ONE
Lady Sarah Williams of the Aboveground –
Congratulations on your recent triumph over the ancient Labyrinth.
In acknowledgement of your rare feat, we wish to reward you with a prize worthy of the Champion of the Labyrinth. We hereby offer you one wish of your choice, to be granted at no cost to yourself or your loved ones.
Please contact King Jareth of the Goblin Kingdom, Keeper of the Labyrinth, to discuss your wish at your earliest convenience.
The letter is unsigned, and trying to figure out just who might be responsible for this missive keeps Sarah awake for four consecutive nights.
It's only been a week since her adventure in the Labyrinth, but already she can feel her memories of that evening growing… fuzzy around the edges, like the precious few pictures and newspaper clippings she has of her mother, the ones she relegated to a small chest the day after her return. She can feel her adventure slipping from her mind like sand through one's fingers, and with every passing day she grows more desperate to keep the magic alive, to keep her life from going back to what it was before.
When she realizes it's been less than two weeks and she's already struggling to remember her friends' voices, Sarah knows exactly what she has to do.
Forget the potential repercussions, forget the fact that this might be a trap, forget the fear that grips her heart at the thought of dealing with the Goblin King once more. The idea of having magic grace her life only for her to forget about it entirely scares Sarah more than any of those things, and she's saying the words before she can fully realize what she's about to get herself into.
"I wish the Goblin King would come and talk to me."
.
.
.
As it turns out, being given the chance to wish for anything can be quite overwhelming.
Their first meeting is spent outlining the limitations of her reward (of which there are very, very few) and the potential consequences (practically non-existent, the Goblin King assures her). There might be a condition or two attached to her wish, but that would depend upon the nature of the request itself. By the time Sarah has thoroughly questioned her once-nemesis about this wish, it's late and she's way too tired to think of something.
The second time they meet, Jareth – he insists – offers to take her back to the Labyrinth. It wouldn't count as her wish, merely an invitation extended from Keeper to Champion for her to properly learn all about the magical entity she has now forged a lifelong bond with. Sarah has just enough self-restraint to secure Jareth's word that he'll send her back to her own time and space the minute she asks him to before she's eagerly travelling between worlds and running around the Labyrinth to seek out her friends. They don't do much talking that time – Jareth trailing behind her with the occasional long-suffering sigh as she tracks down all of her friends – but something tells Sarah he doesn't really mind. She even catches the occasional fond smile on him whenever he doesn't realize she's looking, but somehow she finds a way to convince herself that it must have been a trick of the light or something.
Finally, the day of their third meeting arrives. Summer's nearly over, and it's only a matter of days before Sarah will have to go back to school. She's determined to settle the matter of her wish before then, to know what the year ahead will have in store for her. Jareth transports her to a remote section of the Labyrinth, one that's entirely inaccessible by anyone other than the Keeper and Champion, and offers to share the true nature of the Labyrinth to buy Sarah a little more time.
"What's beyond the Labyrinth?" Sarah asks instead, wondering if there's even such a thing. It feels like the structure stretches on forever, or perhaps it's ever growing at a rate faster than anyone can possibly travel and that's why it feels endless.
"In this world? Nothing," Jareth tells her cryptically, offering her the tiniest hint of a smile when she huffs at him in irritation, somewhat accustomed to his manner of speaking by now. He doesn't charge for information, but it doesn't exactly come at no cost either – the price is dedication and time, and the willingness to pry and question and piece together seemingly unrelated answers until they form a complete picture. In some ways, every conversation with Jareth is like a game of twenty questions.
It takes Sarah a while to make sense of his first clue, but she gets there eventually. "So you're saying the Labyrinth leads to other worlds?"
Jareth practically beams at her in approval. "Precisely. The Labyrinth seems endless to the naked eye, but if you look closer you might see a flicker here and there, in places where it appears to stretch beyond your field of vision," He offers her his hand, and suddenly they're in his castle, standing before a truly magnificent view of the Labyrinth. "Anything beyond the flicker is no longer entirely the Labyrinth; the flicker is the veil between worlds – the doorway, if you will – and beyond that is another world entirely. You see, that is all the Labyrinth – and the Underground, to a certain extent – really is: a gateway to all the worlds your kind sealed away when you drove magic out from the Above."
Sarah takes a closer look. Closer, and closer, and closer, until she's squinting so hard her forehead is lined with effort. And slowly, the flickers reveal themselves to her, shimmering spots all over the endless structure she's grown to love and admire and fear.
"So all of those flickers – like that one and that one and that one –" She points them out at random, picking the ones with the most intense concentration of shimmers. "All of them are gateways to different worlds?" Her voice is rising with excitement, with exhilaration, with anticipation.
"All those, and a hundred thousand more," Jareth nods.
"A hundred thousand more," Sarah echoes faintly, her mind struggling to wrap itself around the concept as she surveys the shimmering Labyrinth once more. It seems like another flicker reveals itself to her with every passing second, and Sarah grows more certain of her decision with every new and unknown world that shimmers invitingly at her.
She turns to Jareth with her shoulders held high and her mind made up. "I know what I want."
"Are you sure?" The Goblin King asks, equal parts teasing and serious, one eyebrow raised in question.
Sarah nods. "I'm sure. I want to travel to all of those worlds, to see all the wonderful and strange things the universe has to offer."
Jareth studies her for the longest while, tilting his head in a birdlike manner at some point. Finally, he seems to find whatever it is he was searching for in her determined eyes. "Very well. However, the universe is limitless and your wish is not. I can offer you thirteen years of uninhibited access to the gateways of the Labyrinth, and nothing more."
A hundred thousand worlds in thirteen years. It'll be a challenge, but Sarah has accomplished equally impossible-sounding tasks in significantly less time. After all, that's how she got herself into this situation in the first place. "Deal," She decides, offering Jareth her hand.
"One last thing," He tells her, eyeing her proffered hand with a gleam in his eyes that betrays his amusement at her impatience. "A condition, if you will. I am to accompany you on all of your travels."
Sarah narrows her eyes at him warily, to which the Goblin King holds up one hand in a wordless request for peace.
"I swear to you, right here and right now, with the Labyrinth as my witness, that I have no ulterior motives, no malicious intent. So long as your wish is being granted by my powers, you are under my care, and I cannot allow any harm to come to you. Some of these worlds will be dangerous for a mortal – hostile, even. I only ask that you allow me to accompany you to ensure your safety."
Sarah's known the guy for less than three months – hell, she doesn't even know if he's a guy or a goblin or some kind of faerie – but she trusts him. Jareth is many things, but a liar is not one of them. So she raises her hand once more, holds it out to him while her eyes maintain unwavering eye contact.
"Do we have an agreement, Goblin King?"
Jareth smiles, a slow curve of his lips and a twinkle in his eyes. He removes one glove and curls his bare fingers around Sarah's hand.
"I believe we do, my dear Champion."
So I've had this idea in the back of my mind for a little over a year now, and I've been waiting for the perfect time to sit down and write what was originally supposed to be a really long, really elaborate and detailed and whimsical one-shot. However, I realized I'm never going to find the time to do that and my attention span is crap, so now it's going to be three or four chapters of snippets instead. I hope you'll like it anyway. Feel free to drop by the comments below; I could use some human interaction that isn't work- or family-related.
Psst – I suck at maintaining my FFN account so if you wanna read the next chapter the minute it's done, go find me over at AO3. I'm E_Salvatore.
P.S: the title's from Florence + The Machine's "Strangeness and Charm".