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Salas could only stare ahead, feeling overwhelmed for a reason he couldn’t fully explain, as his eyes found the King.
“Now what have you done?” Tarick chided. “Less than ten seconds in your presence, Jareth, and the boy is already in tears.”
“Begone,” the King demanded. “I will see you tomorrow, Beatrice.”
“Until then, Your Grace.” The witch Beatrice gave a graceful bow and then, for some reason, threw Salas a warm smile. “And to you as well, little one. Good night.”
“I’m off,” Tarick echoed, ruffling Salas’ hair as he passed, and then the two were gone.
Jareth pulled Salas into the room with ease, as though he manhandled Salas about every evening. Sometimes he did. “I’m guessing you heard much of that?”
“You…” Salas swallowed, beginning again, though he was not sure of how to phrase his own question, in any language. “You did not know about the guard?”
King Jareth frowned, letting the doors shudder shut and rounding on him so that they were facing one another. “What is this about?” he wondered gently, wiping a tear that hung suspended on Salas’ chin, yet keeping his great hand there and gently tilting Salas’ face up to view it.
Salas’ next words came in a rush, and even as he spoke, he had no idea where they came from. “You didn’t know! You didn’t know, which is good but…but I should not care if you knew or didn’t know! Because it is okay, because he came and offered me bread. It was very good bread! Very good. The finest, I think, so it was a very fair exchange. In Suscon, I had sex with many men. So many men! And none of them gave me bread. So perhaps he was a good man.”
Salas cried freely now, the tears bubbling up from some horrible, unknown cavern inside of him that he was unsure of how to clog without knowing its whereabouts.
The King was now crouching lower to him, his eyes wide with concern. “A guard…? A guard came to see you…and what?” The King swallowed, his eyes suddenly boiling. “What is this aboutbread, Salas?”
Salas blinked, and blinked, and blinked. Eyes too wet. “You said no one has been close to me, Your Grace. You were wrong.”
The King’s face darkened, becoming flat.
Salas covered his eyes with his hands, fingertips digging into the wetness there, wanting to block out the anger of the King. “He gave me bread,” Salas insisted in a small, choked voice.
“Shh…” The King hushed him gently, and then Salas was being embraced. He pressed his face to the hard, towering body, and tried to breathe. “Salas, I need you to listen to me, and you are going to accept it, do you understand?”
Salas stiffened, digging his face in deeper.
“The guard you speak of will receive punishment for what he did. Do you know why?” The King’s voice was a low, hateful growl, and Salas was unsure if the tone was directed at him or the nameless guard.
Because of this, he said nothing and shook his head.
King Jareth peeled Salas away from him and grabbed his shoulders in an unrelenting, yet still surprisingly soft, grip. “Because what he did was horrific andwrong. Things like that should not be done to you, Salas. Ever. And he will pay for it.”
Salas wiped more tears, frowning. Had the King misheard his story? Hadn’t he mentioned the bread?
Salas, not wanting to further enrage the man before him, only nodded in confusion, feigning understanding.
The King stared at him hard for a moment, as though searching for something. Salas could only blink back at him.
The silence dragged on for too long.
“And water,” he said softly, eventually, when the stare became too unbearable.
“What?”
“He also gave me water.”
When the King only continued to stare, Salas dropped his gaze. Finally, the breathy, agonized sigh of distraught and fury cooled his face as it left the King. “It seems your lesson isn’t over, little one.” King Jareth straightened, moving towards the door. “I’m taking care of this now. You’ll never see that man again. Go to sleep, Salas.”
After he left, the door shut with an audible ‘click.’ It firmly barred him from any understanding of the people of this country. With his spinning confusion, he paced the room. Of course, he was unable to sleep. Silly Jareth.
Instead, he was left alone with thoughts, which ripened like weeds choking out his knowledge of what good, positive actions looked like. The King seemed to think he was helping Salas with his cryptic words such as ‘horrific’ and ‘wrong,’ but all he was doing was leaving behind a sea of rot in Salas’ brain.
Even more worrisome was the conversation he had heard between the other witch, Beatrice, Tarick, and King Jareth.
