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Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters featured in the movie 'Labyrinth'.
Prologue
The Labyrinth. It was a legend that had been passed down for hundreds of years and countless generations, always from one woman to another. Young Sarah Williams had obtained it from her mother, who had gotten it from her mother, and so on. There was a given rule that it pass from mother to daughter, but if the woman had no daughter, she could pass it on to another girl in the family, of her choice. So the direct line of passage was lost over time, but it was speculated that the story originated in Europe, perhaps in France or Austria, sometime in the Middle Ages, around the 1300's. Traditionally, the story was to be an oral one only, so as to keep its existence secret, but it was found that it didn't quite work out that way, as the tellers of the story kept forgetting a few parts. So it was tediously written down, and later printed in the 1600's. With the story came only three rules. One, the story was only to be passed from woman to woman. Two, the men of the family are to never know of its existence, and neither is any outsider. Three, the story must never be forgotten, or lost, or ignored
Sarah had a vague childhood memory of sitting in her beloved mother's lap, listening to her grandmother Jessie read the red-leather-bound book, then carefully explain the three rules. It was a more recent tradition, her mother had said, that the little girl first hear it from her grandmother, and her mother keep the book until the little girl was old enough to take care of it. And so it would be when Sarah became an adult and had a daughter of her own. Sarah was terribly excited for the day she turned eighteen, which was the day she was to receive the book from her mother.
But that was not to be. Sarah had another vague memory, which drifted in and out of her mind, like a song she only heard once, and could just slightly remember. It was of incident in the night, her mother being extremely angry and whispering something into the air… then music all around her, and the chiming of a clock… Sarah could barely remember that night, but the next day was as clear and shining in her mind as snow. Her mother was sobbing, and packing her things into suitcases, her father was confused, and couldn't say a word. Her mother shoved a shoe box into Sarah's arms as she walked out the door, and Sarah could only watch as her mother got into a black taxi that pulled up in front of the house. Her mother never looked back.
Opening the Nike shoe box, Sarah found, nestled in cotton balls and tissue, the red-leather-bound book her grandmother had read to her a few years ago. She cried, salty tears falling onto the gold lettering of the title, The Labyrinth. In her heart and in her head, she knew this was wrong, the book was not supposed to be hers yet, and her mother was supposed to still be here. But she was old enough to know that her mother wasn't going to come back, so she tucked the book away, and vowed to not touch it until she was eighteen.
Of course, she couldn't wait that long, and on her thirteenth birthday, when she got yet another check from her mother in the mail, without any card or note or anything saying "I still love you", Sarah looked for solace in the Labyrinth, and from that point on could never put it down. And the rest, as we say, is history.