Disclaimer:  Are they mine?  No.  Am I making any money off of this?  No.  Are you a lawyer?  If not, why are you reading this stupid, boring disclaimer?

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A week later now, autumn blushing the leaves of the trees she and Merlin scampered under.  He'd been playful all this time, teasing and laughing and affectionate.  She'd reveled in his touch when below there was only discord.  But they clashed as well - her tainted light versus his flawed darkness.

Night air caressed her skin as she fled the house, away from yet another fight.  And when she came back after midnight, her father was asleep on the couch.  She shook her head in pity - for whom, she was uncertain - and went upstairs and fell asleep. ; Predictably, she dreamed of him.  Passion and need and hunger, laughter and lightness shining starkly against the velvet touch of evil.  He was so strange.

Did he love her?  She didn't know.

Did she love him?  She didn't know.  She didn't know anything, really, except that it was only in the darkness of the night she found herself truly alive.

If she could have spurned the daytime, she would have.

Of course, she understood vaguely that this was the way things must be, the way they had always been, and that even in his realm it had been a most glorious dawn.  She suspected *that* had more to do with his disposition than weather patterns.

But when the dawn slid through her window like a golden knife slicing down her skin, she muttered expletives at him for stealing her curtains.

"Sarah!  Breakfast!" her stepmother called, her voice as irritating as ever to Sarah's sleep-clogged ears.

"I'll be there in a minute!"  Never mind that sometimes her minutes took hours.

She slid off her bed (a gift, one far too luxurious for her to toss back in his face as she had done with several others) and headed towards her closet.  She yanked open the door, idly wondering how he was going to warp her world today, and found her answer in a complex thing that was dark as midnight shot through with gold.  Elegant, vaguely sinister, utterly beautiful.  He did have marvelous taste.

She slid into the concoction of silk with ease, and wore dirty sneakers where he would have her wear delicate black sandals with ribbons to crisscross their way up her thighs.

Just because he slept with her didn't mean he controlled her.

Her parents didn't complain when she came down to eat.  They'd stopped complaining about her a long time ago, when their troubles with each other overtook their concern for the quiet girl in their midst.  Her father hid behind his paper, and Karen didn't bother disguising her disgust - with them all.  It was only a matter of time, then.  And only Toby grinned at her, and only she knew why.

She left for school an hour late, and danced her way there.
 
* * *

And that night, the wind was rattling the house, shrieking in fury, lightning slashing the sky.

And she had been pushed off the couch by a flailing arm, cradling her baby brother against her chest, and now lay dazed on the roughly-hewn carpet.

This time, she was in the middle of it.

This time, she couldn't bury herself in Jareth's warmth and know that Toby was protected - the Goblin King was very good with children, after all.  No, this time he couldn't charm her out of her desire to kill something, coax her into bed with a sly smirk, settle her shattered nerves with a toe-curling kiss.

This time, the couch was upended and nearly crushed her.

She held a squalling Toby against her chest and watched as her stepmother held a kitchen knife up to her father.  Watched her father back off, wariness in his eyes but a large piece of their nonexistent table in his hand.

Closed her eyes and silently pleaded for it to stop.

The lightning flashed, her stepmother screamed, and there was a thud as two bodies collided.

She dared to open an eye.

Wrestling, sharp nails raking flesh, large hands slamming her stepmother aside.  And the yelling, loud and vulgar and discordant.

Above all the screaming, above the noise of the storm, she raised her voice and said clearly, "I wish the goblins would come and take us away."

Sudden, shocked stillness.  She lifted her eyes from Toby's blond head to stare at her parents.  Stunned expressions, fists frozen in positions of fury.  They gaped as she tightened her hold on her little brother and lifted her head regally to finish the words.

"Right now."

Outside, the storm raged, but the room was empty and still as a tomb.

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email: mjalta@yahoo.com

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