Chapter 1.

Kate gripped the steering wheel and stared out into the black night.

She had been on this road now for hours, mindlessly staring at the

gray pavement in front of her as she drove on. Her thoughts kept

drifting backwards in time, back to the days of her childhood as she

remembered her beloved Aunt Sarah.

Aunt Sarah...

The words brought to mind a wise old woman with dark brown hair and a

wrinkled face. She had been a wonderful aunt, and Kate had been

closer to her than she had her own mother. She recalled the many

times her parents would drop her off at Aunt Sarah's, and how exicted

she was to be there. The weekends spent with her aunt were the best

times of her childhood, when she would listen to the fanastic stories

her aunt claimed had really happened to her. Aunt Sarah was forever

telling tales that would awe any child: about the handsome Goblin

King, of her friends Hoggle and Ludo, of the Labyrinth itself. Kate

remembered the many nights her aunt would tuck her in bed, telling

the stories over and over again. Kate would ask all sorts of

questions; what did the Goblin King look like? Had she been

frightened? How did the ballroom song go again? And her aunt would

tell her everything with a small smile on her lips, as if the memory

took her back to another time and place - the time of her youth.

Even now, Kate could see herself in bed, covers pulled up tightly

under her chin. Aunt Sarah sat beside her, humming the haunting

ballroom tune. "But why didn't you stay?" she would ask her aunt.

Sarah would chuckle softly. "Because I didn't want him to rule me. I

wanted to rule myself. And because I was terribly stubborn."

"He was in love with you!" Kate would cry excitedly.

Her aunt would meerly shrug. "I was too young to understand at the

time. Even now, I don't know if he loved me or not. Can Goblin kings

love at all?"

And Kate would say that of course they could. They had to. It made

the story all the more wonderful thinking that he had.

"Well, I would have stayed with him," she would tell her aunt. "I

would have been his queen." And she meant it. To a girl of six, whose

parents never stopped fighting, whose home life was never peaceful

and happy, living in the Labyrinth sounded too good to be true. And

having the love of a Goblin king sounded like the best fairy tale she

had ever heard. She would go to sleepand dream that she herself was

in the crystal ballroom, dressed in a shimmering white gown and

dancing with Jareth.

Jareth.

Kate gripped the steering wheel tighter. He had been her dream. When

other girls had fantasized about boy rock bands and movie stars, she

had been dreaming of Jareth. As a young girl she had been sure she

was in love with him. And now...and now Kate was an adult, twenty-two

years old and much too mature to believe in such things as labyrinths

and goblin kings. The stories she had heard in childhood were just

that now - stories. They were nice memories, but however much she

wished them to be true, they simply were not.

It bothered Kate that her aunt believed them. She knew for a fact

that Aunt Sarah honestly thought she had gone to the Labyrinth when

she was fifteen, had defeated Jareth, and had come home to tell about

it. Most of the family said her to be a bit "eccentric" and a few

went so far as to call her "crazy." Had her aunt been mentally

unstable? Had she spent her life living in a fantasy world?

Kate kept on driving, and about an hour later she pulled in the

driveway of her aunt's home. It was a large two-story with enormous

trees looming over it. Kate spied her Uncle Toby's car parked beside

the house, and decided to pull up near it.

Uncle Toby had called her yesterday morning to tell her the sad news

of her aunt's death. Kate had cried the entire time she had packed

her belongings in her suitcases. She headed out around noon, and now,

a full day later, she had finally arrived. She stepped out of the car

and shivered as tiny flecks of snow began to fall.

She dreaded going inside and saying hello to everyone. She almost

wished she could sleep in her car and leave tomorrow afternoon

directly after the funeral. Taking a deep breath, she started for the

front door, pulling her gray wool coat tightly around her for added

warmth.

Kate didn't see the large oak tree in the front yard, nor did she see

the white owl perched in the top branch. He was watching her every

move, and didn't fly away until she had closed the door soundly

behind her.