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Chapter Six: A wicked stepmother in a fairy story...

Sarah glanced up, halfway through her trigonometry homework, and finally noticed the intrusion in her room. Her eyes narrowed dangerously, but she bit back the angry screech that threatened to erupt and carefully finished her problems, putting the paper back in her folder and the folder and book in her bag before moving to confront the perpetrator.

She meticulously pinched the offending items between forefinger and thumb, as though they were dangerously contaminated, and paraded out of her room, back straight and head held high.

“Excuse me. But what, exactly, are these?” she asked her stepmother, dangling the strappy, vividly pink shoes in the woman’s face.

Her eyes narrowed. “Those would be your shoes for prom, young woman. You refuse to find any for yourself, so I found some for you. They were the last pair in stock in your size, and they match the dress.”

“They’re hideous. And I’m still not going.”

Pursed lips joined the narrowed eyes. “I don’t like your tone, Sarah. You will go to prom. You will wear the shoes and the dress, and you will be on good behavior, or—”

Sarah, keeping her eyes focused unflinchingly on her stepmother’s, extended her arm over the trash can and unpinched her fingers.

“You are grounded. Beginning now.”

* * *

Sarah spent the next two weeks doing her homework at the dining room table—in plain view of her stepmother in the kitchen—and far from the privacy of her room, where dwelt her books, toys, and Labyrinthine friends. If no one was happy about the arrangement, they were, at least, equally miserable.

Sarah, being grounded, was forbidden from disappearing into her room, from reading her fantasy novels, or, really, from doing anything that she wanted to do. Instead, she was condemned to complete her homework immediately upon arriving home from school and after that, to do chores for her stepmother: scrubbing dishes, washing and folding laundry, vacuuming, dusting, cleaning up after Toby...

Her homework had never been completed so meticulously.

Her stepmother, meanwhile, had the unenviable task of enforcing this detestable penance on a recalcitrant teenage daughter, and the man of the house wisely stayed out of the warpath between the menopausal wife and the hormonal daughter.

The overtime bonuses were pleasant.

* * *

“Hoggle!” Sarah called, able to indulge herself with time at her mirror for the first time since her grounding. “Hoggle? Ludo? Sir Didymus?” She waited a few minutes for them to answer, since she knew that they couldn’t always drop their activities immediately, but began to turn away after about five minutes of staring into a blank mirror. Perhaps they were mad at her? She had disappeared for two weeks, after all...she wouldn’t have known if they had tried to contact her in that time or not...

“Relax. Those three are just busy—there’s a rather nasty fairy infestation out in the bog, and I sent them to fix it.”

Sarah jumped at the unexpected, sarcastic tone echoing from her mirror and whirled back to face it. In the silvered glass, Jareth lay sprawled across her bed, the picture of contentment.

She spun to look at her real bed. Empty.

The Goblin King chuckled darkly from her mirror. “After the last time I saw you, I wasn’t sure I wanted to get too close again. You almost bruised my side.”

“I wish I had,” she snapped back, her hackles rising instantly with his appearance in place of her friends.

He shrugged leisurely, appearing unconcerned with her antagonism. “In any case, I just didn’t want you to think that I’d done something nasty to them, since you seem to think so poorly of me.”

“And sending them to the bog isn’t ‘something nasty’?” she retorted.

Jareth lifted an aristocratic eyebrow. “It’s their job,” he said simply. “Would you have me be so lax a ruler that I let my subjects laze around and slack off at their tasks? Or let my kingdom be overrun by malicious, biting fairies? They’re rather like mosquitoes, if I understand your world correctly.”

Sarah’s eyes narrowed, working out a way to respond.

“No matter,” he continued airily, waving a hand. “They have a break coming up in another two hours or so. I’ll tell them you called.” He pushed himself to his feet and gave her an abbreviated salute, a wry twist to his lips. “Have a nice day.”

And walked out of the mirror’s frame, disappearing from sight.

* * *

“My lady! His Majesty just said that you called—”

“That rat waited ‘til the last minute, though...”

“—and we hastened to the nearest portal as quickly as may be—”

“SAWAH FRIEND!”

“He didn’t do nothing to you? You didn’t call us for a while... I wouldn’t put nothing past him...”

“My lady? Is there anything the matter? I am terribly sorry—”

“MISSED SAWAH!”

“—not free to come when you called us, but—”

“He stuck us in the bog, chasin’ those darned fairies. Evil blighters.”

“SMELL BAD! BITES BAD!”

“Indeed, their teeth are quite sharp, but you simply have to spray them first, with Sir Hoggle’s fine spray! It takes care of them most handily.”

“But you gots no aim for shootin’ ‘em, Didymus.”

“I protest! Why, I vanquished nearly as many as you yourself did, good sir!”

Sarah put her head down on her arms and shook with laughter. This was what she had needed—the chance to talk to her friends again, to tell them what had been going on over the last month. That, and the thought of Sir Didymus, armed with a spray can and going after the little fairy creatures—it was too much.

“My lady? Are you alright? You’re trembling.” Sir Didymus’s concerned inquiry finally brought her out of her paroxysms of laughter.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. I’ve just had a long week. A long several weeks. I missed you guys so much,” she assured them, leaning forward on her elbows, putting on a brave smile for them.

The little knight leaned forward from his perch on the edge of her bed and raised a hand as though to touch her. “Several weeks, milady? Whatever has been the matter?” he questioned.

Sarah closed her eyes slowly and massaged her forehead with her fingertips. “Everything,” she replied heavily, and began the long explanation.

* * *

Jareth watched Sarah vent to her friends—supposedly his loyal subjects!—through yet another of his crystal balls. That they sat and listened to her while ignoring their duties to him rankled, even if it did allow him a unique chance to hear her unedited opinion. One eyebrow was quirked with interest at her complaints about her stepmother’s plans for the upcoming holiday—was it Chrastmis?

No, Christmas. He wondered what the significance was, other than a chance to go shopping and pass around a bunch of presents.

Excessive cleaning and redecorating, the grounding, and oh yes, more complaints about her parents’ plans for her for prom. He listened with rapt amusement as her spiel continued, becoming vastly self-satisfied and only minutely guilty when complaints about himself suddenly began edging out the others for vehemence.

My dear, you wouldn’t be so worked up if you didn’t care...at least a little, he purred to himself, smirking handsomely.

Then his eyes fell on the sorry excuse for a dwarf, Huxle, and his good mood vanished. No matter how valuable these insights were to Jareth, he could never truly convince himself that it was for his benefit or companionship or counsel that Sarah opened up like this.

He growled suddenly, his fist closing tightly over the crystal and shattering it.

Not for him—never for him. Sarah was, if anything, more guarded around him than she was around anyone else, including her stepmother and those rather repulsive harpies at her school. He wanted her, damn it all, and he wanted her to give herself to him willingly and completely.

It was the only resolution which he would accept, and he would have her.