Larksong and Goblins

The hall was full of ghosts. It might not have looked like it to all the other people milling around, but Sarah could see them. The school was just as she remembered it - the hall a high, arching dungeon, the walls solid claustrophobia skinned with slime.

The people around her looked like fairies and elves, and mermaids singing sweet songs to drive away the darkness, but they were really snub-nosed goblins, and gargoyles that leered at Sarah where she stood, clutching her handbag and umbrella. Outside of the arrow slit windows a dazzling claw of lightning tore the sky apart. The slit windows were so abundant that they looked like thousands of sly eyes. Sarah was drowning under the weight of all those eyes. One would think that so many windows would let in light, but on the contrary, the windows let in the darkness. The sun and the moon were the same: the darkest shadows in the land of shadows. Sometimes, a window would shrink, and then grow back somewhere else, to allow for maximum darkness in the hall.

Above Sarah's head,, hung the grisliest thing she'd ever seen. It swung and fluttered in the moan of wind that swept bitterly through the hall. It was a sign, and on it, written in blood no doubt, read those treacherous words:
"Welcome back to Larksong School, class of 1992!"
As if larks would sing here, in the place that had crushed Sarah's soul for five years! Only the carrion crow would sing here. And welcome? Yes, welcome back to the deep, dank dungeon they're calling Larksong School.

Lucy and Benjamin came up beside her, their presence warm and comforting.
'Don't worry, Sarah,' Lucy said brightly. 'The darkness is outside!'
'No,' Sarah muttered. 'It's all around!'
'Excuse me?' some unfamiliar voice said. 'Are you all right? Lost?'
And there he was. His face a pure, sculpted, marble beauty. His face shone, and an aura of radiance made everything around him dance and glitter. His voice was different, of course. He was older - it had been fourteen years, after all.

He seemed to kill the darkness. Sarah heard several of the goblins whine in pain.
'Tobias Sapphire?' she said, her voice rich with wonder.
He raised one eyebrow questioningly.
'Uh, sorry,' he said. 'You must have got mixed up. My name's Toby Safe.'
Of course. She'd forgotten he had another name. His "real" name. But he was Tobias Sapphire to her.
'Toby!' a goblin with long blonde curls called from across the room. 'Toby, come over here!'
'Excuse me,' Tobias Sapphire mumbled, smiling.
And then he delved into the crowd, and the hall was dark once more.
'Don't worry, Sarah,' Benjamin told her.
'No, stop telling me not to worry!' Sarah cried.
A goblin nearby gave her an odd look.

Sarah elbowed her way through a group of gargoyles, who snarled and showed her their sharp teeth, but Lucy and Benjamin followed her as they always did. They merged into one person as they ran after her: an all-powerful Benja-Lucy with glistening, crystalline eyes.

She finally stopped, when she'd reached the wall at the other end of the hall. She leaned against it, and felt its icy sliminess through her clothes. Benja-Lucy separated again, and stood on either side of her.
'Don't worry,' said Benjamin.
'Don't worry,' echoed Lucy.
They used to say that a lot. Over and over again: don't worry, don't worry, don't worry. While she cried and the goblins stared and sniggered like weasels.
'Lovely weather,' a gargoyle murmured vaguely whilst passing Sarah.
Sarah looked out of the windows on every side, and all she could see was the crash and howl of the wolf that blew the wind, and the snarl of the beast that cried its rain onto the earth.

Yes, fierce and fiery earth. Whip your flames into a whirlwind of darkness and ensnare me, oh yes!

Beside her, Lucy gasped.
'Look! Here he comes again!' she said to Sarah.
Sarah saw him at the same time as Lucy. Tobias Sapphire, walking towards her and leaving sparks in his wake.
'Hello again,' he said, stopping right in front of Sarah. 'I assume you were in my class in 1992? Only I don't recognise you...'
He wouldn't. Sarah remembered hiding from him - in cupboards and the girls' toilets. And the girls in the toilets would giggle behind their hands at her. Goblin girls with horns and fangs.

Sarah remembered that she felt so small that she thought she was going to disappear. The dungeon seemed bigger than ever then.

After Sarah had left the dungeon, Benjamin and Lucy had faded and become flitting spirits, but they'd never completely disappeared, and now that the dungeon surrounded her once more, they were back in force.
'I'm Sarah Eliott,' Sarah told Tobias Sapphire.
'I don't know why I don't remember you,' Tobias Sapphire said. 'You're very pretty.'
Sarah remembered crouching in dark tunnels, and the raucous laughter of the goblins passing by as they yelled 'Brace-face! Specky, spotty Sarah!'

Then it suddenly struck home that Tobias Sapphire had just said she was pretty. She rejected his comment almost straight away - he must have been making fun of her. Nobody thought that specky, spotty Sarah Eliott was very pretty. But, in spite of herself...
'Really?' she asked timidly.
Tobias Sapphire smiled and nodded sincerely. Sarah thought she'd burst from happiness. She'd been dreaming of this moment for so long...

But then a glimpse of her past came to light. She remembered Tobias Sapphire passing by her hand-in-hand with a different pretty, air-headed girl every day, and ignoring poor specky, spotty, brace-face Sarah Eliott. But she shook off the thought, and smiled at the grinning angel in front of her.
'So, how would you like to go out on a date sometime with me?' asked Tobias Sapphire.
But a niggling thought came to the forepoint of Sarah's brain again, and her smile turned sour on her lips. That one memory where her precious Tobias Sapphire had joined in the chant of 'brace-face! Specky, spotty, smelly Sarah!'

And suddenly, what was this? In front of her, Tobias' sculpted features were morphing into the stunted features of a goblin. The king of the goblins. And behind him, the darkness was fading away, and the dungeon turning into a sunlit school hall, where birds twittered and swooped outside, and ordinary people - former students - grinned and gathered. Tobias Sapphire...no! Toby Safe! Toby Safe was the only goblin left. Beside Sarah, Benjamin and Lucy were gone, forever. And Sarah pushed through the crowd, and out through the door into a new world where the wolf of wind and the beast of rain were still and silent, and the sun shone and there were so many prospects floating around for her to catch!