The whole setup seemed creepily familiar. The castle didn’t make any sense, but neither did Oblivion, so I only made one double-take at the stairs coming down the wall and I felt like a tourist for even doing that.

In the end it didn’t matter because he totally snuck up on me anyway. I felt breath on the back of my neck and I jumped and turned around. So this was Jareth, the Goblin King? I wanted to think he didn’t look too scary, but the less scary people tend to be more scary in the end so I didn’t let myself hope. It’s not like Xemnas is ever interested in shiny happy friendly people. And this Goblin King was not so much happy or friendly as he was shiny and kind of effeminate and familiar in a way that made me cringe without knowing why.

“And to what do I owe the pleasure,” he said, except it didn’t sound like he said it so much as the words were always there and he just plucked them. They reverberated like strings. There was so much certainty in his voice that it took me a minute to realize it was a question.

“I, ah, I’m here on behalf of someone who…” Dammit. Forgot the line. I dug the little card with Xemnas’s handwriting out of my pocket. “Someone who admires your work.”

He smirked and I noticed there was eyeshadow on his eyes, violet to match his clothes, and he had very nice eyebrows actually and– and he was answering me and here I was thinking about eyebrows.

“–not interested in partnerships on principal,” he was saying. “I have my goblins. What else do I need?”

And that was my cue. Where did I put–? I pulled the sphere out of my other pocket and held it up.

I couldn’t help it. I peeked, even though Xemnas had told me not to, specifically forbidden me to look in the sphere.

I gasped and almost dropped it, but it was okay, because the King was gasping too and grabbing it from my hand.

“Sarah…?” I whispered, and he glared at me.

“You know her?”

“Yes, I– you know her?” and while I waited for an answer I watched him, and I really looked at him this time, and that sinking feeling in my stomach went straight through the floor and probably into — what had that dog called it? — the Bog of Eternal Stench.

“Jareth isn’t your name,” I said before I could stop myself.

He cocked an eyebrow and held the sphere possessively and I thought about sweet Sarah, who used to come to the park and listen to me play and read poetry at me and lay her head in my lap and then the day when she didn’t come and I waited in the dark by the lake, and the dark waited for me. That was the last thing I remembered before Axel found me. It had meant something, all of it, something that I couldn’t put my finger on anymore.

I took a deep breath. Jareth did too.

I stepped away from him and to the side, and he followed. We must have looked like cats circling. He let the Sarah-sphere dance over his fingers.

“Does your someone have her?” he asked me finally.

“I… I don’t know. I don’t think so.” I didn’t like the idea of Sarah in that cold world, in that castle, in Saix’s care. I didn’t like the idea that she might be there and I wouldn’t know. I should have been upset or scared or angry but I wasn’t. I just didn’t like the idea that I didn’t know she was there.

“You will not touch her,” he said and now there was anger in his voice and I saw the goblins in every crevice, a bit too much like heartless for me to be comfortable.

I shook my head. “Look, it’s not me that–”

“She will come to me of her own will or she won’t come to me at all.” Fingers on cords, tight little notes.

“Geez, okay, calm down, I’ll tell him that.” I started to back up, but the goblins were behind me too and I could feel them there and it was really, really starting to make my skin crawl and not just because I knew this man.

And I did.

Did Xemnas know? I mean, what were the odds that he didn’t know?

But if he knew then why… he talking about finding hearts, fixing us. If he knew, then why wouldn’t he fix it?

“Get out,” Jareth ordered.

“Wait, let me work this out,” I said, trying to think faster and only managing to get caught up in the knots of logic. My strings were tangled. “You know Sarah. From before, right? Before all this? And–”

“Out.” There was power and force in his voice, and the goblins were grabbing at my coat, but I reached out for him anyway, grabbed his hand, felt the spark.

Something passed between us, small and incomplete, before I stepped back into the dark corridor and tried to think of what I would tell Xemnas. The mission was a failure and Jareth was– what the hell could I say about that? “Did you know you were sending me after my heart?” That would go over well.

I thought about Sarah.

I missed her.

I loved her, I remembered it now, not just the idea of the feeling but the feeling itself. That was something, at least.

And as for my heart, I could worry about that later. First I wanted to make sure Sarah was okay. Everything else could follow.

They came for her that same night, while she snuggled warm under her blankets. Sarah was not quite asleep, for she was still thinking excitedly (if somewhat dreamily) of Hoggle and the other friends she had made, and trying not to think about snowy while owls. She didn’t notice them creep in through the shadows of her closet door; they made little noise, and she’d gotten used to the sounds of a baby brother in the middle of the night.

The goblins huddled around her bed, talking quietly and laughing. At first they kept each other quiet with elbows and hissed shushes, but the talking gradually grew louder. Unsure if she was waking or dreaming, Sarah opened her eyes.

When she opened her mouth to scream, one of them leapt onto the bed and pressed his hand to her lips. His skin was rough and leathery, and she tasted copper and black licorice.

“Quiet, lass,” he hissed. “Do ya want to wake everyone?” She shook her head no.

“Good,” the goblin said as he lowered his hand. Sarah watched him warily, totally awake and hoping this was a dream. “Jareth has sent…” but his words were drowned out.

“But my kingdom is as great as his!” she cried without listening, the words replaying through her half-waking state. “He cannot touch me here!”

“Greater, seems like. Jareth allowed as you’d bested him, so ye’d conquered his kingdom. We’re at your service now, my queen”

Sarah blinked. “Your… queen…?”

Around her bed, goblin heads bobbed low. “Aye, lass. Queen of the goblins, ye are.”

“No! No, I won’t! I’m not!” Before Sarah had finished shouting, she heard crying down the hall. She realized she’d woken her baby brother. The light clicked on in the hallway, and footsteps followed. The crying slowly hiccuped and died out.

The goblins still stood there, bathed in the light of reality slipped through the door’s crack. Her brother finally went silent. Footsteps again.

“Your orders, my lady?” asked the goblin. What would her stepmother say if she found goblins in her room?

She closed her eyes. “Hide.”

“Sarah?” came her stepmother’s voice. “What was that screeching about?” Her door was pushed wide open, and she felt the hallway light slide over her.

“It was a nightmare,” she said, praying that her words were true. “Just a nightmare. I’m sorry.”

Her stepmother sighed. “If you’re going to be waking your brother, maybe you should start sleeping with your door shut. You’re too old to be afraid of the dark.” Without waiting for Sarah to reply, she pulled the door shut until it clicked. Her footsteps retreated, and even the thin band of light under the door disappeared. Only starlight from her open window shone in now, lending the slightest of blue tones to the darkness as Sarah’s eyes adjusted. For a moment, she thought she saw something white flutter past her window, but it was gone in a moment.

She waited a moment to see if anything would return. Nothing moved. Finally she closed her eyes and begged anyone who might be listening to let her sleep.