The ringing of the telephone, in the manner of phones everywhere, seemed somehow louder and shriller than normal as it sliced through the silence of the darkened bedroom. There was no strictly scientific reason why darkness should equate greater loudness, save perhaps some obscure subsection of Murphy’s Law ( i.e., “The loudness of the ring shall be directly proportional to the depth and intensity of your REM state. This is technology’s way of wishing you good morning.”) As he groped and pawed for the phone with the uncoordinated, lurching aim of muscles reluctant to release their grip on sleep, Sam Marin only knew that it DID ring louder, scientists be damned.
Of course, the hangover didn’t help, either.
“Yeah?” he mumbled, voice still thick and muzzy with the combined residues of bourbon and slumber. What had the dream been about? Beautiful women, yes. Negligee-clad women. Attacking his head with staple guns.
Tiny blue stars flashed and trailed like comets beneath his eyelids, exploding mini-supernovas of agony. Aaaaaah . . . When Terry Ames had invited him to that party last night, he thought it had been a peace offering, a gesture of reconciliation, a sort of “Hey, you didn’t land me that play I wanted to star in, but you’re a great agent anyway, can I get you another bourbon?” Bury the hatchet, that sort of thing.
Bury the hatchet in his head was more like it. Somewhere out there, Terry Ames was laughing his sober ass off.
“Um, hello. This is Sarah Williams, can I speak to Mr. Marin, please?”
“Sarah who?” The voice seemed oddly familiar, but the name didn’t ring a bell. Thank God -- after that phone, another ringing bell would neatly cleave his head in two.
“Sarah Williams. Linda Williams’ daughter? She’s a client of Sam Marin.” Embarrassed pause. “Um, I’m sorry, did I wake you?”
“This is Sam Marin.” Unfortunately, he added to himself as an afterthought. Right now he wasn’t completely reconciled to that fact. Being Sam Marin equated blinding pain . . . . A nagging thought shouldered its way through all the cerebral screaming and demanded his attention. Linda Williams had a daughter? He strained to remember. Bad move. Was it possible to sprain your eyeballs?
Even in this state, his answers were governed by the automated politeness of the genetically engineered salesman. “No, s’allright, I was just getting up.” Yeah, a daughter, of course -- the voice sounded a little like Linda’s. Linda Williams did have a daughter, not that she advertised her existence much anymore; grown-up daughters were about as handy in this business as having your birth certificate blown up and mounted on a billboard in Times Square. A kid was a tangible, indelible marker of age, a sort of flesh-and-blood expiration date that you could never completely deny with impunity. Not that Linda hadn’t tried her very best to do just that.
He’d met this Sarah-kid years and years ago, hadn’t he? Dark-haired, quiet thing. He remembered how she met his appraising stare with a striking combination of discomfiture and defiance, looking at him shyly from under heavy, drooping lashes like he was plotting to bite her. When he’d prodded, she said that she wanted to be an actress, like her mother. She had the looks for child modeling, no doubt about it, and maybe even acting, if she had any talent at all, but Linda had been less than enthused about the idea. It was bad enough that Sarah manifested Linda’s fading youth; Linda didn’t need her eclipsing her spotlight, too.
He reluctantly returned to the painful present. “So what can I do for you?”
The voice on the other end of the line took on an edge of desperation, that same querulous whine that Linda had when she railed against the indignities of off-Broadway theater. “I’m really sorry to bother you, Mr. Marin, but I really, really need to get in touch with my mother. I’ve called her house, but she isn’t home. She gave me your office and home number awhile ago to call in an emergency. Do you know where she is, where I might be able to reach her?”
Oh, great. So he was Linda’s answering service, now, was he? “I don’t appreciate being called at home. Are you absolutely sure that this is an emergency?” he snapped, assuming the cold, dictatorial tone that could get aspiring ingenues to admit that they’d faked half the references on their resume.
The line went quiet. Just as he was about to hang up, he heard Sarah’s reply. The whine was gone, replaced by something much steelier. “It will be if I don’t find her.” He couldn’t have said quite how, but the tone clearly managed to imply that it would be an emergency for HIM.
He snapped to full attention in an instant, ignoring the protesting throb in his head. He’d had a few clients lose it before, artists being an inherently high-strung breed; one had actually gone postal in his office, threatening him with his own letter opener. When he’d told Terry Ames he hadn’t gotten the Role of the Century, he really had thought Ames was going to be the next to contemplate opening a Bates Motel, metaphorically speaking. He recognized that same strain in Sarah’s voice now.
He quickly switched gears into his “talking them down from the clock tower” mode. “I understand. I think she’s at a breakfast meeting with the director of her upcoming play this morning, but I’m not sure what restaurant they’re at. You did try her cell phone, right?”
Unnerving silence. “Cell phone?”
“Well, yeah, Linda’s had a cell phone for about a year now. It’s the only way to reach her most of the time, she’s never home. Don’t you have the number?”
Another unnerving silence, the weight of the tension even worse for his hangover than outright noise would be. “No, I don’t. I didn’t know she had a cell phone.”
God, that was vintage Linda. She’d forgotten to give the kid her cell phone number. Maybe even deliberately neglected to do so. Out of sight, out of mind. “Oh,” was all he could think to say. “I’m sure it must’ve just slipped her mind.”
“I’m sure.” The syllables were positively frigid. “Would you mind giving me the number, please?”
“Sure thing. No problem.” He thumbed awkwardly through his black book, cradling the phone between his chin and shoulder. Even the whispery crinkle of the pages hurt his ears, like tiny fingernails on a chalkboard. “OK, I’ve got it.” He recited the string of numbers into the phone, certain that his supersensitized hearing could actually perceive the faint scratching of pen on paper through the connection. God, if you’re listening, I swear, no bourbon, ever, ever again . . .
“Thank you, Mr. Marin. Thank you very much. I’m really sorry to have disturbed you like this.”
“Not at all, Sarah. Glad to be of help. Hope everything’s OK. Give my best to your mother.”
“I will.” More like her worst, from the tenor of that reply, followed by the decisive click of the phone. He could almost find it in his heart to feel sorry for Linda.
But not quite, he reflected, his head doing its best impersonation of a pneumatic drill. Why not share the misery?
Actors. Damn them all.
Sarah sat, the phone in her lap, wrestling with the toxic cocktail of emotions which inevitably bubbled to the surface after any contact with her mother, no matter how indirect or brief. Resentment was the main ingredient. For crying out loud, she was her only daughter! How could she forget to mention that she had a cell phone now? For a year, no less! That was the best part, a whole damn year. God forbid anyone should be able to reach out and touch her, right? She’d just save the number for the important people, like agents and directors and actors. Leave the inconvenience that was Sarah tucked away nicely in her custom-made oubliette.
She picked up a picture of her and her mother at a hotel swimming pool, taken when she was a few years old. The ornate frame had an ugly crack running through one side, acquired when Sarah had hurled it across the room after one too many forgotten birthdays years ago. When the heat of the moment had passed, she had carefully superglued it back together. Her father always teased her about how she never threw anything away; she was a hoarder, a fixer, right down to the very marrow of her bones. She never wanted new things to replace old ones; she always wanted the broken things fixed instead. Dolls, toys, knickknacks; Sarah could fix them up good as new.
Too bad relationships didn’t work the same way.
Her first childhood attempt at such repair work was actually how she’d ended up supergluing herself to the front door on that embarrassingly memorable occasion. She shuddered at the memory. Ironic, really. That was Sarah in a nutshell: always trying to glue things back together through sheer force of will. Always getting stuck by it in the end.
She returned the photo to her nightstand and began to idly play with the dreamcatcher instead, using a gentle tap or two to set it swinging like a pendulum from the chain hooked around her index finger. She sighed as she watched it sway, the back-and-forth motion blurring the sharp outlines of silver and white into an image from an impressionist painting, an object etched from light itself. Sparkling and enchanting and utterly useless. They do say the choice of gift tells you a great deal about the giver, don’t they? None too gently, she let the chain drop back over the bedpost, the dreamcatcher still spinning lazily in its own self-absorbed dance.
Instead of shoving down her resentment, as was her habit, this time Sarah forced herself to take a good long look at it, analyze it objectively in all its unlovely festering rawness. If she was going to have a coherent conversation with her mother, she’d better be painfully clear about exactly where she stood. She couldn’t afford the luxury of illusions anymore; they were the Achilles’ heel Jareth had been born to exploit.
It wasn’t even as if there was anything wrong with not wanting to have a child. Motherhood is not mandatory. It’s a choice, and a big one at that, which is by no means the right biological option for everyone who just happens to have the relevant set of reproductive organs; just because you like tropical fruit doesn’t necessarily imply that you’re ready to run out and start a career as Carmen Miranda.
Linda, however, had freely made her choice. She’d wanted a child right away, wanted to be a mother more than anything. In retrospect, according to Sarah’s admittedly bitter father, she had wanted to play the role of a mother. All her friends were having children, and Linda was never one to be left out of a trend. When the novelty of it all had inevitably worn off, Linda had left Husband Number One to deal with the consequences as best he could. Consequences had never been Linda’s strong suit. In theater, the curtain went down and that was that. Life, on the other hand, had this nasty habit of refusing to resolve itself that neatly. “It’s not that she doesn’t love you, Sarah,” her father had sighed. “It’s just that she has no idea what to do with you. You’re too real. We both are.”
Still, it took courage of a sort to honestly admit that you’d made a huge mistake, that you just didn’t have what it took to assume the ultimate responsibility of raising another human being. The trouble was, Linda had never officially done that, either. Just when Sarah had almost healed, Linda would make her disruptive grand re-entrance into her life, all glamour and greasepaint and happy endings, ready for another curtain call at this mothering business; then she’d inevitably leave Sarah with a heart more broken than before. Yet another object that superglue couldn’t fix.
Sometimes Sarah wondered why they both kept coming back for more. They were eternal optimists, maybe. Either that or dyed-in-the-wool masochists.
Taking a deep breath, she dialed the number Sam Marin had given her, and fervently hoped for optimism.
Linda sat, chin in hand, gazing raptly at Ian MacKenzie with that certain look she’d perfected over the years, that look which could make the recipient certain that he was the single most fascinating object in the universe at any given moment. It was a look which had served her well.
“So, exactly how is your play inspired by Shakespeare? Sam mentioned something, but he didn’t go into detail.” He had, actually, but she hadn’t understood a word of it, and wasn’t about to admit it.
Chewing thoughtfully, basking in the glow of her adoration, Ian winked. “Probably because he didn’t understand it, I’d venture to guess. He’s a fine agent, but certainly not an artist, Linda. One of the most prosaic minds I’ve ever met, in fact!” He waved his bagel for emphasis as they shared a moment of conspiratorial laughter. Despite having a mouth entirely too crammed full of bagel, he wasn’t bad-looking, Linda mused. A bit too much of the Greenwich Village “I am dressed in black and therefore you WILL take me seriously” look, but not bad at all. If you got some color on him he’d be downright handsome, and he was, according to Sam, one of the up-and-coming names in the business. Although Linda would never have phrased it quite so bluntly, if you couldn’t find an established star to hitch your wagon to, an “up-and-coming” was a far better bargain than a “down-and-falling.” Rather like hers, for example.
“The play’s called ‘Juliet Dreaming.’ It’s a postmodern reworking of, well, ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ of course, and some ideas pioneered by Jacques Lacan . . .” He trailed off as he saw her eyes glaze over. “Anyway, it won first prize in the New York Academy of the Performing Arts’ Annual Young Playwrights’ Competition last year.” He swelled with pride. “The thing is, I saw you on Broadway when you were in ‘Romeo and Juliet’. I was just out of high school. As soon as I wrote this, I knew you’d be perfect for it when I finally got a chance to direct it.”
Linda ignored the “just out of high school” part and focused on the “perfect” part, smiling coyly. Ignoring things she preferred not to acknowledge was another tactic which had served her well. “Why, Ian, I don’t know what to say. I haven’t been so flattered since I don’t know when.”
Ian smiled expansively, bits of tomato-basil bagel lodged firmly between his teeth. “First of all,” he continued, “I need to know if you’re familiar with some of the new directions plays have taken since you left us for Hollywood. Have you seen ‘Milk and Honey?’ ‘Nothing to Fear?’ What did you think?”
Her smile became a bit fixed. Of course she hadn’t seen them. They were off-Broadway, dammit. Until now, she never had to bother with that sort of dreck. “I’m afraid I’ve just returned from vacation, Ian, I haven’t had time . . .” She bridled at his look of disappointed disapproval. God, it was humiliating -- pandering to this little self-important self-designated auteur! He was barely out of diapers! She had to be old enough to be his moth--
No. Best stop that thought right there.
“Well, the new tone of plays in general, then, Linda. There’s a lot happening out there, right now -- we’re riding the crest of a big change.” He smiled happily, as if this idea wasn’t terrifying in the slightest. Linda began to hate him a bit more. Why couldn’t damn Sam have gotten her into that Andrew Lloyd Webber play they were casting, newly arrived from London? Just one more big hit. That wasn’t too much to ask, now, was it? Although Sam had told her that her old friend Terry Ames hadn’t gotten the lead he was pulling for, either. Webber was going for fresh faces, Sam had said. What the hell did that make her and Terry? Stale faces?
“Well, I think . . . well, like you say, it’s clear that things are changing . . .” Even if she’d had the vaguest idea what Ian was talking about, Linda would still have been completely at sea. She tended to struggle to express any profound emotions or opinions that hadn’t first been scripted for her.
A ringing sound from Linda’s purse interrupted her in mid-stammer. She jumped slightly, then flashed him an apologetic little shrug and grimace as she fished the cellular phone out of her purse. Saved by the bell. “Damn things never give you a moment’s peace,” she sighed, raising it up to her ear. “Hello?”
Sarah had rehearsed precisely what she was going to say, right down to the smallest pauses and punctuation. It all fled like steam from a boiling kettle the instant she heard her mother’s voice, leaving Sarah feeling eminently abandoned -- a familiar by-product of her infrequent maternal encounters. She swallowed hard, the leaden sensation settling heavily into the dense strata of old angers and thwarted dreams ossifying around her soul. Year by year, that crust was growing . . .
“Hello, Mom?”
Her mother’s airy voice rose several octaves into that enthusiastic squeal Sarah remembered so well. “Sarah, sweetie! How’s every little thing?”
God, how did she do it? How did she bridge the gap so casually, so effortlessly? Her manner sounded like they’d talked to one another only yesterday. Sarah had just spent a good hour plotting how to overcome the awkwardness of the distance accruing between them, and then Linda never noticed it existed.
“Um, I’m fine.” She mentally smacked herself. By no stretch of the definition could she possibly characterize her current emotional or physical condition as “fine.” Great start, Sarah. You make Hoggle look valiant as Didymus by comparison.
“That’s what I like to hear. Sarah, I’m so sorry to do this to you, but this is not a good time. I’m right in the middle of a breakfast meeting right now about my new play. I’m going to have to call you back later, O.K.?”
So much for a soul-baring conversation. This one actually set the new World Land Speed Record for shortest interaction yet. She opened her mouth to acquiesce, and was shocked to hear the word “no” come out instead. “No, it’s never a good time, is it?” Time for Linda to confront things she didn’t like to hear. “I mean, I really need to talk to you right now. Just for a minute? Please?” Her voice was thick with unshed tears. “Please. It’s just that -- well, actually I’m not really fine. I haven’t been feeling very well lately.”
“What’s the matter? Are you sick?”
“Sort of. I mean, I . . .” I . . .what? What could she possibly say? You know, Mom, I’m either being stalked by a Goblin King or going completely out of my mind, possibly both, and I think it’s all due to the emotional baggage you’ve dumped on my doorstep. Care to help me unpack? “I’ve been having nightmares,” she finished lamely.
“Oh, that’s a shame. Have you tried taking anything?”
“I tried the valium you gave me that one time. It didn’t seem to work very well.”
“Did you take enough? It usually takes two to really work, you know. Just one alone is no good to deal with anything.” There was no Wise Man around to point out the irony of Linda’s choice of words, but Sarah caught it nonetheless; she knew quite well the difficulty of dealing with things when you’d been thrust into the unenviable role of “one alone.”
Well, it was now or never. “Mom, why didn’t you give me your cell phone number?”
“What are you talking about? You’re talking to me on my cell phone right now.”
“I know. I got the number from Sam Marin this morning after I couldn’t reach you at home. I didn’t know you had a cell phone. Why didn’t you tell me?” She tried to keep her voice neutral, posing the question as a point of inquiry motivated purely by scientific curiosity. No matter how hard she tried, though, she couldn’t keep it from sounding like an accusation -- which, in fact, it was.
“I’m sure I did, Sarah. If I didn’t, it must’ve just slipped my mind. You shouldn’t have bothered Sam.” The volume of her voice abruptly lowered, shielding her next remarks from Ian MacKenzie, who had tactfully returned his full attention to demolishing the ravaged remainder of his bagel. “You know, you’re not a child now, Sarah. You should know that I can’t be there for you at your beck and call all the time anymore.” The feather-light tone had sharpened almost imperceptibly; feathers, after all, come accompanied by beaks and talons and all manner of nasty tearing things. Emotion is the strongest form of memory, and Sarah’s stomach vividly recalled what her brain had forgotten with the passage of time. Confront Linda and you came to regret it, for she had the same reactions as a cornered predatory bird. Very soon after Linda left the first time, little Sarah had tracked down her new telephone number from family friends and called her up, crying, to ask her why. She’d never asked again. She’d learned to take only what Linda offered, and never risk asking for more. Sarah once overheard one of her father’s friends joke that his progress from wife number one to wife number two represented a passage from bubblehead to iron maiden. Those who knew Linda best, however, sensed that her iridescent bubbly surface hid a core as hard as steel. It had to.
Sarah bit back the retort that had been on the tip of her tongue, repressing the urge to remind her mother that she had never, even at the best of times, been there for her before. Well, it shouldn’t be too hard to adjust, then. Hurrah for the status quo. Chewing on her much-abused lower lip, she groped desperately for a new topic of conversation with no land mines lurking underneath. “So what’s your new play about?”
“I’m not exactly sure yet -- I was just talking to the director about that when you called.” Sarah knew this was her cue to apologize and hang up. She didn’t. Finally, Linda resumed. “It’s a very avant-garde, artistic piece, my agent says. It’s the playwright himself who’ll be directing it. He’s really brilliant -- handsome, too.” Sarah fortunately couldn’t see her treat Ian MacKenzie to a flirtatious wink and a pseudo-shy smile -- what Linda called her one-two knockout punch. Sarah’s stomach was already so nauseated it probably couldn’t have withstood the sight.
The words “avant-garde” and “artistic” set off Sarah’s internal alarms. “When does it open on Broadway?”
“Actually, it’s going to be off-Broadway. It opens in a few months.”
Although Linda carefully kept the phrase “off-Broadway” free of any color of distaste, Sarah could remember too many occasions when Linda had spat the phrase like Bog water. Hell, Linda had an entire repertoire of off-Broadway jokes, like other people had collections of Polish jokes and “change-a-lightbulb” jokes. She’d practically danced with glee when one of her biggest rivals had accepted an off-off-off-off-Broadway role three years ago. “Take it from me, sweetie,” she’d chortled, “it’s the first nail in the coffin for her. Oh, she says she’s doing it for the chance to do something ‘artistic,’ but that’s like when someone says ‘Oh, it’s not the money, it’s the principle of the thing.’ You know what they say, don’t you? Old actors never die -- they just fade to off-Broadway. Sweetie, do me a favor -- if I’m ever reduced to piddly little roles like that, just shoot me.” All too often, Sarah would have been happy to oblige.
She began to fidget with the cassette tape on her desk, turning it over and over like driftwood caught in a whirlpool, her brain spinning in much the same fashion. It was almost incomprehensible; Linda the Survivor was crashing and burning too. It was like reaching out from the saline gloom of the open sea to clutch a life preserver, only to discover it riddled with holes. Jareth’s words seared into her brain in letters of fire: That’s the future you’re choosing: a fading legacy of mediocre acting and an inability to open up to anyone. What horrors can I hold compared to that?
She heard her mother’s cheery voice, bubbly as champagne and sea-foam once again. “Oh, that reminds me -- did you get the dreamcatcher I sent you? I forgot to tell you -- it’s called ‘Crystal Moon.’”
Sarah responded automatically, a tiny corner of her mind wondering why the odd name sounded so familiar. “Yes, yes I did. It’s really beautiful, thank you. I’ve never seen anything like it. Did you and Mark have a good time?”
“Santa Fe was lovely, Mark was not. Little stick-in-the-mud hates shopping, you know. Can you imagine? Anyway, I left him right in the mud and had a glorious time without him.”
“You and Mark broke up?” She couldn’t disguise the horror in her voice. Closing her eyes couldn’t blot out the image of that contemptuous smile Jareth had worn while she was rabidly defending the genuineness of Linda’s affection for Mark. My God, he’d been right. Right about everything. Everything . . . .
“Yes, but don’t fret, sweetie, I’m not. I say, good riddance. ‘Don’t cry for me, Argentina!’” Linda sang the words in low, affected, trilling soprano, giggling at her own joke.
Sarah had to physically restrain herself from hurling the phone against the wall. During a physics lesson a few weeks ago, Monty had taught her that certain sounds, modulated at precisely the right frequency and pitch, could kill someone instantly, shattering their eardrums like so much crystal under a sledgehammer. Right now, she’d give almost anything to be able to visit a sonic apocalypse on the unsuspecting Linda. How could she dismiss Mark with such utter indifference? She had said she loved him! Just like she loved all the others, she reminded herself bitterly. Just like she says she loves me. It was that indifference that cut to the bone. Linda never really intended to hurt anyone, not deliberately. It would probably hurt less if she did -- calculated malice at least presupposed being the center of her attention in some fashion, even in a negative sense. She didn’t have the attention span for that, though. She just took you for granted, knowing you’d be there, eager to please, still playing the fool, if and when your existence was convenient! Always wrapped up in herself, never thinking about the feelings of anyone else! Never opening up and talking about her feelings to anyone! Sarah bit back furious sobs. She treats people like --
Her wildly racing thoughts paused as, for the first time, she dimly noticed the cassette she was waving around to punctuate her angry gestures, like a speed freak conducting an orchestra. “Paused” in the same sense that a brick wall causes a speeding car to “pause.” “Songs for Sarah,” it said on the label, written in Monty’s unmistakable blocky lettering. His parting words finally sank in, with all the impact of a time-delayed explosive device: “They make me think of the way I feel about you.” Oh, God, no . . .
She treats people like I treat Monty.
She dropped the cassette with nerveless, boneless fingers, watching it clatter carelessly to the floor. Jareth had been right about everything . . .
Your mother would be proud of you, Sarah. You’ve learned her lessons well.
Linda rattled on, absorbed enough in her own words not to notice that Sarah had been struck dumb. “. . . where I bought the dreamcatcher, it was really a lovely little shop, I wish you could’ve seen it. And the shop owner, too.” She heaved an exaggerated, heart-fluttering sigh. “I tell you, Sarah, I’m slipping. Would you believe I forgot where the place was when I tried to go back for more souvenirs? I must be getting ol--” Remembering Ian MacKenzie was within earshot, she left the ugly thought unfinished. “You would have loved him, Sarah, very artistic, he’s the one who made the dreamcatcher. He had the most enchanting voice, all suave and British, like butter melting in your mouth, and his eyes! I swear, he had two different color eyes! Probably just colored contact lenses, but very striking anyway. You’ve never seen anything like it!”
A single phrase from her mother’s mindless chatter slowly bobbed to the surface, glistening for attention with a crystalline audacity.
Two different color eyes?
TWO DIFFERENT COLOR EYES??
Oh, she just might have seen something like that. Want to bet?
“I have to go now. Goodbye.” She slammed the phone down on a bewildered Linda, livid with mindless rage. She was breathing like a sprinter in great ragged gasps, nostrils dilating, face going from pale to flushed as adrenaline shot through her system, accompanied by every other hormone her body could produce in mass quantities on short notice. “Son-of-a-bitch,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “Son-of-a-bitch.” As her every nerve seemingly tried to crawl out from under her skin, she slowly turned.
The dreamcatcher sparkled back at her innocently, swaying a bit from the vibrations of her trembling. As if for the first time, she noticed the geometrical precision of its intricately beaded crystal pattern, the way the complicated interplay of curves and angles carefully converged to suggest a certain shape . . .
It was an outline of his pendant, sketched in crystal and silver.
It all made sense, now. That was how he liked to play his games. Last time, he had used her stepbrother to get to her -- used Toby both literally and figuratively by kidnapping him and confronting her with the sibling rivalry he aroused. This time, he was exploiting her mother in the exact same way, making Linda both the actual giver of the dreamcatcher and the fodder for her nightmares. He played off the people closest to you, the source of your greatest vulnerabilities. With unerring aim, he spotted all the pressure points in your relationships, every tiny fault and seam and instability. With unerring ruthlessness, he leaned on them until you cracked.
“That’s playing nasty, Jareth,” she snarled. “Even for you.” She picked up the dreamcatcher between thumb and forefinger, holding it like she might grasp a decaying rat by the tail. Her scowl morphed into a diabolical grin as her gaze settled on something her roommate had left behind. It was a grin that would have done the Goblin King proud. She tossed her mane of dark hair defiantly. “Jareth? I know you can hear me.” She reached down with her free hand and picked up the small object which had caught her eye, brandishing it threateningly: a cigarette lighter. Time to flick her Bic, in a manner of speaking; fight fire with fire. Nothing like a good cliché to round out a happy ending. “Say goodbye, Jareth.” With a quiet “tssschkk” sound, the lighter flared to life under her thumb. Slowly, she brought the smoking flame up to meet the very edge of a feather.
Then she dropped both lighter and dreamcatcher to clutch at her head, mouth gaping at the sheer intensity of the agony, unable to produce a single sound from her spasming throat as she sprawled flat upon the floor. Every blister, every sunburn, every battle she’d ever fought and lost with the element of heat was distilling into the purest point of searing white-hot pain flooding through her brain, her eyes. She was drowning in a deluge of flames -- drowning from the inside out in a viciously orchestrated slow-burn. She was going to die, pure and simple. Nobody could feel this and live.
As she floated on the twilight edge of unconsciousness, she sensed that Jareth had arrived before she actually saw the movements of his hazy silhouette; a certain silvery tension in the air, like the subliminal tinkling of a thousand tiny chimes, always heralded his presence. She fought unsuccessfully to focus her vision, then realized that his form itself was blurry, a vague blending of blacks and whites softly smudged as a charcoal drawing against the clarity of her bed and dresser, unreal and out-of-place as an owl in the daylight world.
He drifted across the room, bending down to pick the dreamcatcher up off the floor and replace it on her bedpost. A movement of his arm ended in the faint sparkle of a crystal, which he touched to the curled and blackened feather tip. As it healed, the pain in her head faded to a horrible memory.
He was beside her then, his ghostly touch chill upon her forehead; she leaned into it, grateful for the coolness. “Sarah.” His voice was an insubstantial shadow of itself as well. But it made sense, didn’t it? She was at least still partially conscious. Daydreams were never as vivid as their nighttime counterparts. Jareth was, first and foremost, a creature of the night: the night of the earth, and the night of the mind.
“Sarah, what did you think you were doing?”
“Destroying your power over me.” No sense in beating around the bush -- he couldn’t do anything more malevolent to her than what she’d just experienced. “Trying to, at least. I know the dreamcatcher’s yours.”
“You mean, it was mine. It’s yours now -- my gift to you. You seem to hold my gifts in very low regard.”
“Gee, I can’t imagine why.” Maybe if she goaded him enough, he’d kill her and get it over with.
The echo of a laugh drifted like mist around her, encircling her in silky tendrils of sound. “I love your spirit, Sarah. Even more than your beauty, it’s something I treasure.”
“Is that why you’re always trying to break it, then?”
“You misunderstand everything. It’s broken already -- and not by me. What I offer you is a chance to be whole again.” His image was shimmering, dissipating into the shadows. “Regardless of what you might think of my gift, I would strongly suggest that you refrain from doing anything rash like that again. It’s a dreamcatcher, Sarah. Listen to the name. It’s quite direct about its function. It is, indeed, my portal into your dreams, as you’ve concluded, but it allows me this access by absorbing them. Your dreams are a part of it now, Sarah. The dreamcatcher is a part of you, as am I. Destroy either one of us, and you destroy yourself.” He faded completely then, leaving behind only the grim import of his words.
And, of course, the dreamcatcher, still sparkling softly, spinning like an orbiting moon.
Feather image edited from Graphics by Tammy; Moon image edited from Yahright Graphics Archive; Background from Joerg Doehring's Backgrounds.