At the Center of the Labyrinth

by Merellia

There's always a monster at the center of the labyrinth. . . . Cupping the sphere in his hand, Jareth studied his plan, mapped in dark webs and light chains of magic. "This will do well," he said.

This fic was written for moon_lover68 in the LJ Labyrinth Community's (/labyfic/) Fic Exchange (/labyrinth_ex/). Moon_lover68 asked for a snarky, murderous dark Jareth; snarky I didn't quite get, but I think I got murderous down pretty well!

i. Executioner's Gate

Cupping the sphere in his hand, Jareth studied his plan, mapped in dark webs and light chains of magic. "This will do well," he said, voice soft as a snake's tread. Rolling the sphere to a gloved fingertip, he tossed it to his other hand, then blew on it as if it were a soap-bubble and vanished it from sight. "She will regret that she was born."

He shifted his gaze to a pair of squabbling goblins pummeling each other on the floor of the throne room before him as he continued to think over the nuances of his plot. "I will triumph in the end," he said softly. The words were vow, threat, and reassurance all together.

Hilaf bashed Irgle with his tarnished brass helmet, which gave a resounding clang upon contact with the smaller goblin's knobbly skull. The dented helmet banged to the ground and rolled away, clanking against the stone paving. The sound was as hollow as that from the Labyrinth, which had fallen silent in the last minutes before the girl had broken everything and fled.

Jareth stood, kicked the goblins out of his way, and stepped Above to make his first move.

ii. Portal of Grief

"Stick with me, kid. You'll become one extraordinary usual person," Sarah said with relish, enjoying every syllable of the line. Eve Wilfong was such a richly textured character; Sarah loved the stretch and challenge of playing her. But in this moment-Eve was so sarcastic, and so much older than Sarah. Sarah tried to imagine what it would be like when the body was older, when the eyes had seen more and people were more predictable and less surprising. Sarah repeated the line, adding a touch of cynicism. Yes; much better.

Resting the script on her stomach for a moment, she rolled her shoulders and stretched her delight, toes dangling off the end of her mattress. To have gotten this role in her junior year, even! Next year would be even better-with Nice People Dancing on her resume, she could probably get a role at the city theater, where Scott had taken a job while she finished her bachelor's degree-and then there would be New York for them both, and roles better still.

She addressed the next line to her photograph of Merlin, perched on her desk where she could see it from the bed. "Honey, I got a whole library down there, and this is the only book that deals with. . . ." She was jerked from the scene by a rapid banging on her bedroom door.

"Sarah?"

The familiar voice was Gavin's, which left her momentarily confused; hadn't Scott drafted him to help at the city theater this afternoon? "Yeah, just a sec," she began, but he interrupted, speaking on top of her.

"Sarah, open up. Right now. It's an emergency."

Puzzled, she tossed the script aside and rolled off her bed, throwing the deadbolt and opening the door. Gavin looked a mess, his dirty and sweat-stained. "Get your ID and keys. We've got to hurry," he said, stepping in the moment she had the door open.

Her skin prickled with sudden cold, taking in his taut expression. "Ga-gavin, what's hap-"

"Sarah, now! I'll tell you on the way, just get your stuff, hurry," he said, picking up her running shoes from where she had left them by the door and shoving them at her. "Where's your ID?"

She fumbled with the shoes, shoving them onto bare feet as worry curdled her stomach. "On the desk. By the phone," she said even as he snatched the jangle of keys tossed next to the old putty-colored telephone.

He turned and urged her toward the door with a hand to her shoulder. "It's Scott, and we've got to hurry," he said, letting the door slam behind them. "He's at the hospital. There was an accident."

"Is-is he okay?" Sarah asked, feeling sick as she hurried blindly down the hall after Gavin. Scott had only been at the downtown theater, doing set work. How could-surely nothing could-

"He was doing some work on the main stage piece," Gavin began, shoving the dorm's front doors open and pushing her to the right, though she couldn't turn her attention from him and thoughts of Scott.

"The Wicker Man," she said numbly.

Gavin was starting the car before she even had the door shut, backing it out of the parking space in the startled faces of a gaggle of passing first-years. "Right," Gavin said, angrily shifting the stick into first gear.

"Gavin, what happened?" Sarah asked around a tight throat when Gavin did not resume his story immediately, his gaze fixed on the road in front of them as they turned from parking lot onto the street.

"He was inside the wicker piece, setting charges, and-" Gavin stopped, slamming a fist on the steering wheel in wordless fury. "Sarah. . . ."

Sarah stared at Gavin, the dirt-smoke-on his face and clothes striking her with new meaning. She opened her mouth, trying to say something, anything, that might banish the images coming alight in her thoughts, and her breath came in a hoarse moan. "No-oh, no, no-"

"The hospital has a burn center," Gavin said. "Everyone tried to help." His voice cracked when he tried to continue, and he cleared his throat. "Bu-but it went up so fast, Sarah, and he was inside it-" he faltered and fell silent.

She buried her face in her hands, roughly pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes, blocking out sight, out light, but the terrible images unfurled and burned before her mind's eye with horrifying intensity. "He took this job because of me. Because of me, and now-"

"Sarah." She felt Gavin's hand fumble at her awkwardly, reaching for one of hers as he said, helpless as fear and disbelief rose within her, "Sarah, don't cry. Don't cry, Sarah."

iii. Ritual's Walkway

Jareth studied the image of Sarah reflected in the water mirror, tucked within the darkness of the Labyrinth's most obscure oubliette. The image that rippled across the mirror had grown much stronger since the first sacrifice and the power he had gained from it, which even now he stored and held in reserve, untouched. He could almost hear the Labyrinth stir around him, curious but silent.

She was older, as he judged the age of humans, though still young, and more beautiful and-he set his teeth against a flare of anger-looked happy. Joyous, even. He glared at the mirror's image. That she dared walk the world Above as if she had no concerns, no reason to fear, as if she had not spurned and derided him, had not sundered the foundations of his kingdom and his power until he had needed years to recover, years so many they were marked by years Above, not just days or weeks. . . .

The power rose within him, stoked by his fury, a crackling heat of magic that begged to be used, though use it he wouldn't-yet. The thought of his plan grounded him, banked his anger into simmering embers. He stepped away from the mirror, turning to eye a cobweb draping from the corner of the opposite wall. A scuttling movement made the fine threads tremble as the spider hid itself from his sight. He smiled.

"I think it's time for another visit," Jareth silkily told the spider. He vanished, letting loose as he did so a blow of power that emptied the silver basin in a cloud of steam and destroyed the image within it.

iv. Repetition Circle

Sarah was enjoying a lazy, pleasant dream when something tickled her nose. She turned her face to the pillow, reluctant to open her eyes and wake. It was Saturday: getting up a moment before hunger drove her from the bed would be getting up a moment too early.

"Sarah."

She rolled over, tucking the sheet more tightly about her. She grasped after the wisps of her dream-it had been funny, something about a dog dressed as a knight, challenging her to a game of Scrabble-

"Saaaaah-rah." The tickle returned again, this time along the nape of her neck, hitting just that spot needed to make her shudder and bolt upright.

"Aah!" She threw off the sheet, skin crawling, as Gavin laughed and let go of the lock of her hair with which he had been teasing her. She narrowed her eyes at him in a scowl, but his amusement stirred her own and she smiled reluctantly. "You jerk," she said, giving his bare shoulder a shove. "I was sleeping."

"And I was bored. Sarah," he said, cupping her neck and pulling her down to him for a kiss. "Sarah, most beautiful of Sarahs," he murmured between kisses as she eased on top of him, delighting in the feel of him against her, the heat and hardness of him. This was much better than the dream, the air springtime-cool around them, the bedroom lit with pale morning sun and shadows, birdsong in the tree outside the open window, crisp sheets. "Take pity upon me."

"You only flatter me," she said, nipping his lip, "because you want nookie." She laid a trail of kisses from stubbled chin down the line of his throat. Tonguing aside the golden torc he had worn since before she met him, a family heirloom or so he claimed, she kissed the salty hollow of his throat.

"That doesn't make it less true," he muttered, shifting against her, the warm pressure between them making her breath catch in desire.

"Mmm." She allowed him to roll them over and settle himself between her legs. She stroked her hands up the broad lines of his back, warm skin and the hollow of his spine. "You're very persuasive. . . ." They twined about each other, heat to heat, hunger to hunger, heart to heart.

Panting and drowsy in the aftermath, they lay together. Sarah watched the tree leaves shiver in a breeze outside, a gray-barked branch scratching hypnotically at the windowpanes as the wind moved it.

"Sarah," Gavin said, pressed behind her and tracing lazy lines from her shoulder down her arm and along her hip. "Do you think we might begin trying soon?"

She captured his hand. Clasping it with hers and tucking it between her breasts, she leaned into his embrace. "I. . . . If I'm going to start a PhD, I'm not sure I'd want to take time off from that right away."

"Mm." Gavin kissed her shoulder. "We've been together four years. . . . We have the house, and my job-programming pays well. Maybe take a year or two off after you finish your MA?"

Sarah smiled. "You just want to be a father before your brother becomes one. Confess."

Gavin chuckled, and Sarah loved how she could feel it in her skin and bones. "I would never admit to a motivation like that."

"Never admit, but definitely be thinking. You two are always competing over something." She turned within his arms to face him. "I'd like to get my career more settled," she said, and added, "and maybe turn thirty before getting pregnant."

"Let's see how your PhD application process goes, and talk about it after?"

Sarah frowned. "I'm not going to get rejected from everywhere."

"That's not what I meant," he protested. "It's just that you never know; you might change your mind."

Sarah sighed, feeling the morning's relaxation fleeting away. "Perhaps. Right now, I'd rather have a dog, though." She kissed him, then sat up. "I'm going to take a shower. Do you have plans for the day?"

Gavin sat up too, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. "Yard work-cut down that screechy tree branch before it breaks the window glass in some storm, then mow the lawn before it gets too hot."

"Good idea," she said. Unable to resist, she threaded her hand through his curly brown hair and tugged lightly.

"Mm, feels good. Since you kept saying the branch's tapping was waking you, too." He turned his head and gave her a lopsided smile, her favorite. "I saw yesterday: The Lost World is playing at the theater near the supermarket. Want to go see it tonight?"

"You're such a romantic," Sarah said, grinning. "Is a crappy sequel your idea of an anniversary celebration? What about real theater in the city, and maybe a fancy dinner?"

"Hey! We went to see Jurassic Park on our first date, Ms. English-Lit-MA."

Sarah mock-groaned, standing up and padding towards the bathroom. "It is your idea of an anniversary celebration! Will you propose when the next sequel after this one comes out?"

Shrugging into a t-shirt, Gavin said loftily, "I have other plans for that."

"Hmph." Sarah turned on the shower and was just getting in as Gavin came in to brush his teeth. She sighed luxuriously under the onslaught of hot water, and thought through her list of things to do.

She had an essay to begin writing, due after next weekend; laundry needed to be washed; she needed to write the checks for their bills and then drop them off on her way to work at the bookstore tomorrow; Irene's birthday was near and Sarah still had to get a card for that; and she still needed to do more reading for her Steinberg class Tuesday night, which she kept postponing because, however much she liked Eugene O'Neill, the class was excruciatingly dull.

But a movie tonight would be pleasant. An anniversary movie. Sarah smiled, thinking about it, then sobered. One year since she and Gavin had bought the house and she began her MA; three years since they had moved in together; four years since they had begun dating; six years since Scott's death. If Scott had lived, they might have been-but she firmly stopped that line of thought. Gavin was wonderful and didn't deserve the comparison.

She should suggest that they go have dinner at Myrna's restaurant before the movie: the souvlaki there was Gavin's favorite. She liked the ouzo there, too, and besides, if she were to get pregnant. . . . She stepped out of the shower, uncomfortable at the thought, trying to imagine her father's or Irene's or Toby's response. Toby would get a kick out of being an uncle, but her father would be upset. He still wasn't happy that she and Gavin hadn't married yet.

She stepped out of the shower and sighed, wrapping one towel around her wet hair and tucking another around herself as she left the bathroom to dress-

And paused, for the room had darkened unexpectedly, as if the day had gone cloudy-

And turned to the window-

And stared in horror at what dangled outside, grotesque in the shivering shadows of leaves that caressed it, at the beloved face so distorted and very, very dead-

And her world came crashing down around her-

And she screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

v. Victim's Passageway

Jareth frowned as he checked the crystal, the one he thought of as Sarah's crystal. The interlaced webbing of his plan had snarled, traceries coming to a tangle that yielded nothing on its far side. It had been like this for some while now; possibly even years, as time was measured Above.

He had thought matters would resolve themselves eventually and his plan would return to course, but that appeared not to be the case. She had yet to make that final connection which would bring that last person into her life. It seemed instead as if she had rejected all possibilities. Grudgingly, he admitted to himself that his direct intervention was perhaps necessary.

It was just like her to foul his precisely-laid plans.

And so his temper was sparking when he arrived in her apartment that evening, the reserved power of death-so intimately connected to her-giving him the ability and authority to do so without invitation, without being named.

An infant child, the fruit of his previous errand, was a warm weight against his side where he carried it.

It was a shabby space, and he took in its transparent humanity with a sneer. Flat, lackluster reproductions of art hung on dingy walls above a sagging sofa; a clutter of steel pots and mismatched dishes put the kitchen in disarray; books and envelopes and scribbled papers burdened the table, making it useless for the act of eating. Human detritus, human squalor. "You'll be glad I am taking you away from this," he said to the babe in his arms, shadowed beneath his cloak.

There came the bang of a shutting door from another room, and Sarah strode into the room; and, abruptly, stopped, looking at him in shock. Her face grew pale, highlighting those high cheekbones of hers, and he noted the details, avid even as he despised her for how easily she drew him to her. She looked thinner, less content, less happy, and he took pleasure in the sight.

Recognition bloomed in her face. "You're . . . real," she murmured, a satchel sliding from her grasp to drop to the floor with a thump. "You're real, and here," she said, the curve of her mouth and the pucker between her brows displaying both startled pleasure and bewilderment. "I had forgotten. . . ."

Jareth crooked a brow, easily concealing his temper beneath a cast of affability. "That does occasionally happen when one deals with the Underground."

Sarah's puzzled look deepened. "I had wished Toby away. But I would never do that, never again." She took a breath, shook her head. "Why have you come?" What Jareth thought of as a remnant of buried guilt cast her words in a defensive tone.

He shifted so that his cloak fell back from one shoulder, revealing the infant held in the crook of his arm; it was leaning against him, drowsy. Lightly, he said, "I had business in your area."

To his satisfaction, Sarah flushed, angry. "Oh my God," she said. "It was true, you really do steal children-you stole Toby-and now you're trying to steal another?" Disbelieving, she said, "Why are you doing this?"

"You know very well, Sarah," he replied coldly, provokingly. "It is not theft when the child has been wished away. I act within rules established long before your culture came to this land and granted me access here."

"No!" Sarah said, eyes glittering as her fury grew. "You can't. What do we know of your rules, and who are you to impose them, anyway? That child needs to go back to its mother, its family. It has no business being with you at all!"

Jareth felt a flare of satisfaction rising along with his own irritation at her presumption and willful ignorance. Sarah completely deserved all that she would receive by means of his arrangements. Sorrow, pain, horror: to the last drop it was hers to drink, and he wished she would only gag on it by the time he was through. And at the bottom of it all would be understanding, and she would drink that, too, until she was utterly destroyed.

And then he would remake her.

"Only a parent or sibling can lay claim to this child, and you are no parent," he said, aiming to wound. He saw her subtle flinch at the words and relished the shadow that darkened her fine eyes. "And who are you to imply the child would be better off with its family? It was wished away." Carefully, cunningly, watching her closely, he added, "With me, it will enjoy health; companionship; pleasures according to its nature; and a life longer and encompassing more than a human's."

Another minute flinch from Sarah, another dart finding its target. She responded as she invariably did to him: with anger, fists clenching. "It-he didn't ask for that!" she spat.

"It cannot ask for what it does not know," Jareth replied sharply. "And were it to know, it would choose as has been chosen for it. You humans," he added contemptuously, goading. "Your mayfly lives are more full of hurt than pleasure, of pain than joy. When you should be kind, you kill; when you should caress, you curse. This babe has far better before it than do you."

"You don't know what it means to be human!" Sarah retorted. "There's love, poetry, beauty in simple kindnesses and grandeur in great ones-"

Scornfully, he interrupted. "I have lived for millennia, and interacted with your kind for millennia, and you accuse me of ignorance? And you, Sarah Williams, having barely five years beyond your third decade, you who have shut yourself into this," he gestured with disdain to the space around them, "who sees no-one and has no-one but those tied by blood, not choice: you think you can change my mind."

Hurt, then indignation rose in her glare. "You-"

He smiled cruelly. "Call me by name when, or if, you learn better." Satisfied that he had nudged all that was needful into place, he returned himself to the Underground.

vi. Sacrificial Alley

"There's lots of great poetry written in the twentieth century," Sarah protested, pretending to be wounded.

"But no Byron; no Keats; no Tennyson or Swinburne or Laetitia Landon," Alan said, with his most charming smile as he finished toeing off his shoes and sat on the beach blanket beside her.

Sarah mustered a grin despite her tiredness; it was as though a thread of anxiety strung taut through her that always seemed on the verge of snapping. She had thought that finishing grad school would make things easier, but instead tensions seemed only to have mounted. She leaned back on her elbows, stretching out her legs, and told Alan, "Eliot, Sandburg, Yeats, Stevens, Plath, Rich, Heaney, and Dorothy Parker."

Alan tipped his head, raising his hand in acknowledgement. "A hit, a hit; it is hard to surpass the mastery of Dorothy Parker," he conceded, tone sly. "What was that deathless poem of hers? Oh! I remember: 'I like to have a martini, Two at the very most. After three I'm under the table, After four I'm under my host.'" He sighed, touching hand to heart dramatically. "A classic."

Sarah rolled her eyes at this but said, game to continue, "Your century is so hung-up with repressions." It was a ritual of theirs, exchanging mock-insults about each other's areas of specialty. It suited the mood of the day, the beginning of their working vacation in Brighton-working for him, on his first book, vacation for her.

"Séances and the supernatural! Indeed, it's not hard to top that," Alan said with irony.

"'A Study of Two Pears,'" Sarah said.

"Hmph!" Alan began rummaging around in his backpack, dark hair ruffling in the breeze. He looked up long enough to give her a teasing look. "'Goblin Market.'"

"That's playing unf-" Sarah began, before catching herself short on the pangs of a memory. Trying for lightness but feeling the weight of a frown settle on her, she replied instead, "You know I can't stand 'Goblin Market.'"

From his backpack, Alan pulled out a sack with sandwiches inside, his air one of triumph. "I like to win," Alan said, handing Sarah one of the sandwich-packets. "And besides, I keep hoping you'll change your mind. It's a gorgeous poem."

"It's ridiculous; the goblins are ridiculous," Sarah grumbled half-heartedly, sitting up and peeling back the sandwich packet's cellophane lid. Other beach-goers clattered past, kicking up the rounded stones of the beach as they sought out an empty spot for themselves and their chairs.

Alan made a face. "Anyone would think you'd met a goblin, Sarah! The goblins represent the threatening, disruptive Other that tempts-"

"You just like it because you can interpret Lizzie and Laura as lesbians," Sarah accused, taking a bite of egg-and-watercress.

"It's a myth of redemption," Alan said loftily, pulling out two bottles of water and handing one to Sarah. He uncapped the second and took a swallow.

"It's a silly description of an illogical magic system passing in the guise of overwrought verse."

"Sarah," Alan said patiently, "magic is illogical."

"No," Sarah said, her gaze sliding past the beach full of people to the water beyond that glimmered under the rays of a watery summer sun. "Magic has rules."

"In the hands of novelists, maybe," said Alan, gesturing airily with his bottle of water.

"Many cultures with traditions of magic think of it as bound by rule or ritual," Sarah said, scowling at the water. "Mantras in the Artharva vida. Mayan rituals. Cheyenne medicine. Greco-Roman curses. European witchcraft."

"Su-per-sti-tions," said Alan, stringing out the word in a sing-song.

"Magic is not superstition by default," Sarah snapped, losing patience. "Are you going to eat or go swimming, Alan?"

He sighed, tucking his water bottle in the backpack. "Swimming. I think the temperature's a little cooler in the water."

Sarah stretched out and turning her face to the sun, closing her eyes,. "Enjoy." Alan said something in reply, but she was so busy thinking over his comments about magic. So ignorant! But how could she tell him? She only heard the sounds of syllables as he left, not their content.

She shifted, feeling the hard press of beach pebbles beneath the layers of blankets, the noise of other beach-goers a background hubbub. The sun was pleasantly warm, not too hot, and magic was full of rules. Thirteen hours, cause and effect, wishes and curses made and fulfilled, if one followed form, followed the rules.

She sometimes thought she almost knew what the rules were, a mysterious grammar of ritual and belief and magic, perfectly balanced like clauses in parallel, like the flat plane of a teeter-totter poised to go up or down.

The victim would be on the down end, she thought drowsily. About to fall, about to crash. The caster on the upswing, ready for triumph. If it wasn't handled properly, the whole arrangement would slide from its foundations, spilling them both.

She had made a wish, done in ignorance but still invoking the rules, and Jareth had been on the upswing for much of what resulted. Matters had swung in her advantage by the end, though. . . .

Unless she had derailed the situation, Sarah thought suddenly, a prickle of unease creeping up her arms. "You have no power over me": Wasn't that a paradigm shift, a negation of the rules? Was it the teeter-totter falling off its rails, or was it a change to a different set of rules, her rules? She'd reclaimed Toby, cared for him and loved him afterward, loved him now. She'd played by the rules even afterward, the maiden-turned-mother, which was the way stories always went.

Until she'd gone to college. She'd allowed herself to forget, to be normal, to be something other than a surrogate mother. College was never in the stories, nor the rules. Mothers never became maidens again.

Nausea twisted, and Sarah bolted upright. Everything suddenly felt wrong. The sunlight, the beach, the air, even the water: it was all wrong, and Sarah turned, scrambling to her feet as she anxiously looked for Alan.

The noise of beach-goers shifted, shrilled from chatter and games to sharp fear, and Sarah turned where it led, pushing up her sunglasses in time to see a flailing in the water, a familiar, dark head slip beneath the waves, blue sea gone flat and dark.

And she thought of rules, of the perfect sentence balanced in parallel, and knew what the words said.

vii. Dead End

Jareth slouched on his throne, halfheartedly listening to the recital of a dispute between a troll and the goblin merchant who had tried to cross the troll's bridge without payment. The troll had overturned the merchant's wagon into the chasm below the bridge, and the merchant wanted compensation. The merchant gabbled on without ceasing for breath as if to stop was tantamount to failure, and Jareth felt inclined to side with the troll for no other reason than he, too, would have wanted to toss the merchant off a bridge.

Jareth, King of the Goblins.

He straightened, uncrossing his legs and sitting up more straightly on his throne. She had called his name.

His movement had caught the attention of the merchant, who paused in his harangue to eye Jareth uncertainly.

Jareth stood. "I invite you to stay at the castle while I give this matter some further consideration," he told the goblin, and summoned Aeddylwyd with a glance. "Put him in the Gray Room," he said to the Steward, catching the tall goblin's fleeting look of satisfaction.

She had called him. His plan was reaching its culmination. The thought sent him Above to her, swifter than owl-shape.

She sat at a table, in a room smaller and neater than the one in which he had last seen her, the surrounding walls covered in cases thick with books.

Sarah was older, but not distraught. Not weeping as he had imagined she would be, torn with grief and fear. She sat quietly, self-contained, hands folded on the tabletop before her. She looked up as his shadow streaked across her.

"Jareth."

"You called," he said coldly. He raised one eyebrow. "Have you something to ask me?" He held himself in anticipation, inwardly, waiting for her to seek his help in ridding herself of the curse that hung over her, that shaped her life through death.

Sarah looked at him, face pale against the dark fall of her hair, her eyes steady and unreadable. "No," she said. "There is something I wanted to tell you. I know what you've been doing."

Startlement and chagrin slapped him before incandescent rage erupted as he read truth from her gaze. Before another second could pass, he grabbed for his hoarded reservoir of sacrificial power, and he gathered it, intent on annihilating her, plans be damned. How could she . . . How dared she?

The power roared to his hand, straining against the shape he threw around it, forcing it sharp and heavy, a battering ram nothing mortal could withstand.

He shouted the first of the syllables that would give it release-

"Jareth of the Labyrinth, I command you to stop!"

He stopped, cut short mid-syllable. He stopped not because he wanted to, not because she had named his heart-name, but because he felt the Labyrinth. The Labyrinth that he had not felt since decades gone by, since a mortal girl defied him and shattered the rules as carelessly as a child dropped a glass ball on cobblestones, the Labyrinth stirred and held him fast, a barrier too strong for his own magic, however great.

He heaved himself against the barrier nonetheless, fought against it until he fell back panting, hair in his eyes and a breath away from snarling. She was watching him dispassionately.

"I know," she replied, though he had not said anything. "I broke the rules. I didn't know, but that doesn't excuse me. That you were trying to remedy the situation doesn't excuse what you did, either," she added, the first hint of anger, hot enough to match his, darkening her eyes and sharpening her voice.

Glaring at her, he caught his breath for an insult, only to find the Labyrinth gagging his voice as effectively as his magic.

Her tone turned contemplative. "You had forgotten, hadn't you? I had. But I was thinking things through, and I remembered. I set everything awry when I rejected your power over me. That did nothing, however, about the power you had given me over yourself."

Jareth stilled.

Sarah smiled, and it was a threat. "If I acknowledge that and reciprocate, we can strike a new balance, can't we?"

Various thoughts struck Jareth in that moment, sharp and painful as iron-tipped arrows. He found his voice freed and spat, "I don't think you know what you're doing."

"I think I do. You've succeeded in your aims: you've made it impossible for me to stay here Above. Yet another suspicious death to which I've been tied; I'll never be free of suspicion. And if I leave you untrammeled, I suspect you'll be worse in the future."

"We might reach an agreement."

"Forgive me if I am unwilling to give up oversight of what you're up to."

"Oversight." Jareth felt the word like a blow.

"Yes." She looked up at him and he could clearly see her stubborn resolve.

He realized, bitterly, that the power had indeed shifted. "It will change you," he said, because if his plans were going to see fulfillment in such a twisted way, so reversed and inverted from what he had tried to shape, the least he could do was to sow doubts: and doubts in the form of truth: what better?

"I'm stubborn."

Sarcastically, he said, "And what is that to the stubbornness of the Labyrinth?"

"I beat it once," Sarah said.

"You beat me," Jareth corrected pointedly.

Sarah stood. "And I've beat you again."

Softly, poisonously, he said, "The goblins have always wanted a mother." He took himself back to the Underground, before he had to witness the conclusion of this travesty. He knew what would follow: they were steps he himself had taken, millennia ago.

At least, he thought as he left Above, she had not killed him outright. He could still rise to the top of this; didn't he always?

viii. At the Center of the Labyrinth

Shadows snickered in the room, from which a window, shutters open wide, let in a brisk evening breeze. Moonlight limned the edges of the figure standing just beyond the reach of fluttering curtains.

The boy stared up, dread a sickening pool in his stomach. "But she's my sister! You can't take her."

"My dear, you wished her away."

"I was only joking. I didn't mean it!"

The creature before him, tall and terribly beautiful, smiled. "Yet you said the words, and words are very, very important."

"But no-one ever listens to me!"

"When you say the right words, someone will always listen. I heard you, and I've come to do as you said. She'll have a great life, you know: anything she could ever want, plenty of playmates."

"But you can't just take her. That's not fair!"

"Fairness has nothing to do with it. It's the rules that matter, sweet."

"She'll miss Papa and Granma!"

"Oh, she'll have her own, new parents," said Sarah, Queen of the Goblins.