She was fifteen when she first met him. It was a meeting born out of a schoolgirl wish, a wish for a chance to see another world than the one inhabited by stepmothers and algebra homework and curfews. It was a meeting the turned her world upside down, and she would never be the same the again.
"Everything that you wanted I have done. You asked that the child be taken, I took him. You cowered before me, I was frightening. I have reordered time, I have turned the world upside down, and I have done it all for you."
At the time, Sarah hadn't guessed at the meaning veiled behind these words. This was a world of her own construction, with players invited by her own mind. There was only so much he could say before the illusion would be broken. And he did't want to break it.
"You have no power over me."
And it was true. She held the power. She always had.
She thought about that meeting for a long, long time. She mulled the words and images over in her mind, running her thoughts over them the way one runs their tongue over a hard candy, savouring each flavour and taste. She hid those memories away in corners of her mind, taking them out when she wanted to look at them again or be comforted by their familiarity. Her love of fantasy stayed with her through her senior year at highschool. As graduation approached, so many of her younger self's interests waned, pushed aside by thoughts of SAT scores and college applications and what furniture she would need for her dorm. And for just a little while, she stopped thinking about the Labyrinth, letting it get buried under endless to-do lists and pressure.
But the Labyrinth wouldn't, couldn't stay away forever. Thoughts of it would creep back to her at night as she lay drifting off to sleep in her dormitory bed, fantastic thoughts that enticed her mind but vanished by morning light, leaving her with the feeling of forgetting something important that was just out of reach but still needed to be found.
It was two weeks before her first midterm when it happened. In a compulsive fit of cleaning brought on by nerves, she hastily pulled a box out from the back of her closet so she could vacuum. A book from her childhood - the one book she had saved away from the great purge when she moved into her new life. The one book she couldn't, wouldn't let go of. Red leather bound cover and red ribbon bookmark, filled with as many promises and secrets as she had remembered. She sat down right there and flipped through the pages. That was how her roommate found her hours later, sitting in the midst of several boxes with the vacuum cleaner still plugged in, reading a book on the floor. Sarah started, suddenly brought out of her fantasy world by the closing of the front door and the footsteps of Ali as she entered the room and asked if Sarah was okay. Sarah tucked the book into her pocket and stood up, smiling at Ali and saying she was fine. She put the boxes back into the closet sans book and proceeded to put away the vacuum as Ali made dinner. Sarah had cleaned enough for the day, she had something else to fixate on now.
The following week she thought more about the Labyrinth than she had since she was fifteen. She thought about the castle walls when she woke up, and thought about oubliettes as she got dressed, she though about the murky orange of the sky as she brushed her teeth, about that dizzying peach dream as she walked to class, and as she sat down and opened her notebook to scrawl half listened to lecture notes, she thought about him. The ideas started off innocently, because in all honesty, who hasn't sat in the middle of class and wished to be somewhere else? Her mind ran away with her.
What if, she wondered. What if it could happen all over again? Of course, it could't really happen the same way again. She wasn't the same person she was back then, and though the thought floated briefly through her mind, she couldn't really wish her professor away to the goblins. But it didn't stop her from wishing that she could have some kind of break from the tedium of academia in the same way she had a break when she was younger.
The idea germinated in her mind. She wanted different things now that she was older. Fifteen year old Sarah Williams wanted a dark and frightening wizard with great powers who lived in a far off world, twenty year old Sarah Williams wanted something a little less frightening and far off and a little more understanding and accessible for the world she lived in. One couldn't always run off to a labyrinth whenever one wanted, and if one looked hard enough, fantasy could be found in many corners of everyday life. Magic didn't live solely in the Labyrinth.
Her first midterm was tomorrow. A group of friends from her precalculus class had invited her to a study party at the local pub. She had been hesitant at first about just how much actual studying would get done at a pub, but eventually relented when told of the appetizers that would be available - chicken wings, soft pretzels, nachos, sliders. The first two hours of the study party went swimmingly. In between bites of savoury foods they quizzed each other on problems and recited mathematical formulas. When the food was all finished, some of them began to talk of where to go next. Sarah felt annoyed at the thought of not spending any extra time going over the problems that were sure to be on the test despite doing just as well as all the other students during their dinner. She let them leave without her, off to find some fun in other places. She stayed behind, the solitary figure going over things she knew but but feared forgetting.
The waitress came and went, clearing off the plates and empty cups until all the was left were textbooks and notes and flashcards. Sarah glance out the window just once.
"I wish-" the rest of her words mumbled and ran together under her breath, finished off with a deep sigh as she pulled her eyes away from the parking lot and looked back down at quadrilateral inscribed circles. A single tear drop fell onto the diagram. Would all of her college good times consist of listening to the things her classmates did while she was stuck worrying over tests? There was a faint rumble from the parking lot; a motorcycle had pulled up.