Disclaimer: I don't own anything connected with the "Labyrinth", and I'm doing it all for pure fun. :) No profit hoped for or aimed at.
Author's note: I gave my heart to the movie when I was less than 10 (do not remember, when exactly). It's not my first fic, but I never felt up to writing a Labyrinthian thing – it just seemed too demanding a challenge. Now I finally mustered up enough courage for it. Forgive me for any mistakes or typos. I sincerely hope there are none, but who knows what I could miss. And thanks for reading it, if you do. Feedback would be much appreciated. (cookies? chocolate? a hex on your enemies, anyone?) Have fun!
You wish
Chapter 1.
Call me late.
Throw down your gun
you might shoot yourself,
or is that what you are tryin' to do,
put up a fight you believe to be right
and someday the sun will shine through.
You have always got something to hide
something you just can't tell
and the only time that you are satisfied
is with your feet in the wishing well.
"Wishing well"
Free
"I wish to speak to the Goblin King. Right now."
For a couple of eternities the house war perfectly still and even more quiet. Then...remained as still and quiet as ever. Nothing happened. No storm broke out to rage unleashed and inexorable outside. No blinds flapped, no windows shattered, no shadows sprouted on the prosy beige carpet. Not a single lightbulb in the room – in the whole blasted street - condescended to giving the slightest impression of growing dimmer.
Sarah pressed her lips hard to lock the way to the curse that was hanging on the tip of her tongue. What did he think she was, a bloody pet-parrot? Five summons in a row and not a sound in return!
She had prepared herself for a melodramatic escapade of an entrance, thin-lipped sneers, jeering, pointedly sardonical advances, intrusion into her personal space...She could have borne threats – even a blatant rebuff, but this complete disregard was...miffing.
The first call was an awkward experience. She stumbled through the request, pushing out word by word with inhuman difficulty, and, being honest, the lack of response was a relief rather than disappointment. The second was rolling along somewhat better until her voice betrayed her and broke at "now", which sounded like someone had pushed a mouse down her throat. The third and the forth went swimmingly, the only problem being that they got as much reaction as those uttered before them. Specifically – zero.
"Jareth?" tried she without much hope.
Silence.
Oh, what the hell.
"Fine," yelled she, "Go on, be one major royal ass!"
Not much of a summoning spell, but the efforts she'd put into those more courteous rounds of invocation gave her the right to blow off some steam.
Needless to say, it worked no better than anything she had already pronounced here.
Calm down, she said to herself. You're a grown-up person in an evening dress. Grown-up persons in evening dresses do not major-royal-as-...cough...back-side their regal opponents. And do not graze their freshly manicured nails all the way down to the middle phalanges.
With a snort of exasperation Sarah let herself collapse onto the impossible construction of cushions, erected by Karen in a fit of house-pride and occupying the fair part of the couch ever since.
"Fine," repeated she almost peacefully, "Guess that's the case of no gain, no pain."
A wise observation, considering the trouble she'd been – in the proper sense of the word – inviting to enjoy her company.
And to crown it all, she couldn't exactly tell why it had never occurred to her that the infamous Goblin King could fail to come to her call. It simply went without saying that he would, no, HAD to appear at her first word. To mock at her, to execute those long-chewed, precious plans of revenge, to – to-anything – whatever!
Wasn't he, at least, curious?
Perhaps, the feeling of being watched that grew into her very flesh in course of the past eight years was just a nice little case of her personal paranoia. Only that none of either her close or distant relatives had ever showed signs of such didn't mean she couldn't be the first in the family. Perhaps, all of it had been but a manifestation of a puberty-triggered neurosis. And there had never been any kidnapping, any Hoggle, Ludo, any Labyrinth. Any Jareth. Perhaps, the fact that none of it entered her life for about two years already could be easily explained by some shift of hormones which had to happen sooner or later. Yes, she could swear that last talk with Hoggle was real, but...wasn't it what all those plagued with hallucinations said about the creations of their minds?
Sarah didn't miss them much, not until now. When faced with the news that they couldn't visit her anymore, she felt anything but regret. The real life swallowed lots of her time and brain – to such an extent that at some moment she actually started regarding those evening hours in the company of her labyrinthian fellows as tedious, yet unavoidable family gatherings. It's not that Ludo became any smarter, or Hoggle underwent some striking transformation from a sullen pinchpenny dwarf to anything distantly reminding of a decent friend for a swiftly growing and even more swiftly developing young woman. And truth be told, the way Sir Didimus reacted at every car, which chose to honk, or, Heaven forbid, stop anywhere near their house, was plain ridiculous and no less embarrassing.
She let them go with a light heart, and plunged deeper into the everyday prose.
And now...now, in the empty house of her childhood, with no one striving to rob her of her free time, Sarah suddenly questioned that decision. By no means was she unhappy with her life. The college was fun, while it lasted. She wasn't pressed for money. The small gains yielded by the vintage and handmade shop she ran with her two partners allowed her to rent as small a flat, but it was more than most had, and for now she didn't feel any wish to move on. She did her best to get along with her family. In fact, the terms she finally came to with her step-mother were better that she felt she could ever have with Linda Williams herself. The fact that she was staying here for a week already, and such visits occurred at least twice each three or four months, testified to how eager Karen and her step-daughter were to bear each other's presence.
And yet. There was something in the air this week that had woken up the twinges of conscience in her. May be, it was because this time she was offered to occupy her former room, which, even redecorated, kept too many memories to wave off that easily. Or may be, something in the way Toby's new terrier bounced at her feet, spluttering with ecstatic barking at each ghost of a smile, or went at every stray leaf or candy wrapper which threatened to break her peace, reminded her of another brave defender she once had. All of a sudden that careless goodbye began to feel if not like a complete betrayal, then a thing very-very close to it.
Why didn't she ask about the reason of their leave? Or wait, she did, yet it went straight down the dusty basement of her priorities as soon as she got her answer. The King deemed it impossible. His right, she remembered herself thinking. She was too tired of trying to bring two utterly different lives together.
But what if they were just forbidden to tell her the truth? Or hoped she would press them into asking for her help? They could expect her to call Jareth or to wish herself away to the Underground to right the wrong they were suffering from, whatever it might have been.
And what did she do?
And what was she doing now? Sitting here dressed up like for a marriage market.
The thought made Sarah smile against the rapidly deteriorating mood. Jareth definitely missed the fun of his life. It's not everyday that your formerly triumphant adversary makes an idiot of herself, attempting to impress you with a cheap off-the-peg elegance.
"Could have made me run your Labyrinth in that, you know," told she to the ceiling.
It seemed like high time to wash off the war paint, since the war never came off.
Should have let it go from the very beginning. It's not like she knew what she'd have asked him, had he deigned to appear. Any claim, any word of anxiety for her friends were just a little too late.
She needed a shower. A long, boiling hot, relaxing shower.
The autumn had barely begun, but coming out of the small bathroom, warmed-up like a perfect oven, was already an unpleasant undertaking. Her bare legs instantly covering with goosebumps, Sarah wrapped herself tighter in her old bathrobe, but that didn't seem to help much.
The self-forgetful warble of the phone caught her half-way to her room. She'd dearly wish to ignore it, as her hair was already covering in rime, but it could be Karen wanting her to drive Toby home from some pal's birthday party. She warned Sarah that might happen in case their own Saturday visit to one of the three cousins of Karen turned out longer than expected.
Forcing herself to think of a bottomless cup of hot chocolate, solar flares and the dunes of Gobi at once, Sarah grabbed the receiver.
"Williams, Sarah?" sing-sang a crystal voice before she managed to utter a single word.
That didn't bode well at all. It could be just her, but getting a call from an unfamiliar person and hearing the latter enunciate one's name in a pointedly official way when one's family was not in could hardly make that certain one happy.
The obliging imagination immediately drew Sarah a sequence of horrible pictures, one worse than another. The only thing that still kept her from letting her knees buckle right on the spot was an absurd idea that neither police, nor any medical institution would ever let anyone with such angelic vocal qualities deliver the worst news possible.
"Umm...Yeah," admitted she through the lump in her throat.
"Miss or Missis?" inquired the voice with the same cooing intonations.
"Miss."
"See," murmured the receiver, breaking out with soft humming and a series of tapping sounds, "Yes, Sarah Williams, age 23. The Royal Underground Wish Service. Accept our sincerest apologies for the delay."