Disclaimer: I don't own the Labyrinth of any of its awesome characters and all rights go to the owners. This is a work of fanfiction.
Note: This is a version of the Labyrinth set in modern day 2016 based on the movie and its Novelization.
Chapter 1
The White Owl
No one could have noticed the owl, hidden in the pixels, gliding ever closer to the screen on silver wings. The owl saw and heard everything.
He settled in a cluster of pixels just out of view on a well designed tree. From his hidden spot he watched a girl in her bed beyond the barrier. The wind outside drifted against the open window. The electricity in the air rose the hair on the girl's neck. The owl noticed everything with intelligent, watchful eyes.
Skillfully, the girl's thumbs played across the controller, brining the scene to life. From the shadows of the tree below the watchful own a girl, not so unlike the girl beyond the screen, emerged. The girl on the bed mirrored the expression of the pixelated woman: concentrated. The pixelated woman moved forward awkwardly, arms stretched before her towards an unseen force. At the bottom of the screen two options appeared in tilted font.
Give me the child - A
This game ends here - B
Beyond the screen the girl in the bed did not have to think twice. Without looking down her thumbs moved from memory to choose the correct option.
"Give me the child," the girl pleads, "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City to take back the child you have stolen."
My will is as strong as yours - A
You have no right - B
"For my will is as strong as yours... and my Kingdom as great..."
You have no power of me - A
Please don't hurt him - B
The girl in the bed closes her eyes for a moment. In the distance thunder rumbles through the sky. The owl watches closely.
"You have to be kidding me," she growls, "That can't be the only two options!"
A clap of thunder interrupts her thoughts causing her to drop her customized white and grey controller. The big shaggy sheepdog that slept beside her jumped as well. Until now he had been content to sleep silently at Sarah's feet until she needed a break from her game to burry her face in his hair. Now he turned and began to bark at the screen, alerted by an unseen presence.
Sarah ignored Merlin, instead focusing her attention on the TV propped up on a stool. She approached the television, retrieving a long black cord from her desk where several were tangled together. With it she plugged her smart phone (the cover which matched her controller) into the television.
Merlin continued to bark as she began fiddling with an app to bypass the suggested phrases on screen. She had done this before, just a simple pass into the voice automated system to put her own phrase in. But just as she started typing her new words into her phone the pixels began to jumble into a mass before her eyes. The pixelated girls on the screen disappeared into a scene of flickering black, white, and blue colours.
"Oh no!" Sarah exclaimed, fearing she had ruined her old television for good this time.
She pulled the cord from the hole with the intention of undoing the damage. When that didn't work she started pressing buttons on the black and green game system to turn it off.
While her head was down only Merlin caught the pixels shifting into the form of the graceful owl, dominating the screen. Merlin barked fiercely at the screen. The owls dark eyes settled on Sarah before disappeared as her head lifted from the system.
The system was old and the red ring around the power button told her that there was nothing she could do to bring it back.
In the distance a clock tower chimed seven times. Sarah, angered by the loss of her only game system, threw her phone angrily against the floor snapping the back off and startling Merlin. To add to her bad luck a thick layer of rain suddenly poured through the window, soaking her white laptop propped against the wall.
"No, no, no!" She crushed to the window to slam it shut, "It's not fair!"
She was close to tears now. How could this have happened? She had bypassed plenty of games before and she was always careful not to let anything happen to her precious game system. Now it was fried and she had no money to get another one. If her laptop was ruined too she would be completely cut off.
From down the hall, louder than the storm raging outside, Sarah could hear her brother Toby wailing. She hated Toby. She hated how all of the money her parents could spare on gifts went to him. She hated how her father loved him more than her and how he spoke of how proud he was of him when he was only a toddler.
She put the thought far from her mind. He wasn't her problem. If it wasn't for her father she would have nothing to do with him. Instead she focused her attention on her last possible piece of entertainment. Her laptop, which had been almost completely soaked, turned on without an issue. She sighed with relief.
Immediately the signed on to her favourite forum dealing with video games and electronics. There she would be able to get help from others, strangers she knew nothing about, on fixing her system and maybe her phone.
Please HELP, she typed, red ring of death upon me. Any hints on how to fix it? If not, anyone looking to give away a gaming system to a poor girl with parents who wouldn't spare her a penny when it could go to her ANNOYING baby brother?
She hit send just as a loud bang on her door caused her to jump.
"What?" She asked, irritated.
"Sarah," her stepmother's voice came from the other side of the door, "Your father and I will be leaving for dinner now. Can you please come out of your room and look after Toby while we are out?"
"I'm busy." She called back, focusing her attention on her dead system.
"Sarah," her stepmother's voice was insistent this time, "You know the rules. Your father and I go out very rarely-"
"You go out every weekend!"
"Let me finish! I only ask you to baby sit if it won't interfere with your plans."
"It does interfere with my plans! I'm busy, I told you. I have something very important to do right now."
The door rattled, a sign her stepmother was trying to enter. "What have we told you about locking your door? And I know you don't have plans. You never leave your room anymore. I would think if you had plans you would come and tell us. Just bring your gaming things into Toby's room and sit with him until we get home."
"I can't just move my gaming things into the hall. Everything has stopped working thanks to you never letting me get a new system, thank you very much!" She yelled through the door.
"Well, if your things aren't working then there should be no problem sitting with Toby."
"Just leave me alone! You don't know anything about this!" She screamed, her eyes filling with tears as she looked upon her dead system and phone lying on the ground.
Angrily she threw herself onto her bed, pulling the laptop close to her.
Update: Stepmother thinks that since all my old systems are broken I can be her slave and look after my bratty brother. Well the joke is on her, I still have my laptop.
She stood from the bed, determined not to let her stepmother beat her so easily. She had many different gadgets organized all over her room she could use to try to fix her system or her phone.
On book shelves she had plenty of gaming guides, instruction manuals for putting TVs together from her father (back before Toby came along and she could get a new TV when her old one died), and cheat codes for her older systems. Stacked neatly on hanging shelves from the wall were her old portable players with hundreds of games she had completed a hundred times.
She was digging through a cluttered drawer of cords, rubber bands, and memory cards for her game systems when a soft knock came at the door.
"I told you to leave me alone." I said darkly.
"Sarah? Can I talk to you?" Her father's voice awoke something deep within her that made her cringe.
"There's nothing to talk about..." She said just loud enough for him to hear.
"Your mother and I are leaving now. Toby isn't feeling well so you will need to keep an eye on him all night. See you later tonight." His voice faded away with the sound of his footsteps.
Angrily, Sarah shoved and handful of memory cards, elastic bands, and an discarded motherboard into her jean pockets.
"You really wanted to talk to me didn't you?" She sobbed to herself, "You basically broke down the door!"
She threw herself back on her bed and sobbed into her pillow. Beside her Merlin licked her white blouse. He understood just as much as she did how awful her parents acted towards her. Even he had been left behind in the absence of Sarah's mother who had brought him into the house when he was just a puppy and Sarah was just a young girl. Many years had passed since then and he had watched her slowly grow sadder as she passed into late teenage years. Now he felt he was all she had left.
"It's not fair!" She sobbed.
She heard the garage close over the sound of the rain and thunder. But more than anything else she could not drown out the sound of Toby crying. In her mind she wondered how her parents could be so cruel to leave her with a sick crying baby. Wasn't it their job as parents to take care of their child? Not that they were very good at being parents she supposed.
When she was able to calm herself down she stood and moved back to her collection of prized childhood gaming devices. Nothing she had on hand would be able to fix her system or phone, she would have to get her dad to look at it in the morning if he could spare her some time. In the meantime she could always download a free game on her tablet that she kept charging in case of an emergency.
Her eyes came to rest on the empty space where her tablet always sat. A sickening realization filled her. Someone had been in her room in the brief time she left to get food or take a shower. They had taken her prized gaming tablet.
Down the hall she heard softly, over the sound of Toby crying, a voice speaking in calm tones. Her anger grew until it overflowed.
"I hate you!" she screamed to the wind, to her stepmother, and to Toby.
She threw her door open and stormed down the hall in a fury. Merlin followed her out but only ran the opposite way down the hall where her rage could not reach him.
In her parents room, next to their oversized bed, Toby sat wailing in his crib. Attached to the side of the crib with a new device meant to hold such a device was her tablet. The volume had been turned to the highest setting and a woman's voice calmly read from a series of children's stories. Toby took no notice.
Sarah stormed towards the crib and ripped the tablet from the device, only to find that it was tightly secured with a lockable cord. She screamed with rage at the act her parents had done against her. Not only would they steal from her but they would prevent her from retrieving her own property!
"I hate her! I hate you!" She wailed at Toby, who screamed only louder at her.
She looked down at the screen and exited out of the program, cutting off the woman's voice. Acting on a hunch she checked the purchase history knowing very well that she had never bought anything on it. Sure enough, over $25 worth of books, baby games, and other programs had been purchased to turn her tablet into Toby's private tablet.
"They don't have money to spend on me but they have plenty to give to you?" She cried, dropping the tablet and letting the screen drop outside the crib where Toby couldn't reach it.
Outside the door the storm raged harder mirrored by Toby's wailing, which grew louder with every passing minute.
"Someone please save me from this retched family!" She begged, tears streaming down her face.
"Did you hear that?" A muffled voice comes from Sarah's room.
From within the broken TV several shapes began to move among the pixels. Slowly shapes began to emerge in the screen until dozens of black, beady eyes could be made out staring. Sarah did not notice from the other room as these shapes came closer to the screen, fighting to try to listen down the hall where Sarah was.
Back in the bedroom Sarah was beyond self-pity. "Just be quiet will you? What do you want, a story or something? It's not like you haven't already taken everything from me. Why shouldn't you have my tablet?"
She snatched the tablet from where it hung off the crib and scrolled through the apps she had taken the time to download months ago until she found an app that played videos.
She typed in 'baby videos for spoiled brats' and hit 'I'm feeling lucky' even though she felt anything but lucky.
A blank video appeared on the screen with a deep voice speaking in a British accent.
"Once upon a time there was a beautiful young girl whose mother always left her alone with the baby. The baby was spoiled and wanted everything to itself, making the girl a sort of slave to him. But what the girl didn't know was that the King of the Goblins had fallen in love with her and had given her special powers…"
Sarah recognized the story from her video game, which she had never gotten to finish. And though Toby continued to wail Sarah remained spellbound by the man's voice, reading the story.
"The girl knew that by saying these words the baby would be taken away to the Goblin Kingdom and so she suffered in silence. But one night, the baby was being very naughty, pushing the girl to the edge of her patience…"
Abruptly the video changed into another with bright colours and childish music. Sarah shrugged and reattached it to the holder so Toby, who was too busy wailing to notice it, could watch it if he wanted.
With that accomplished Sarah returned to her room, confident that if music, a story, and a video couldn't calm Toby down that nothing else would. She threw herself into her bed where her laptop awaited her return.
Sarah never could have known that the faces that once watched eagerly from the screen had once again gone into hiding, waiting for their moment to come.
She pulled up her forum site and continued typing.
Update: My disgusting stepmother has decided that it is okay to come into my room and take my things to give to the stupid spoiled baby. She is willing to spend money she claims she doesn't have on books and videos the baby doesn't even like instead of giving any to me to fix things. I guess she would rather just take my things instead of buying something for the baby. I hate her!
She hit send with more force than necessary. A ping answers right away indicating a reply.
GblnKng: Say your words right…
"Goblin King, huh?" Sarah snickered casting a glance over to the game, still stuck in her broken game system, "He must be a big fan of the game."
SarhWill: Cool name Mr. Goblin King. I'm not sure what words I'm supposed to use but I do wish you are your Goblins would come and take my brother away. Right now!
Before Sarah could hit send her TV exploded in a hail of sparks sending her cowering under the safety of her blankets. Down the hall Toby's cries were cut short by an unseen force while Merlin barked as though he were in pain.
From the safe darkness of her blankets Sarah couldn't see an empty crib sitting alone in a room or the dark eyes that gazed upon her from a broken television.