Wishful Thinking

O Body Swayed to Music

Jareth held four crystal balls close to his face. He stared into each of them in turn, catching the light. It seemed as though he were choosing among them. He took one of them and swirled it into the air, with a flick of his wrist. It floated away from him, became a bubble. Then it drifted through the open window beside which he was standing, and away through the darkening sky. The other three followed in turn, coldly beautiful bubbles floating through the dusk, turning and gleaming, mesmeric globes glowing in the dying light.

Sarah was still leaning limply against the tree, too dizzy to move, when the four bubbles approached her in the sky. She stared at them, entranced. She watched as the dazzling spheres floated toward her, slowly descending. They were dancing with the light, and she could hear music, an aching, haunting music, solemn, like a pavane. She was rapt. Her lips parted in wonder. The bubbles were close enough now for her to see that within the first of them was the dancer from her music box, twirling pirouettes. In each of the other three bubbles was another dancer, moving with sinuous elegance.

Sarah's body swayed hypnotically in time with the music. She was the music and the dance. She was inside a bubble, dancing, dressed in a ball gown. Enchanted and enchanting, she danced slowly across the sky in company with the other dancers

A congregation of many bubbles crossed the night sky, each with a dancer within it. They were approaching one great bubble, as though attracted by some magnetic force. Inside the great bubble was a magnificent ballroom. Jareth was already dancing there.

Stephanie saw all of this through the mirrored portal. She knew what she had to do.

'Thanks for everything!' she told the family of pygmy griffins. She took a deep breath and rolled herself forward into the pool of silver, wishing to be in the great bubble with her sister.

The ballroom had once known opulence. Between glittering cornices were hung many long chandeliers where the wax, dripping for a hundred years, had formed stalactites. The silk covering the walls had faded and, in places, worn threadbare. Bubbles decorated the room, and the whole of it was contained withing the iridescent skin of one great bubble. A tall, gilt, thirteen-hour clock stood in a corner. It was almost twelve o'clock.

Sarah watched the dance, and the dancers watched her from behind their masks. The men sported silken shirts open to the waist and tight velvet breeches. Some of them wore wide-brimmed hats; others had capes or carried staffs. The women's gowns left their shoulders bare and dove between their breasts. They had their hair coiffed high, and many wore long gloves.

The dancers moved in a ring around the ballroom, with a kind of lethargic brilliance, as though the party had been going on all night. Men who were not dancing lounged indolently against the columns, or in a cushioned pit in the center of the ballroom, in the company of women. Maids and footmen, with skin the color of old parchment, served them trays of fruit and refilled their goblets from decanters. And always the dancers were watching through the eyeholes in their cruel half-masks, from which snouts projected and horns sprouted above. Moving together or elegantly reclined, they watched Sarah, or watched each other watching, and beneath the masks the mouths smiled at each other like knives.

Sarah's gown was silvery, the color of mother-of-pearl, with puffed sleeves. She had a pearl necklace on, and her hair was braided with strings of pearls. Her eyes were wide. She was the picture of innocence in that setting, a picture that excited the dancers, who never took their masked eyes off her, while they moved with weary grace to the cadence of a sinisterly beautiful tune.

That was the scene Stephanie saw when she arrived courtesy of the portal. One instant it was like she had plunged into ice cold water, and the next, she was standing there in the opulent ballroom, soaking wet. Well, at least she was finally free of the disgusting sludge she had been caked in. Two gorgeously gowned women snickered behind their fans at her. Stephanie paused beside a tall mirror and saw her image. She looked like a drowned rat.