Gulping a final tepid mouthful of his rapidly-cooling coffee, Monty cast an accusing glare at the corrugated iron sky bearing down upon him with all the ruthless inevitability of an Amway salesman at an office party. When he’d set out that morning for his Sunday ritual caffeine-and-doughnut infusion, a clammy mist was smothering the city, packing into every crack and crevasse tightly as cotton in an aspirin bottle. Even as the milky moisture transformed the leaf-strewn streets into the autumnal equivalent of a giant, slushy bowl of half-eaten cornflakes, the cadres of TV weatherpeople had all agreed with blow-dried enthusiasm that the afternoon promised to be clear and fair as their perfect complexions. If they’d issued a warning, though, he probably still couldn’t have brought himself to forgo the luxury of a break from the undrinkable tarry concoction he and his roommate created, which could only be called coffee by giving it the benefit of a very sizable doubt.

Now, as he returned, he noted how the fog had solidified into a desultory drizzle, the sort of half-hearted rain which seemed to state that it wasn’t at all sure if this precipitation business was really worth the effort. Harsh and grim as a disgruntled Goblin King, the glowering sky seemed to harbor no such existential doubts. There was a definite drill-sergeant expression to its brooding cirrus formations, a determination to whip the weather into a serious squall. Monty dodged reflexively as a kamikaze leaf dive-bombed him with a rather soggy show of defiance, foreshadowing the all-out insurrection to come. The forecast, it seemed, had altered almost magically.

A magical storm. Imagine that.

Tossing the empty paper cup into a nearby trash bin, he jammed his gloved hands into his pockets and set out for his apartment at a brisk pace. If he hurried, he just might make it before the sky really opened up. As if in answer, distant thunder rumbled out a drumroll for the fast-approaching meteorological mayhem. Then again, he mused, maybe not. Doubling his speed, he found himself outpaced by the swiftly scudding menace of the clouds.

With weather like this, he’d just have to take the initiative and cancel today’s study session with Sarah. Turnabout was fair play, wasn’t it? Moreover, the storm was a perfectly sound, sensible, legitimate motivation, a virtually unassailable Official Statement. He resolutely ignored the ensuing choir of skepticism in his mind’s ear, like a chorus of tiny conspiracy theorists analyzing the Warren Report. The Viking machismo contingent scoffed that his behavior was less worthy of Erik the Red than Monty the Yellow, while the guilt lobby chimed in with condemning the pettiness of his decision, and as for the love hormones -- well, suffice it to say his mind and body failed to present the united front he had anticipated. Even when Sarah wasn’t physically present, he reflected, her essence still exerted its own peculiar gravity, dense and inescapable as an emotional black hole; the light of reason never stood a chance.

Sighing heavily, he squared his shoulders and snapped up the collar of his coat in his best hard-boiled TV detective impersonation, patrolling the lonely and crime-infested beat of his own heart. In the sort of defensive exercise that makes psychologists go weak in the knees, his conscience commenced the complicated two-step of rationalization. After all, it wasn’t as if he was deliberately avoiding her, as such. He most certainly was not afraid to learn that she’d reacted badly to the cassette -- or worse yet, to learn that she hadn’t reacted at all. Monday’s deadline was fast approaching; barring some serious studying, they would both be good as dead. Regardless of whether she was really sick or simply avoiding the hell out of him and his fumbling advances, he quite simply had no more time to spare for her vacillations and cancellations. She’d damn well have to cope with physics by herself for once while he floundered through his own long-neglected creative writing assignment, both of them struggling separately with their own respective burdens in a needless martyrdom of isolation. Despite being universally acknowledged to be, to put it politely, more than a little poetically challenged, Monty knew dramatic irony when he saw it. It failed to cheer him up.

Ah, well, maybe he’d be in the right mood to compose a magnum opus this afternoon for his writing class. Besides possessing less natural rhythm than the proverbial Zen one-handed clapper, as well as the deep-set conviction that a symbol was something an orchestra percussionist clashed together, Monty suffered from the genetic disadvantage of a naturally cheerful disposition; if the entire class could be compared to an elevator, then Monty was the only moron with his finger on the “up” button, violently annoying all the dark-clad, dark-haired, dark-minded passengers with pressing appointments in the sub-basement. They all looked like photographic negatives, and their outlooks were equally so, judging from their near-carbon-copy verses of personal and universal apocalypse. Not that he knew anything about writing, but didn’t it ever involve happy accounts of flowers or young love? Apparently not, unless both flowers and lover had died tragically in recent weeks, and left you with unpaid hospital and florist’s bills, to boot. Amateur poets and traditional country singers largely subscribed to the same philosophies, surprisingly enough; the former simply dressed better and bathed a bit more frequently. Basically, Monty had “Mandatory Liberal Arts Requirement” written all over him. In a writing class, that constituted a “kick me” sign.

“You’re doing just fine,” Sarah had reassured him only last week. “You’re really getting much, much better at this.”

“Yeah, in a few months, I might be able to write a whole sentence without asking you for help,” he grinned. “Look out, Shakespeare.”

“Now, come on, Monty, this is all your work. It’s all inside you, you’re just having a hard time expressing it, and making it come out the way you mean. All I’m doing is being your sounding board.” She had laid a graceful hand upon his arm, naively assuming that his smile arose from her words of encouragement, not the exquisite pressure of her skin against his.

“You know what I need? A muse. All of them talk about muses all the time, inspiring them day and night. It’s like you can go out and buy one from ‘Muses ‘R’ Us’. Want to be my muse? You’d look good in a toga. We can make beautiful angst together.” As always, his flirtation had been carefully laced with humor, a deliberate hedging of his bets. He realized now that he made a lousy gambler. He hated losing far too much.

“I don’t think wearing a sheet is really me, Monty, but I’m flattered,” Sarah giggled. “You just need to figure out what’s important to you, then write about it. That’s what all their talk about muses means, really. You shouldn’t try to be like one of them. Just be one of you. You need to find your own voice.”

“How’s this?” He dropped his tone an octave or two, growling like a villain in a melodrama.

“Monty . . .” Sarah rolled her eyes.

“Or this?” He shot back up the scale to land on a squeaking falsetto.

Sarah socked him on the arm. “You are just too literal for your own good, you know that? Aren’t you ever serious about anything?”

His smile had faded. “Sometimes,” he concurred. “But I guess it’s hard for you to tell.”

Scampering for shelter from the rain, a passing cat miaowed suspiciously at Monty as his hand jerked out in an involuntary, angry gesture directed at no one in particular. It belonged to that class of responses that constitute a karate chop at the neck of fate, the same sort of frustrated body language (only without the eloquent extending of middle fingers) which old Italian men use to illustrate the intellectual validity of their point and the dubious parentage of their opposition during the particularly heated portions of barroom debates. Sarah again. No matter what mental passageway he selected, all roads led to Sarah, the Rome of his subconscious. Get a grip, Monty, he berated himself. You’re going to degenerate into the kind of guy who calls radio talk shows at three in the morning to ask the host what women find so unattractive about him. Or worse yet, the kind of guy who writes bad poetry about it. Next thing you know it’ll be time to buy black hair dye. Just stop it right now.

Shaking his head to himself, he indulged in a quiet chuckle, the raindrops spraying from his damp curls only to be replaced with new ones. Cold new ones. He hazarded another glance at the sky, wiping away the raindrop which trembled upon the tip of his nose in anxious preparation for the bungee-jump to the ground below. The drizzle had apparently acquired some ambition while he was lost in thought, becoming the kind of frigid, sleety deluge which aspired to be snow when it grew up. Shivering, he pulled his overcoat tighter and returned to the drier haven of his mind.

Let’s see now, poetry. A poem about something important to him. Whatever could that be?

“Roses are red, Muses are Greek, I really like Sarah, but she thinks I’m a geek.”

Wet leaves pelted his face like the rotten tomatoes of an unappreciative audience. “My kingdom for a muse!” he called out to the cat, which was caterwauling its disapproval from the refuge of a handy overhang. “Everyone’s a critic. Guess I’d better leave the Shakespeare for Sarah.” Not that she seemed too eager to tackle the Bard again after the Ashby incident.

In retrospect, the whole thing shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise. The first paragraph of Ashby’s syllabus told prospective victims, right up front, that “I don’t intend to coddle your egos. Acting is a brutal business, and I believe in brutal honesty.” Heck, the phrase “brutal honesty” was even emblazoned in bold and italics, the closest punctuation could come to erecting a flashing neon sign which read “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” Clearly, the dividing line between brutal honesty and mere brutality was a razor-fine one, and Ashby the Bastard enjoyed wielding the razor rather more than was healthy. The Dr. Ashby’s of life liked to stand there and be ironical at you, slashing expertly with their rapiers of wit until you went to move and discovered that you’d been as neatly sliced in two as a prop candle in the one-upmanship dueling scene of a cheesy 1940's swashbuckling film. Monty always wondered if Ashby had missed his true calling of biology, a life choice for which the experimental animals of the world would remain forever grateful.

Admittedly, some of Monty’s own science professors were more than a little lacking in the social skills department, particularly in terms of such niceties of etiquette as tact, diplomacy and, in extreme cases, personal hygiene; it was one of the reasons so many of them tended to remain single. One particular unfortunate was saddled with a toupee which gave the impression that a small woodland creature had unaccountably decided to nest on his head. In the midst of particularly boring lectures, students speculated that the jet-black squarish mass perched precariously atop his graying sideburns seemed poised to blink and skitter away. This same fashion plate tended to write “WRONG” in large red letters next to incorrect answers on exams. A complete failure to grasp the fundamentals of artifice was the key to comprehending his personality; wrong was wrong and right was right, and it would no more occur to him to cushion the blow of his comments than it would occur to him to choose a hairpiece which less resembled a separate sentient being. Unlike Ashby, he took no satisfaction in assigning a low grade. It was a neutral fact, like the atomic weight of plutonium. There was nothing personal about it.

On the other hand, in Monty’s opinion, Ashby held a grudge like James Bond villains held white Angora cats with names like Fluffykins, fondling and caressing it with psychotic enthusiasm. He resented Sarah on principle, given that she was attractive, talented, and had a famous mother, none of which advantages the gods of acting had seen fit to bestow upon the unfortunate Ashby himself. Sarah was no fool, so why couldn’t she see that for herself? Why did she feel like she had something to prove? Why did she believe someone like Ashby, and not someone who cared about her, like--

STOP IT. Don’t just derail that train of thought -- rip up the tracks, bulldoze the ticket booth, and sow a little salt on the ground, Monty, my boy. Think about The Sarah Question objectively, with detachment. Logical analysis is what’s called for, here. Cogito ergo sum. Cogito ergo sum not making a goddamn fool out of myself.

Of course, acting did form the core of what Sarah had always wanted to do and be. It had to hurt to be told that you sucked at it, even if you knew that the bearer of the bad tidings had a bone to pick, preferably one from your skeletal system. Sarah’s reaction, though, went way beyond hurt. She believed Ashby, with an unswerving, fatalistic faith completely unsupported by the facts of the situation. It was as if she had deliberately picked the harshest, most unfair critic she could find, and systematically set herself up for failure. Why was she so prepared to believe the worst?

Unless, deep down, she believed it already.

In the end, it was none of his business, anyway. He was probably wrong to push her to talk about it with him. With him, of all people. Who the hell was he? He wasn’t her boyfriend, or her therapist, no matter how much he might hope to be the former, or try to be the latter. If she was sick, well, so was he. He was sick of living like this, sick of the agony of uncertainty she kept him in all the time. Although he was used to being engaged in a field of quantum, where chaos had become a theory and uncertainty had been elevated to the status of a principle, where Einstein and Heisenberg had added a tiny, devastating footnote to every rule, saying in essence that “It ain’t necessarily so, son,” he had previously dealt with uncertainty only in terms of numbers and impersonal forces, not in terms of something that grabbed at your guts and your glands and at your other very intimate bits and whispered that you were making yourself look about as dignified as the star of one of those clips on "America's Most Lawsuit-Inspiring Home Videos." In his own life, sensibility and stability had been his bywords, and now -- well, just pull the strings, m’lady, and your puppet will gladly dance for your amusement. His words to Sarah came back to mock him: “I guess what I’m saying is that you may envy my certainty, but sometimes I envy your freedom, too.” That’s what it had come down to: his feelings for her had robbed him of both certainty and freedom, except the freedom to make an utter idiot out of himself with every disastrous overture.

The storm brewing above his head was nothing compared to the storm raging between his ears as he neared his destination. Over and over, without fail, he was the one who came to her, standing like an overgrown Oliver Twist with his heart in an outstretched bowl, pathetically begging for more than she was obviously willing to give. Time and time again, he was the one who ran after her. The tape had been the final indignity, and his inner Viking rose up in revolt. A true Nordic warrior wouldn’t toss his pride to the wind and run after her like this. No, a true warrior would . . .would . . . um . . . well, run after her, toss her kicking and screaming over his shoulder, and leave the smoldering remains of her just-pillaged village sizzling in the distance.

So maybe Vikings weren’t the best relationship role models, then. But the principle was sound. He was sick of running after her, sick of being a not-very-irresistible force to her immovable object. He wished, just once, that she’d come to him instead.

Now, Monty had often heard the expression “be careful what you wish for -- you just might get it.”

When he turned the corner and beheld the bedraggled form of a very sodden Sarah huddled on his doorstep, he finally knew precisely what it meant.

Clad in capital letters and trailed by an extensive entourage of neuroses, the Moment of Truth had arrived.

Certain segments of society, poets in particular, tend to harbor grandiose notions about Moments of Truth, scribbling sentimental blather about truth being beauty and vice versa. Of course, these are the same segments of society which tend to ingest large quantities of the sort of hallucinogenic substances which transform a waterstain on the wall into a revelation from God. Seen from the wind-whipped, rocky outcrop of sobriety, with the harsh vistas of consequence shrouded by no cloudy nimbus of delusion, the Moment of Truth is not a picnic spot. The Moment of Truth barges into your brain like a long-dreaded visit from an ancient relative, lugging scrapbooks crammed with every embarrassing picture and anecdote from your youth, demanding and querulous and ugly as hell.

Monty and Sarah were both doing a passable job of pretending it wasn’t there.

Frenetic and mindless activity emerged as the shield of choice for Monty, bouncing from point to point in the tiny room in his own peculiar version of Brownian motion. Towels, tea, a dry sweatshirt, would you care for a Twinkie? His hyperactive scavenger hunt showed no signs of slowing.

Sarah, meanwhile, head swathed in a faded towel, stared blankly into her steaming mug, her pose suggesting a swami whose tea-leaves were pleading the Fifth. Her perfect stillness formed the tranquil eye of Hurricane Monty, but only externally. Internally, she struggled with a thousand fears and instincts, converging on a paralyzing stalemate; she walked upon a thousand paths which seemed to lead to nowhere. She tugged the towel from her hair, shivering as the clammy tendrils brushed the nape of her neck. What do you do, Sarah? Sit here nursing a nice cup o’ tea, or . . .

She turned and faced the labyrinth of fear.

“Monty . . . I need to tell you something. But you have to promise me that no matter what, you won’t say anything until I’m finished. I don’t think I can do this unless I say it all at once, no interruptions. OK?”

He set the box of Twinkies down, very carefully, swallowing hard. It served him right, really. So he wanted her to come and talk to him, did he? A nice heart-to-heart? Well, his dream was coming true now with a vengeance, the stuff of fairy godmothers gone bad. He stared miserably at Sarah, huddled cross-legged on the mold-green sofa directly beneath his prized “Holy Grail” poster, signed by the entire cast. Damp, forlorn, and haunted, she opened her trembling mouth, struggling to form a single word; give her a scraggly beard and she could double for the Flying Circus’ “It’s” man.

“Please? Monty?”

Well, best get this show on the road, then.

He sat down slowly in the overstuffed orange chair directly across from her perch, digging his fingernails into the softly shabby fabric; anyone could see that Monty invested a lot more money in Python paraphernalia than furniture. “All right, Sarah. I’m listening.” He braced himself to receive the Top Ten Reasons Why I Wouldn’t Go Out With You If You Were The Last Man on Earth, You Pathetic Geek.

The silence waited, empty as an oubliette and twice as treacherous. This confession would constitute much more than simply airing dirty laundry; she’d be walking from the laundry room stark naked. First she’d given Jareth a skeleton key to her mind and soul, and now she was inviting Monty in to tour the ransacked remains. What could she say? Good God, where could she even begin?

Only one way, really.

She took one final, endless breath, and forced herself to stop chewing her lip.

“Once upon a time . . .”

Relationships are full of disillusioning moments. Once the friction of constant contact wears off the shiny gilt of novelty, even the most ardent Romeo will note how Juliet steals his razors to shave her legs, while Juliet will wonder why Romeo never learned to toss his dirty briefs into the hamper. This sort of thing is natural, and only to be expected.

Still, learning that your beloved is completely crackers ranks as a more profoundly disillusioning moment than most.

She wasn’t joking, at least; one look into her eyes blew his frantic hope that this was a demented prank, or a theatrical rehearsal. She was looking at him, waiting, in an agony of fear. In the world of physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction; a stunned and silent stare seemed the sole response that he could muster. Finally, clearing his throat, he spoke in the quiet, calm tones normally reserved for addressing hysterical children, skittish woodland creatures, and cranky postal workers toting Uzis. “Sarah, you know, sometimes I’ve had nightmares that scared me for days, they seemed so real. You’ve been under an awful lot of stress lately. Have you thought about . . . um . . . seeing a doctor, maybe?”

Deep down, Sarah hadn’t realistically expected any other response from Monty. He had his feet firmly planted on solid ground, as only one boasting an intimate acquaintance with the principles of gravity can manage; she was asking a man of science to believe in fairies, to turn his world upside down, to take an ultimate leap of faith -- and do it all for her. It was easy enough for Jareth, he of the Escher sensibilities and everything to gain; Monty, on the other hand, had everything to lose. No, she hadn’t expected anything different at all, really.

She’d dared to hope for a hell of a lot more, though. The drop into the yawning chasm between hope and expectation manifested such a hauntingly familiar pattern in her life. How long had she performed this endless dance to a mocking music box melody? As it gouged its ruts of repetition ever deeper into her mind and heart, she began to fear that both were poised to snap in half. And in that event -- well, how much of a difference was there between a rubber room and a crystal prison?

“No! Godammit, I’m not crazy!” she shrieked, half-sobbing, skittering to cower at the far end of the couch in a defensive crouch which did nothing to bolster her claim to sanity. “A doctor’s not going to help! I’m not sick, not the way you think!” With the remnants of her will, she desperately groped to clothe her plea in the guise of a semi-rational argument, knowing it was an ill-fitting suit at best. “Look, I know it sounds insane. I know that. But I swear to you, it’s all true. Remember the blisters? Remember how bad they were? Look at my hands, Monty. Look at them!” She presented two pink and perfect palms for his inspection. “You know blisters can’t heal that fast. He healed me! I’m waking up with sand in my hair, scars on my skin -- that’s not a dream, it can’t be. Please, Monty, I’m not crazy! I need for you to believe me. I don’t expect anything from you, really I don’t. I’m not asking for any help. I just need . . . I need for you to understand that I . . . I care about you. I really do.”

The phrase, which had seemed like such a revelation that morning, now seemed lame and flat, half-hearted, like giving someone a cheese sampler for Christmas when your companions had chipped in for a Ferrari. Unfortunately, it was all she could emotionally afford right now. She was strapped for cash, for emotional tender; her reserves were depleted from years of drought. “I thought that you deserved to know the truth, that’s all, and I wanted to tell you while I still had a chance. Your song . . . your song meant a lot to me.” Her voice thickened and choked, encircled with the noose of one final rejection. I hope you’re enjoying this, Jareth. Wherever you are. She briskly scrubbed the tears from her face with trembling fingertips, looking impossibly young and fragile in his oversized blue sweatshirt, graced with the leering image of the Verencia Viking. She seemed a lost child determined to be brave until the bitter end, a lost child who knew that something terrible would finally come to fetch her. “I’m sorry. I should go.”

Monty was only dimly aware of her rising to leave, his dazed attention focused on the input of his ears rather than his eyes. There it was; a single phrase, sparkling in the darkness: I care about you. Not quite as good as I love you, but . . . Hadn’t he told himself, over and over, that all he wanted was for Sarah to say she wanted him, she needed him? Now she had, the only catch being that she was obviously insane.

Still, he’d sworn that she could talk to him, hadn’t he? About anything, he’d said, with the blithe confidence of one who thought the world conformed to glossy images on picture postcards. He’d beheld only the shallow surface of the sea, the symmetry of desert dunes, all unthreatening and pure and terribly romantic, all mirror-flat and mirror-full of his own reflected notions of their nature. Would he cry foul now that the mirror cracked, and the gruesome true extent of unimagined depths and tempest-tossed leviathans lay open to his view, beached and gasping for air? He’d bullied her to trust him, open up to him, had begged her to surrender her compulsive self-control. He’d claimed to hate her silence, her distance, never dreaming that those very factors were allowing him to draw a perfect picture in his mind, protecting him from sights he might not care to see in three dimensions. Now that she’d finally run to him, would he simply run away?

What would a Viking do?

To hell with Vikings. What would Monty do?

I’ll protect your body and guard your soul/From mirages in your sight . . .

“Wait.” He stopped her with one hand upon her arm, clutching and scrabbling at the blue folds of fabric until he felt the skin and bone beneath, throbbing with the rhythm of her heart. “I know you’re not asking for help, but . . . I’m offering. Tell me what to do.”

Fifteen minutes later, she was still sobbing into his shirt, clutching at him with an intensity that would have proved enormously gratifying under different circumstances. He sighed and stroked her dishevelled hair, firm in his decision, if still a bit bewildered. If she was on an unusually scenic route to Nutsville, well, then, by God, he’d come along for the ride, and see if he could convince her to change her itinerary a bit. He needed to try to get her to a doctor; he knew that, but after her last violent reaction to the suggestion, he wasn’t willing to hazard another try. No matter what, he wasn’t going to let her go it alone; they’d face her demons together, lost out in the desert.

Problem was that he cut a rather sad figure of an exorcist, waving his Bible of logic at a mind possessed by fantasy. Shuddering, he inspected her palm, stroking the tip of his thumb over the pristine flesh. Sarah’s mind was obviously convinced enough of Jareth’s existence to cause blisters to appear -- and disappear -- solely from the power of suggestion. How could he possibly hope combat that level of belief? Unless, of course, he gave her something new she could believe in . . .

“Sarah, wait a minute. I have an idea.”

Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins, That almost freezes up the heat of life. I’ll call them back again to comfort me.

Snapping shut Romeo and Juliet, Sarah huddled deeper under the covers and forced her breathing to remain steady, mildly astonished that no tiny puffs of mist condensed upon the icy air. She should have asked Monty to stay. Pride and propriety -- what ridiculous, Jane Austen-ish things to be concerned about at a time like this. She supposed she could call him back; eyeing the phone longingly for several minutes, she ultimately dismissed the idea. Even if he stayed there beside her all night, he couldn’t very well gain entrance to the terrors of her mind. Only one man could do that.

My dismal scene I needs must act alone . . .

Punching her pillow savagely, she turned over hard enough to make the bedsprings squeak in protest. She stared fixedly at the bedpost, where the dreamcatcher was conspicuous by its absence. It was entirely possible, she lectured herself, that there would be no dismal scene. Maybe Monty’s plan would work.

Yeah, and maybe Jareth only wanted to sell her Tupperware.

It had seemed like such a logical, sane idea at the time -- as if someone like Monty could conceive of anything else. “The way I understand it, magic is a force, right? Like magnetism.” Grabbing a magnetic paperclip holder from the desk beside him, he had held it under her nose for emphasis. “Now, you see how when the clip is close, it snaps right back to the magnet, but the force gets weaker and weaker the further away it gets, until . . .” The paper clip dropped to the floor. “So if that dreamcatcher is the source of his power over you, then it makes sense that the force gets stronger when it’s closer to you, and weaker when it’s further away. Well, right now it’s right on your bedpost, for God’s sake. What if I was to hold on to it here for tonight? I’ll bet it can’t do anything from that far away. And if you feel sick, like when you tried to burn it, I’m close enough to bring it right back.”

Now, Sarah had felt the touch of magic, had felt it in the throb of crystals and the cool caress of gloved and slender hands. Something deep within her scoffed instinctively at the notion that magic was as simple as a physics lesson, that saving her soul might be as easy as helping her with homework. Still, it was the only straw she had, no matter how short or slender, and she seized upon it eagerly.

Now, with the tide of night around her, pressing in relentlessly to menace the circumference of her island of light, it seemed a very short and slender straw indeed.

She closed her eyes and sifted through the day’s events, cringing briefly with guilt when she remembered hanging up on her mother. Given the chance to live the moment over again, it wasn’t how she’d choose to say goodbye. She reached up and over, grasping the photograph and bringing it to eye level. Her face reflected in the glass, pale and half-transparent, as if her mother’s memory was the living being, and herself an insubstantial spirit. She put the photo back, and decided against calling a second time. Leave well enough alone, Sarah.

She wished, just once, that she could face a day without the curse of memory. No road was ever fresh; she always stumbled over all the tracks and ruts of those who came before, especially her mother. Family: what a wonderful thing, festering in the graveyard of the mind.

As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,/Where for this many hundred years the bones/Of all my buried ancestors are pack’d . . .

“Shut UP!” She wished she’d never memorized that stupid monologue, never set it loose, creaking and lurching in shopping-cart circles, complete with a broken wheel. Groaning, she clasped the pillow to her ears, as if it could blot out her inner voices, then sat up, tousled and exasperated. Flinging back the covers, teeth chattering, she sallied forth upon an Arctic expedition to brew a fresh cup of chamomile tea. Monty had pressed the box upon her, displaying a Blue Worm-like faith in its power as the ultimate restorative, capable of squelching even the peskiest of nightmares. She regarded the yellow brew with an equally jaundiced eye. Bottoms up.

What if this mixture do not work at all?/Shall I be married then to-morrow morning?

Stopping briefly to kick Romeo and Juliet under the bed, she yanked the covers over her head and crossed her arms over her stomach, unconsciously assuming the classic “rest-in-peace” position. Monty had promised to stop by first thing in the morning to check on her, and the dreams usually didn’t reach their worst until relatively late. She wondered quietly who would get to her first: Monty, or Jareth.

How if, when I am laid into the tomb,/I wake before the time that Romeo/Come to redeem me?

At the rate the temperature was dropping, the cold might beat them both.

It didn’t make sense. How could she be this freezing when it wasn’t even snowing? Even the rain had stopped. Still, she’d read somewhere that it could get too cold and dry to snow; when all was said and done, the Antarctic was a desert just as much as the Sahara. Assaulted by exposure to the elements, the human body recognized no difference in extremes. Fire, ice, they all burned to the bone, sand and water suffocated with an equal ease -- and for all his glittering veneer of foppery, Sarah knew, Jareth was as elemental as they came. The touch of his desire qualified as an un-natural disaster.

She lay perfectly still, listening to the thrumming of the blood within her ears, monitoring the tingling presence of arms and legs and fingers and toes, concentrating on the smorgasbord of sensations that defined the being known as Sarah. Adrenaline, the MSG of hormones, intensified the flavor of each detail to a headache-inducing richness. She’d spent so much of her life immersed in memories, in fantasy, in everything but the immediate, throbbing pulse of the now. It seemed as if she’d never really been aware of it before, until she stood to lose it. Young as she was, she nursed a litter of regrets, so many things she had and hadn’t done.

Right now, not buying a goddamn space heater was number one on the list. Allowing Monty to leave ranked as a photo-finish second place.

After he walked her home, she’d clung to him for a ridiculously long time, burying her face in his overcoat in denial that anything existed but the wholesome, rain-damp smell of him, until he’d asked, hesitantly, if she wanted him to stay. Like a fool, she’d said no, and let him go. “Thank you for everything,” she’d whispered, exhausted eyes large and lustrous, brimming over with unshed tears. Touched beyond bearing, he reached out to stroke her cheek with a gloved hand, drawing back in confusion when she flinched. “He wears gloves,” she muttered, knowing she sounded like a lunatic, and hating her weakness more than Monty could begin to guess. It was like exposing an open wound to the open air, over and over again.

Flashing his lopsided, reassuring grin, he hastily stripped off the offending glove to brush bare fingertips against her cheek. His touch was warm and soft and unspeakably comforting, the antithesis of Jareth’s cool caress. “He said he’d be there for you while the world falls down, right? Well, I’ll go that one better. I won’t let the world fall down on you, Sarah. I swear.”

“You don’t believe me, do you, Monty.” It was less a question than a statement.

He had hesitated desperately, fumbling for a reply, testing and discarding various comforting lies behind the curtain of his eyes. Finally, he offered up the one response he knew she could accept: the truth. “I believe in you, Sarah. And . . . I love you.”

The words surged with their own peculiar magic, electric and alive. The former phrase was Jareth’s, but the latter? She searched her memory in vain. Never once -- not once -- had he said “I love you.” He spoke of love, certainly, as a separate entity, hard and self-contained, easily grasped within his hand. Easily controlled and utterly controlling, sealing her within its unyielding crystal shell like a doll behind glass, dancing to the music of eternity. But “I love you?” A pledge of self? Never. He had never said the right words.

Come to think of it, she couldn’t remember the last time her mother used the phrase, either.

And when had she ever uttered it aloud?

Bedclothes heaved in time to thrashing elbows and knees as she sought restlessly for some elusive comfort. She should call him. She needed to talk to him, needed the warmth of him to thaw the killing frost encroaching on her soul. He had offered, hadn’t he? Just a word and I will cover your shoulders/with veils of silk and gold/when the shadows come and darken your heart/leaving you with regrets so cold . . .

She resolutely turned away from the phone. She’d already screwed up her goodbye to her mother; she wasn’t going to make the same mistake with Monty. She wanted to remember that final, bittersweet embrace, not ruin the ending with an epilogue of well-deserved resentment. To one person in the world, at least, she wouldn’t be remembered as a burden.

She pressed one aching cheek against her pillow -- and froze. A flash of white and silver--

It was only moonlight gleaming from the polished surface of the music box, igniting the sequins and glitter encrusting the doll’s dress. Even in miniature, the Fairy Queen’s gown was still a vision, white as the wing of an owl, translucent as crystal and cobwebs, the embodiment of everything designed to snare an innocent soul.

But no; lack of sleep and a surfeit of terror were muddling her thinking. Her mother had been no villainess in that play, not by a long shot. The Fairy Queen represented everything Sarah had always yearned for in her love-starved life: dreams come true and happy endings and . . .

Dreams and endings.

Seized with a sick premonition, Sarah padded softly over to the music box, gasping with shock as she lifted it to the light. She could swear the doll had once been the spitting image of Linda; her mother’s vanity would have allowed for nothing less. Now, the youthful pout, the huge blue-grey eyes, every feature screamed of Sarah.

He had her coming and going, didn’t he? She could throw away the music box, throw away Romeo and Juliet, throw away the dreamcatcher, run away from everything -- it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. They were just the symbols of his power, symbols of the way he’d stolen every dream she’d ever dared to love, and exposed the hollow, cold despair within the core. He lived inside her mind, not in these things; it was she who lived within them, within the world of love and fantasy they promised. No matter how hard she might try, or how far she might run, she could never escape him.

She could never escape herself.

Clenching her jaw with determination, she wound the key and forced herself to listen to the melody, steeling herself against its sweet infection, hoping that she looked more angry than afraid. She tried, with every particle of her being, to hear the song again just as her mother’s gift, and not as his seductive offering.

She failed.

“Damn you, Jareth,” she whispered, blinking back a single tear, pressing a dampened fist against her lips to taste the sterile sting of salt. “You twist everything to your advantage. You rewrite everything, and make it yours. Well, you’re not getting me, do you hear? I’m not your Juliet, or your Fairy Queen. I’m Sarah, and you can’t have me.” The moonlight gave no answer as she sobbed herself into a feverish sleep. The clock ticked on towards midnight, stolidly unfazed by threats of dreams or magic. Then came a soft click, as her bedside lamp extinguished of its own accord.

The stage was set.

Stabbing its spotlight through the windows, an icicle thrust of moonlight settled on the music box, casting a shadow on the wall in stark relief. A silhouette of flowing skirts turned slowly to the rhythm of a softly chiming tune, gentle as a lullaby, endless and entrancing as the vistas trapped within a crystal. Then it lengthened, widened, changed . . . the shadow-play continued, evoking half-formed images of owls and angels’ wings, until the moonbeam etched the outline of a figure whose high-collared cloak swirled dramatically about him, billowing in the winds of the imagination.

Like a pool of overturned ink, the shadow advanced, shrouding Sarah with a velvet stain of darkness. She moaned softly, arms crossing over her face to ward off the chilly pall of its embrace. Seeping ever further, drinking in the light, it blotted out all features from the room . . .

And then it was gone. Everything, to all intents and purposes, appeared just as before -- except that Sarah struggled sluggishly against some unseen force, clearly caught within the unrelenting clutches of a nightmare.

And, of course, the clock now ticked inexorably towards thirteen.

Feather image edited from Graphics by Tammy; Moon image edited from Yahright Graphics Archive; Background from Joerg Doehring's Backgrounds.