She'd been having dreams about the Labyrinth again. He was rarely in them. Most of the time, she was simply wandering, discovering new secrets and creatures.
But it troubled her that she still thought about the Labyrinth at all. Here she was, a young woman of twenty, living in her own apartment, (okay, so her dad did help with the rent), and she still hadn't left IT behind. She still hadn't gotten away.
Even though she felt like she had, she hadn't. He had let her go, but he hadn't disappeared. She never spoke his name, for fear he'd show up. Or maybe, she was more afraid he wouldn't appear. That would mean it was gone. She'd never be able to go back.
She got up that morning, eyes still clouded with passages and that strange glitter-slime that coated everything, and proceeded to go about her life, like usual.
She had thought that giving away Toby to him and taking him back had been all she needed to do to grow up. And she had grown up, become very mature from that surreal event.
Now, she wasn't so sure it had actually happened. She didn't think it was real. She was afraid it wasn't, so she never mentioned it.
She showered, drove to campus, and went to her classes, but wasn't really there. She was still thinking of him and his kingdom. His goblins and his nameless creatures. His voice. Calling her. She heard it in her dreams, surely, and couldn't recall what he had said, only the way he had said it.
When she got back to her little home she dropped to the couch and promptly took a nap. It was her regular Tuesday routine, considering she had a night class and would sleep through it otherwise.
She was there again, just like that. This time, she was going to focus on the details, and commit them to memory, to convince herself that any time she had been in the Labyrinth had been dreams.
She was wearing the clothes she wore when she first came here, and her hair was the same length. Her body seemed to be the same height and weight as when she was here as a teenager.
"So, this is a dream. None of it was real."
"It's as real as you or me."
The voice had come from what first appeared to be a young boy, sitting atop the wall across from her.
Sarah looked closer and saw it was in fact a girl, about her age, or at least her age in the dream. She had short hair, delicate features and was dressed like some sort of 1920's Libertine. Sarah thought about what she had discussed in her 'Feminist Theory' class that day.
The liberation of women of the 1920's through fashion. Women wearing trousers, like this one. Her outfit was like she had taken a man's suit and tailored it. A button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a formfitting vest and knickerbockers. And socks up past her knees, and old shoes crusted with sparkling mud.
"No. I'm just dreaming. Toby was never taken by goblins. How absurd." She laughed quietly at herself.
"You are asleep right now, but this isn't a dream."
"Oh, then what is it? Some sort of magical dimension?" Sarah suppressed a laugh.
"Not quite. You get here not by dreaming, but by being asleep. You've been before and part of you still wishes you'd stayed."
"No, I wanted to go home. I wanted to save Toby and leave."
"But deep down, one part of you, Sarah, isn't it, wanted to stay here."
She shook her head. Sarah wasn't that selfish…was she? No, no part of her had wanted to be there any longer than she had to, barring the fact that she had made such wonderful friends; she didn't belong in the Goblin King's world. She belonged in the real world, where she promptly turned over a new leaf and began to grow up.
"Thinking about it?"
"I didn't want to stay here at all."
"Well, he still wants you. That's the only other reason. Me, I chose to stay."
"What happened to you?"
"I never saw my family again, my little sister was turned into a goblin and Jareth forgot about me in a decade. He's got one, one of us, for each decade you know. You were the eighties. I was the twenties. He takes us, us headstrong little women and dazzles and frightens us. For as long as there has been time."
"I wasn't the only one?" She said this without any trace of jealousy. She was, instead, remarkably curious.
"Was there every any thought that you were?"
"The story…"
"Left out quite a heap of Jareth's life. It only told one story. After all, it was only one book. I chose to stay, that would be a completely different book."
"Why would you do that?"
"I thought I loved him."
"Did you really?" Sarah felt a profound sadness for this poor girl. Her family, dead and gone, her sister a little servile monster, and her trapped in her own selfishness for an eternity.
"Really, I was just looking for a place to hide. People weren't the same in my day. I was pelted with rocks and nearly arrested just for wearing pants."
"Just for wearing pants?" Sarah asked, smiling and skeptical.
"Well, I might've been helping out with a suffrage protest. On private property."
"But you were willing to walk away from all of it? From your parents?"
"Parents who resented and feared the changing times and their own daughter for changing with them? A time of misunderstood, brilliant women relegated to cooking and squeezing out children?"
"I guess it's pretty different. My life wasn't bad at all. I just had to watch my brother every weekend."
"And realizing it wasn't bad was what made you free." She slid down the wall and held out a hand to Sarah.
She shook hands with the girl from the twenties.
"There are loads of us here, Sarah. We never get older, we never get sick, and we will never die. We're still here, because it was better than what we'd come from. Get out while you can. Forget about Jareth, move on and keep living."
"But the Labyrinth—"
The girl sighed deeply, knowing she was never to disclose what had been revealed to her in the utmost secrecy.
"This place isn't just a place. The Labyrinth is Jareth. His mind, or his heart. I'm not sure which."
"How is that possible?"
The girl's lips moved, but Sarah heard instead the electronic buzzing of her night class alarm. She felt her cheeks, damp and salty, and knew she would never dream of the Labyrinth again.