She couldn't face their parents just yet, and made an excuse that they had interrupted them just as Toby had been about to start telling her what was wrong. Chastised and guilt-ridden, they let her go up to her room, but they couldn't feel half as bad as she did at the lie she had told them to make them feel so horrible.

Once in her old room, which had been cleared of most of her things a good eleven years previously, Sarah sat down heavily on her bed and wondered if she should tell her brother about the reality of the Underground, or let him meet all of her friends. He had always loved Ludo out of her friends, but she had seen him, in his younger days, prancing around pretending to be Jareth. It had bothered her then, and it bothered her even more now. But the reality was that meeting either of them might not sit well with him, and terrifying him was the least of what she needed to do at this point. He was already quite frightened enough.

She rose and went to her window, peering out of it and leaning on the sill as if she could pierce the night with her gaze. The storm that had been promised the next day was, apparently, moving in earlier than they expected. Instead of tomorrow, it would be breaking around midnight or the early morning. She had no doubt, given the last storm that had involved the goblins and her little brother, that it was only a tiding of things to come.

She waited until she saw her parents in their car on the road before she turned away from the window. They'd come upstairs to ask them about what kind of pizza they wanted to eat, saying that since it was Toby's birthday, they would allow a bit of junk food to go with the cake and ice cream of earlier. Both she and Toby both hadn't been hungry, and so she took their parents aside and asked them if they'd like to go out for a while on their own. It would give her a chance to work on Toby, she had explained to them, because if he was as willing to talk to her as he had been earlier, then she might could help him without their presences around to worry him.

They'd gotten ready and then had left within an hour. I have three hours left to figure out what's wrong, Sarah sighed, rubbing at her bare arms lightly. Then… who knows what will happen? I should tell Toby that the Underground is real, but not about how I can contact my friends. Not yet, at least. He'd want to badger them with questions, and it would be chaos. I don't even know if they'd come around with him in the same room, or if he'd be able to see them. What if not being able to remember being in that world means that he can't see them? I don't think he'd think I was crazy, but he'd probably be hurt that, after all he's been through, he couldn't do what I could. Jareth held him and sang to him, after all, and Toby was never frightened. The boy in the book was never frightened, after all, and wasn't that story the whole reason why Jareth came around, and the goblins took my brother, and everything happened as it did?

She licked her lips and turned around, moving to her mirror and having a seat there. "I feel like I'm trying to call up Bloody Mary," she muttered sardonically to herself. Setting her hands on the top of her dresser, she took a deep breath and sighed lightly, trying to recall how she had summoned the Underground folk. It had been long enough that her memory of it was fuzzy. Frowning, she said lightly, "Hoggle? Ludo? Sir Didymus? I need you! I need you now!" She paused a moment, feeling the old swell of power, but instead of the great swell and their sudden appearance, all she felt this time were wisps of thought. She bit her lip a moment and then concentrated on the mirror, looking around for them. She always saw them there before they materialized. "Hoggle? Please! I need you! It's an emergency!"

There was still nothing to be seen.

It sent a thrill of terror through her. She knew that Hoggle, at least, would respond to her need of him, especially when it was as dire as what she felt. They always knew when she most needed them, and were there when she called to them. That they weren't now, or couldn't be, was greatly disturbing. More than that, it was terrifying for her.

"Hoggle!" she cried, frantic desperation putting an edge to her voice. It wasn't unlike the tone she had used so long ago when she had lost Ludo in the forest of the Chilly-downs and stood, alone and scared, without anyone around her to comfort her.

She heard the faintest of whispers this time, but nothing more. It was as if the ghost of her friend was trying to break through to get to her and failing. It almost brought her to tears.

The door opened without warning, and Toby stood there, looking worried. "Sarah?" he asked, causing her to jump and stifle a little scream at his sudden appearance. In the mirror, she could have sworn it had been Jareth himself for a moment. "I heard you yell something. Are you all right?"

Sarah closed her eyes and let her heart slow down. The Goblin King had been defeated, and Hoggle had told her that he hadn't been seen in a long while in the Underground because of it. He wouldn't show up in her own world. He wasn't even human, let alone mortal. "Yeah, Toby," she said after a moment when she was sure her voice wouldn't shake. "I just thought I saw a mouse." The lie burned on her tongue.

He frowned at her, but nodded and accepted it. "Found the book yet?" he asked hopefully.

She shook her head negatively, but then paused a moment. "What if…" she began hesitantly. "What if I told you the story? You wouldn't have read it, but maybe hearing it from someone who's still got it memorized might work?"

Toby, in the process of leaving, paused and looked over his shoulder at her curiously. A moment later, he shrugged and moved to sit on her bed. "Wouldn't hurt, I reckon," he declared lightly. "It's the best we can do right now as it is. I don't know that even reading the story would do anything for me at this point, though."

"You feeling sick?" she asked, suddenly afraid. When he shook his head, she didn't believe him, but accepted it. He would be brave until the last, most likely, but she was bound and determined that his last wouldn't be that night or any night close to it. My will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom is as great, she told everything silently, including the Underground. You have no power over me.

But it seemed to have a power over Toby, and that was her problem.

She cleared her throat and proceeded to start the story that she already knew by heart, and that she figured Toby knew just as well by this point. "Once upon a time…"

* * *

Sarah tried very hard to remember each and every word of the book that she could. It took her until 10:30 to go through it fully, however, word by word. In the end, she saw that Toby seemed only a little better. It caused despair to well up in her to see him growing as wan and pale as he was, and without meaning to, she blurted out the very thing she hadn't truly intended: her own story with him. It differed from the story of the book in several ways, and Toby noticed right off, but Sarah had hoped that her own version would help him even more.

"You told me this version when I was very young," he said slowly, trying to move through it in his head. "With me in it, and you rescuing me as the princess. But then you left, and I read the book, and I always thought that you'd just made up your version so that the story wouldn't be as worn out by the time I got older."

She shook her head a bit, hesitating, and looked at the clock. It was 11:30 by the time that she finished her story, and she turned from the clock with a look on her face that was pained. "Yeah," she answered, struggling with the decision to tell him the truth or not.

"You believe me," he said with finality, staring at her intently. "Why? It was always just a story for you to hide in, growing up."

Sarah winced and then shook her head a fraction. "No, it wasn't," she said almost inaudibly. "I believe it because I lived it." She looked at him in apology. "I wished you away because I was horrid and troubled, but realized I loved you too much all the same, and went to get you. I defeated Jareth, the Goblin King, at his own game and brought you home."

Toby was quiet for several minutes, looking as if he were victorious and yet disbelieving all the same. "How can I believe it?" he demanded at last, conflicted still. "You could just be saying that to humor me."

Sarah flinched at those words, anger flaring up in her. "You think I'd say it to get on your good side and betray you to your mother and father?" she snapped at him. "I went through Hell and back to save you from my own mistake!" She rose, fists clenched at his audacity at not believing her when he believed it himself and couldn't even recall being there. "You want to know something, Toby? Your eyes only changed when you were there around Jareth! Every time I look at them, I'm reminded of everything that he offered me, and those eyes haunt me." She gave him a pained look. "Why do you think I can't look you in the eyes, Toby? I don't see you when I see them. I see him."

He sat with an expression that went from angry to dumbfounded as she spoke, and at last blank, as if he wasn't sure what to think. "You left your dreams and everything there behind for me," he said at last, flatly. "The book said that the King loved the girl and gave her anything she wanted, and you turned it all down."

She blinked at him a little, the anger fleeing her without warning. His tone was almost… horrified at her, but there were also hints of righteous anger, as if she had chosen to turn her back on him and not the King. "For you, Toby, yes," she began, wondering why he was frightening her almost as much as his impending doom or even his long-absent abductor.

"The man gave you everything, and you wouldn't even look at him twice," Toby continued, rising and shaking his head at her. "You destroyed him just to get back something you hadn't even wanted in the first place, to have sent it away. What kind of sadist are you, and what kind of masochist was he to take it and keep giving to you?" He rubbed his face as if he couldn't believe it.

Sarah was both confused and bewildered by her brother's alteration. "Toby, what--what are you saying?" she stammered. "That you'd rather I'd have left you there to become a goblin? That's not how the story worked! You've read it."

"Then maybe someone should've rewritten the story," he shot back at her. "What? Were you just a sheep, following it to the letter or something?" He gave her a hurt look. "You believed me all this time, and you wouldn't even stick up for me with Mom and Dad. Why are you siding with them? Because it's the safest path, like living out the same storylines as what you've memorized?" She tried to get a word in edgewise, but he waved her off and stormed out the door, slamming it behind him and rattling the framed pictures on her walls.

She stood where she was for a moment before slipping down to her seat again. She felt like crying, but she wasn't sure why. Her brother hated her, apparently, for doing what she thought was right, and now would die without her helping him somehow.

"Hog-GLE!" she called to her mirror, wheeling around and letting her tears fall at last. "Ludo, Didymus, HOGGLE! WHERE ARE YOU?!"

"Here, Sarah," Hoggle's voice said, and through her teary gaze, she discerned his form in the mirror. Sir Didymus and Ludo were behind him, but they seemed somehow fainter and more indistinct than Hoggle. She covered her mouth before a sob of relief could escape her.

(To Chapter Five)