw his move and blew away faster, screaming for the
wall in a blur of motion.
Then, mercifully, it stopped. The handler sobbed against the gems he fell on,
oblivious to their bright pulses as his tears fell on them.
"Sarah," Jareth said gently after ensuring the handler was not injured. "You cannot
continue to do this to your presents."
"You promised me everything," she said to him, pouting. The expression was rapidly
becoming her preferred "This is junk!"
Jareth looked at her with red-rimmed, sunken eyes, worn from lack of time and
sleep. He wore ash-grey silks, loose against his thinning frame. His hair was dull
and lifeless, small evidence of the rest his magic would soon forcibly extract. It
had been days. It had been a lifetime.
"As you wish, your highness."
-----
Rishabh
//navel chakra/sensuality/creativity//
-----
"Jareth," she purred. "I've been looking all over for you."
Sarah's dress was skin-tight, her skin creamy against the black velvet. It was far
less a dress than a skirt, but she had never claimed modesty was her forte.
When he did not look up from his work, she wrapped an arm around him, tugging his
chair back from his desk carefully, so that he could feel the brush of her breasts
against his shoulder blades. She reached around him to stroke the tops of his
thighs, molding her hands to the muscles beneath her touch. Pausing to waste a
seductive smile on the back of his head, she let her hands wander further up his
thighs to where she could feel him hard and ready through the thin material of his
breeches.
"You don't need to work right now," she murmured into his hair, nuzzling into the
silky fall as her hands slipped under his shirt near his waist.
"Perhaps not," he agreed with a wicked smile. "But whatever shall I say to
Gabrielle when she wonders where I am at dinner?"
She quickly withdrew, kneading his shoulders in slow circles.
"I told you not to marry her, darling," she offered, pausing to kiss the back of
his neck. "You could have had me and been happy."
Jareth smirked as he stood up and turned to draw her into his arms. "Declares the
woman that told me who to marry," he said, pulling her close against him. "You never
would have accepted the same offer."
She smiled and lifted her head for a lingering kiss, taking advantage of his
distraction and letting her hands wander freely.
"I never wanted to be the goblin queen," she said as she pulled away. "I merely
wanted the king all to myself."
"Depraved woman," he chastised. "Whatever shall I do with you?" He stroked a finger
down her cheek, replacing his touch with his mouth as he stooped to kiss her cheek.
"Forget about dinner," Sarah replied, her eyes sparkling with mischief.
Jareth laughed. "She can wait for you."
-----
Ghandar
//third chakra/personal power/willfulness/energy//
-----
The beast approached the throne in chains, bowing its head only after the goblin
guards viciously yanked on the collar, spiked on the inside.
"What do you have to say for yourself?" the Goblin Queen asked, her voice razor-
sharp as she considered the traitor. "You were told to never enter this realm again."
The beast roared, but said nothing.
"No rock calling," she chided, shaking a leather-clad finger in mock dismay. "I've
already worked a little spell to take care of that."
"Now," the Queen said, leaning forward in her pale, beautiful throne. She
absentmindedly caressed a golden snake bracelet that coiled around her wrist. "Tell
me where the others are."
Sullen silence was her only reply.
Sarah's eyes narrowed sharply, barely visible behind the cobwebbed black veil that
covered her face. "Don't deny me," she said, her voice clipped and precise. "What
you have endured until now will be but the merest shadow of what you will go through
if you do not answer my questions."
No sound.
A crystal crashed against the filthy floor, spraying crystal shards everywhere. A
discolored mist rose upwards, forming a ticking ebony clock that marked the minutes
and hours with knives.
"Tell me where they are," she said casually. "I have no more time to give you."
"Sa-rah," Ludo moaned.
Sarah stood in one rapid, angry movement, violet and black skirts skimming the
floor as she stepped forward. She clutched the horned pendant between her breasts
with one hand, pointing at Ludo with the other as she chanted a dark and ugly spell.
Ludo vanished.
The goblins, having fled the first time she raised her voice, returned slowly,
peeking around doorframes, windowsills, and solid items of furniture as they gauged
the malice in the Goblin Queen's slight figure as she paced.
One goblin caught her gaze.
"You," she sneered, crooking a hand in the hapless goblin female's direction.
Against her will, she walked towards the queen, windmilling her arms frantically
against the magical summons that bound her.
Sarah watched her struggle, amused. Only when the power forced the goblin to her
knees did she sigh and release the spell with a demure twist of her gloved hand.
"Find the dwarf and the knight," the Goblin Queen commanded. "They will be
somewhere near the castle, planning a heroic entrance. Perhaps near the gardens, or
the gardener's former quarters."
The goblin looked studiously down at the floor. "An' then, yer majesty?"
"Good!" Sarah exclaimed. "Intelligence. Very good!" She clapped her hands together
once in delight, drawing them apart to frame a grey, stained crystal. Mist rose
through small cracks in the crystal, sending vapor into the air. It smelled of
sulfur and ether.
She had never discovered why they were not the pure, bright magic that had been
Jareth's trademark.
She hadn't cared much in the heady days after his death.
"Give them this," Sarah said with a smile of pointed teeth, handing the frightened
goblin a perfect, succulent peach. She walked to the window, staring out at the
orange-tinted clouds of the sunset, shot through with red streaks like bleeding
gashes. In the distance, she could see the shadow of the crystal moon beginning to
rise over the mountains.
The goblin scuffed the floor with a foot, cradling the peach carefully.
"Well?" the Goblin Queen asked, turning. She raised her eyebrows when she saw the
messenger had not yet left. "Go!"
The goblin female bowed and hurried out the door, the others giving her envious
glances as she ran to find Hoggle and Sir Didymus.
-----
Madhyam
//heart chakra/love/compassion/acceptance/trust//
-----
"Mommy!"
Sarah turned with a broad smile to her daughter, scooping the four-year-old up
easily. She looked down at the bundle of energy that wriggled in her arms.
"And how was class, my little goblin?"
Anne scrunched up her nose, causing her dark curls to fall into her face. Balancing
Anne on her hip with one careful hand, Sarah pushed the hair back behind her ear,
tugging the curls lightly behind the yellow daisy-print headband.
"I'm no goblin!" Anne announced.
"Thank goodness for that," Sarah said, tweaking the girl's nose. "Because I don't
give goblins cookies, and I certainly don't take them to play in the park."
"The park?" Anne whispered, her eyes huge. "And cookies?"
Sarah nodded solemnly. Anne thought about this and then threw her arms around
Sarah's neck a bit too tightly.
"Careful," the woman said lightly, gently unwinding the pale arm from her throat.
"We need to get going before the cookies go bad. They have to be eaten way before
dinner or they'll go all funny." She put her hands around Anne's waist and lowered
her to the ground. Placing her hands on her hips, she stared down at the girl, who
was doing her best not to race ahead of her mother to the car. "Do you think you can
do that?"
Anne fidgeted, doing her best not to spoil the treat. "Yes."
Sarah smiled, caught in the moment. The camera was too far away, so she settled for
locking the memory in her mind as perfectly as she could. "Then we'd better get to
the car quick!"
"Race you there!" Anne said, running in an instant. She beat the deliberately slow
Sarah to the car easily, grinning as she clung to the door handle.
"Mommy?"
The voice was carefully calculated to be as sweet and light as possible.
Sarah sighed. Anne was a born manipulator.
"Yes?"
"Do we have any extra cookies?"
It wasn't a normal request. Anne liked treats, but she never asked for more than
what she was given.
Sarah looked at her daughter, puzzled. "We might, if you tell me why."
"I wanted to feed the bird," Anne said innocently, looking up at her mother with
her own green-grey eyes.
Sarah grinned in sudden understanding. "Cookies are for little girls. We feed the
swans bread crumbs because it's their favorite treat. In fact, I know I have a big
bag of crumbs in the glove compartment."
"Not that bird," Anne said, exasperated. "The white one with the funny face and big
eyes. The one near us every time we're in the park. That one."
Sarah froze.
-----
Pancham
//throat chakra/communication/expression/faith//
-----
"I miss you," Sarah said softly to the mirror. "Hoggle, Ludo...Sir Didymus? Are you
there?"
It felt strange to drag the names up out of the past. The images that came forth in
the mirror, when they finally flickered into existence, were far different from what
she remembered. Hoggle's face had more lines, and his clothes were thinner and more
patched than whole. Ludo's hair was turning silver at the tips and down his back,
and although the same childlike innocence still shone in his eyes, it barely masked
some deeper pain. Didymus's one eye was dim and clouded, his whiskers bent.
All three were together in a lit room, an abandoned deck of what looked like
playing cards spread out in a strange pattern. She spent a moment trying to peer
through the unfocused image and determine whether it was a card reading or the
Underground version of gin rummy before giving up.
"Sarah?" said Hoggle, peering into the mirror. His struggle to find a good viewing
spot made her feel better about the way the picture kept fracturing and
superimposing her reflection.
"Could you--" she trailed off, rephrasing what she had been about to ask, "--come
and visit me? It's been a long time, and there's so much I'd like to hear."
The picture disappeared several times before she managed to hear enough of Hoggle's
extra-loud reply.
"...too long, Sarah...now...King...gone...might be...last time..............talk"
"What?" she said, unable to figure out what he meant. Cursing at her own
reflection, not giving way to what she wanted to see, she put her hand on the mirror.
The outline of her hand glowed. She jerked it back, startled to find she was
breathing as though she'd run a long sprint, her heart pounding madly. She watched
the outline fade away, a bit worried about what had just happened.
Hoggle's image returned in crystal-clear focus. Didymus had gone, she realized with
a pang.
"So you can give it power," he said, shaking his head. "We always guessed, we did,
but it's different to know it."
"What's happening, Hoggle?" she asked, alarmed. "What's going on? Why are we having
these problems?"
"You mean you didn't know?"
She shook her head. "No."
Hoggle took a deep breath, and she braced, recognizing something even stronger than
his usual pessimism. "Jareth's losing his power, Sarah."
Thoughts of Marxism and then the French Revolution filled her head, but a tricolor
seemed an odd precedent for what she thought Hoggle had implied. "You mean...a
goblin revolution?"
He frowned. "That won't ever happen."
"Then what?"
"Magic," Hoggle said curtly. "He's been losing a little bit at a time he uses it,
and he's almost out."
"Such a pity," Sarah said sardonically, trying to imagine Jareth as mortal and
powerless as the rest of the human race. "I can't imagine how that's a bad thing."
"It's everything!" Hoggle yelled, shocking her out of a daydream in which an
impoverished Jareth flipped burgers at a fast food joint. "Without his magic, he
can't protect us," he finished sadly, giving her a lightning-quick look before
dropping his eyes.
She opened her mouth, but he cut her off. "There's more to the Underground then the
labyrinth, Sarah. There are things out there," he shuddered, "that would find the
labyrinth a right tasty snack and us all just the seasoning on top."
She paled. "Then you should be getting out of there."
"No magic," Hoggle said shortly. "Didymus knows a naiad that might have a bird
friend who could get us out. Ludo might be safe, but we're not sure. In the
meantime, we're just sitting and waiting for Jareth to die." He hunched over in
front of the mirror, despondent.
"Die?" she said, reeling. "It's that bad? You have to get out!" She touched the
mirror again; her suspicions confirmed when she again left a glowing palm print.
"Hoggle?"
"Yes?"
She was hesitant to describe the somewhat petty reasons she had had for calling
them this day, but perhaps there had been a reason. There might be one way she could
help, and perhaps that's why she'd had to call in the first place. Sarah began to
feel the first stirrings of hope. "The past few years, I've noticed that more and
more I can do...what I think you'd call magic. That's why I called you tonight. I
bet I can use it somehow if you tell me how..."
Hoggle shook his head. "That's not your magic."
She sank into her chair weakly, resting her forehead against the cool wood of the
teak vanity. Ludo stood behind Hoggle when she lifted her head again to look
through, watching her sadly.
"How do I give it back?"
"You come through the mirror and back. Then you give it back to Jareth," Hoggle
said. He turned away, and she heard what she thought she remembered as the
Underground version of swearing as he talked to someone just to the left of the
mirror where she couldn't see. When he turned back, he was colder than he'd ever
been.
"And as soon as you can. We don't want to die either, us."
She gulped and stepped up onto the vanity using the chair as a stepping-stool,
placing both hands against the mirror. Hoggle and Ludo watched her eagerly. Again,
the outline of her hands glowed and she felt that rushing sensation. This time she
didn't pull away, and felt her hands sink into the liquid silver of the mirror.
Then, as she pushed forwards, her hands hit what felt like hard stone.
"I can't go through!"
Hoggle narrowed his eyes. "You need to hurry, Sarah. Jareth'll die by dawn, the
goblins say. The goblins are never wrong."
"But I can't!" she said, shoving against the stone. "It's stopping me!"
"No!" shouted Hoggle. "You can't do this to us! Give it back to us!"
Ludo moaned softly behind him.
She watched in horror as he began pounding on his side of the mirror with his
fists. She could feel the stone shaking beneath her fingertips, faint ripples of
compressed energy reaching her. But clearly not enough.
"Tell me what I can do," she said, panicked.
"He should have taken it back from you when he realized, instead of waiting for you
to return it. It wasn't yours to take from us!" Hoggle yelled. He turned away from
the mirror, scrambling out of her sight only to return with a large stone in his
hand.
Sarah knew exactly what he planned to do with it, too. As she lifted a hand free of
the quicksilver to stop him, it brushed against something protruding from the
invisible barrier. She stopped, closing her hand around something round that just
fit into her palm.
Walls always have doors.
"Hoggle! I know how--"
The image shattered as the other mirror broke.
-----
Dhaivat
//chakra of the inner eye/mental intelligence/psyche/intuition//
-----
She had told him every night what she regretted; had said it a hundred million
times as she waltzed in his arms in the ballroom that had haunted her since she was
fifteen.
Sometimes she sobbed it to him, breaking down in his arms as the tears ran down her
cheeks, streaking the mascara and eye shading into a macabre Tragedia mask of violet
and marigold and raven's-wing black. Sometimes she screamed it to him, beating her
fists ineffectually against his chest as she told him how stupid she'd been. And
sometimes she whispered it dreamily into his ear as the lover she had always wanted
to be.
He never heard a word she said. She had long since realized that it was a wishful
fantasy, not some conjured bridge between her world and his.
Despite these confessions, confrontations, and long conversations, the dream came
every night anew, torturing her sleep in mingled pleasure and pain.
As long as she dreamed, she remembered him. She was frightened that the night he
did not return in that same eternal moment would be the night he would pass from
memory and time forever.
Tonight, she feared that the change in her dream signaled its departure.
Instead of the obscene ballroom with its leering dancers and discordant music,
there was a pure white room, tiles shining under the heeled slippers she wore in the
dance. The dress had shifted gradually as her girlish fancies shaded into maturity
and resignation; instead of pure, virginal white she wore a dark green ball gown
with a modest neckline that narrowed as it fell, clinging to her waist and hips
before swirling out at her feet.
Perhaps that would change, too, as she became too arthritic for the vigorous
waltzes she knew by heart from dancing in her dreams every night.
She had been the wonder of her ballroom dance class, and refused to share her
secret with the envious, curious women.
There was no ceiling, another startling difference. Tonight she was alone with the
Goblin King, dancing between elegant candelabras under a velvety night sky. The
weather was mild enough to dance, but chill enough that the exercise would be
welcome.
She tilted her head back, looking up at the unfamiliar stars and shining glassy
moon, soaking in the pale light that filtered through the bright candles. She had
long since memorized every line and plane of her partner's face; the sky was new,
and perhaps never to be seen again.
There was an established pattern that seemed well on its way to fulfilling itself
tonight. She would begin to dance with Jareth and the hours would fly by without a
word or proof that he had ever been a living, breathing man. When her feet began to
tire the music would slow, Jareth would bow, regardless of what stage her confession
had progressed to, and she would flee. His face would always be nothing more than a
damnable, enigmatic smile.
The cardboard Goblin King and the woman who loved him desperately.
Perhaps she should have considered the changes more carefully and realized what
they meant. Her heart nearly stopped when something entirely new happened, something
without precedent.
"Sarah," Jareth said, looking down at her with intent eyes. "Are you happy?"
Happy, she wanted to scream. I'm heading into old age with my eyes wide open, and
what I see scares me. I ache more each day for something I barely remember. I have a
cat and two goldfish, not someone beside me as each day ends.
And I certainly don't have you.
"I'm happy," she told him calmly, smiling at him. It was only a dream, after all.
She was weary of confessing her sins year after year to a conjured shape of dream-
stuff.
"I'm glad," he said quietly.
They danced more. She found it hard to breathe as she clung to him, savoring the
steps she had learned and retraced for years. Too soon, her feet began to hurt, and
she stumbled.
The music slowed. Jareth gently disentangled himself from her grasp, looking at her
tenderly as he bowed to her.
"I still love you," he said, and smiled. It came slowly to his face, as if
distilled from the pain she imagined she read in his eyes. She wanted her lover to
want her, after all.
She smiled back, unnerved by the sudden gift of change granted her tonight.
"I made my choice," she said, feeling only slight guilt as she lied. Tonight he
seemed so real, so vulnerable. She sighed, unable to hurt him now even in the
privacy of her sleep. "Perhaps it would comfort you to know that I, too, am still
alone."
"But you are happy," he pointed out gently.
She nodded stiffly, looking steadily into his unequal pupils, willing the moment to
last forever. She knew that tonight was the last dream, and fought to hold it even
as the final words slipped away.
"Thirty-seven years," Jareth said, resignation in his voice. "You remain as lovely as
ever."
Thirty-seven years, and she still imagined him the perfect gentleman.
Then he was gone, and Sarah awake in her bed.
There was a crystal between her hands, glowing gently in the darkened room.
-----
Everything!
Sarah woke.
The room was pitch black, but she knew its shape and the looming objects that she
felt more than heard. It was her bedroom in her parent's house. And...
She reached out a fumbling hand to pull the cord of the lamp. She blinked rapidly
as her eyes adjusted to the bright light, realizing that the curtains were drawn to
shut out daylight, not the night.
In fact, when she looked out the window she could see Becky, the mailwoman,
shutting the mailbox from the driver's seat of the mail van. She waved cheerfully to
Sarah's next-door-neighbor, Mrs. Murrell. Mrs. Murrell worked long hours at an
accounting firm but never on Saturdays.
Becky worked only on Saturdays; Sarah loved to talk to her.
Saturday morning, however, she had slept in, waking up at noon to go to the park.
She had read the play through excitedly, performing the best parts aloud for Merlin
in her dress and crown of flowers. Then she had come home.
Now, it seemed, it was morning again.
What had just happened? A whole day had passed, and now it was back again.
I have reordered time. I have turned the world upside-down.
She flinched, but there was no pain, no repercussions for remembering his words.
The strange memories, not hers and yet completely hers, flitted through her mind.
Today, nothing was impossible.
A brand new day. He had done this for her.
Well, then. She knew what to do.
She dressed, careful to wear exactly what she had worn the last time she had been
through the day. There was something she half-knew about time paradoxes but her mind
was already racing ahead as she bundled the book carefully into her dress, said a
curt goodbye to Karen and exited, stage left.
"Don't forget to be back tonight in time to baby sit," Karen called irritably out
the door.
Sarah ran to the park, fumbling to braid her crown of flowers. She slid the dress
over her head with trembling fingers, pinning the crown over her hair carefully.
Merlin watched her with soft eyes.
She began to recite.
"Give me the child," she said, somewhat annoyed when her voice trembled. Looking
down at her hands for a moment, she continued. "Give me the child," she began again.
"Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the
castle beyond the Goblin City, to take back the child you have stolen."
Behind her, Merlin cocked his head, watching the owl that had landed on the statue.
The owl blinked. Thunder rumbled faintly in the distance.
Sarah's voice, strong and confident now, continued with her lines. "For my will is
as strong as yours...and my kingdom is as great..."
She frowned, pausing, scarcely daring to breathe. Thunder rolled again, slightly
nearer. She looked up to see grey clouds darkening overhead.
"Hello," said the Goblin King.
Sarah turned around to see him, learning against the obelisk. He wore grey breeches
and a loose white shirt, plain and simple clothes. His hair fluttered as a breeze picked
up, smelling of rain and lightning and green growing things.
"What happened?" she asked, unsure of where to begin, or what to say, but knowing he
behind all the strange moments, and that he had come as she called to answer her
questions. "What was all that I saw? Why did it hurt? Why did you do...this?" she asked,
sweeping her hand out to enclose the park at the last.
He smiled, small lines appearing at the corner of his eyes. He was paler than she
remembered, and he leaned against the obelisk more for support than for appearance.
"So full of questions, I see."
"You're hurt," she said, crossing to him and reaching out for his arm.
He sidestepped away before she could touch him, and she felt the ghostly echo of
that more brazen Sarah. She blushed.
Jareth had stopped smiling. "I reordered time. What you encountered was merely an
unfortunate side effect."
"But what was all of that?"
"Time has possibilities," he said after a long pause, clearly searching for the
right words. "When I reordered it, I rewound everything you had done, every choice
that you made." He looked at her, staring directly into her eyes, and she nearly
stepped back at the intensity she saw there. "And every choice you could have made.
What you saw was a spectrum of possibility."
"So I could have been any one of those?"
"I hope not," he murmured, more to himself than to her.
"But why?" she asked, closing the distance between them. She stood only a few
inches away, looking up at him, even more unsure of what was happening. She wanted
to be close, but didn't know the how or the why.
"To save my kingdom," Jareth replied. "And..."
She sensed the potentials hidden in his unfinished sentence, the hidden
possibilities and desires and words unspoken. With the sudden awakening that had
started that evening, she divined what he would never say aloud.
"You wanted to give me that choice again."
He merely looked at her.
"I came because I wanted to ask if I could try it again," she offered, trying to
break that silent tension. The thunder, long forgotten, sounded again, and she
realized it was about to rain.
"There are terms," Jareth said slowly. "If you choose to repeat this day exactly,
you cannot go through with the memories of the previous time."
She raised her chin proudly. "You're just upset because I beat you."
He narrowed his eyes, but she saw the good humor lurking behind it. "And you're
concerned that your luck might not hold true a second time. I may not be so
generous, Sarah."
She was suddenly afraid. "Will I remember anything?"
She paused, even more afraid of a new possibility. "What if I make the same choice?"
Jareth looked at her gravely, the humor draining from his face in an instant. "I
can erase the memories from her mind." He leaned over, breaking their unspoken
desire for space, and tapped her between her budding breasts with a gloved finger.
"But you will still know--a part of you will." He flashed an amused
grin as she looked down and blushed to see how intimately he had touched her.
Just as swiftly, he receded, drawing himself up slowly.
Sarah nodded. "I accept."
Only then did Jareth reach out to her and draw her to him with one elegant gesture,
bringing her just near enough to kiss her forehead chastely. She looked up at him,
hope in her eyes, confident in her choice.
He stepped back, bringing his hands together and drawing them apart until a
delicate crystal appeared between his palms.
"For you, Sarah," Jareth said, his voice brushing her name like the touch of
feathers. "The choice is yours."
Sarah reached out hesitantly and took it from his cupped palms. It shimmered for a
moment and then vanished.
She looked up to see him one last time
He had already disappeared.
A second passed slowly, ticking somewhere in the castle beyond the goblin city.
She wondered what had drawn her attention. Turning, she saw Merlin, lying quietly
in the grass near her feet. He stood up at her glance, shaking himself, then barked
once, sharply. Thunder rolled in the distance.
The clock in the pavilion began to chime.
"Oh no, Merlin!" Sarah said with alarm. "I don't believe it! It's seven o'clock!"
She whirled, already running in the direction of her house. "Come on!"
The owl flew away from his perch in the tree, winging off through the first
raindrops as the storm began.
And I have done it all for you.
-----
Nishad
//crown chakra/harmony/devotion/transcendance/peace//
-----
"My love," Sarah said, leaning against Jareth's shoulder. She felt him kiss her
hair and draw her nearer.
They stood, locked in a private moment that needed no words--any spoken sound had
been uttered in the countless times they had held each other. They had gone beyond
words, movements, thoughts. There was everything in the clasp of their hands,
drawn up between their hearts.
Sarah felt Jareth's heartbeat underneath her fingertips and sighed, counting the
rhythm that she had attuned herself to a lifetime ago. She smiled a secret smile
into the black silk of his shirt.
"I love you," Jareth said, and she knew he was smiling down at her, despair and
loneliness long since washed into the peace they shared.
Giving herself one last, contented sigh, Sarah pressed herself close to her
husband. She lifted up her head, losing herself in his warm gaze. "Shall we dance?"
The invisible orchestra had already begun. She shared a smile with Jareth as
the waltz began.
They danced under the crystal moon, lost in each other as eternity dawned.
-----
Anhad
//cosmic silence//
-----
-----
Author's notes:
Yes, somewhat fluffy.
Written on 05-Feb-04 as a plotbunny that refused to leave my head. Beta'd by the
amazingly punctual songbird, the consummate beta.
Wondering about the references? The Doctrine of Affections is defined at the beginning
of the story. The eight foreign words are terms of North Indian classical music: the
first seven are the seven notes of the Saptak, which is (very roughly) equivalent
to the eight-note scale of Western music, if you need a helpful comparison.
There are many texts in several beliefs pairing this seven-note scale with the seven
major chakra centers of the body. Each vignette in Doctrine of Affections is based
one the pairing of a note with one of the seven chakras: for the truly curious, I
assigned shadja to the basal chakra and worked my way up.
Each note, therefore, corresponds with the emotions associated with its chakra.
You'll find that I took certain liberties in interpretating an extreme emotion of
chakra five and somewhat in chakra six.
And having written and posted this, all last distractions are out of my head as I
settle in to write.
Have comments? I welcome any and all criticism. The form was very experimental and I'd
be happy to hear any comments on the idea, style or grammar.
-AH