Chapter One: Love at First Sight
A white barn owl swooped out of nowhere through the cloudless blue sky, surveying the human realm, so different from his own, as he soared— for this was no mere owl. He was a Fae by the name of Jareth, king of a filthy band of goblins he was only too glad to have escaped… if only briefly. Disgusting, squalid, unruly creatures, they were— he had often thought that his position as Goblin King was a mere figurehead. Surely, they had no need for government. He knew he was right, too, as things never appeared to have gotten too out of hand after one of his escapes to the Aboveground.
A voice snapped the Goblin King out of his utter detestation for his revolting subjects, the sweet voice of a young girl. Jareth couldn't make out the words, but already, he was entranced. Flying lower, he saw her and his little owl heart beat faster against his chest. Though she was no more than fifteen— and a mortal, no less— he couldn't help but be struck by her indescribable beauty. She was dressed like a princess of his own world, in a butter yellow gown slightly large on her, but held to her form by a pink ribbon that matched the ones streaming off of a circlet of roses to mingle with her long, dark hair.
She was kneeling on the ground, her arms wrapped tightly around a large sheepdog that was wriggling, learly not pleased by the embrace. The girl, however, took no notice, instead continuing her speech. "When she returned, the Beast lay dying in the garden," she informed the dog. "No, Beast, you won't die… you will live to be my husband. I thought it was only friendship I felt, but now I know it is love." Finally, she noticed the dog's grumbles of protest and let him go, standing and brushing dirt off her dress.
"Fine, I won't finish," she said with a smile that made Jareth's heart melt. "Oh, if only you really were the beast that turns into a prince, though, Merlin, and take me away from this awful place." The dog rubbed against the girl, who absentmindedly scratched behind his ears. "I can't stand living with Karen anymore…." She looked up at the clock tower peering over the trees in which Jareth was perched. "I guess we'd better get home…. Daddy will want me to slave away for my wicked stepmother while they go out again." She sighed. "Come on, Merlin!" With that, she was hurrying away from the Goblin King. His every instinct was to follow her, but he knew he would be needed back in the Underground.
I'll be back, the silently promised the beautiful mortal girl.
And he was. Day after day, week after week, he returned in time for another captivating story from the exquisite young girl, whose name, he quickly learned from nights of following her to her window, was Sarah. Though she thought she was performing only for a dog, he watched intently as she wove him story after story, from the tale of a princess who fell asleep for a hundred years because of a faery's curse, to the one about the mermaid who traded her voice for legs out of love for a prince. She told him of a princess who lived with seven dwarves until a witch poisoned her to sleep until a prince came to awaken her and of a servant girl who became a princess because of a glass shoe, a flying boy who took a girl to an island where they would never grow old, and of a girl locked in a tower and visited only by the witch who had to climb up her long hair. Each story had its own costume to go with it, each making the girl look more beautiful than the last. Each tale ended the same— Sarah wishing for her own faery tale to come true and rescue her from her stepmother's clutches. Jareth yearned to fly down, transform before her, and promise to make all her dreams come true, but he knew he could never go through with it unless she wished it of him.
The thought was excruciating, causing him to skulk around his palace as a miserable shell of what he had once been and nearly triple the goblin population in the reeking cesspool known as the Bog of Eternal Stench. Even the least intelligent of the goblins knew that their king hadn't been the same since the fateful day he had found this girl, but no one had a name for his affliction.
No one, that is, except for the Goblin King himself.
Love.
The King of the Goblins had fallen in love with a mere mortal girl. Of course, he would never admit it to anyone, including himself, but in his heart, he knew that was what it was. It pained him to no end that he could never even speak with her outside of the wild dreams that plagued him night after night. Unrequited love was the worst fate a Fae could suffer, he thought to himself forlornly, as he flew off after watching her tell of a girl falling down a rabbit hole to a world that reminded him quite a bit of his own Labyrinth.
He had yet to find out just how right he was.
