Author Note: This story has been pulling at me for some months now, but the various bright bits and wiry pieces of it keep getting tangled like Christmas lights until I lose track of which end plugs in where! The story is not meant to be told in a straightforward fashion, but rather to weave around to its eventual destination like a ribbon through a braid of hair. I hope it works, but this is an experiment for me too! I'm not one for interrupting a story with notes, so until we reach the end I won't distract you again, though you may check my profile for updates and news. Enjoy!
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Prologue
"You have no power over me."
Her words echoed in the depths of the Labyrinth, but she was gone, returned home by that final crystal he released into the air.
Disappointment coursed through him, but for a fey creature, Jareth, the Goblin King, was surprisingly realistic. He never truly expected the teenage girl to choose him over her baby brother.
In owl form he briefly watched the revelry she enjoyed with her newfound friends and then launched back into the night sky, winging like a comet across its starry face.
He would be alone, to which he was accustomed, and the thought did not so much displease him as reassure him.
Alone.
That was something he understood, that was a feeling with which he was intimately acquainted. That was the very heartbeat of his existence, the shining mirror into which he gazed every day of his very long life.
No, he was not sorry to be alone again, or so he believed. Alone, after all, was an easy concept.
But he was wrong.
Alone would henceforth become strangely, unexpectedly, difficult.
***
Part One
I am the wind, and nothing more.
I am the wave, pushed toward the shore.
I am the shadow, gone Underground.
I am the answer yet to be found.
Now.
Jareth was in a very old part of the Goblin Castle; a very old, very unstable part of the goblin castle. He walked slowly down an airy corridor, gingerly stepping over gaping holes in the floor and running the long gloved fingers of one hand lightly over the crumbling walls. After a time, he stepped across the rubble of a collapsed doorframe and entered an empty, roofless room. Along the walls, now gray with age, could still be seen bits and pieces of once-glorious paintings of the Labyrinth. In the center of the room, the floor was sunken and the footing was treacherous. Choosing his path carefully, Jareth skirted one edge and came to a large doorway that long ago served as entrance to a grand balcony but opened now only onto the night. With a sigh, he rested an arm on the stones surrounding the opening, one booted foot braced on a small ledge. This door had been built like a window, with a wide ledge for stepping or sitting and remarkably, it was still largely intact.
Jareth's memories of this room were vague. It largely predated his tenure as King, but he had played here as a child. The tremendous magic that had been loosed following her departure years ago had shaken the castle to its very core. This wing had suffered the most, but he hadn't considered it worth the energy to restore. Though his own parents had preferred a castle full of people and parties, Jareth kept much more to himself. The great, lonely stretch of years following their deaths had seen much left unused, especially since others of his own kind were increasingly occupied in the preservation of their own fragile realms.
Still, that catastrophe had triggered something within him, and he found himself visiting this wing, this room, with greater frequency. He sighed again, a soft sound in the dark, and removed one of his gloves. There was a place on the stone in front of him, worn smooth by the attentions of time and countless other caresses, that molded itself pleasingly beneath his bare hand. He closed his eyes and relaxed his palm and fingers into the cool stone. In the blink of an eye, he was awash in memories. His head lolled back against the opposite side of the doorway as images swept across his mind like wind before a rainstorm.
Candles were burning everywhere. A swirl of fabrics as elegant ladies and gentlemen moved about the room. Music, a tune his mind couldn't quite recall, wove about the undulating bodies like bathwater, warm and inviting. Small brown figures darted in and out of the melee, laughing and chattering happily as they ran about on various errands. And in a corner, a young boy sulked into a velvet pillow, his blonde hair falling into his eyes as he shook his head in vehement disagreement with the dapper fox in front of him.
A change of scene: the same boy, older now, lying on his back in one of the deeper castle gardens. His blonde hair and burgundy cloak spill out over the soft moss on which he lies, and his chest rises and falls evenly. Somewhere behind him, a dwarf gardener is clumsily making repairs to a section of garden wall. The wall is made of stones of various shapes and sizes all cobbled together, and something (or someone!) has made a hole in it large enough for the dwarf to fit his lumpy head. Something possessed him to try this very thing, and finding it no easy task to remove again, he set about pulling and cursing and causing a shower of smaller stones to rain down noisily on the paving stones at his feet. This same noise caused the sleeping boy to awaken and…
He is much, much older now, a jaded king playing cat-and-mouse with a very young girl in a room full of stairs. He's let this one get further than any before her, dangerously far, though he's confident in his ability to win her love, her obedience. Her fear, he already has, but as he gets ready to play his final hand, he abruptly realizes it will not be enough. The great Labyrinthine chime sounds.
Too late! Too late!
With a gasp, he pulls his hand away from the wall as though burned.
***
Elsewhere
"I ain't doin' it, Didymus, and that's final!"
In a small clearing near a ramshackle cottage at the Labyrinth's entrance, Hoggle, Royal Gardener and Steward of the Moving Arch, was in a snit.
Sir Didymus, Knight of the Labyrinth and Guardian of the Bog of Eternal Stench, trailed doggedly after his friend as he prepared to begin another day's pointless effort in the brambles and vines that called this area home.
"Friend Hoggle!" he cried again, "you must surely see the reason in my entreaty! His Majesty is not himself, else he would surely have…"
Hoggle whipped around suddenly and brought the small fox up short, bushy eyebrows lowered over eyes dark with anger, and something else. "Jareth's the same as 'e ever was, thinkin' only of himself same as usual."
His derisive snort caused Didymus' eyes to open wide, but the little knight was silent as he continued, "Never did see 'im consider anyone else, save once, and look where that got 'im! Pffft! Pah!" Hoggle spit upon the ground, narrowly missing his own worn leather shoe, and resumed walking, leaving his friend to hurry once again in his wake.
The little fox's face was full of optimism, which pained the surly dwarf to see. He liked the knight, and under other circumstances would happily forbear any inane, eccentric request that the other felt compelled to make, but not this time. This time, Hoggle intended to put his foot, his feet, firmly down and not be persuaded by his friend's wily charms. Let Didymus chatter all morning, it was one and the same to him. No reason why he should let the gardens gain a greater foothold into chaos than they had already, just to humor that request. Bah! He'd have to be hit on the head with one of Ludo's rocks first. Determinedly, Hoggle marched on.
***
Nearby
"I don't like it, dearie, no I don't."
Within a damp wall, something squirmed and stuck its brightly tufted head out a small opening for the briefest of looks and a deep breath of air before tucking itself swiftly out of sight once more.
Retreating within, it's voice was softer than before. "There's an ill wind blowing, lovey, sure as anything. Something's a'brewing."
Outside, a dozen googly-eyed stalks of gander-weed shifted restlessly and were still once more.
***
Above
Sarah was restless.
Work done for the day, she wandered a quiet park alone, walking quickly in the autumn chill with her hands stuffed into the pockets of her long denim coat. Her feet in soft leather boots kicked at dry leaves in her path as her thoughts skipped here and there like butterflies in a summer breeze, refusing to alight for more than a moment on any single thought. She stepped off of the paved path and onto a narrow dirt one that ran between two large oak trees into the thick woods that made this particular park so quiet, and so lonely. None of the normal playgrounds or tennis courts could be found here, just a paved path running through a small corner of an immense acreage of very old woods and a few unmapped trails that criss-crossed its expanse for those who desired solitude and reflection.
The second her feet found the dirt trail and the shadows of the great trees closed overhead, she could feel herself relax and her thoughts begin to settle. More and more frequently, she found herself here of late. She'd walk for hours before some inner alarm clock warned her of the advancing hour, and then she'd reluctantly leave and head for home.
But for tonight, the hour was still early and she felt cheerful at the thought of a long hike to clear away the debris of the day.
In the shadows of the thickly carpeted forest floor, small brown shapes darted, their small feet making almost no sound save for the occasional dry leaf crunched underfoot or brittle twig snapped in that same fashion. Every time Sarah walked these trails, more of the little forms accompanied her, but if she was aware of them, she gave no indication of it that they could detect.
Tonight, they grew bolder than ever before, scampering up behind her on the path only to jump away into the underbrush with muffled, cackling laugher. Sarah never paused, but walked resolutely ahead, a thin melody rising from her lips like mist on a damp morning. In the dark of the forest, she was doing something she would never allow herself to do anywhere else, something that absorbed all of her attention. She was remembering.
***
Then
The noise from their celebration should have caused her parents to come running, should have disturbed Toby into a resentful shriek, but it didn't.
When Sarah slipped out of her room for a quiet breath in the hallway, the silence was absolute. Other than the light spilling beneath her door, no sign existed that would alert the household to the revelry taking place behind her. She moved without sound down the hallway to the bathroom, pausing for just a moment outside the bedroom her parents and Toby shared. All was still and dark, and only a small pool of light from a nightlight above the sink penetrated the blackness. Sarah moved into the bathroom and closed the door with a soft click, her breath exhaling with a barely audible whoosh that betrayed her feelings of exhaustion and relief. She rested her hands, palms down, on the cool marble surface of the vanity and cautiously peered at her own reflection in the large mirror hung above it. In the dim light from the nightlight, most of her body was lost to shadow and only her pale face shone whitely within, seeming to float in the blackness like some lonely moon.
For what felt like hours, but was probably only moments, she gazed at herself and breathed slowly, thoughts ranging back over the events of the evening. Of course, thirteen hours hadn't really passed. She had clearly been away almost no time at all.
How did I get back here? She was so grateful to be there, so grateful for the steadying presence of her father and stepmother, her parents, in the next room, and yes, for Toby too; especially for Toby. I've been so very, very foolish.
An image flashed across her mind: mocking blue eyes beneath strangely slanting brows. Suddenly, she very much wanted to be back in her brightly lit room with her new friends.
She left the bathroom quickly and retreated to the door of her own room, but then stopped, hesitating, with one hand gripping the doorknob. Light still spilled out from beneath the closed door and as before, there was no noise. She turned the knob and pushed the door open, instantly sure what she would find.
The room was empty.