The usual disclaimer... I don't own the characters, places, or words. I just arranged them.
A goblin must always make noise, or so the little creatures believe. From an early age goblin children are taught that, like a whale surfacing for air, the goblin voice must surface at least once every five minutes or their lungs will be poisoned with harmful unused sounds. Normally the Goblin King found it amusing that his minions had believed the outrageous "fact." But for a king in thought, the cacophonic spurt of words was grating; he almost wished he had not told them the lie.
He would have corrected them, except that too many things had already been undone. The majestic, powerful, and dashing Goblin King had been bested by a mewling little girl. She had stormed into his castle, rejected his offers of bliss, and retrieved the babe he had rightfully stolen. The nerve! If only he could get his hands on her... But he could not interfere with the overworld unless he was invited by one of the humans. And aside from Sarah, who had found one of the final copies of the Labyrinth fairy tale, no one even knew the legend anymore. How the Goblin King longed for the days past wherein legends and myth had become a part of history. In those days, he had prospered. Parents wished away their troublesome and unwanted children a dozen at a time.
The worst aspect of the entire scenario was that Jareth had truly thought the girl would have been the one to reignite the kingdom. From the moment her delicate fingers had caressed the spine of the Labyrinth book, the Goblin King had been aroused from the aching slumber of decades - miserable decades where not a single infant had been offered. He had conjured a seeing crystal as she plucked the book from the shelf. Her lips had puckered as if to kiss but instead blew the dust from the rouge cover and Jareth had shivered as though her breath had been on the back of his neck.
Sarah had scrambled to the park to read her new treasure and the goblin king had followed, in his owl form, of course. Not willing to miss the momentous occasion of Sarah's first reading, he left his castle in the Underground to perch within sight of the precious girl. Soaring high above her he could not help but screech in victory at the satisfied smirk the girl wore as she tore through the pages. She did not even hear his cry, so engrossed in the volume was she.
He had invested time and energy into helping her mature to the point where she could understand the glory that awaited her. All she needed to do was love him, fear him, and he would have made her his queen, in a manner of speaking. But she had been stubborn and refused to see all that he had to offer.
"You look troubled Goblin King." A mellifluous voice echoed around him.
There were few who could enter his presence without his foreknowledge, but this vixen was unfortunately one of them. Nerissa was a comely maiden with soft eyes and flaxen hair that would have been the envy of the human realm. But Jareth saw her for what she was, a viper seeking its prey, not the cherubic pixie she appeared. Nerissa was the faerie queen, the leader of the wretchedly cruel raise of diminutive sprites. Though the average faeries were only a few inches tall, Nerissa could appear as a grown woman and she did so now as she approached the goblin king.
Had she expected a measure of decorum, she would have been disappointed for the goblin king hardly deemed her worthy of sitting up in a polite manner and so he remained lounging, as he always did, with one leg thrown over the armrest and his back pressed against the other. "You were given no invitation to enter my palace." He sneered at the faerie woman.
"You have no power over me." Nerissa chided. Her traitorous words caused goblins to flee or fall silent as they awaited the response of their king. The king's malicious glare was precisely what the goblins had feared and Nerissa had hoped for. "Oh yes I have heard of your defeat, Goblin King." She chuckled. How could she have failed to notice? A human had not been in the labyrinth for decades. The Underground was simply abuzz with information about the girl; she had become something of a celebrity since her departure. How many of the stories could be trusted, Nerissa could hardly fathom. Some goblins claimed the girl was twenty feet tall and wielded a sword that could crush a dozen goblins at a time. Others said she had the ability to fly and that she used magic to steal the child back. Whatever the case may have been, Nerissa knew one thing: the baby was gone meaning the girl had won.
"I do not know what you are talking about." Jareth denied.
"Poor, poor Jareth," Nerissa sighed as she reached a hand to his face and stroked it. He snatched her hand and thrust it away but her voice did not even catch as she continued her mockery. "You finally had a child in your grasp and you let it slip through your fingers." The comment did not get the particular reaction Nerissa had been hoping for so she pressed further hoping to discern the true point of misery buried within the goblin king. "But the child did not mean that much to you did it? You already have enough goblin men to keep you satisfied. You are disappointed because the girl won. If she had lost, she would have had to explain her brother's disappearance and then your name would have emerged in the overworld again. People would have remembered you and then you would have had dozens of children."
To Nerissa's dismay, Jareth simply smiled at her. "We all want to be remembered."
Nerissa shifted her weight from one foot to another, suddenly uncomfortable. "Nonsense, I am perfectly satisfied with being forgotten." She replied. "I have not had to grant the wish of a single mortal in nearly two centuries. Wish granting is such tedious work. Mortals think I can just make things happen, but, of course, that is false."
"Tsk, tsk, tsk." Jareth clucked his tongue. "You cannot lie to me, faerie queen. You know as well as I do that our present existences are duller than a day in the oubliette. The foolish mortals made for such sport. They never understand what they wish for until they get it and then the horror sets in."
Despite herself, Nerissa's lips twisted in a smile. "The surest way to ruin a mortal's life is to give them what they want."
"Do you still prefer to stay in the underground when there is so much pleasure to be had toying with the mortals." Jareth queried.
Nerissa bit her lip. She had come here to torment the goblin king about his failure but she could tell from the glimmer in his eye that he had a scheme. Truthfully, she had been bored, bored enough to have tea with a worm and his wife the other afternoon. "Fine, I will admit that a trip to the Overworld would be enjoyable, but you know as well as I do that none of them recognize me anymore. If they do not believe I have power, I cannot do anything for them."
"But Sarah will."
"And what exactly am I supposed to do with this Sarah? I cannot have any fun with her unless she makes a wish."
"Sarah will." Jareth added without a hint of doubt.
"You have to give me more assurance then that." Nerissa rolled her eyes. "And why would I want to go to your Sarah? What will you give me in return?"
Jareth sighed as he rose from his throne and turned to the stairs. "I thought you wanted to be remembered. I guess not."
"What are you scheming goblin king?" Nerissa called after him.
Without revealing the knowing smile on his smug face, Jareth ascended the stairs leaving the faerie queen to her thoughts.
"What does one do after rescuing her baby brother from a goblin king?" Sarah asked herself as she peeled the covers off her bed. "She sleeps." Stretching her sore limbs, Sarah glanced at the clock. "For thirteen hours!" She exclaimed as she did the math. "How fitting," she commented before leaping from her bed. Thankfully, it was Saturday, the one day a week Sarah could sleep until the afternoon. She was a little disappointed in herself though, she had hoped to see Toby before Sarah's stepmother and took him to ther ritual Saturday afternoon shopping spree.
"I grew up so much." Sarah realised as she sat down at her vanity and began to comb her hair. The previous night she had stowed away many of her toys and even the Labyrinth book she had kept on her like a security blanket since her mother had ran away with a theatre co-star. As she looked around at the unusually tidy room, she could not help but congratulate herself for her own maturity.
"That's funny," she said as she put the brush down, "I thought I had stowed the Labyrinth book in my drawer." Despite the vivid memory of tucking the book away, it was resting on her desk as if she had never touched it. "Maybe Hoggle pulled it out."
Hoggle and her friends, as well as some other Underground residents, had somehow found her room and celebrated Toby's return with her. None of them had questioned how they had ended up in Sarah's room; stranger things had happened in the Underground. Nor had any of them noticed the owl perched on the tree overlooking Sarah's window.
Placing the book in the top drawer again, Sarah flashed herself one final smile in the mirror before racing down the stairs to make a very late breakfast.
The goblin found the king perched in a windowsill overlooking the goblin city. "Your highness?" the goblin approached hesitantly. By Jareth's own rule, the goblins were allowed to approach their king whenever they wanted... if they could find him. But the king was not known for the constancy of his temper.
"Yes?" Jareth responded.
"Will the girl-who-ate-the-peach-and-forgot-everything-and-then-remembered-everything really make a wish again?"
"Of course not!" Jareth guffawed.
"Oh," the goblin bowed and then, in order to make himself appear more intelligent, he added. "I understand." He did not.
Sarah's nose was deep in the refrigerator when the faerie entered the kitchen. It had been centuries since a faerie had visited the Overworld and the dwellings of the mortals had changed significantly since she had last been in one. The buzzing of electrical devices, the roaring of engines, and the scent of freshly washed humans was unnerving to the diminutive sprite.
Not quite certain of how to make herself known to the girl, the faerie hid behind a dish until she could better discern an approach.
Sarah groaned when she could find nothing appetizing in either the fridge or the pantry and settled for a piece of toast and an apple. With the fruit in one hand and a slice of buttered toast in the other, Sarah retreated to her room.
The faerie followed the girl to her chambers where she found a perch on the mirrored vanity.
Sarah leapt onto her bed placing the apple on the blanket before devouring her toast. After licking the remaining butter from her fingers, Sarah grabbed the apple. Rather than eating it though, she looked at it curiously.
"I am not taking the chance." She told the fruit as she moved to put it on her vanity.
Unbeknownst to Sarah, her visitor anxiously waited for the impending confrontations. To the faerie, this would be a glorious moment for it dawned the reawakening of the magical world.
The fluttering wings were the first sign of the intruder and Sarah caught a glimpse of them out of the corner of her eye. "Ack!" she screeched as she grasped the Labyrinth book and slammed its hard cover down on the faerie. When she lifted the book again, all that remained of the faerie was a gooey mess on Sarah's vanity top. "Gross." Sarah commented as she wiped the smudge with a tissue.
Only after the mess was disposed of did Sarah realise the book had not been in her drawer where she had left it.
"Jareth!" Nerissa squealed as she darted into his throne room. She transformed to her more imposing human-sized form so she could tower over the goblin king who was lounging on his throne. "You said she would make a wish! Instead she destroyed Aeria."
"I know; I watched the whole thing." Jareth lifted his seeing crystal so she could perceive it. With a twist of his wrist, it disappeared – just like Aeria. "I thought you would go personally though."
"You will regret this treachery." Nerissa fumed. "You have made an enemy today."
"Nonsense," Jareth dismissed her. "I have made an ally. Now we both have reason to go after the girl."
"If you think I am going to help you now, then you are sadly mistaken."
The goblin king decided he did not like her tone. Rising to his full height, he was at least a head taller than she was; he reminded her who the more imposing figure was.
Normally Nerissa would have reverted to a more flirtatious approach to diffuse this situation, but it would never work on Jareth. She tried her best to keep her knees from trembling as his temper sunk to dangerous levels. Nerissa had provoked Jareth enough to know when to run, and she felt it was nearly that time.
"You will do exactly as I tell you." Jareth replied.
Nerissa gritted her teeth, unsure of how to respond without injuring her pride. "What do you want me to do?"
The fearsomeness of his demeanor fled as he sprang away from her and hoisted a nearby goblin into the air. Not bothering to catch the thing, Jareth responded, "Do exactly as you always do; just grant a wish."