Summary: A tale of the distance between states. A tale of the distance between parents and their children. A tale of the distance between the real and the imaginary. A tale of the distance between stars. Written for the LabyFic livejournal community.
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Distance
One of my earliest memories is of looking up at the sky when it was dark and asking what the lights were.
"Well," my dad said, pausing in the way that all grownups do when preparing to explain something to a child, "they're big balls of light and fire."
I frowned. "They don't look big at all!"
"That's because they're very far away."
"How far?"
"Remember the time we drove to Grandma's place in California?"
I remembered. Stopovers at gas stations and motels aside, we'd driven nearly non-stop for three days. At first, I'd been fascinated by the great stretches of scrubland and sun-baked dust that the road had cut through. Once my questions were exhausted and my patience gone, however, the drive suddenly hadn't been as much fun anymore. "Yes," I replied eventually, my expression made sour by the memory, "it was long and boring."
"Exactly! If you were to drive to the stars it would take much, much longer."
"Longer than it was to California?" I asked, appalled by the prospect of such a journey.
"Much longer," Dad confirmed enthusiastically, seemingly pleased with his analogy and oblivious to my horror.
I spent that night in bed trying to comprehend how anything could be further than three days in the car. It didn't make sense that the stars were further than California, because I could see them. I could see them from my window quite clearly at night, and they became clearer the longer I stared. On the contrary, I couldn't even glimpse California from my window during the day. I spent the first hour of the next morning squinting at the horizon, trying to make out palm trees. Much to my disappointment, I could only see low rolling hills and dense, dark patches of firs and oaks.
When I left my room to go downstairs for breakfast, Mom and Dad weren't talking. I decided it would be best if I didn't talk either—I was afraid of hearing the tense, angry voices I knew they would use—so kept silent and didn't ask any more questions about the stars. After eating my soggy cereal I went back up to my room and had a long, involved conversation with Launcelot, my teddy bear. In my solemnest voice, I swore to him that if he were to get lost, I would go with him; we were never to be parted, not even by death. This agreement was later enshrined in a poem I titled Teddy and Death.
Science was never fully comprehensible to me at school, and I considered it thoroughly incompatible with my artistic temperament. I did just enough to scrape Cs in exams, but never truly applied myself. Nonetheless, I remained fascinated by the stars. The older I became, the better I understood distance. I learned that my mom was more distant from me than my grandma in California, as I came to appreciate that distance can be visible in the eyes as well as on the horizon and in the night sky. Around the same time, I realised that the stars were more distant than anything else in the world, and I took comfort in that; however physically distant my mother was, the stars were still much, much further.
When Mom finally left for good, Dad told me that he was going to buy me a present as a reward for being so brave. I didn't know how I'd been brave, but was pleased by the thought of a present nonetheless. I mulled things over, and eventually asked Dad for a poster of the Andromeda Galaxy. He was confused, but he bought me one all the same. It hung over my bed for three years, reminding me that Manhattan wasn't that far away at all; indeed, it was less than an hour to Grand Central from Tarrytown station. When I was twelve, I was allowed to make the journey by myself for the first time. Dad waved me off at the station, and Mom's personal assistant picked me up in her shiny red Corvette.
I only took the Andromeda Galaxy poster down when Irene moved in, as that was when the stars lost some of their fascination. I no longer wanted to be reminded of how distant the stars were; thinking about the many billions of miles made my head hurt, more of a taunt than a balm. Irene didn't notice that I'd taken the poster down, and bought me a shoddy plastic telescope for Christmas. I left it under my bed in its box, only checking on it occasionally to see how much dust it had gained. The ultimate aim of this exercise was to leave the dust-laden, unopened box on Irene's dressing table. I never quite decided when this plan would be put into action, though I think I was waiting for the box to accumulate a satisfactory amount of dust.
The next time I went to see Mom, I asked for posters from Broadway shows and was rewarded by one-sheets for practically every big production in town. They appeared in the hall overnight, as if by magic. I gave her a big hug to say thank you, and tried not to think too much about how stiffly she patted my back in return. She was dressed for a lunch date, I told myself later, and wanted to keep her blouse straight. That explanation was enough to make the hard pat comprehensible, and I went home on the train with rolls of posters tucked firmly under my arms and a smile on my lips. The same evening, I spent several hours pinning the same posters to the perfect places on the walls in my room.
When my brother was born, I thought quite seriously about two star-related solutions: either Toby would be sent up to the stars, or I would travel to them by myself. I toyed with both ideas, but ultimately decided that Toby was the one who deserved banishment. It only seemed fair. I'd arrived first, and I didn't cry for food or soil diapers. I didn't doubt for a moment that Toby would be dramatically inferior to me even when he reached thirteen. With Irene as his mom, he didn't stand a chance of catching up. The plan also had another advantage. If I could send Toby to the stars, there was a good chance that Irene would follow him. The thought of such a neat solution was seductive, and I liked to spend the nights when I was babysitting looking out at the stars and picking out ones to send Toby and Irene to.
I wasn't at all surprised that my wish—my wish that my brother be taken—was heard, since I'd always known magic was real. The stars were magic, which was why I couldn't stop thinking about them, and there was also a lesser kind of magic in the land. Magic surrounded me, and I was far too conceited to think that I ever truly spoke to myself. There were always people listening to me; it was simply that some of them were hidden. I explained their absence to myself as a symptom of shyness. I even noticed signs of the hidden people sometimes: shaking hedges, missing socks, and thick, hair-whipping winds. In my mind, it was inevitable that someone would be listening; I think I might have even voiced my wish aloud as a test of the hidden people's hearing. The only real surprise was that the wish was acted upon, my brother stolen.
I never thought of it consciously while I was there, but at the back of my mind I think I wondered if the Labyrinth was perhaps on a distant star. I remember looking up briefly at the sky there when it was twilight, but there were no stars visible. But if I was on one of the self-same stars that I could see from my bedroom window, why should I see the stars I saw from Earth? It wasn't like there was nothing in the sky, for there were two bulging twin suns that glowed a hot, tropical red even as the darkness closed in. Later, I decided that I was merely looking out on the universe from a different perspective; it made complete sense to me that a star that could still shine brilliantly across an incomprehensibly great stretch of space would have a surface shaped from the raw stuff of magic.
But while I marvelled at it all later, I was fixated on getting my brother back while I was there. When I found him gone, I felt his distance from me as an ache, as a hole in my heart. The moment I realised that I missed his cry and his small, beating fists was the moment that I realised I loved him. While no amount of train trips and back pats could close the distance between me and my mother, a steady tread and some cleverness could help me rescue Toby from the Goblin King. I didn't want to send him to a star; I wanted to save him from one.
After I returned home with Toby, I thought more about the world of the Labyrinth, and I thought for the very first time of the Goblin King. I had spoken with him and defeated him to his face, but I hadn't actively thought about him. I had merely done what was right, taking the correct steps and saying the predetermined words. Only when I returned home did I contemplate what he had said to me. I recalled him mentioning something about stars. My mind had been a haze—filled with grotesque, gazing faces and the choking scents of a thousand flowers—so the words hadn't quite registered; nonetheless, the faint memory of what he'd said intrigued me. In fact, I couldn't stop thinking of it.
Three nights after returning from the Labyrinth, Dad and Irene took Toby to visit Irene's parents in Vermont. This presented me with an excellent opportunity to ask the Goblin King a question. I waited until it was dark and then went to my window, opening it wide and scrutinising the sky. When I found the brightest star, I said, "I wish the Goblin King would answer my question, right now."
"And what question fills your mouth, champion? What forbidden knowledge do you want to possess?" The voice came from behind me, crisp and sardonic.
I turned to face him, schooling myself to appear calm and unafraid. He appeared much the same as before, only his black clothes were slightly more muted and his hair more restrained. The only betrayal I allowed myself was a quickening of my heart, for I was sure not even he would hear it. "I want you to tell me what you said about the stars."
"I said nothing to you about the stars," he scoffed, as if the mistake were offensive in the extreme. "I sang of them."
"Well, what did you sing?"
"I cannot sing that particular song without a dance."
I looked around. There wasn't enough space in my room for star-jumps to work off pudding, let alone dancing. "Well, we can't dance here." I said this rather lamely, and suddenly felt rather sheepish. The Goblin King suddenly seemed thoroughly out of place in my bedroom, and I didn't like how he was staring at me with a glint in his strange, uneven eyes.
"We needn't dance here!" he proclaimed this boldly, offering me a hand. My heart was beating ever faster, but there was something irresistible about his offer. It was made so lightly, with such confidence, that I was sure it had to be safe. I managed a nervous nod, and accepted his hand
The moment our hands touched, the world changed. Everything was dark, like the lights had gone out. There was no breeze, but the air that surrounded us was chill. "What's happening?" I asked in panic, on the verge of letting go of his hand only for him to seize my waist and squeeze my fingers with his.
"Look around you," he said, clearly delighting in his own assuredness. I looked, and when I did I realised that there was no ground beneath my feet, only sky. The sky dropped below me for miles, and the homes there twinkled like small, feeble lights. When I looked above us I could only see the stars. They were closer than I had ever seen them, pulsating with light. They were mesmerising, and the mere sight of them made me forget all of the fear I should have felt.
"Are we flying?" I asked, still gazing upwards.
"No. We're only dancing."
I looked down at our feet, and sure enough he was right. He moved his feet with precise, dancer's steps, and my own feet followed his with automatic movements. He guided me with the hand he held to my waist, with the hand that clasped mine. I looked back up at his face, and he smiled at me with something like fondness.
The longer I looked at him, the more I came to understand that his smile made no sense. At the worst possible moment, I realised that I was suspended high up in the air with the man who had kidnapped my brother. The king I had defeated. The lover I had rejected. My mind, which had been a bubble of block-coloured, child-like sensation, was suddenly buzzing with questions. The first that came out was formed from my fear. "Aren't you angry with me?" I kept the quiver in my voice low, hoping he would mistake it for an effect of the cold.
"Why would I be angry?" he answered breezily, the same maddeningly charming expression constant on his features.
I hesitated, and felt my steps falter as I did. The sky shifted, and we dropped by a few feet. I threw my arms fully around his shoulders, clinging tohim and looking down at the drop.
I felt his mouth move quickly to my ear, his breath warm against my neck. "Move. Dance with me, and I will answer your question. Dance, and you will be safe."
I decided it would be better not to know what would happen if I didn't dance. Taking a steadying breath, I began to move my feet again. Mom had paid for me to take ballroom classes for a summer I'd spent with her in New York, killing two birds with one stone by simultaneously teaching me how to use my feet and keep out from under hers. I found the dance teacher's baton-sharp voice ("one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three!") reverberating around my head as we danced, and the fear slowly began to fade.
My hold on the Goblin King loosened, my hand finding the correct place on his back to rest. When the dance flowed once more, he finally answered my question. "I am not angry. I am fascinated."
I frowned. "By what?"
"Your stupidity. Your brazenness. What sort of clever person would summon their arch villain, a king no less, to answer a question about the stars?"
"I'm not stupid!" I replied, quite indignant. I sped up my steps, challenging him to match me. The world whorled around us in shades of black and grey, the light from the stars visible only on the Goblin King's face. "I'm just confident. And curious. Besides, I beat you before. I can do it again if I need to."
The fact that he did not see fit to comment on this, merely smirking, probably should have made me uneasy. I tried not to think of it.
"So, do you like the setting?" he asked, eventually. "I felt it appropriate."
"Yes, it's beautiful. It's beyond anything else." I paused a beat, then added: "Is it real?"
He managed to shrug as much as it is possible to shrug mid-step. "It is as real as my world is, if you consider such a staid term appropriate."
"Well, it certainly feels real. It feels like there's nothing beneath us at all."
"There isn't. You must keep your grip, dear. You must keep on dancing."
This time, the question burst out from my tongue before I could stop it. "What happens if I don't?"
He smiled with sated glee. "You'll fall."
I spent the next few minutes concentrating solely on my steps, perfecting them and familiarising myself with his tricks. I was determined to be brave and to hold my ground even though there wasn't any ground for me to hold. He took strange steps and twisted his body at sharp angles, forcing me to swerve to keep with him. We rose higher and higher as the dance quickened, until the stars swarmed around us. They gathered in thick, disordered bunches, reminding me of the lights tangled around the trees at one of Mom's fancy garden parties. If I hadn't been afraid of dropping back to Earth like a stone, I would have reached out a hand to try and touch them.
The silence was palpable between us, and I was conscious that it needed to be broken. "Will you sing now?" I asked this softly, not breaking step. The Goblin King was glowing in the light of the stars, and from the way he looked at me, with something like reverence, I knew that I was glowing too. There was no distance between us, yet there was a great deal of distance between us and the world. While I wasn't sure I wanted to remain so separate from the world—not when I had my dad, not when I had Toby—I was captivated by the sheer sensation of being in the sky. I was finally up with the stars, and it felt as good and as freeing as I had always imagined it to.
As we continued to dance, he finally began to sing. He explained the stars, and our path between them. He told me that his love would wait for me in the sky.
And I was enchanted.
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The End
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A/N: Many thanks to NiennaTelrunya for the edit of this. This is probably the most straightforwardly cute/romantic Labyrinth story I've ever written, so it's new ground for me. Let me know what you think by leaving a contribution in the little box!
The reference to a suicide pact with a stuffed-toy was inspired by a real anecdote related by Jennifer Connelly, who once swore to a toy monkey that she would sooner die than live without it. I love the melodrama of childhood, and had to use that thought here.