Mornings of Gold (a Jareth and Sarah fanfiction)

Chapter Twelve

Sarah's boredom was throbbing through her. Trying the nth door she'd come across, she held herself back (with difficulty) from slamming her forehead against the wood when she found it to be locked. Again.

    Jareth had been kind enough to give her free run of the castle, informing her that he had "business to attend to" before promptly excusing himself. At first, the prospect had excited her. But, as was the recurring case in her life, the reality was a huge disappointment.

    Sarah had already opened most of the openable doors in the palace – she'd found, among other things: a dining room, the main kitchen and a scullery, whatever that was. Annoyingly, Jareth seemed to have prohibited access to almost all the rooms in this place. Sarah wondered how many keys he must need, or if he had one master key that unlocked everything in the castle. Maybe he just uses magic, Sarah pondered. Maybe he doesn't even need keys.

    The next door she tried opened when she twisted the handle. Her boredom alleviating slightly, she disappeared inside the room within.

    Judging by the endless rows of bookshelves she was confronted with as she entered, she guessed she'd stumbled across the library. She smiled to herself. Others would be disheartened and move on, but she would not. In her opinion, reading was one of the finer joys in life. And, in an archaic kingdom without access to electricity or technology, how else would she keep herself occupied?

    Her steps were slow and steady as she wandered deeper inside the maze of shelves. She thought of how she'd find her way back, but shrugged it off after a few moments. She wasn't going to get lost in a library. Still, the little corridors seemed to stretch on infinitely when she looked down them. It was unnerving.

    Jareth's personal Labyrinth. The idea made her giggle for a while as she searched the shelves for nothing in particular – a title that stood out or something along those lines.

    After a few minutes – it could've been a half hour; there was no way to tell – of walking, Sarah came across a shelf that was stacked with books of the exact same colour, size and shape as each other. There was nothing strange about the shelf itself, so she almost moved on and put the strange similarity between its books down as duplicates or spares. Then she saw the writing on their spines.

    Vol. I ~ 1790-1800
    Vol. II ~ 1801-1811
    Vol. III ~ 1812-1822
    Vol. IV ~ 1823-1833
    Vol. V ~ 1834-1844

    This format continued up to the nineteenth and final volume, which said 1988-1998. Written in gold, embossed block capitals on the black leather covers, the letters and digits glittered from whatever angle Sarah looked at them from. Her curiosity was eating her inside, but she had the strangest feeling that she'd regret reading the encyclopaedic tomes. What else could they be but encyclopaedias, anyway? Nothing interesting...

    She'd picked up Vol. V before she could stop herself.

The tome was a lot thicker and heavier than she'd first thought – at least three thousand pages, probably more – so she had to lie on the floor with the book open in front of her in order to read it without breaking her arms. She wondered what the four-digit numbers on the spines were for as she opened the cover. A measure of something, maybe? How many x was in y?

    Years.

    The idea slammed into her almost painfully. It stuck.

    Suddenly she was a whole lot more interested.

    Sarah opened up the contents page, an exciting hunch beginning to bubble up in her chest. The paper was cracked and yellowed with age, almost flaking apart in her hands. She skimmed over the elaborate cursive script.