Tumbling, falling. Head over heels.

Inside, she was screaming. But outside, she was too terrified to make a sound.

Deeper and deeper into the bowels of blackness she plunged; the dark so complete Amry had no concept of either the width of this hole she was falling down, or its depth. It was terrible to fall, because Amry knew she had to hit sometime.....

Maybe not, maybe she would just fall for eternity downward, suspended weirdly in time and space...

But, as this thought entered her mind, her surroundings suddenly brightened softly with light, and her feet contacted ground. Amry collapsed heavily onto the damp stone floor, but not as heavily as such a fall should have merited.

For a moment, she let herself lay miserable in her heap. In her heart, she despaired.

Hadn't she answered the riddle correctly? Didn't she choose the right way?

Somehow, she felt comforted laying there on the stone floor of this dimly lit place. She didn't know where she was, but it was dark and dank, air thick with the humidity.

A part of Amry didn't want to get up, didn't want to face anymore. A part of her wanted to lie there forever. Because as soon as she had slammed into the floor, it was like the truth of her situation had hit.

She could very possibly die. She had no clue where she was, or how she even got there. Everything  that had doubted the reality of this place in her died when true fear raced through her veins.

After a moment, she summoned up her strength, and struggled to raise herself from that floor. Her limbs ached, and she felt weak from her immense fear. Weak or not, afraid or not, she pulled herself unsteadily to her feet. She had to.

Amry raised her eyes slowly upwards, to the natural stone ceiling packed high above her, and saw the tunnel through which she had fallen. It was an absolute black, with no pinprick of light to indicate it opened anywhere else. Now, Amry began to take in her surroundings.

She was in what appeared to be an underground cavern or room. It was much like a cave, but the grey stone floor was worn smooth and the ceiling had only the occasional stalactite. There was the eerie noise of dripping water. The size of the room she could not determine; where she stood was at one end of it, with two dimly flickering torches illuminating only a little ways...then, darkness. Thick and uncertain. Slight sounds echoed deeply behind it, ominously. There could be anything hidden beneath its impenetrable layer.

The two torches which served as the only source of light were on the wall to Amrys left, positioned across from each other, with what appeared to be a hewn inscription etched between them. Amry squinted and drew closer. The words read :

"Ce qui est souhaité pour être oublié"

Amry attempted to speak the words aloud. "Sounds French," she noted to herself.

French. Amry hadnt ever taken French...now she wished she had. On the other hand, it just as easily might be some strange language she had never heard of. What could it mean? She ran the phrase over and over in her head, trying to make some sense of it. Maybe it's another riddle

Her fingers went instinctively to the dark crystal. It was twirled and massaged.

Suddenly, light flooded the darkness ahead in such a rush and so unexpectedly that Amry started in her surprise. She gasped loudly and gaped at the now lit other part of this place. It was a long passage, with no obvious source of light. It consisted of the same cave-like look, with what appeared to be...framed pictures on the wall?

"This place just keeps getting stranger."

Amry walked curiously across the firm stone to the beginnings of the hall, where the large cavernous room seem to gather itself together into a rounded hole. The hall itself had a rounded shape, and curved up ahead out of sight. The first picture was a large square, set off by an elegant gold frame so beautiful, ornately carved into skillful delicate designs it seemed a pity it was buried in this uninhabited hall. At first, Amry thought the image within in the frame was a photograph, but upon closer inspection determined it a painting. A remarkable painting, so exquisite in its detail and capture of life, the very portrait seemed to breathe.

It was a depiction of a man, his face filling the canvas. The features were so expressive of personal sorrow, so plainly depictive it was almost as though his very troubles were written in them. In his obvious worry. In the lines of his face, the turn of his lip, the muscle clenched in his jaw. His seemed a face of centuries past. Amry shivered in the encompassing misery she felt in this picture's presence. She looked into those hollow painted eyes and saw dreams of a better place

Amry hesitated. She wasn't sure she liked this choice of direction, but it seemed she had no other option. Taking one last look at the torches, inscription, and hole in the ceiling, (as though wishing for some excuse to linger but finding none) she turned and worked her way onward down the circular hall.

The passage was long and comfortably wide. Pictures, hundreds of pictures, thousands of pictures dotted the walls. Each showed a tormented person, a soul that haunted the canvas and burned into you the impressions of empty existence. Each face seemed to evince different eras, different times in history. There were so many faces, so many people...young and old, fat and thin, male and female, black and white. Each painting spaciously placed on either side of the hall.

On and on she walked; down, down.  Descending farther into the passage. Somehow, Amry felt compelled to examine each portrait, learn the sad story in each pair of eyes, and move on. This slowed her down even more, but to ignore the pictures were like ignoring people who stared and begged for someone to look.

Amry felt enveloped with the heavy gloom of this place, the heartaches, the loneliness, the despair here was almost too much...

As she moved onward, she noticed that the looks of different eras were thinning, becoming less and less in number for each period.

She walked on and on, turning to look at this painting, glancing at that one, until...

Amry came upon a face that seemed to strike her in a different way. She paused, like at the other paintings, looking into this face. Dark hair, a deep brown hangs from the shoulders and drapes down the back. Long and thick. Pale face still rounded in youth,  two hazel/green eyes question innocently from their place. Stare at Amry. Filled with the desperation of a child who fears an adult world she perceives to be cruel....

Amry saw hurt...this girl in the portrait. Somehow, a name found Amrys tongue...

"Sarah."

She moved closer to the towering rectangular picture, eyes locked on the girl's.

Despite the brushstrokes that composed them, they seemed to shimmer, to glisten, to live, to gaze right back.

Amry simply stared for a moment into those eyes. Searched  and pondered them.

She pulled herself away, and pressed on. As she walked, Amry spotted another picture up ahead.

She moved toward it, but soon froze in surprise.

Even from this little distance, it was obvious who it was.

Quiet amazement coursed through her as she drew closer to it. She looked at the face, mastered beautifully like all the other pictures.

"Its.me."

And it was. Her own face, with her own hurt and sadness, framed and displayed here in this forgotten place. Amry gaped at it...

But....how...why...?"

It was so completely her...not just in the identical features, but the look in the eyes, the story in the face, the expression, the very reflection of light upon it. A part of her was reeling, awed by this sight. A part of her wanted to stay and stand here and examine every detail...

But, another part of her was terrified at the existence of this picture, and, this being the greater power, she hastily moved away, glancing back disbelievingly as she walked. A part of her couldn't really accept she had  seen it.

In this state of mind, Amry found the next hanging likeness. The man in it was absolutely nothing like any of the other pictures she had seen down here. His sadness was somehow different, so deep and complex, with silver blond hair, a long face with thin lips and nose, and a pair of piercing eyes that almost appeared to glare and mock her.  She cautious moved closer, and discovered they were two different colors, and the pupils opposite sizes. His presence had a magic to it that seemed to draw Amry ever closer to the painting, strangely ominous, yet enticing...

She raised a hand and reached to the canvas...somehow, she felt she must touch it, feel it.....

As her hand neared the painting, the brushstrokes began to quiver and vibrate. A sound started to echo from them, winding around Amry and pulling her in...

 'It's a crystal, nothing more..but if you turn it this way, it will show you your dreams..."

Voices, voices cried and enveloped Amry, spoke and whispered and screamed and shook...

Sounds of glass breaking, of music playing, of singing...

"As the world falls down...."

The volume was growing and Amrys index finger was so close...reaching, with the other fingers lightly folded back...just an inch away...

The painting was shimmering, moving, living...

Her finger made contact.

The surface of the painting rippled like water, then the frame widened like a horrible mouth and the whole wall rushed at Amry. She screamed and wanted to escape but felt like her legs were frozen...

The whole wall rushed forward as she tried to shield herself with her arms. The frame seemed to swallow her, and she passed through the painting to collapse in her extreme horror upon a dry brown stone floor. One very unlike the floor in the hall she had previously been in, with sunlight now warmly streaming all around her and a fresh breeze blowing ...

Jareth stood  next to her, impassive at this huddled girl trembling on the ground. He rolled his wrist, and the round crystal he had been gazing into a moment before vanished.

Jareth turned his mismatched eyes now to Amry.

He was expecting her.

~

Just a quick note: "Ce qui est souhaité pour être oublié" is French for

"that which is wished to be forgotten." Thanks Rita :)