A Shared Burden
By: Tallulah
She stood uncertainly at an unmarked crossroads. The Labyrinth stretched out in front of her, some unknown particle in the odd stones of its walls glinting in the pale sunlight. She chewed on her lip, debating her next move. Should she continue forward or take one of these turns? She looked up at her ultimate goal. So far away that its details were shrouded by a thin haze, the castle stood in malignant majesty far above the walls that confined her to her task – her punishment for having wished Lizzy away to the goblins.
"Eeny meeny miny mo," she said finally, and lacking any other guiding factor, turned left…and nearly tripped over the boy.
"Oh, hello..." She hesitated, not sure of what to make of the sad figure. "Who are you?"
"Hello," he said miserably, looking up at her with tear-stained cheeks from where he sat slumped at the foot of the wall. "I'm no-one." He looked back down and sniffled disconsolately.
Forgetting to be cautious in her happiness at seeing another person, Claire knelt down next to him. He appeared to be roughly her own age, fourteen or so, with a shock of shaggy brown hair that brushed the grubby collar of his once-white shirt. "Are you trying to get to the castle?" She asked. "Have you uh…lost someone?"
His face was pale and haggard. "Yes, I…I've lost my brother. Can you help me find him?" His voice was plaintive, his brown eyes beseeching.
"I don't know," she confessed. "I'm a bit lost myself. I'm trying to get to the castle beyond the Goblin City. I wished…that is, my sister's there and I want to take her home."
The boy nodded. "My brother's there too. The King said if I can get to the castle, he'll let him go, otherwise…
"He'll turn your brother into a goblin?"
"Yeah, yeah, that's what he said. Um…you too?"
"Me too," she admitted with a grimace. Her face lit with an idea. "Do you want…I mean, maybe we could work together…you know, two heads are better than one and all. What do you think?"
"Really?" the boy said, "you'd help me?"
"Sure," she replied. "You'd be helping me too. Come on." She stood and extended her hand. The boy took it warily, his fingers cold to the touch, and allowed her to pull him upright.
"So, which way?" She wondered aloud, turning from side to side as the boy brushed himself off and surreptitiously wiped away any lingering tears.
"I'm not sure which is the right way," he said, "but I can tell you which is the wrong way." He pointed down the path Claire had just chosen for herself, "I went that way – there's no way out. It's just a bunch of dead ends."
"Are you sure?" she asked, peering past him. "I mean, some of these places have tricks and secret passages."
"I'm sure," he declared confidently, but the look he threw over his shoulder was anxious. "Trust me, you don't want to go that way." He shuddered delicately.
"Okay," she agreed readily, unwilling to chance an encounter with anything more unpleasant than what she had already stumbled across on her own. "See," she said with a smile, "this working together thing is going great already."
He returned her smile, hesitantly. "How about we go that way?" He suggested, pointing the opposite direction of her original heading and then shrugged. "At least it heads towards the castle, and neither of us has gone that way yet."
"Right you are," she said, feeling more cheerful than she had in hours. A burdened shared is a burden halved they said and she felt lighter already. "Lead on."
"So, how'd it happen for you?" she ventured to ask as they started along their way. He looked at her quizzically so she elaborated. "I was supposed to go to the mall with my friends and then my mom sprung this whole babysitting thing on me at the last second…I guess I just got angry at Liz. I mean, she's the youngest of us, years younger than my brother Baxter and me, so it's not really her fault, but…" She trailed off and then sighed. "Well, there's really no 'but' about it is there? I mean, she's only two. It's not her fault I got stuck babysitting…what about you?"
"Ah, something like that, really. I was supposed to watch my brother and he just cries all the time, you know? I guess it was pretty stupid…" He picked his way over a fallen section of wall and she clambered up after him.
"Wow," she said, from the top of the small pile, gazing off at the castle in the distance. "That place just never seems to get any closer, does it?"
He reached a hand up to help her down, his eyes faraway as he gazed up at the menacing edifice. "I'm not sure I want it to get closer, you know? I mean, I want to save my brother. I don't want to give him up, but I just don't know what to expect when we get there." He stopped for a moment and looked at her with frightened eyes. "What do you think is waiting for us in the Goblin City? I've seen stuff here…well, stuff I never want to even dream about, much less run into again." He held onto her hand as he started walking, leading the way.
"What have you seen?" she asked, curious despite herself. It frightened her that he was so frightened.
"I almost got eaten by some giant man-eating plants," he said with a shaky laugh. "I thought I'd never get out of there. Then this…creature…I don't even know how to describe it – it had a body like a bull, but I think it's head was an eagle or something – anyway, it had claws like a bird, but hooves for feet and it charged at me and I had to climb up into some trees to get away from it. I thought I was dead for sure." They came to a fork in the path and he glanced back at her, "This way?"
She nodded, and swallowed hard, saying a quick prayer that they didn't go back down any of the ways that he had gone. She looked up and realized she could no longer see the castle from where they were. She pulled on his hand to get him to stop. "Hey, which way is the castle?"
He looked around and frowned. "I don't know. Here, let me take a look." He let go of her hand and climbed up a few feet off the ground, finding chinks in the Labyrinth walls as footholds and craned his head. "Yeah, we're okay." He jumped back down and pointed ahead. It's this way and then off to the right." He smiled at her with something like relief on his face. "I think we're making good time!"
"How long has it been for you?" she asked as they again began picking their way through the maze.
"How long…?"
"How long have you been here? You got thirteen hours, right?"
"Oh, yeah. Yeah, he gave me thirteen hours, but…I'm really not sure how long it's been, maybe five? How about you?"
"I wish I could tell for sure," she said with a frown. "Maybe nine? I'd wish I had my watch, but I don't think time works the same way here."
"No," he agreed, "I don't think it does."
"Why do you think he does this?" she ventured after they had gone on in silence for a few minutes. "Why steal babies?"
"Do you really think he steals them?"
"Well, yeah," she snorted. "What would you call it?"
"Well, I didn't say he doesn't take them, but really they are Igiven/I to him, aren't they?"
She gave him a bewildered look.
"I'm not saying, 'hooray for the Goblin King' or anything'," he said, seeing her expression. "I'm just trying to see things from his point of view."
She stopped. "Why would you want to do that?"
He looked exasperated. "Haven't you ever heard of 'knowing your enemy'?" he asked. "That's all I meant."
"Oh…okay." Still slightly puzzled, she followed him through a series of short turns. She was starting to feel dizzy – everything in this place looked the same. "Are you sure you know where we're going?" she asked finally.
He gave a mirthless laugh, "No, I'm not sure. I'm just going 'castleward'." He gestured overhead in the direction that the castle lay. "Let me know if you want to go a different way. I'm open to suggestions."
Claire sighed. "I guess you know as much as I do. Let's keep going."
They continued on down the dirty twists and turns of the crumbling network, lapsing into silence as the gloom and exercise got to them. They came to another intersection and after a moment of hesitation her guide turned left. She followed him, but as she did so, something caught her eye and she stopped, unsure of what it had been.
"Just a second," she called ahead, getting her companion's attention. "I think we're lost."
"No we're not?" he called back irritably. "Come on, if we're going to make it to the castle, we need to keep moving."
"No," she said softly, more to herself than anything else. "Something isn't right here." She looked around, hoping desperately that something would jiggle loose whatever it was that was bothering her.
The boy came back and grabbed her hand, "Will you come on? My brother and your sister are waiting!"
She pulled her hand loose with a cry as the realization hit her. She looked at the boy in growing horror as the thing that had been niggling at the back of her mind fell into place. He stood directly in font of her, a puzzled expression on his face while just above his head growing into the very stones of the Labyrinth itself was a single red rose. It was faultless, each petal an object of velvet perfection, flawlessly formed into a thing of unearthly beauty. She was riveted, not by the flower itself, but by what this exact flower meant. It was the beginning. The first thing she had seen after the first turn she had taken upon entering into this god-forsaken place was the rose. Not just any rose, or a rose just like this. It was this self-same rose at which she was currently gazing in open-mouthed shock.
"No," she said breathlessly, as though she had been punched. "No."
The boy turned around to see what she was staring at, his brow furrowed in confusion. When he saw the rose, he laughed. Laughed! And then turned back to her, his blue eyes dancing…no wait, not blue eyes, only one. The other was nearly black and fathomless. They had been brown before, she was sure of it. She felt cold all over and realized she was shaking. "Y…y…you."
The boy started laughing again, and this time he kept laughing and suddenly, he wasn't the boy any longer, but the face and person of the man she had come to fear and loathe as no other. She knew at that moment that for the rest of her life, her each and every nightmare would be of this instant. This all encompassing terror and revulsion that paralyzed her completely as the Goblin King laughed down at her leaving her sick with fear and disgust – at him, at herself. She sank to her knees. "No."
"Oh, yes." He knelt down next to her with that wicked smile on his pale face. "Really, my dear girl, did no one ever tell you not to trust strangers?"
She said nothing. What could she say? He was right.
He walked around her, preening at his own excellent performance. "Never have I had such an excellent time, leading one of you astray." He laughed again in delight and then leaned close to her so that his cool breath brushed her cheek. "You were no challenge at all, my dear, none at all. Your feeble efforts on behalf of your little sister were in vain. You will go back home to your life of selfishness and conceit, but your sister stays with us. She is mine." He stood and pointed at the familiar clock which now adorned the far wall, just below the tell-tale rose, laughter in his voice. "Though, there's still time, should you care to use it." It read 12:30 – no chance at all of making it through the web of the Labyrinth in thirty minutes.
She was in shock she knew. Her breathing was shallow and she felt cold and clammy. "How…how could…you."
"Me?" He looked offended. "Spoiled child, I never forced you to follow me, you chose to take the easy road and let someone else do the hard work for you. You have learned nothing from your time here." He cocked his head to the side. "Lizzy, is it? I've no doubt that she'll make a fine goblin and a welcome addition to my little family."
Still, she could find nothing to say, no retort, no reply.
The Goblin King reached up and plucked the perfect rose from its tenuous hold on the Labyrinth wall and brought the blossom to his face, the flower a blood red against his pale visage. Taking a deep breath, he smiled as he began to fade away, the echo of his voice all that remained.
"Such a pity."
A/N: This was written as a response to the 'Talk is Cheap' challenge in the Labyfic LiveJournal community some time ago. One of my early attempts at dialog.