Chapter 3

She flipped on the light and went straight over to the table; clearing a space she bent over and searched for the book she wanted among her many stacks.

“This room is quite different than it was.”

She sat on the stool and turned to look at him. “It has really good light for drawing.”

He slowly looked around. On one wall were sketches that had been framed; he wandered closer. It didn’t surprise him to see the sketch of his own face in the collection of pictures. “Is it still a good likeness of me?”

Randy got up and went over to study the picture. “Yes, you haven’t changed one bit.” She ran a hand over the sketch. “I had to draw it so I wouldn’t feel like I was losing my mind. I had to feel that you were real.”

“I am real in the fact that you can see me, but I sometimes have doubts about how real I truly am.”

As she looked up at him, her eyes became serious. “I think you’re very real, in every way...we’ll just have to find a way to reconnect you to this world.”

He shook his head. “I am certain there is no way to do such a thing. I was cursed for not returning an item gathered during a mandated trip. This item was illegal to have.” Memories flooded through him, most he had relived for decades after being cursed. He sighed. “I do not see how it would be possible. The items are not near, and I cannot leave here to see if they are still hidden...as I am also certain the gypsy who cursed me is long from this world.”

Randy studied him for a moment. “We’ll see.” She turned and went back to her table. “Come and tell me what font was used for the name of your ship.”

Jareth stood there for a moment staring after her. Had he not spent years trying to unravel the mystery of how to be solid again? How could she possibly find the way? “I do not know what a font is,” he stated abruptly.

Randy turned and motioned for him to come over to where she stood. “It refers to the design of letters’.”

“Ah.” He came over and looked down at the table. She had a book open to a page filled with the same words, written over and over again in so many different swirling ways that he couldn’t believe a body would ever use all of them. “Writing has changed a great deal.”

She laughed quietly. “No, probably not. I’m a design artist, so I use all of these to create ads, logos, and promotional items.”

“I have many things to learn about.” He studied the page again. “The letter style is not on this page.” She flipped the page without comment. “I tried to follow what changed as the years went by from watching others, and television was of great assistance to me.” He shook his head. “Not that page, either.”

Randy flipped the page and looked at him. “I guess you’ve seen every style of fashion come and go. You’ve witnessed the world changing for more than two hundred years. That’s awesome.”

He looked from the page to her. “Awesome?”

“Yeah, amazing, remarkable, tremendous.” She smirked.

“Ah, yes. It was awesome.” The word came awkwardly off his tongue, but the smile on her face was very rewarding. He cleared his throat and turned back to look at the book she held. “It was close to this.” He held a finger over a printed word.

She flipped through several pages before stopping. “This?”

He looked over the page and recognized a font. “Yes, I believe that is a close match.”

“Cool.” She got up from the stool and went over to the drawers that lined one wall. “I’ll get some brushes and paint.” She straightened and looked at him. “What color was the name and design done in?”

“Black.”

She nodded and turned back to the drawer. “Hey, maybe we could name the rest of my ships...I mean, sometime, if you like.”

He frowned at her. “You do not have to entertain me, Miranda. I know you have a life to live.”

Randy snorted. “Not so much now.” She turned back to him with the jar and brushes in her hand. “I lost my boyfriend and my job this morning, so I presently have no life and all the time in the world.”

Moving, he came to stand in front of her. “What do you mean, you lost your boyfriend?”

She shrugged. “He left me a message on my answering machine, giving me the kiss-off.”

He sighed. “I do not understand some...all of what you just spoke.”

Turning away, she went over and grabbed the book. “Let’s go back downstairs and I’ll see if I can explain it.” She walked past him to the door.

Jareth stood there for a moment. Despite feeling that he should never have come to her this morning, he could not help enjoying a sense of purpose again after hundreds of years.

Randy set everything on the table and turned when he walked back into the room. She pointed to the phone. “That is an answering machine beside my phone. You do know what a phone is, right?” He nodded. “Okay, when you phone someone and they don’t answer, you can record a short message for them to listen to later.”

Studying the machine on the table, he tried to comprehend. “And this boyfriend left you a message?”

She nodded and dropped down onto the couch. “Yeah. He said he didn’t want to see me anymore that I was too blunt and it embarrassed him.”

He stood there for a moment. “What did he mean, too blunt?”

“I tend to say what I’m thinking, and a lot of people don’t like that as a quality in a girlfriend.” She sighed loudly.

He walked over to her. “I find it a redeeming quality. It is refreshing to hear the truth rather than a lie.”

A grin appeared on her face. “That’s what I thought.”

His brows drew together. “Did you care deeply for this man?”

She shook her head. “Not really. I thought I did. But when I got the call it bothered me more that he did it over the phone instead of face-to-face.”

“He is spineless.”

“Yeah, I guess he is.” She patted the couch. “Sit and you can tell me if I’m putting the letters in the right place.” She leaned forward and picked up a pencil and the sloop model.

Jareth sat beside her and watched her study the stern of the sloop. “You lost your job today as well?”

Randy nodded briefly as she estimated the space she’d need to put all the letters on the back of the model. “Yeah, I beaked off to the boss... I was just so sick of being treated like a slave instead of an employee.” She sighed. “I’m not too freaked out about being unemployed, yet.”

He frowned. “How will you live without money from your job?”

She shrugged. “I’m not destitute. The house is paid for, I own my piece-of-crap car, and I have a bit of money saved. I do freelance designs, too, so it’s no biggie yet.

Again, Jareth wasn’t sure what half of what she said meant, but as she did not seem distressed by the events of earlier this day, he decided he could relax as well. He watched her move the pencil toward the ship. “It was across there.”

Randy nodded and placed a small mark on the wood. “Were there any other changes to this we could make? The color or anything?”

He eyed the model and tried to remember the ship that had been his home more than not for the last eight years of his life. “Any changes would only come from being more weathered.” He grimaced. “Or repairs from battle.”

She started. “From battle?”

“The gun walls, as well as the mizzen, underwent repairs more often than not. The bowsprit took a bad hit during the last skirmish we were part of.”

Raising her eyebrows, she looked back at him. “I am not going to blow holes in it just to fix it again.”

He chuckled. “I was not suggesting that you do; I was merely answering your question.”

Randy blew out a slow breath. “Sorry, I know you lived in a whole different world and time and things were necessary then, but it seems...like it was brutal and you could have chosen a different direction to travel.”

He reflected on her words. “I did not feel I had any choice to make but to live at sea. The yearning for it was inside me before I was a man, and as hard as I tried to set it aside, I could not leave it for long.”

She nodded slowly. “I get that. Sometimes you have to do something or you’ll never feel peace.”

Jareth smiled at her. “Yes, just that.”

Her eyes moved over all of his face before she spoke. “You’ve led a rough life and dealt with it.” She exhaled. “Okay, now tell me where the design was on your ship.”

“You are wanting to paint that, as well?”

“Why not? You have the blueprint of it on your back, so it shouldn’t be too hard to copy. It won’t be as detailed as the life-size version, but it can be close.”

Several emotions went through him, yet he could not focus on just one, knowing she was willing to go as far as this to please him. He cleared his throat. “It was below the name.”

“Okay, give me fifteen minutes and I should have the name finished... Oh, wait. Was it in all capital letters, big ones, or lowercase?” She pointed to an example of each in the book with the tip of the pencil. She had no idea how developed writing had been in the eighteenth century.

“It was all large letters, put closely to one another.”

Nodding, she picked up the brush. He stayed where he was when she dropped down to sit on the floor and rest the ship on the table in front of her. He watched the first letter take form under her careful movements and for a brief moment it was as if he were back in the time when he had stood and watched the lettering appearing on his very first ship.

While she worked at filling the letters in with tiny strokes of her brush, she was silent for a long time. Watching took him back to so long ago when he had held his breath as the name began to take form. When she did speak it jolted him back to the present.

“So, where did you live when you weren’t on your ship?”

“I lived in my quarters on my ship. I did not see the need to have a home I would never visit.”

She pursed her lips to concentrate on her fingers’ movements for a moment. “Didn’t you have a family, a wife?”

He watched the gentle, steady movements of her hand. “No. I did not feel it was right to marry and leave a wife alone with children for three seasons at a time.”

“Oh.” She gave him a hesitant smile. “I guess that’s kind of noble, actually. How many of your crew had families waiting for them all the time?” She dipped the very tip of the brush into the paint again.

He leaned closer and watched her. “You have a great talent for that.”

“Thanks.”

“Most of my crew had family of some kind scattered from one end of our charts to the other.” He observed her silently for a moment or two before continuing. “A very few ever complained loudly about wanting to go home. When you are a true man of the sea, it is all you want for.”

Pausing with her slight brushstrokes, she turned to look at him. “Do you still miss it?”

He knew for a fact he would always miss the feel of standing on the deck and the wind against his face. He even missed the taste of the sea on the air. “I most likely always will. Yet I have missed my body more this last hundred or so years.”

She winced. “I guess so. What do you miss the most...about not having a body?” He gave her a bold smile. “Besides that.” She grinned.

“I took eating and drinking so much for granted. Just tasting something with flavour on my tongue would be truly...awesome now.”

Laughing, she set the ship down. “Speaking of food, I need to grab a quick bite or my hands are going to shake when I try to finish this.” She stood up and looked down at him. “I’ll be right back.” Her eyes moved over his face slowly before she turned and half-jogged out of the room.

Jareth let out a long breath, or he liked to believe it was a breath. He was questioning whether he should stay with her this long. It was not as if he had somewhere he needed to be; time was most assuredly not the problem. His quandary was he liked being here with her, and worried about growing attached. Miranda was so young—two hundred fifty-plus years younger, if he were to be truthful...yet it was not the reason that he felt he should not stay. To be truthful, it was the way his body reacted to her presence that disturbed him most.