While Your Lips Are Still Red. Prologue

---

It was going to be a long night, she thought in despair.  She sat at the precipice of the frozen lake alone, frosted reeds and snow a bed beneath her. In her hands was a bottle of cognac, the label long ago worn away by her palms.  In her mouth, a cigarette spewed smoky puffs into long dancing trails around her.  She interchanged between the acerbic bottle and rig, inhale here, then swig now.  
Sarah watched with heavy and wet eyes as her family’s sheepdog investigated along the icy bank, his maw bringing grunts and huffs of excitement to every new scent. He wasn’t the greatest companion for melancholy but she was thankful for at least, he was wordless.  It was unnaturally cold tonight, a clear skied spring midnight.  She gazed at the celestial lights, admiring the clinquant and stark twinkling of starry jewels along the silky night black. The forests grew tall and willowy around the lake, deep green of pine and aspen barely radiating a color in the veil of darkness.   It had been a family intervention that had brought her here, to this wild and isolated place.  It had nothing to do with the purse full of smokes, nor the pantries of booze, no.  It had to do with that damnable red book.  

Sarah, hissing her rage bit the neck of the bottle and gorged tremendous mouthfuls of the drink, rivers of it over-spilling her cries and swimming down her neck.  Thinking with every sour gulp, ‘Drown, oh please, drown my thoughts of him.’ She laboured the rest of the bottle, licking the glassy opening of all remaining nectar.  Before shoving handfuls of snow into the empty bottle, waiting for it to melt and sop up the last of the drink.  Her smoke sparked when a heavy gust blew across the lake, her hair tossing up into disarray.  Sarah could only frown and pull her coat tighter around herself, her gut wriggling uncomfortably. The thoughts of her red, threadbare book burning haunting her fearsomely. Her family, or more reasonably her half-kin had arranged this entire farce of an early spring getaway simply to shame her, concluding that her delusions of the Labyrinth were nothing but a stubborn and selfish cry of attention that had meandered into her early adulthood without any doubt of dying soon.  Sarah had been happy at first for this reprieve from college, her daily life and workload wearing her gaunt and bitter.  Her step-mother had made a point of lecturing her tonight about her loss of friends and once gregarious nature. That her once beautiful, kind-hearted and spirited step-daughter was nothing more but a penniless, shrewd creature now.

 “How thoughtful.” Sarah muttered, flicking her cigarette across the pastel blue ice. ‘Your fantasies are muddling your mind! You’re not a child anymore!’ Her parents had cried and cried, and although she felt great guilt and distress she could only sharply remark and rebuff, her claws aimlessly lashing at any remark or effort made either kind or cruel by her parents.  In her father’s anger, he had taken her little red book and set it ablaze in the hearth fire.  A book that had gotten her through unimaginable turmoil, the very book that had guided her by word of mouth to…him. That cursed book had vanished into a plume of curled paper and cracking fire.  Her parents had been relieved, thinking that somehow they had exorcised the evil plaguing their daughters mind and social life.  ‘It’s better this way, Sarah.’ Only if had been that simple, to burn a book and forget about her demons.  But, it was not the book that cemented her to her daydreams or her nightmares. It was what the book had brought and what the book decreed,“The goblin king had fallen in love with the girl and afford her certain powers.”

Sarah had stormed out into the wintery night when her parents had finally fallen asleep, stealing their prized cognac, and their stupid dog before making her way a mile down the rural road to this lake. Sarah did not know how long she had been sitting her for, but her frozen legs and face did give some reassurance that it had been a while and that thankfully she hadn’t chickened out of her daring escapade.  She watched a small herd of ghostly deer cross the ice of the lake, cautiously they treaded beneath the moonlight.  Thoughtfully surprised and drunk she spoke aloud, “The ice is still thick enough? Huh.”  With a stumble she rose, taking a few slippery steps out onto the dazzling lake, mimicking the ethereal-of-foot deer.  Her parent’s sheepdog gave a few shrill resounding barks which echoed off the far trees and ice eerily. The herd of does bounding away into the copse of dark moonlight and branches from his loud voice.  Sarah paid little attention to this, deciding instead to saunter to the windy mean of the lake, unaware that her parent’s rambunctious dog did not dare to follow.  The nightly effulgence glinted in the bottle of her hand, brilliant honey and amber light reflecting a motley across both the ice and her jacket.  She sang intoxicated and sad in the winter night. “Sweet little words made for silence not talk…” Her boots clicked and crunched against the floating veil, voice rolling out with ashen clouds from her lips. “Dark hair for catching the wind, not to veil the sight of a cold world”, Sarah twirled, snow spiraling from her heels, her bottle of cognac rolling away further across the lake. The liquor growing warm and undeniable in her blood as the shimmering bottle lead her further and further out.  The glass was beautiful, a beckoning rainbow of colors that danced like an aurora before her.  It hooked to her mind, reeling her wherever it wished across the thin ice of the lake.  

A voice broke from behind her, pounding her heart with his cordial yearn. “Kiss, while your lips are still red.” Sarah whirled in her fogged haze, and watched as he appeared like a dream from the dark. His mismatched eyes sought hers, golden hair dancing sinuously in the sparkling and arctic breeze, a ragged cloak flagging its dark colors around him.  Where he approached, the iced lake turned to crystal marble.  He looked onto her intense with longing, his colors blurring into the lifting shadows around making him appear as a phantom. And Sarah, she truly did think him a ghost of the lake, even when he took her hands into his own gliding fingers and began to dance and sweep her off her feet into the ethereal May night.  Sarah was dumbstruck as he rounded with her across the stiff water, his jovial voice light as he sighed, “Sing to me, Precious. We do not have long.” Sarah sobbed helplessly as his warmth began to radiate around her, was this only a cruel dream too?  “Get away…” She moaned, unable to stop him as they spun tirelessly in tandem.  These dreams were always the same, always so real, so inviting and perfect… only to be proved at the last second nothing more than a torturous lie.  Was this how she was to live the rest of her life? Was this her punishment for disregarding his love, for denying him and her? Was he content with raping her life and tormenting her love? He gripped her close, flowing cape raveling around them, delicately he lifted her into his arms laying his head to hers. “Please, precious. I need to hear you sing once more.” He woed, his lament a howl of the clawing north and trees.  Suffused with anguish she wrenched her head free from his embrace, offering only a drunken pant before her lips found his.  Was this how she was to live, panhandling her dreams for desires? His fingers crawled across her skin, climbing her throat and into her hair.  His scent warm and soothing, a rendolence of amber and honey. His cries of affection contending with her own as they kissed desperately an apparition of one another. He lifted from their bowed embrace, his hands orbiting her face, tantalized to touch but fearful of the tears which shrouded her face.  The rivers of her emotion, carving brilliant and fearful light.  He let out a breathy thought, watching the air from his lips become an oppressive cloud. “Precious, are you real?” He combed her hair behind her red ears, sliding a fine strand of her tresses through his fingers seductively.  Sarah touched his face, gliding a touch across his appearance. Her heart swelling as she coveted the moment, the great veil beneath them splintering. “I don’t know…” She assured, both her hands cupping his comely face. “Do you want me to sing still, my love?” Shards of ethereal light began to float off the ice, sprawling into the starry sky above.  From afar both of them could hear a dog howl frantically.  Jareth nodded, kissing one of her hands before kneeling against her breast, waiting with closed eyes as she soothed his wild tresses and began to sing again, “ Drown into eyes while they’re still blind, love while the night still hides the withering dawn.” The ice of the lake shattered below with immense roar, but they still clung to each other unaware of the turmoil. “A passionate hour’s never a wasted one, the violin, the poet’s hand. Every thawing heart plays your theme with care…” Sarah felt her feet give from under her, deathly cold water devouring her as she slipped into the broken ice. She welcomed the cold water below, it cleared her mind as she drowned into another dimension. Jareth’s concerned stare connected with her own, both still fully enchanted in their shared dream as he watched her fall through the ice into the inviting abyss below.  He hung above for a moment, still not sure whether he murmured this in dream or truth. “Kiss me while your lips are still red…”

A lone sheepdog paced the banks, barking wildly. His scampering paws mowing over his masters discarded cigarettes. He whined pitifully before laying down onto the fluffy snow reluctantly, watching his master and the man on the lake vanish with a blinding and enveloping light. His little eyes watching the lake ripple like a wavering mirror.