A/N I have absolutely no excuse for the long, long wait, other than the fact than life (and school) apparently caught up with me. But I took my last final of the year today (freeeeedom!) , so this thing should actually start being updated again. Thank you so, so much to all of you who review; you keep me going!

Chapter Nine: The Dreaming Queen

Sarah traced an absent finger over a dark whorl of wood on the bar. Her book had gone on tour. After the bookstore and the crystal, she had slept for the better part of a day on the couch in the Strand's office. Sleep had helped, she supposed. She still couldn't look at the crystal without a twist of misery, and she found herself carrying the little owl feather in her pocket rather obsessively. But she smiled when she thought of Jareth more often than not, and told herself that he would visit when he could. And if she still dreamed of a park in the winter, that was no one's business but her own.

Toby declared that he didn't want to see another book as long as he lived, and voted for a very extended vacation someplace tropical and far away. They certainly had the money. It was a completely unintended consequence, but neither of them would ever have to work again. Sarah insisted on the tour. She wasn't sure how much control Jareth had, or what would happen if people stopped believing in him, and she didn't want to find out. The reading public was a notoriously fickle monster. People wanted vampires and teenage wizards and forgot about rings of power and space adventure, and in a hundred years they would think 'hobbit' was a new snack food. It was the way of things, but it could not happen to her book. Not yet.

Sarah wasn't entirely sure how she had ended up in Ilwaco. The little town nestled on the Washington State coastline was hardly a writer's ideal market. Toby had muttered something about a scheduling conflict and a famous bookstore, and off they went. The bookstore in question flooded the day before they arrived. Apparently the town spent the better part of the year under a grey curtain of rain, and Main Street was waterlogged more often than not. They had done the signing in an incongruous cross between a general store, a taxidermy shop and a curiosity museum. Stuffed animal heads and strange birds lined the walls, and Sarah was fairly sure that most of them were extinct. There was a vintage fortune-telling gypsy in a corner, and something that was labeled as "the were-man" and looked as if someone had tried to stitch together an alligator and a rabbit. Amazingly, the people still came. They poured into the store to poke at the stuffed cougar and pour quarters into the gypsy, and Sarah signed books by the hundreds.

Toby had gone to a meeting afterwards, something about re-negotiating merchant agreements, and he assured Sarah that it was not something she wanted to sit through. The thought of going back to the little motel, with its endless cable channels and too-soft bed, drove her to seek out the only bar in town.

Duffy's apparently served as an unholy union of dive bar and unofficial town hall. There were yellowed sports illustrated covers and neon beer signs, a dented shuffleboard table and a jukebox that seemed to only play the Rolling Stones. When she walked in, Mick was wailing that he couldn't drink her off his mind, and Sarah thought that the idea was worth a try.

Perched on a squeaky stool at one end of the bar, Sarah watched the crowd in the dusty mirror and sipped slowly at her drink. At half past nine on a Tuesday night, Duffy's was full of fishermen and cannery workers and tired-looking men and women in starched shirts. A small group huddled over a laptop screen at a small table, and Sarah could have sworn that she heard one of the women say "mayor." Thankfully, it seemed she wasn't quite famous enough that people recognized her on sight. Newcomers glanced at the stranger with her too-high heels and far-away eyes, and left her alone.

"Want another?" The bartender was tall, with a wild mane of dark curling hair and a beguiling smile. There was the whisper of Ireland in his voice, and his eyes were strangely familiar. The bartenders must have changed shifts; when she walked in, the man behind the bar had been white-haired and missing most of his teeth. Sarah couldn't help thinking of Christmas Eve and a taxi driver, and told herself firmly to stop it.

"Ah…sure." She fumbled in her purse, but the bartender waved his hand.

"Nah. 'Tis on the house." He cocked his head to the side and looked at her, almost assessing. Sarah instinctively sat up a little straighter and stared back, resisted the urge to squirm. Someone called 'Finn!' and he turned away, glass already in hand, but Sarah saw him snatch glances at her when he thought she wasn't looking. Maybe he had liked the book, she thought uneasily, and decided to leave after she finished her drink.

"You saving this seat?"

Sarah started, and turned to face the woman standing by the empty bar stool beside her. She looked like a trucker, or maybe a mechanic. A long blond ponytail was tucked through a white baseball cap, and she wore heavy jeans and a worn flannel shirt. Perhaps it was only the shadows in the bar, but her face was arresting and very nearly beautiful. A silver pendant hung from a chain around her wrist.

"Tanya!" A man who had just walked into the bar clapped her on the shoulder and nodded at her, and the woman—Tanya—nodded back. So she was a regular, Sarah thought, and started to slide off her stool.

"Hey, wait. I didn't mean to scare you off." Her voice was lovely, soft and low. Sarah froze like a startled rabbit.

"It's alright. I should be getting back to the hotel."

"You're a tourist, then?" Tanya slid comfortably onto the stool beside Sarah and nodded at the bartender. She tugged off her baseball cap and yanked the tie out of her hair, and fine gold strands fell in a river down her back. Sarah would have sworn it was the exact color of Jareth's. You really have it bad, don't you? She could not escape him, it seemed, not even in a nameless bar at the other end of the country. Maybe she needed another drink after all. Sarah realized she was gaping at Tanya, and told herself to pull it together.

"I'm just in town for a few days. It was…kind of an accident." The last thing Sarah wanted to talk about was the book signing. Belatedly, Sarah realized she hadn't introduced herself, and she held out a hand. "I'm Sarah."

"Tanya. It's Tatiana, really, but Tanya's easier."

"Tatiana. Is that Russian?" Something niggled at the back of Sarah's mind, telling her she should know that name, but it slid out of reach.

"Something like that." Tanya smiled a little, and took a gulp of the Guinness Finn plunked down in front of her. "An accident, huh? That's how most people come here, I guess. Can't imagine anyone coming here on purpose, though I suppose they do. Fishing and all that."

Sarah blinked at these pronouncements, and wondered if perhaps Tanya had started drinking earlier.

"I'm not drunk, I promise. Just…distracted. It's been a busy month."

Sarah laughed, a bit hysterically and for too long. "I completely understand." Tanya gave her a strangely knowing look. And for some reason, sitting in a dive bar beside a trucker with the hair of a princess didn't seem the least bit awkward anymore. Maybe, Sarah though, it was the rum. She took a gulp of her rum and coke, barely managing not to choke as it burned its way down her throat, and she and Tanya sat for a moment in companionable silence.

"It's strange. You don't seem like an idiot."

"I…what?" Sarah told herself she couldn't possibly have heard that right.

"You don't recognize me?"

Sarah shook her head dumbly and started to slide off her bar stool. Tanya sighed.

"People say my son and I look alike."

"Your…your son?"

"Yes, my son. Arrogant, immortal, tendency to turn into something white and feathery when particularly put out." Tanya paused and glared at Sarah. Her face turned somehow sharper, and something sinuous and silver glittered in her hair. Sarah remembered the revel, and the woman who had stared at her. "Obsessed with a mortal girl who somehow managed to break his heart and save his life. If it were the only first and not the second, I would kill you."

Tanya lifted her Guinness to her lips and sipped contemplatively. Sarah's heart thundered in her ears like the beat of a horse's hooves on the highway, once upon a dream.

"You're…you're Abhoeil. You're Jareth's mother." So she was meeting the parents, Sarah thought more than a little hysterically. Oh, god. Tanya—Abhoeil?—inclined her head, and the gesture reminded her so sharply of Jareth that she had to turn away.

Sarah blurted out, "He…looks like you, when he's angry." She instantly wished she could take it back. But she remembered something then, and suddenly the opinion of Jareth's mother didn't matter much at all.

"You left him there." Her anger would never rival that of the mighty faerie queen, but she thought that Tanya's eyes widened, just a little. "You locked him away in that tower, you left him to die! How could you?" Her voice rose to something near a shout, and the murmurs in the bar quieted. The bartender looked over at them, his expression unreadable. Tanya and Sarah held each other's eyes, green and grey, and it was the queen who looked away first.

"I won't justify it to you. I didn't have a choice." She paused. More quietly she said, "And maybe there are some choices I wouldn't make again." Sarah remembered a stupid girl who had gone on a quest once upon a time, and felt a traitorous twist of sympathy.

"He's alright, then? The book worked?" She had seen it in the crystal, but she had to be sure.

"Yes. Jareth is…free. He doesn't need the book any more." Then why doesn't he come, Sarah wondered, but she couldn't bring herself to ask. She was too afraid of the answer.

"He hasn't recovered." The other woman said it abruptly, as if the words had been pulled unwillingly out of her. "He controls the magic, but travel between the dreaming is…difficult for us." Her mouth twisted, as if the Guinness suddenly disagreed with her. "He told me to give you a message. He'll come when he can."

Something in Sarah's chest fluttered wildly. If this was another trick, Sarah thought, she could not bear it. Abhoeil watched her, unblinking.

"You really don't know, do you?"

"I…what?"

Sarah's shook her head absently. Jareth was coming back, and she was not really listening anymore.

"Foolish girl! Words mean only what they are intended to, and yet you must have the words or nothing at all. You dream so strongly, but you refuse to believe anything unless it is declared and written out and tied with a pretty bow. Did you never think what would happen, if the lord of the dreaming professed the dream he held above all others? Words have power in our world, and the magic was difficult enough to control. He gave you everything, and it was not enough. You couldn't do without those pitiful, useless words!" Abhoeil looked nearly murderous.

Eldan loved Tanya; everyone knows that. She hadn't allowed herself to believe. But what if…

"But...but he did lose control of it."

"Said or unsaid, it was true. The dreaming knew it. It was only a matter of time. And my son was….unduly confident in his abilities. He has reason to be, but there are some things even he cannot master."

Abhoeil was not lying, Sarah though. She sounded much too bitter. But that meant…

Sarah stared down into her rum and coke and watched the little bubbles rise to the surface, and trembled. She had assumed that Jareth lost control because of the Labyrinth. But if he hadn't...if it had been because of her...

Oh, god, what a fool she had been. He had tried to tell her, that day in the park so long ago, but she had wanted to hear the words, the right words. And when he couldn't say them...

Sarah sniffed, and firmly told her breakdown that it had to wait until she got back the hotel.

"Everything alright, ladies?" The bartender looked at Tanya, his eyes faintly accusing. He handed Sarah a handkerchief, an actual cotton one with little embroidered initials in the corner. She stared at it a moment in bemusement before taking it and scrubbing at her cheeks.

"She nearly killed him!" Abhoeil glared at the bartender, but he glared back.

"She also saved his life. And looks to be a rather permanent fixture in it, once their…disagreement is resolved." His mouth quirked into a small smile. "And I do not care to watch you sulk for the next thousand years."

"A pleasure to finally meet you, Sarah." Finnbarrah, beloved of Abhoeil, reached out to shake her limp hand. When she instinctively held out the soggy handkerchief, he shook his head.

"Keep it, my dear." He paused. "I think Sarah has had quite enough for one evening. We will see you again, I believe, very soon." He nodded at her congenially, and then something in his expression sharpened. "If you hurt him again, you will not be forgiven."

And then the bar faded into her dingy hotel room, and Sarah was alone.