started: 12/12/2018

completed: 12/15/2018, with minor editing on 12/22/2018

Disclaimer: The Walking Dead is the brainchild of Robert Kirkland. The Labyrinth belongs to Jim Henson.

Note: This can be considered a sequel to my drabble "to fit in the red dress." It obviously goes AU after that, and it's not necessary to read the first fic to understand this one.

One Last Wish in a Dying World

(A crossover of The Walking Dead and The Labyrinth.)

by Lucidscreamer

The sun's setting, and Sophia is still lost in woods that are far more frightening than the ones Carol remembers from when she was a child. She remembers playing until it got too dark to see in the woods behind her Mamaw's house, chasing her cousins through the pines or picking blackberries and muscadines in the late-summer heat.

Now, the trees hide things more dangerous than copperheads and rattlers, and Sophia is all alone. Carol casts the beam from her flashlight into the gathering shadows, but only manages to startle an owl from its perch on a sweet gum at the edge of the grassy vergeance. It swoops past her on white wings as silent as a ghost, and the shape of it stirs a fragment of memory, long-forgotten until now, of a tale her grandmother used to tell her.

She remembers sitting in the porch swing of an evening, the chains creaking as Mamaw pushed off with her toes, the rocking of the swing creating a small breeze to temper the heat.

I wish...

o0o

Fading sunlight glinted off the glass of the bottle trees adorning the flower beds: deep green and cobalt blue and amber brown flashing back sparks of cleansing daylight. The earthy scent of fresh-picked field peas rose from the bowl in her lap and her fingers dug into the seams to split the hulls. Peas rattled into the bowl; she tossed the empty hulls into the old washtub sitting between her bare feet. Beside her, Mamaw's work-reddened fingers moved as deftly as her own, despite the arthritis that bloated her knuckles. Cicadas thrummed a steady white-noise in the reaching shadows that were already tipping the porch toward darkness despite the band of light still glowing just above the copse of trees at the edge of the yard.

"Mamaw? Tell me a story?"

Mamaw's hands stilled for a moment, resting on the edge of her bowl. It was nearly full of shelled peas, her years of experience trumping Carol's young fingers. "Well, I suppose I could..." The teasing note in her voice belied the reluctance of her words.

"Please!" Carol's best wheedling tone got sly smile in reply, doubling the deep creases around Mamaw's mouth and eyes.

"All right, child. Settle down. And keep shellin' them peas if you want some for supper."

"Yes, ma'am." Carol obediently went back to stripping the small peas from their purple hulls. They'd cook them up to serve with cornbread in the big cast-iron skillet and fresh tomatoes and onions from the garden out behind the house. Tomorrow, they'd make jelly from the hulls and can it in little glass jars for the coming winter. For now, she prompted, "Story?"

"Well, lemme see..." Mamaw got that far away look in her eyes that meant she was watching the beginning of her tale unfold in her imagination. She always said the story had to show itself to her before she could tell it properly. "Hm, yeah, I reckon that'll do."

Her voice fell easily into the cadence of a bard, weaving her tale so vividly that Carol could almost see it playing out in the shadows of the porch: a selfish child wishing away a sibling to the goblins, then repenting and braving the hazards of a strange labyrinth - and its mysterious ruler - to retrieve the one wished away.

Young Carol thought it a great adventure, almost wishing she had a sibling for the goblins to take so she could win them back. When she said so aloud, Mamaw chastized her, warning that, like the spirits the bottle trees captured for the sun to burn away, goblins were nothing to play with. She'd made Carol promise never to do anything so foolish as to make a wish where anything Other might hear.

o0o

As she grew to adulthood, Carol would be grateful for many things Mamaw had taught her. How to cook, how to can and preserve, how to stretch a meal with the meagerest of ingredients. How to make do. And the less practical, but no less useful things, like painting the window frames and doors blue; and which herbs to plant around the doorsteps; and the protections of salt, sunlight, and iron. (In the years to come, life with Ed Peletier would reinforce almost all of those lessons, the perils of foolish wishing most of all.)

But, sometimes, in the privacy of her head, Carol still dared to think, I wish...

o0o

Now, Carol sends a silent apology to Mamaw for what she is about to do. It goes against everything Carol learned about not attracting the wrong kinds of attention. But it's a new, scarier world, and there are worse things than Mamaw ever dreamed of lurking in the woods. And if there's even the slightest chance, Carol knows she has to take it or never forgive herself. Because it's better for her daughter to live in some farway fairyland (even as a goblin) than to die here at the teeth of a Walker, even if it means Carol never sees her again.

She barely notices the wind pick up, strangely cold after the oppressive heat of the day. The shadows beyond the reach of her meager light seem darker, more substantive, holes in the gathering night rather than the absence of light. The wind twists through the trees, then stills. The night holds its breath in silent anticipation. Hugging herself tightly, as if that will hold her together when her heart is breaking itself open in her chest, Carol draws the words from her memory.

"Goblin King, Goblin King, wherever you may be, take this child of mine far away from me." She bites back a sob and whispers, "I wish the goblins would come and take Sophia away. Right now."

o0o

Sophia screams as the Walker's grimy, rotting hands reach for her. She is tired and aching and terrified. Her vision tunnels, the shadows growing thicker, seeming to swoop out from under the gnarled tree limbs to surround her. She hears an eerie chittering that drowns out even the Walker's rasping groans, and sees glowing eyes surging out of the dark-

o0o

And then the deeper shadows are gone, retreating back to the trees that spawned them, and the girl is gone. The Walker grasps futilely at the empty spot where its prey had stood, its infected brain unable to comprehend that it should be afraid.

o0o

In owl form, the Goblin King watches from his perch on a high tree limb. He does not think this Wisher will choose to run his Labyrinth any more than the last few have. None have taken the dream crystals, either; to get lost in dreams is simply too dangerous in this dying world. But there must be an exchange for the child; he will not be indebted to a mortal.

As he launches himself from the tree, he screeches his hunting cry, the piercing sound luring the dead thing away from the humans camped on the nearby highway.

o0o

On the highway, Carol watches the shadows and wishes. She does not see the barn owl that wings away over the woods, vanishing into the moonlight.