Disclaimer 2: "Come By the Hills" is a traditional Celtic song. Thanks
to Talarian for supplying the lyrics for me.

Disclaimer 3: Lyrics of "Thursday's Child" written by David Bowie,
available on his 'Hours' CD. Used without permission. But go buy
the album, people. It's your duty!

Cast List: Jareth: David Bowie
Sarah: Jennifer Connelly
Col: Kathy Bates
Lady Saishoku: Tamlyn Tomita
Ian: Ewan McGregor
Queen Titania: Michelle Pfeiffer
King Oberon: William Hurt
Gwyn: Sting

PERCHANCE TO...
Part 1 : Dream a Little Dream of Me.
By Rhondda Lake

Shadows shifted upon shadows, barely discernable in the fog that swirled and danced about her. The mist clung damply to her skin, curling her hair as her lungs filled with moist air smelling of spring rain. She did not know where she was or how she had gotten to this place. She did know she heard something moving, whispering just out of sight. The sound resembled the dry slide of a serpent gliding over stone or the shuffle of padded feet.

She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered even though the air
was warm.

Then she heard it, a trace of a murmur, a breath of a word. Her name
in a voice she thought she remembered from a dream. Accented, seductive, a summons, an enchantment.

"Who are you?" Her own voice broke as it tumbled from her lips, betraying her fear.

"You know me." Soft, so soft the answer, but it echoed through the mist, "...know me... know..." Hot breath on the back of her neck.

She spun at the sound of flapping wings right behind her. Raising her arms to protect her face, she opened her mouth to scream.

Her shriek was drowned out by the blaring of the alarm clock beside her bed.

Heart pounding, threatening to break free of fragile ribbed constraint,
Sarah took in her familiar surroundings. She lay in bed, tangled in sweat slicked sheets.

Her tiny two room apartment was dark and faded. It was neat and organized but cramped with paint ten shades separated from its original color, now going to yellowish gray. The single window did not shed much light.

She slapped the alarm off, not sure if she should be grateful it saved her from her dream or angry it had stolen the answers she thought the voice could provide.

In the place of the alarm's teeth-jarring buzz was the sound of a siren screaming in the distance.

Sarah ran her hands through her long, dark hair and felt the dream images already fading in her mind. It was time to go to work.

She got out of bed and crossed to close her apartment's solitary window. It was barred and on the third floor, which is why she felt safe enough to open it a fingers breadth overnight to allow fresh, or what passed for fresh, air into the room.

Frowning, she reached out to the windowsill and picked up a single large, white pinion feather. The snowy plume teased at a remote memory.
Sarah shook off the unfounded tremor of fear and excitement and forced herself to shake off the uneasiness.

-

Life was not at all as she had dreamed it would be in her younger days. It was not even how she believed it would be as a hopeful student. Back then, she knew what she wanted, so she went after it. Her future was bright and full of unbounded promise.

She never thought it would elude her. She knew, sometimes, life was unfair, but never understood just how cruel it could be.

In college, she had excelled, in grades and in performing. She had starred in two productions and loved the applause, the rush of becoming someone else to loose herself in a part for a few hours a night. She was good. She was an actress. She was going to make it.

Or so she had thought.

She was not good enough. New York was filled with good actresses. Each was scratching and scrambling for parts so Off-Broadway you needed a compass to find them.

Sarah walked two blocks to the subway, surrounded by people yet alone all the same. The press of humanity had been overwhelming at first, now it was all background noise, just part of life in the big city. In daylight the trip to work was not so bad. At night it was necessary to take precautions, for predators roamed the streets and subway stations.

Sarah held the cold metal of the pole on the train, listening to the clacking wheels as it carried her further from home, further into the underground. Underground.

Sarah shook off the tendrils of memory from a long ago dream, another
dark tunnel, something chasing her and someone else. Fear and anger mixing together as she fled. It didn't make sense. She exited the train at her stop, further unnerved, jumping at shadows.

Her current way of paying the bills was so cliche she might have cried if she allowed herself the luxury. She didn't. She wouldn't. If she did she would be pulled under by her own misery. Her life had become a parody of what she had dreamed.

Since graduating college she had been in three plays. Each time in a supporting role, never a star. Never even truly noticeable.

She loved the stage, the lights, the people. But then the work stopped coming. She still went to auditions, still reported to her agency dutifully, but Sarah began to realize that at twenty-four she was not getting the roles she wanted and might never get them. The legendary casting couch was not one of her options. She wasn't about to screw her way into a role and that had hurt her chances, she knew full well.

So she turned her imagination and creativity to another form. As she waited against hope for the perfect role she began to write. Before she quite knew what had taken her she had completed a children's fantasy book. With crossed fingers she sent it to an editor, hoping it was good enough to sell. It was. The publishers had loved it, and asked if she had any other ideas.

So far the two children's books she had written barely brought in enough money to cover rent most months and those checks kept getting smaller. Her first attempt at a novel sat at home on her computer hard drive, stalled. It was writer's block, she rationalized to herself as she stared for hours at the screen, waiting to fill it with words. It was as if her imagination were drying up as she struggled to simply survive.

She also felt certain resentment when her editor, on reading the book's proposal, had suggested she add more romance to it. Sarah's few encounters with romance had not been anything to write a pamphlet about, let alone a book. She could not write about something that she knew nothing about.

Entering the restaurant, Sarah went into the staff room to secure her purse. No roles meant no money. No money meant either giving up on her dreams and going home or living on the streets. She opted to take a job
to pay the bills. With a sigh she straightened her white shirt and plastered on a fake smile.

She put on the role of one more nameless waitress waiting to be discovered, one more nameless face among the thousands.

-

Her legs were sore and her feet were killing her by the time she returned home. Securing the door locks she crossed to her second hand answering machine.

There was only one message from her brother. None about the audition she had a week ago. It had been the second audition for the lead in a really promising play. If she got a third, she was in. It felt like all her hopes lay on a single phone call. Her dreams, as always, just beyond her reach, taunting her as they glittered before her eyes, a bubble about to burst... or a crystal ball.

Trying not to be too discouraged she called her brother to cheer herself up. She sat down, stretching out her tired legs as someone picked up the other end of the line.

"Hello?"

Sarah felt the first genuine smile of the day spread over her face. "Hiya, kiddo. How was school today?"

"Hey! It was okay, I guess. I hate American History, though. It's so boring."

"Just think of it as a story, an adventure story." Sarah settled in to take joy in the maundanities of her little brother's life.

-

Afterwards she sat before her computer, grasping for the words, for the story she knew she could write, for the imagination that had so filled her as a child. It simply wouldn't come. Her head pounded with the frustration of it, pressing on her sinuses and filling her eyes with tears.

Hours later, still damp from the shower, she crawled into bed. She felt empty, like she'd been striving all day for something yet in the end nothing was accomplished. She closed her eyes and willed sleep to come.

-

"Was it worth it?" The accented voice spread like warm chocolate through the night.

She sat up with a gasp. Someone was in her apartment. In the darkness something moved. She was afraid to do the same. If she moved whoever it was might attack. Damn, why couldn't she have bought a gun? She'd laughed when her father suggested it.

"I asked if it was worth it. I'm not prone to repeating myself." Light flared from the direction of her threadbare sofa, as if a bare light bulb had been lit and exposed. The light was harsh and unforgiving. No... it wasn't a light bulb. It was a crystal sphere, held in an elegent, black gloved hand.

She felt her throat tighten with some emotion she could not identify. Was it fear? Relief? No... not longing. Nothing could sneak past the sudden paralysis of vocal cords and esophagus, no matter what nameless feeling had brought it on.

He sat on the back of the sofa, one high booted foot planted squarely in the center of a cushion and the other splayed along the sofa's back. The man looked completely relaxed and at ease, as if he belonged there.
He was seductively beautiful, still. He had no changed in the least. No lines marred his perfect features.

It all came rushing back, the echoes of a long lost dream. One terrible night of all childhood's fears and hopes lumped together. Oh God, it was real. He was real.

A name, at last, escaped her lips. A whisper or a whimper, she was not sure which.

"I'm flattered you remember me." Mismatched eyes mocked her.

"What do you want?" A cracked whisper, she realized was her own.

"To see you wallowing in your victory." He cocked his head to the side to stare at her with unblinking eyes. The crystal sphere floated to the ceiling and hung there, against the laws of nature, as if such constraints could ever hold him.

Sarah felt ashamed of the small, dank apartment, as he looked it over with undisguised scorn.

"You waited eight years... till I'd started to fail, before coming to gloat?" She felt her courage returning, not completely but, absurd as it might appear to anyone else, this was one threat she at least knew how to handle. Or she hoped she did. "How very petty of you. And yes... getting Toby back was worth it. All of it."

"Who was speaking of Toby?" Another crystal appeared and he began to spin it with lazy grace, tossing and rolling it in graceful yet impossible ways. He had not changed at all. Not one blond hair, not one arrogant sneer.

Sarah suddenly found herself comparing him to a spoiled child in grown
up clothes. Then she met his eyes.

Swallowing, she felt that observation fade. He was much more dangerous than that, and he was no child... though judging by his actions he might well qualify as a brat.

"What a drab and colorless place you chose to live in. Look at you. Even you've become pale and lifeless." His voice was tinged with derision, his eyes contemptuous. "Such a pity." The last was filled with some softer emotion.

"Have you said your piece? Can you leave now?" Sarah raised her chin, refusing to cow before this man, this being. She would not be ashamed, she would not.

"Come morning your agent will call and tell you to come in for that final audition you've been hoping for. The part is down to you and two others. One step closer to your dreams." The crystal was stopped from its rolling dance and offered forward on ebon encased fingertips.

"They always were mine. My dreams. You had no power to offer them to me. You never did. All you could offer was illusion." Sarah swept out of bed and reached for her robe, feeling chilled and exposed in her nightgown.

"Illusion? And this is so much better? Tell me, Sarah, what is real? Define to me the meaning of Reality." He jumped from his perch to stand before her, tall and intimidating, leaning too close.

Had he ever heard of personal space?

"I'm not going to discuss philosophy with you, Jareth." She stepped around him, heading for the small kitchenette in the corner. She needed something to drink. Maybe tea. She considered offering him some then stomped the urge down. It was not like he was an invited guest.

Maybe should call the police. She could imagine the call in her head. 'Yes, please send an officer over right away. My apartment has been invaded by the Goblin King and he's being insufferably rude and arrogant and I want to go back to sleep. No, I have not been drinking and I've never taken drugs.'

"How about truth? Let us discuss the nature of truth, then." He blocked her path.

Damn it, she thought, how did he get between her and her cupboard?

"You wouldn't know truth if it reared up and bit you on the ass." She decided to ignore his game and reached over his shoulder to open the door and find her reserve of tea bags.

"Oh really? Tell me... when have I ever lied to you?" He crossed his arms and stared down at her. His very expression daring her to point out a single lie.

For some reason this whole, surreal conversation was giving her a very
real headache.

"I don't know. And to tell you the TRUTH... I don't care." She lit a fire beneath her teakettle with a flip of her wrist.

Suddenly a crystal was spinning before her, offered in the tips of Jareth's fingers once more.

"What do you think you're offering this time? And for what price?" Sarah met his fierce eyes again, refusing to flinch, in fact she looked tired and worn more than anything else.

"I never said I was offering anything."

She looked at the shimmering orb being held before her. If she could trust Jareth to actually be telling the truth then tomorrow she would be one step closer to her dreams. Was he telling the truth?

So what game was he playing? It was a game, of that she had no doubt. The Goblin King seemed to think everything a game, no matter how deadly serious the outcome.

Sarah reached for the crystal, unsure why... perhaps to throw it in his
face, perhaps to try to discern his trick this time. But it disappeared in a shower of sparkles, leaving only the offering of a gloved hand.

Swallowing from a throat suddenly gone dry, she took the offered hand,
and felt his leather encased fingers close over her own hand.

To be continued...