It's Only Forever

by CryingDragon

When you mix Ethan Rayne and

1. It's Only Forever

Disclaimer: It's not mine. None of it. Except maybe some of the cruel intentions. Joss Whedon owns the Buffy characters. The Henson people own Labyrinth. David Bowie owns a piece of my heart that's slightly smaller than the pieces Giles and Ethan own. A.C.H Smith wrote the novelisation that I, erm, enhanced. And I get nothing from this but the satisfaction of a job well done.

Spoilers: Most of season six, but not the season ender.

Note: This is what happens when you feed plot bunnies the 'Labyrinth' soundtrack as you fall asleep.

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"Pet, if you don't help me, the goblins will take me away!"

"I wish the goblins would take you away." Buffy turned her back to her vampire lover. She heard him yelp, then silence. Turning around, she saw that Spike was gone. "Now what's he up to?" she muttered.

She started walking towards his crypt. "Spike, this is not funny. Where are you?" Silence was her only reply. She entered the crypt and carefully looked around. "If you think you're gonna try and jump me from behind, I got a stake with your name on it." She grew more puzzled and a little worried when she found no sign of the blond undead. She turned to head for the door, only to find Ethan standing there. Her first impulse was to laugh. He was dressed in a way she could only think of as Goth. His shirt was cream-colored, open at the front, loose-sleeved, with silken cuffs at the wrist. Over it he wore a tight, black waistcoat. He was shod in black boots, over gray tights, and one of his black gloved hands held the jeweled knob of a curious cane with a fishtail shape at the end. A black cape swirled around him. His hair made her think of Tina Turner with black hair. Buffy tried to stifle a giggle.

"Not quite the reaction I was going for." He said with a hurt look. "But it's better than the fist I was expecting."

"We could still change that." Buffy said, as she started to move toward him.

Ethan backed up. "Wait a minute, darling. I'm here for a reason." He produced a crystal ball from thin air. "I'm here to let you know that if you want your vampire back, you have to go get him."

He tossed the ball to her. She looked into it and saw Spike surrounded by what looked like Muppets. Really evil, dirty Muppets. And they were not playing nice. He was trying to fight them off but they were too many for him and she could see that he would soon be buried under them. Buffy, despite her loathing for the vampire, still felt a longing for him. And a sense of obligation, since he had been helping her.

"How do I do that?" She asked, trying to sound casual about it.

Ethan stepped aside and Buffy found herself looking at a large maze with a castle in the middle. She got the feeling that she had seen it somewhere before. Looking at Ethan again, she finally put her finger on it. "Labyrinth."

Ethan was dressed like David Bowie.

"I suppose I have only 13 hours before you turn him into a goblin or whatever?"

"Something like that." Ethan said as he turned into a crow and flew away.

"I thought you were supposed to be an owl!" Buffy yelled to him as he got further away.

"He'll be around to see you soon," came floating back to her on the wind. Buffy, trying to figure out what that meant, took a step forward and found herself falling.

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When she landed, she realized that the sun was rising. The castle was shining before her, its spires and turrets rimmed with the reflected sunlight. The sun was soon above the horizon, and color and shape were seeping into the valley. She went on watching, and gradually she took in the full nature of the valley. At first she could not believe it. As the sun rose higher and disclosed more to her, her shoulders drooped. She shook her head slowly, dumbfounded.

From the foot of the hillside where she sat, to the castle and beyond it, and from horizon to horizon on each side, there stretched a vast, intricate maze of walls and hedges.

She studied it, trying to decipher some pattern to it, some principle of design that might guide her through it. She could see none. Corridors doubled, and wound and coiled. Gateways led to gateways leading into gateways. It reminded her of thousands of fingerprints laid side by side, overlapping each other. Did Ethan work all that out, she wondered, or had it just happened?

The impossibility of ever finding her way through started to overwhelm her. She stood up, clenched her fists, set her jaw, and cleared her throat. "Well," she said, "here we go. Come on, feet."

In the dawning light, she could see a path that zigzagged down the hillside. She picked her way to it through the rocks and shrubs. At the foot of the path, she came to a great wall, strengthened with buttresses. It stretched as far as she could see to the left and right.

Doubtfully, she approached the wall, with no idea what she might do when she reached it. As she got closer, a movement just at the base of it caught her eye. There was a little man, cackling as he ground something underfoot.

"Excuse me," Buffy said.

He jumped and turned to look at Buffy. "What to you want?"

"Excuse me, but can you show me the way in?"

He blinked at her once or twice hen his eyes darted to one side. He rushed a few steps toward a bluebell, at the same time pulling a spray can from under his jacket. As he aimed the spray, Buffy saw that a diaphanous little fairy was emerging from the bluebell.

He sprayed it, with a couple of quick bursts. The fairy at once wilted, like a shriveling petal.

"Fifty-seven," he said with some satisfaction.

Buffy remembered this part of the movie. She thought for a second. If this was the same, then odds were that most of the rest of it would be as well. Barring Ethan's meddling of course. "You're Hoggle, aren't you?"

"Yes I am." He sounded surprised. "Who are you?"

"Buffy."

He nodded. "That's what I thought." Spotting another fairy, he squirted her. To make sure, he stepped on this one and ground his foot around. The fairy squealed. "Fifty-eight," Hoggle said.

"Do you know how to get in?"

Instead of replying, he dodged to one side, raising his spray can. "Fifty-nine."

"So where is it?"

"Where is what?"

"The door."

"What door?"

"The door to get in." Buffy groaned in frustration.

"The door! In! Oh, that's a good one." He laughed, not kindly.

Buffy wanted to punch him. "It's hopeless asking you anything."

"Not if you asks the right questions." He was giving her a sidelong look.

"Well, what are the right questions?"

Hoggle stroked the top of his nose. "It depends on what you want to know."

"That's easy. How do I get in?"

Hoggle sniffed, and his eyes twinkled. "Ah! Now that's more like it. You gets in there." He nodded, indicating behind her. "You got to ask the right questions if you want to get anywhere."

Buffy had spun around. Now in the great wall, she saw a huge, grotesquely designed gate. She stared at it almost accusingly. She could have sworn it had not been there before.

"There ain't no door, see?" Hoggle was explaining. "All you got to do now is find the key."

She looked back at him and then all around her. She saw at once that it was going to be no problem to find the key. Near her was a very small mat, and from each end of it an enormous key was sticking out.

"Well," she said, "that's simple enough." She went over to the key and tried to pick it up. She could just manage to get one end of it off the ground, or the other, but the whole key was too heavy for her to lift, even with Slayer strength. She glared at Hoggle. "I suppose it's too much to expect you to give me a hand?"

"Yes," Hoggle said.

She tried again, straining to lift it. It was hopeless. "Oh," she said. "This is so stupid."

"You mean you're so stupid," Hoggle correct her.

"Shut up, you rotten little pipsqueak."

"Don't call me that!" Hoggle was agitated. "I am not a pipsqueak." He was beside himself with rage. "Don't call me that," he said hysterically. "You! Ha! You're so stupid you are, you take everything for granted."

"Pipsqueak! Pipsqueak!"

"I'm not. I'm not. Stop it! Stop it!" Hoggle collected himself and with some dignity told her, "If you weren't so brainless, you'd try the gate."

That stopped her short. She thought for a moment, then went to the gate and gave it a little push. It swung open.

"Nobody said it was locked," Hoggle observed.

"Very clever."

"You think you're so clever," Hoggle said. "You know why? Because you ain't learned nothing."

Buffy was peering cautiously inside the gate and did not like what she saw. It was dark and forbidding in there and smelled of rotting things. She gathered her courage and took two steps in and stopped short. A passageway ran across the entrance. It was so narrow, and the wall was so high, that the sky was a mere slit over her head. In the gloom, she heard a continual drip of water, echoing. She approached the farther wall, touched it, and pulled her hand away. It was dank and slimy, like mildew.

Hoggle's head was poking through the gateway behind her. "Cozy, ain't it?" Buffy shuddered. Hoggle's manner had altered. He was quiet, and it was almost possible to detect a hint of concern in his voice. "You really going to go in there, are you?"

Buffy hesitated. "I ... yes," she said. "Yes, I am. Do you ... is there any reason why I shouldn't?" She was clenching her fists. She didn't like feeling this uncomfortable.

"There's every reason why you shouldn't," Hoggle replied. "Is there any reason why you should? Any really good reason?"

"Yes, there is." She thought of Spike. He was counting on her to save him. "So I suppose ... I must."

"All right," Hoggle said, in a tone of voice that implied, on your own head be it. "Now," he asked, "which way will you go? Right or left?"

She looked one way and then the other. There was no reason to choose either direction asdirection, as both looked grim. The brick walls appeared to extent to infinity.

She shrugged, wanting some help, but too proud to ask for it. "They both look the same," she said.

"Well," Hoggle told her, "you're not going to get very far, then, are you?"

"All right," she said crossly, "which way would you go?"

"Me?" He laughed without mirth. "I wouldn't go neither way."

"Some guide you are."

"I never said I was a guide, did I? Although you could certainly use one. You'll probably end up back where you started, given your record for being wrong. You know your problem?" Hoggle asked.

She took no notice, but tried to look determined to set out in one direction or the other. Left, right, she was thinking, that was the normal order. So in this abnormal place, she might as well try going to the right.

"You take too many things for granted," Hoggle went on. Even if you get to the center, which is extremely doubtful, you'll never get out again."

"That's your opinion." Buffy moved to her right.

"Well, it's a better opinion than any of yours."

"Thanks for nothing, Hogwart."

"Hoggle!" His voice came echoing from the gateway, where he remained.

"And don't say I didn't warn you."

Her jaw set, she strode out, between the damp and dire walls.

She had gone only a few strides when, with a mighty, reverberating clang, the gate closed behind her. She stopped, and could not resist returning, to see if the gate would open again. It wouldn't. Hoggle was shut outside. The only sounds now were the drip of water, and Buffy's quick breathing.

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Buffy took a deep breath and set off along the passageway again. A clump of lichen on the gatepost opened its eyes and watched her go. The eyes, on tendrils, had an anxious look, and when she had gone some distance away, the clump swiveled its eyes toward each other, and commenced to gossip amongst itself. Most of it disapproved of the direction she had taken. You could tell that from the way the eyes looked meaningfully into each other. Lichen knows about directions.

When she had been walking for a while between the towering walls of the apparently endless passageway and gotten nowhere that looked different, she went on walking for a while more and it was all the same. Another hundred steps, she told herself, and if I'm still getting nowhere I'll think of something else to do. One, two ... ninety-eight, ninety-nine. The walls stretched to eternity.

"Damn. I can't remember how Sarah got past here," she said aloud, for the company of hearing her own voice. "There's not a single turn, or corner, or -- anything. It just goes on, and on." She paused, thinking of what Hoggle had said to her. "But maybe it doesn't," she reasoned. "Maybe... I'm just taking it for granted that it does. Because that's all it's done so far, go on and on." Taking another deep breath, she began to run. The only difference now was that the walls revealed their endlessness more quickly. She ran faster, skidding in mud, banging against the brick sides of the passage, faster and faster, and the walls stretched out ahead of her without turning or feature or end, until they began to spin above her head and she realized that she was collapsing, exhausted.

When she had recovered, she opened her eyes very slowly, hoping she would see something different this time: corners, a door, even Spike's crypt. All there was to see were the two walls. With a little yelp of frustration, she beat her fists upon one of the walls.

As though answering a doorbell, a tiny wormlike creature with large eyes popped its head out from between the bricks where Buffy had pounded. "'Allo?" It asked in a cheery voice.

Buffy looked at the worm. 'That's right,' Buffy thought, 'she asked the talking worm.' In a low voice, she asked it, "Do you know how to get in the Labyrinth?"

"Who, me?" It grinned. "No, I'm just a worm."

Buffy nodded. She might have expected as much.

"Come inside and meet the missus," the worm invited her.

She managed a faint smile. "Thank you," she told the worm, "but I've got to get through and I'm having trouble finding the opening."

"Ooh," the worm said, "you ain't looking right, you ain't. It's full of openings. It's just that you ain't seeing 'em, that's all. There's an opening just across there," the worm went on, "It's right in front of you."

She looked. Brick wall, damp mildew, clump of lichen, nothing else. "No, there isn't."

"You try walking that way, over there," the worm said, with a nod of encouragement. "You'll see. But first, why not have a nice cup of tea?"

Tea made her think of Giles and she felt herself longing to have him here with her. He would be able to help her figure out where to go next.

"Where?" Buffy looked at the blank wall again.

"I got the kettle on."

The worm's hospitality was wasted on her. "That's just wall," she muttered. "There's no way through."

"Ooh," the worm observed, "this place, dear, things aren't always what they seem, you know, not here. Not here, no. So don't you take anything for granted. Or anyone."

Buffy gave the worm a sharp glance. How was it that he had the same script as Hoggle? And in her mind she heard Hoggle's voice again. "Me? I wouldn't go neither way."

Neither way. Right in front of you. Of course. Very tentatively, flinching in anticipation, she walked into the wall, and through it, into another passageway.

Buffy was delighted. This passageway, too, stretched out infinitely to either side, but at least it was a different one. She turned back gratefully. "Thank you," she said to the worm.

She had begun to walk along the new passageway when she heard a little shout from behind her. "And don't go that way!" the worm was calling. He looked up at the lichen, whose eyes were worried as they watched Buffy. The worm gave the lichen a cheerful grin, but the lichen just went on boggling anxiously after the girl.

She halted, and then came back panting. "What did you say?"

"What I said," the worm told her, "was, don't go that way."

"Oh," Buffy nodded, trying to remember why. "Thanks." She set off in the other direction.

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In the stone chamber of the Goblin King, Spike, was still fighting off the goblins.

Ethan watched him with an amused smile. Lounging in his draped throne, which was in the form of an interrupted circle, he turned to some one who was hidden by the shadows. "Perhaps it's time you let her know you were here." The figure nodded and disappeared.

Ethan yawned, and looked wearily around the room. The walls had been decorated with skulls and bats. Dear god, he thought. Skulls and bats yet. How jejune could you get? He would have to do something to pass the time.

He stood up from the throne, stretched his arms and paced restlessly. Another goblin came dashing past. Ethan reached down and picked him up by the scruff of the neck. The goblin's eyes boggled at his. "You're a boggling goblin," He said, with a laugh. The rest of the goblins howled with merriment.

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Buffy was wandering along brick corridors. They were still high and forbidding, but at least they didn't stretch out to the end of space and time, and sometimes there was a flight of steps, which made a nice change. Across the end of the passage behind her squads of goblins rustled by, but Buffy's eyes were fixed on what lay ahead and she did not see them.

The chamber was a dead end. She peeked in every alcove and behind the buttresses, but there was definitely no way out. She shrugged, and retraced her steps.

"Hello. Buffy."

She jumped, and whipped around.

"Giles!" She exclaimed. He was dressed in much the same manner as Ethan had been. But on him, Buffy thought it looked kind of sexy. 'Whoa, where did that thought come from?' But what she said aloud was "So Ethan got you too, huh?"

Giles gave a strange grin. "We all have our part to play in this. I'm here to let you know that you don't have much time. And to warn you. Things are not as they seem here. And what you're seeking, may not be what you're looking for."

"Cryptic much, Giles?"

Giles grinned. "Well what did you expect? I'm not allowed to help you. It's against the rules."

Buffy grinned back. "Since when did we follow the rules?"

"True. But I'm afraid in this case, we have no choice. " With that he turned back into an owl and flew away.

She turned back the way she had been going. She now saw two carved doors in the wall, and a guard posted in front of each door. At least, she thought they must be guards, since they stood foursquare and were emblazoned with armor. But as she studied them she was not so sure. They were quite comic, really. Their enormous shields, which were curiously patterned with geometrical figures and scrolls and devices, looked extremely heavy. She noticed that underneath each shield peered another face, upside down, a little like a jack of spades gone wrong. The upside-down characters seemed to be hanging on to their uncomfortable positions by the great gnarled and horny hands she could see gripping the bottom of the shields.

"I can never remember which one is which." She said to herself.

"So just try one of the doors," suggested one of the upside-down ones.

"One of them leads to the castle," the other added in a cheerful voice, "and the other one leads to certain death."

"Which is which?"

The first shook his upside-down head. "We can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"We don't know!"

"But they do." The other nodded confidentially at the top heads. That took some doing, upside down, Buffy thought.

"Then I'll ask them," she said.

Before she could say anything more, the one on the right was speaking in a very slow, pedantic voice. "Ah! No, you can't ask us. You can ask only one of us." He appeared to have difficulty in getting the words out at all, especially the C's and K's.

"It's in the rules." The left one's voice came fast and sneering, and at the same time his eyes shifted uneasily. He was tapping a finger on some ciphers on his shield, which were presumably the rules. "And I think I should warn you that one of us always tells the truth, and one of us always lies. That's a rule, too." His glance flickered at the other one. "He always lies."

"Don't listen to him," Righty, as Buffy dubbed him, said. "He's lying. I'm the one who tells the truth."

"That's a lie!" Lefty retorted.

The two on the bottom were snickering behind their shields. "You see," one told Buffy, "even if you ask one of them, you won't know if the answer you get is true or false."

"Now wait a minute," she said. "I know this riddle. I just have to remember how it goes."

She heard Righty muttering to himself, "He's lying."

"He's lying," Lefty replied.

Buffy was scratching her brow. "There's one question I can ask and it doesn't matter which one of them I ask it." She clicked her tongue, impatient with herself. "Oh, what could it be?"

"Come on, come on," The one under Lefty said grumpily. "We can't stand around here all day."

"What do you mean, we can't?" Righty's companion snapped. "That's our job. We're gatekeepers."

"Oh, yes. I forgot."

"Be quiet," Buffy ordered. "I can't think."

"I tell the truth," Righty declared pedantically, from under his helmet.

"Ooh!" Lefty answered mechanically. "What a lie!"

Buffy was trying to work it out logically for herself. "The first thing to do is find out which one's the liar ... but, no, there's no way of doing that. So ... the next thing to do is to find a question you can put to either one ... and get the same answer."

"Oh, that's a good one," Righty was guffawing. "One of us always tells the truth and the other one always lies, and you want to find a question we'll both give the same answer to? Oh, that'll be the day. That's a good one, that is. Oh."

Buffy narrowed her eyes. She thought she might have gotten it. "Now," she said, "which one do I ask?"

The guards pointed at each other.

With a little smile, Buffy said to Righty, "Answer yes or no. Would he," and she pointed at Lefty, "tell me that this door," she pointed at the door behind Righty, "leads to the castle?"

They looked looked at her, then at each other. They conferred in whispers.

Righty looked up at her. "Uh ... yes."

"Then the other door leads to the castle," Buffy concluded. "And this door leads to certain death."

"How do you know?" Righty asked slowly. His voice was aggrieved. "He could be telling you the truth."

"Then you wouldn't be," Buffy replied. "So if you tell me he said yes, I know the answer was no." She was very pleased with herself.

They looked dejected, feeling that they had obscurely been cheated. "But I could be telling the truth," Righty objected.

"Then he would be lying," Buffy said, allowing herself a broad smile of pleasure. "So if you tell me that he said yes, the answer would still be no."

"Wait a minute," Righty said. He frowned. "Is that right?"

"I don't know," replied Lefty airily. "I wasn't listening."

"It's right," Buffy told them.

She walked to the door behind Lefty. "Very clever, I'm sure," He remarked disappointedly, and stuck his tongue out at her.

She stuck hers out back at him as she pushed open the door. Over her shoulder, as she left them, she said, "This is a getting easier."

She stepped through the doorway, and fell straight down a shaft.

Buffy yelped. The top of the shaft was a fast-dwindling disk of light.

As she dropped backward down the shaft, Buffy realized that her fall was being slightly impeded by things brushing against her. Then, by blind chance, her wrist landed smack in one of the things, which at once closed firmly. With a jolt that almost disjointed her, she found herself dangling by one arm. "Oh!" she gasped in relief, and felt herself heaving for breath. Then she remembered what it was that was holding her up.

Her relief gave way to a sick feeling: she was in the grip of a hand with no arm or body attached to it, and she had no apparent means of ever releasing herself. And now she felt other hands reaching for her and finding her, taking hold of her by the legs and the body. There were hands on her thighs, her ankles, her neck.

"Stop that! Watch were you're grabbing, buddy." Knowing it was futile, she called, "Help! Help!" She writhed, trying to shake them all off, and with her free hand reached out for a hold, in a despairing attempt to climb away. All she could see to grasp hold of was yet another hand. Hesitantly she put hers in it, and it responded immediately, grasping her hand firmly. With the idea of perhaps climbing up the hands as though on a ladder, she tried to free her wrist from the first hand. It was no good. Now she was more tightly held than ever, stuck in a web of hands.

"Help!"

She felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned her head to see what it was. To her bewilderment, she saw that hands to one side of her contrived to form themselves into a face of sorts, with finger-and-thumb circles for eyes and two hands working together to fashion a mouth. And the mouth spoke to her.

"What do you mean, 'Help'?" it said. "We are helping. We're the Helping Hands."

"You're hurting me, and grabbing things that could get you killed." Buffy told them. Now there were several more faces of hands around her.

"Would you like us to let go?" one of them asked.

Buffy glanced down the shaft. "Uh ... no."

"Well, then," one of the mouths said. "Come on. Which way?"

"Which way?" she asked, nonplussed.

"Up or down?"

"Oh..." She was more confused. "Er..." She looked back up the shaft toward the light, but that would be a kind of retreat. She looked down, into the darkness.

"Come on! Come on!" an impatient voice urged her. "We haven't got all day."

'Sure you do?' Buffy thought to herself.

"It's a big decision for her," said a sympathetic voice.

"Which way do you want to go?" asked an insistent one.

"Come on! Come on!"

"Well, er..." Buffy still hesitated. Many faces were watching her indecisiveness. Several of them were snickering, covering their mouths with another hand.

She took a deep breath. "Well, since that's the way I'm pointed ... I'll go down."

"She chose down?" She heard the snickers behind their hands. "She chose -- down!"

"Oh crud. I should have chosen up."

"Too late now," said one of the hand faces, and with that they let go.

As she landed on the stone floor of a dark, small cell, a cover was placed on the hole, with a clunk.

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The picture of her silent face was clearly beamed to a crystal in Ethan's hand.

"She's in the oubliette," Giles observed.

The goblins cackled wickedly, dancing and prancing around. Their jaws gaped with merriment, and they slapped their thighs.

"Shut up," Giles told them.

They froze. Their heads twitched around to look at the two sorcerers. A sly goblin inquired, "Wrong laugh?"

Ethan watched her. "Do you think I should send help?"

"She probably expects you to send something." Giles said mildly.

"Hmm. Do I stick to the script or do I improvise." Ethan said thoughtfully. He chuckled. "Improvise of course!" He sent one of his crystal globes sailing out the window.

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Buffy sat on the floor of the black cell wishing she had asked the Helping Hands to take her up the shaft, toward the light. As she sat, she detected a little scratching sound. "Who's there?" Her body was tense, her spidey senses tingling.

"Me," a gruff voice replied.

Suddenly there was light, and Buffy found herself face to face with a huge demon. "This is no place for a little girl."

She looked at him. Obviously he didn't know who she was.

He pointed out a skeleton. "That's how you'll end up in a moment. So why don't you give up."

"No," she said at once. "I'm not giving up now. I've come too far. I've done too well."

He nodded, and in a smooth voice assured her, "You've been wonderful." Then he suddenly attacked. Buffy dodged his blows while she tried to figure out where he might have a weak spot. She kicked him and sent him flying into the wall. It gave way suddenly, spilling the surprised demon into a tunnel. Buffy followed, only to find the demon running away. She was about to follow, when she spied Hoggle cowering behind a pile of rubble.

"What are you doing here?" She asked suspiciously.

"Well, I felt sorry for you so I figured I'd help." He looked pitiful, and Buffy had to stifle a laugh.

"Okay. But if you try anything, I'll pound you into next week."

She followed him down dimly lit corridor with walls of grotesquely carved rock.

They were working their way along the corridor when a voice boomed,

"DON'T GO ON!"

Buffy jumped violently, and looked all around her. She saw no one, except Hoggle. And then she remembered: carved in the stone wall was a mouth. Standing back from it, she saw that the mouth was part of a huge face. Similar faces lined both sides of the corridor. As she and Hoggle passed them, each intoned a deeply resonant message.

"Go back while you still can!"

"This is not the way!"

"Take heed and go no farther!"

"Beware! Beware!"

"It will soon be too late!"

Hoggle, bustling onward, looked around to see where she had gone to, and saw her standing. "Bah." He waved his hand. "Don't take no notice of them. They're just False Alarms. You get a lot like them around here. It means you're on the right track."

"Oh, no, you're not," a face boomed.

"Shut the hell up," Hoggle snapped back at it.

"Sorry, sorry," the face said. "Only doing me job."

"Well, you don't need to do it to us," Hoggle answered, and led the way on down the passage.

The face watched them go. "Asshole," it murmured grumpily.

The passageway twisted and turned, but on the whole Buffy had the impression that they were moving forward, if such a direction existed here, and she felt encouraged. They passed another carved face.

"Oh, beware!" the face exclaimed. "For --"

"Don't bother." Hoggle flapped his hand dismissively.

"Oh, please," the face begged. "I haven't said it for such a long time. You've no idea what it's like, stuck here in this wall, and with --"

"All right," Hoggle told it. "But don't expect us to take any notice."

The face brightened up. "Oh, no, of course not!" It cleared its throat. "For the path you take will lead you to certain destruction!" It paused. "Thanks," it added politely.

While the face was droning on, a small crystal ball had been rolling and skipping down the passage from behind Buffy and Hoggle. It overtook them as they turned a corner, and they saw it bounce on ahead of them. A blind beggar squatted with his back to the wall, his hat upturned on the ground in front of his feet. The crystal ball hopped smartly into the hat.

Buffy heard Hoggle groan. She looked at him. His mouth was open, and his eyes were staring at the hat on the ground.

The beggar turned his face toward them. "So what have we here?" he asked.

"Uh, nothing," Hoggle spluttered.

"Nothing? Nothing?!" The beggar rose up.

Hoggle froze. Buffy gasped. It was Giles.

"Your Majesty..." Hoggle bowed so obsequiously that he was at risk of performing a forward roll. "What..." he swallowed, and smiled haggardly, "what ... what a nice surprise."

"Hello, Hedgewart," said the former Watcher.

"Hogwart," Buffy corrected him.

"Hoggle," Hoggle said, gritting his teeth.

"Hoggle," Giles said, in a kindly conversational voice, "can it be that you're helping Buffy?"

"Helping?" Hoggle prevaricated. "In what sense? Uh...."

"In the sense that you're taking her farther in," Giles said.

"Oh," Hoggle replied. "In that sense."

"Yes."

"Oh, no, no, your Majesty. I was leading her back to the beginning."

"What!" Buffy exclaimed.

Hoggle forced his lips into an ingratiating smile for Giles. "I told her I was going to help her-- a little trickery on my part..." He guffawed and gulped. "But actually..."

Giles, smiling pleasantly, interrupted him. "That's okay, Hoggle. As long as Ethan doesn't find out. Otherwise, he might suspend you headfirst in the Bog of Eternal Stench."

"Oh, no, your Majesty." Hoggle's knees were wobbling. "Not that. Not the Eternal Stench."

Giles turned to Buffy. "I can't help you personally, but I can try to send help your way." He smiled.

Buffy swallowed. For some reason, it turned her knees to water and made her feel warm. 'What is going on?' She thought. 'Giles is Giles.' She decided she would have to think about her feelings for him later. Right now she still had to rescue Spike. Beside her, she heard Hoggle's feet shuffling. Determined not to allow Giles to know how she was feeling until she knew herself, she affected a nonchalance she was far from feeling.

"I think I've got this place figured out."

Giles raised one elegant eyebrow. Just then Ethan's disembodied voice echoed around them.

"Ripper. Where are you?"

Hoggle's eyes closed in dismay.

Giles looked up. "I'd better get back to the throne room, before he comes looking for me." He disappeared. At once, from the darkness, came a noise: a crashing, whirring, trundling noise, distant as yet, but getting closer all the time, and louder.

Hoggle's face was a mask of panic. Buffy found herself instinctively shrinking away from the approaching din.

"You've got it figured out, eh?" Ethan's voice laughed. "Well, now we can see how you deal with this."

Buffy and Hoggle stared along the passageway. When they saw what was coming at them, their jaws dropped and they trembled.

A solid wall of furiously spinning knives and chopping cleavers was bearing inexorably down upon them. Dozens of keen blades glittered in the light, every one of them pointing forward and whirring wickedly. The wall of blades completely filled the tunnel, like a subway train, and it would chop them into little pieces in the blink of an eye. And, Buffy noticed with horror, along the bottom of the slashing machine was a busy row of brushes, for tidying up after itself.

"The Cleaners!" Hoggle shrieked, and took off. "Run!" Hoggle's shout came echoing from some distance away and brought her back to her senses. She dashed after him.

The slashing machine came clanking and trundling remorselessly on behind them.

All it needed for the story to finish now was that they should come to a dead end. Around a corner, they found one. A heavily barred door closed the tunnel in front of them.

--------------------------------------------

Buffy gasped. The whizzing blades were rapidly drawing nearer.

Hoggle was pawing pathetically at the great door and mumbling to himself.

But Buffy wasn't listening to him. She was looking around for an escape -- above, below. She dashed along the side walls, looking for a handle or button. There had to be some way out. That was how the Labyrinth worked. There was always some trick, if only she could find it.

The clanking, whirring, seething, brushing noise was louder. She glanced momentarily at what Hoggle was doing. He was still just scrabbling at the door. It was no use trusting to him. What could she do? What?

Her eye fell on part of the wall, to one side of the door that looked distinct from the rest, a panel of metal plates. She pushed at it and felt it give a little.

"Hoggle!" She shouted above the echoing din.

"Buffy!" He answered, hammering his pudgy fists against the door and kicking at it, as though it could be expected to relent in the face of such frustration.

"Don't leave me!"

"Get over here and help me," she yelled back at him.

Hoggle joined her. Together they shoved with all their weight at the metal plates.

"Come on," Buffy told him, "push, you little double-crosser. Push!"

Hoggle was pushing. "I can explain," he panted.

"PUSH!"

The panel caved in suddenly. They fell through the space it left and sprawled flat on it.

Behind them, the machine slashed through the air just beside their feet. When it reached the great barred door, there was a terrible crunching sound as the knives and cleavers bit through the wood, spitting it out as splinters, which the whirling brushes swept up neatly. The machine was cranked along by four goblins, standing on a platform behind the wall of knives. They were grunting and sweating with the effort of turning handles and working levers to keep the contraption whirring. The racket clattered onward, through the demolished doorway, and off into the distance.

Buffy lay on her back, recovering her breath. Hoggle looked down at her. "He's throwing everything at us," he said, and shook his head with a trace of admiration. "The Cleaners, the Eternal Stench -- the whole works. He must think a lot of you."

"Who?"

"The One in Charge. If he's going to all this trouble, he must really like you."

Buffy answered with a faint, forced smile. "He's got some funny ideas. But then, Ethan always was messed up in the head."

Hoggle was busy again. Eyes darting left and right beneath his bushy eyebrows, he clumped around in the shadows until he found what he was looking for. "This is what we need," he called. "Follow me."

She sat up and looked. There, on the floor of the tunnel they had entered, she saw the base of a ladder. It led up into darkness.

"Come on," Hoggle was calling. The first rung was too high for him to reach, and he was hopping around trying to jump up to it.

Buffy went over to him. The ladder looked unsafe to her. It was constructed of an odd assortment of bits of wood, planks and branches, patched together with ends of rope and half-driven nails.

"Come on, give me a hand," Hoggle urged.

She stood with one hand holding the ladder. "How can I trust you," she asked, "now that I know you were taking me back to the start?"

"I wasn't," Hoggle protested, and stared fiercely at her with those piggy eyes of his. As a liar, he was so bad it was quite touching. "I told him I was taking you to the beginning, to throw him off the scent, d'ya see? I thought he was the one who wanted you to fail."

"Hoggle." Buffy smiled reproachfully at him. "How can I believe anything you say?"

"Well," he replied, screwing up one eye, "let me put it this way. What choice do you have?"

Buffy thought about it. "There is that."

"And now," Hoggle said, "the main thing is to get back up." And he started again to try and hop up to the first rung of the rickety ladder.

Buffy gave him a leg up, watched him start, and followed. At any moment she thought the thing might collapse; but then, as Hoggle had said, what choice did she have? After climbing for what seemed an eternity, they finally reached the top. Outside was a clear blue sky. Buffy had never seen anything so beautiful.

Buffy joined Hoggle on the top rung of the ladder, gratefully clutching the side of the open hatchway. It felt like firm land after a voyage at sea.

They were looking at a garden, where birds were singing. It was surrounded by well-trimmed hedges -- box hedges, she thought, and indeed they ran so straight, with neatly cut openings in them, and turned such precise right angles, and the lawn was so flat and tidy, that the garden was like a green box, with the blue sky for a lid. But that was not why they were called box hedges, was it? It was a rather formal garden, with carefully positioned stone monuments. On the stones were runic carvings, and a few faces -- more of those False Alarms, Buffy decided, preparing herself for gloomy predictions.

As she struggled to remember this part of the movie, Hoggle spread his hands. "Here we are then. You're on your own from here."

"What?"

"This is as far as I goes."

"You..."

"I didn't promise nothing." He shrugged, callously.

"Nasty double-crossing little runny cheating no-good pipsqueak!"

"Don't say that!" His eyebrows beetled.

She leaned toward him, and whispered, "Pipsqueak."

"Arrgh." Hoggle's body clenched. He bared his teeth, then opened them to scream. With his feet together, he jumped in the air, thumping the ground as he landed. Then he lost his balance, and rolled on the grass, beating his fists in the air, kicking his stumpy legs. His voice alternated between a growl and a scream. "It was you insisted on going on. I said I'd get you out, but oh, no, you're so clever. You knew better, didn't you? Arrgh. Well, now you're on your own, and good luck to you, and good riddance." He closed his eyes, and rolled on the grass again.

Buffy watched him, her mouth open in amazement. She had never seen anyone so angry, not even spike.

Eventually Hoggle subsided, and lay for a while, his eyes still closed, his body twitching occasionally. Buffy wondered if he needed some sort of help. She felt guilty. She had provoked all that with just her one word, which was clearly more hurtful than sticks or stones.

Hoggle opened his eyes. He did not look at her as he stood up, brushed himself down and pretended he had enough dignity left to turn away with his head held high. "Hoggle won't be coming back to save you this time," he informed her.

"Oh, yes, he will," Buffy muttered under her breath. And before he could get away, she darted forward and snatched the chain of brooches and badges from his belt. She had to tug quite hard to get it off and he staggered forward.

"Hey!" he protested.

"Ha-ha!" She held his precious jewelry too high for him to reach.

He danced around beneath the dangling chain, trying to jump up and grab it. It was no good. "Give that back!" he shrieked.

"No. You can have it back when I get to the center of the Labyrinth."

"But you heard Giles," Hoggle whined. "The center is farther than I can go. No! No!" His whine had risen to a shrill whimper. "Ethan'll hang me upside-down in the Bog of Eternal Stench," he said. His eyes closed, and he shuddered.

"Now there's the castle," Buffy said, in a deliberately matter-of-fact voice, one a parent might use to a child after its tantrum. Over the hedges, she could see the castle's spires and turrets and towers gleaming in the sunlight, and she pointed to them. "Which way should we try?"

"I don't know." Hoggle had turned sullen.

"Liar."

"Give it back!" Hoggle was trying to leap up and grab the chain again. "Give it back!"

She ignored him. "Let's try this way," she proposed, and walked smartly through one of the gaps in the hedges, into a hedged alley.

Hoggle followed her reluctantly, his chin on his chest.

She led the way down the straight alley, and soon came out into another garden, very like the one they had just left. Indeed, it was so like the first garden that ... it was the same one, she realized. She went to the urn, and lifted the lid, to check. Yes, there was the ladder leading downward. She frowned. "Isn't this the place we just came from?"

Hoggle was paying no attention to anything but his string of baubles. "You -- you..." He leaped, but could get no more than half an inch off the ground. "Give it back!" he bellowed.

"I'm sure it's the same place." Buffy stared at the hedges and decided to try another gap. "Come on," she told Hoggle, "let's try down here."

He trotted miserably after her.

Again the alleyway ran geometrically straight, at a right angle to the hedge bordering the garden, and again, within a few strides, they emerged into a garden so very like ...

Buffy groaned, "Oh, no." They had come out through a gap directly facing the one they had entered.

"Give me my things." Hoggle was trying on a tone of menace. It was easy to ignore.

"Come on," Buffy said, undaunted, and tried a different gap.

The result was the same as before. They were facing the gap they had entered, and Hoggle was watching nothing but his jewelry. Buffy scratched her head. "I don't believe it," she muttered, and looked around the garden. "Which one haven't we tried?"

Hoggle pointed at a gap.

"Well, let's try that one, then." She plunged into the gap.

This time, Hoggle didn't follow her, but waited, arms folded, on the lawn. It was only a moment before she reappeared.

"Them is my rightful property," Hoggle complained. "It's -- it's not fair."

"No, it isn't," Buffy conceded. She turned a broad grin upon Hoggle. "That's the way it is."

At that moment, she spotted a curious robed figure strolling across the lawn, apparently deep in thought. He was an old man, with a long white mustache and white eyebrows, but the most striking thing about him was his hat, which was topped with the head of a bird, with a sharp beak and eyes that were darting glances everywhere.

"Excuse me," Buffy called, running across the lawn after the old man. He was sitting gravely down on a garden bench as she approached. "Please," she said, "can you help me?"

The Wise Man didn't really register Buffy's presence. It was true that he raised his face toward her, but only as one might gaze at a tree, a fly, or a cloud while lost in the bird's head on the Wise Man's hat suddenly spoke. "Go away! Can't you see he's thinking?"

The Wise Man slowly raised a finger, and rolled his eyes up toward the bird, and spoke. "Shh," he said.

Buffy closed her mouth apologetically. She stood aside, and waited.

"And don't stare," the hat reprimanded her. "You'll put him off."

"I'm sorry."

The Wise Man's lips opened slowly and his eyes turned upward again, to address the hat. "Silence," he commanded.

The hat looked wryly at Buffy. "This is the thanks I get," it said disgustedly.

"Where was I?" the Wise Man was asking.

"How should I know?" the hat chirped. "You're the Big Thinker."

The Wise Man noticed Buffy. "Ah, a young girl."

Buffy returned a polite little smile.

The Wise Man's gaze traveled downward, and settled on Hoggle. "And is this your brother?"

Buffy answered. "He's just a friend."

Hoggle had been about to expostulate at being taken for Buffy's brother, but now he stopped, and looked sideways at Buffy. It was the first time anyone had ever called him a friend. He frowned.

The Wise Man took a long breath. "And what can I do for you?" he asked Buffy.

"I've forgotten how to get to the castle, and was wondering if you could help me."

"Ah." The Wise Man nodded slowly, closing his eyes. After a while he said, "So you want to get to the castle."

"How's that for brain power?" demanded the bright-eyed hat.

"Quiet," the Wise Man commanded.

"Nuts," the hat replied.

Buffy put a hand over her mouth to conceal a giggle.

The Wise Man composed his hands together on his lap. "So, young woman," he told her, pursing his lips in thought. Nodding, he explained, "The way forward is sometimes the way back."

His hat pulled a face. "Will you listen to this crap?"

The Wise Man was glaring upward and clenching his fingers. He cleared his throat. "And sometimes," he continued, gazing earnestly at Buffy again, "the way backward --"

"Is the way forward," the hat interrupted. "Can you believe it? I ask you."

"Will you be quiet!" the Wise Man ordered his hat, profoundly. He looked again at Buffy. "Quite often, young lady, it seems we're not getting anywhere, when in fact we are."

The hat peered down over the Wise Man's forehead, then looked perkily up at Buffy and Hoggle. "I think that's your lot," the hat said. "The sum total of earthly wisdom strewn at your feet for the asking. Please leave a contribution in the box."

Buffy noticed that the Wise Man had absentmindedly drawn a collection box, with a slot, from the folds of his robe, and now was sitting, quite abstracted in contemplation, with the box on his knee. As she looked at it, he gave it a discreet little shake.

What was she to do? She hesitated, then had the idea of donating one of the badges from Hoggle's string, which she was still holding.

He read her mind. "Don't you dare!" Hoggle barked. "Them's mine."

Buffy paused, and finally slid a costume ring off her finger. Hoggle watched her drop it in the collecting box and looked green. He'd hoped he was going to get that.

"Thank you so kindly," the hat said, sounding like a fairground barker. "Move along, please."

As they walked away, across the garden, Hoggle said, "You didn't have to give that away. He didn't tell you nothing."

"Actually he reminded me how to get out of here. Follow me." She turned around and walked backward through the hedge.

Hoggle's expression was skeptical, but he humored her by doing as she suggested. They walked backward through the gap in the hedge from which Buffy had last emerged, and the garden remained in peaceful silence, decorated with birdsong.

The hat was watching where they had gone. When they did not return, it chirped, "Well, what do you know! They took your advice."

"Zzzzzz," the Wise Man said, having dozed off after so much mental travail.

His hat cocked an eye down at him. "It's so stimulating being your hat."

"Zzzzzz," the Wise Man concurred.

-------------------------------------

Once they had left the Wise Man, Buffy and Hoggle found that by walking forward they could move ahead. It made a nice change. Not, however, any more than a nice change, because the maze of hedges turned them left and right and back again so often that it was impossible to make any progress toward the castle. Frequently it could be seen, its spires and turrets looming in the distance above the hedges, but no matter how far and fast they walked, it remained in the distance.

Hoggle was getting more nervous as he went. "Let me go back." He begged.

"Not on your life. You're sticking with me now until we get there," Buffy said, wondering how much time she had left.

Hoggle said, "Huh," rather noncommittally, she thought.

Well, she still had his precious string of baubles. He wouldn't get that back until she had found Spike, and she judged that nothing would induce him to abandon her while she still had his treasure. It wasn't as though she really needed him, but it was better than being alone. 'Although I wouldn't mind being alone with Giles.' Buffy again tried to figure out where the thought had come from.

Alley, turning, alley, dead end, stone pillar, alley, ornamental shrub, turning, on it went, leading nowhere. Buffy wondered whether it wasn't a closed system, no exit but its entrance, that urn. It was just the kind of puzzle that Ethan would set, to waste what time she had left.

She shrugged. How could she be expected to have any respect for Ethan? He was dangerous and powerful, obviously, but he was too aware of it -- a show-off, really -- and mean, a cheat. He had a certain style about him, she could concede that much. He was not unattractive. But how could you respect, still less admire, someone like him? The best word she could think of to describe him was chaos.

Hoggle was quiet for some time. Then he asked, "Why did you say that about me being your friend?"

"Because you are," she told him candidly. "You may not be much of a friend, but you're the only one I've got in this place."

Hoggle thought about it for a while. Then he said, "I ain't never been no one's friend before."

Buffy giggled as she thought of how they seemed to be following the movie script.

An enormous blood-curdling roar from somewhere nearby froze the two of them in their tracks.

Hoggle spun around. Pausing only to say, "Keep the stuff!" he started to run back, away from the roar.

Buffy ran after him and seized hold of his sleeve. "Wait a minute," she said angrily. "Are you my friend or not?"

While Hoggle hesitated, another air-trembling roar made up his mind for him. "No! No, I'm not. Hoggle ain't no one's friend. He looks after hisself. Like everyone does." He wriggled his sleeve free. "Hoggle is Hoggle's friend," she heard him yell, as he dashed in the opposite direction from the roaring and vanished into the maze.

"Hoggle!" Buffy called. "You coward!"

She heard another frightful roar, but stayed where she was. The monster, whatever it was, did not seem to be getting any closer to her. As she was not going to run away, the only alternative was to proceed in the direction they had been going, with some shred of faith that forward meant onward. And so, crossing her fingers for luck, she moved tentatively along the hedge alley, praying it was Ludo and not some other monster sent to distract her.

When she reached a gap in the hedge and peered cautiously through it, she saw that things were, indeed not always what they seemed. The roar was coming from a terrifyingly huge beast, but the animal was upside down, suspended by one leg lashed to a tree. It was roaring with pain, because four goblins were tormenting it with nipper sticks, long poles with small, fierce creatures on the end of them that bit like piranhas whenever they were given the chance.

She looked around for a weapon and found some small rocks. She picked one up, took careful aim and threw it at the nearest goblin. It hit him on the head, knocking the visor of his helmet down over his eyes.

"Hey," the goblin exclaimed. "Who turned out the lights?"

He lurched around sightlessly, still swinging and thrusting out his nipper stick. The vicious creature on the end of the stick was glad to bite anything within its reach. When it made contact with another goblin, its teeth sank in.

"Ouch! Ouch!" the bitten goblin shrieked. "Hey, stop that, you."

"Stop what?" asked the first goblin, still prodding out unseeingly.

The second goblin was now under furious assault. "Aargh. Dog weed! Rat's meal!" Spitefully he retaliated by deliberately using his nipper stick.

It was the blinded goblin's turn to wail. "Help! Who's attacking me? Where are the lights?"

Buffy had armed herself with another little rock, and now she threw it. The rock hit one of the other goblins on the helmet, knocking down his visor. He staggered into his companion, and that one's visor slammed down, too, with the impact.

"Help," cried one.

"It's gone dark," squealed the other.

"What's happened?"

"Lights! Where are the lights?"

The uproar faded as the pack of them pursued each other, yelling and yelping, crashing into hedges, falling over roots.

Buffy wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes, and her face became serious as she gazed at the great dangling beast. Hoping that Ethan had left him as one of the good guys she went to try and get him down.

What the shaggy brute saw was another tormentor coming. It let out a terrible roar and aimed a great blow at her.

She was careful to remain just out of reach. Trying not to laugh more, she told it, "Now, stop that."

Another great roar was on its way from the depths of the monster's body, but the beast stopped in mid-roar when it heard itself thus addressed. "Murh?" it said.

Buffy clicked her tongue. "Is that any way to treat someone who's trying to help you?"

The monster still had its doubts. It tried delivering another bellow and aimed a swipe, but there was not much conviction in it.

"Stop it, do you hear?" Buffy was beginning to enjoy herself. It seemed Ludo was still Ludo. So far anyway.

The monster answered, "Huh?"

"Now do you or do you not want me to get you down from that tree?"

The monster hung in there for a bit, reflecting on what its options were. It craned its neck to look up at its tethered ankle, reflected again, then turned its face to Buffy.

"Ludo -- down," it said. She could see that it was now grinning at her. Not only was the monster grinning at her, it now blinked in a goofy sort of way, which just could mean, I-am-in-a-pickle-aren't-I-but- all-the-same-how-d'you-do-and-thanks-for-being-nice-to-me. Buffy returned a cautious smile. She was not going to credit this monster with being, uniquely in this place, what it seemed to be.

She looked at the knot tethering Ludo's leg to the branch. It was a simple bowline, which she could release with one tug. With her hand raised, she paused, and looked down at Ludo. "I do hope you're not going to turn back into a raging monster the moment I let you down from here."

Ludo's response was another roar that made the rocks tremble.

Buffy leaped back. "I knew it! I can't trust anyone in this place."

But then she saw that Ludo, far from aiming a blow at her, was using his paws to rub one or two of the most tender places where the goblins had bitten him with their nipper sticks. "Ludo -- hurt," he moaned.

Buffy looked more closely at him. He was covered with little bleeding wounds, under his fur. Quickly she reached up, tugged at the rope, and released him. He hit the ground with a mighty thump.

With deep little groans, he sat himself up, and began to rub his wounded head and the sores inflicted upon him. She watched him, even now uncertain whether she should expect him to thank her or eat her.

"Goblins -- mean to Ludo," he grimaced.

"Oh, I know that." She nodded, with more assurance than she felt. "They were terribly mean to you," she told Ludo. She moved closer to him and patted his arm. "But it's all right now."

He sniffled, still rubbing. Then his face broke into the most endearing big dumb smile she had ever seen, bigger and dumber even than in any cartoon. "Friend!" Ludo declared.

"That's right, Ludo. I'm Buffy."

"Buffy -- friend."

"Yes, I am." She couldn't smile big and dumb like that, but she gave him the best she could do. "And," she added, "I want to ask a favor of you, Ludo."

"Huh?"

"I have to get to the castle. Do you know the way there?"

Ludo shook his great head, still beaming at her.

Buffy sighed, and her shoulders sagged. "You don't know the way either. I was hoping that Ethan forgot that little detail."

She stood up. Ludo stood with her, massively towering over her. He may be no guide, she thought, but it's nice to have him on my side.

-------------------------------------------

Buffy walked past the hanging tree. Ludo, wincing with the soreness of his nipped body, followed.

Behind the tree, two high doorways had appeared set into a stone wall that seemed to be part of a rough forest hedge. On each door was an iron knocker.

She looked from one to the other. Which to choose? She looked around the glade, to see if there was some other way past this wall. There wasn't, so she examined the knockers. "Well, Ludo," she asked, "which one of these two ugly characters shall we choose?"

"It's very rude to stare," said the first knocker, the one with the ring set in its ears.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I was just wondering which door to choose, that's all."

"What?" the first knocker asked.

She heard a mumbling noise from behind her.

It was the second knocker, with the ring in its mouth. It said something like "MM. gli m g any."

"Don't talk with your mouth full," the first knocker said primly.

"Ker glimpfwrt mble mble mble..."

Buffy addressed the second knocker: "I don't understand what you're saying." Then she realized what the problem was. "Ah," she said, "wait a moment."

"What was that?" the first knocker inquired.

Buffy took hold of the ring in the second knocker's mouth and pulled. It came away easily. The face looked tremendously relieved. It exercised the muscles around its jaw and chin with evident pleasure.

"It's so good to get that damn thing out," it sighed.

"What were you saying?" Buffy asked.

The first knocker, behind her, said, "Huh?"

The second knocker nodded at the first. "I said it's no good talking to him. Oh, dear me, no. He's deaf as a post, that one, I can tell you."

The first knocker said, "Mumble, mumble, mumble, that's you. You're a wonderful conversational companion, I must say."

"YOU SHOULD TALK!" the second knocker yelled back. "ALL YOU CAN DO IS MOAN!"

"It's no good," the first knocker said, in a matter-of-fact voice. "I can't hear you."

Buffy looked at the second knocker. "Where do these doors lead?" she asked it.

"What?" asked the first knocker.

"Search me," the second one answered her. "We're just the knockers."

"Great," Buffy sighed. "This is where I usually had to go to the bathroom. Never did get to see which door she chose." Well, she had to try either one door or the other. She chose the second one.

She had committed herself to the second door by now, with her hands against it, so she went ahead and pushed. It didn't budge. She pushed harder. She leaned her shoulder against the door. It was as solid as the wall it was set in. She thought of asking Ludo to help her. His gigantic bulk would surely open the door.

But she wasn't sure it was the right door to choose, and so, instead, she asked another question. "How do we get through?"

"Huh?" asked the first knocker.

The second one, with an arch smile, replied, "Knock and the door will open."

"Ah." She looked at the ring she held, and went to put it back in the second knocker's mouth.

He made a face. "Nuh-uh, I don't want that thing back in my mouth." And he clamped his lips tightly shut, and refused to open them even when she put the ring against his mouth.

"Oh, come on," Buffy said through clenched teeth. She tried to force his jaw open.

He shook his head stubbornly.

"Hmmm," commented the first knocker, morosely as usual. "Doesn't want the ring back in his mouth. Can't say as I blame him."

"Then," Buffy said, putting down the ring, "I'm afraid I'll have to bother you instead." She walked over to the first knocker and took hold of its ring.

"Ow! Ooh," the first knocker protested.

Buffy took no notice. She knocked twice upon the heavy door. It swung open.

Cautiously, she put her head through the doorway, to see what was beyond. She heard giggles, splutters of suppressed laughter, honks and hoots. Instinctively she started to grin herself, and went farther through the doorway. She turned, waiting for Ludo to follow her. He remained in the doorway, shaking his head.

"Come on, Ludo."

He shook his head again.

"Well," she thought, "it can't do any harm to see where this might lead." She would come back for Ludo if she spotted the castle.

She was in a sunlit forest, with clumps and banks of flowers, daisy-decked hillocks, dingles and dells, shady trees all around. The laughter was infectious. Giggling, she looked hard for the creatures who were enjoying all this merriment. All she could see were the forest plants. "Who is it?" she called out, chuckling.

From right behind her came a laughing snort. She spun around and saw a tree's branch moving to cover a hollow in its trunk that just might have been its mouth. "It was the tree," she declared. "Tree, wasn't it you?"

That sparked off a tinkle of giggles at her feet. She looked down and saw a cluster of bluebells shivering and shaking together with amusement.

"Oh, look!" she exclaimed, falling to her knees and giggling with them. They were beside themselves with hilarity now.

The tree above her could hold it in no longer. It exploded in a bellow of mirth. Buffy threw her head back and joined in. She didn't remember the last time she felt this happy.

It was the signal for a general outburst. A tree stump nearby was laughing in a deep, cracked voice. Birds on a branch were hopping and cackling. Another tree was rocking. Ferns waved about, squirrels and mice peeped from their holes with tears in their eyes.

Buffy was helpless with laughing. Catching a breath, she panted, "What are we laughing at?"

"I don't know!" the tree above her roared. "Ha-ha-ha-ha!"

The whole forest shook. Even the grass on the ground was trembling.

Buffy was feeling faint. She sat down. "Oh ... please ... please, I must stop." She clutched her sides.

In response, the laughter around her redoubled. It reached a pitch of hysterical shrillness.

"I've never laughed so much in my life," Buffy gasped, flat on her back.

Birds convulsed with mirth fell out of the trees and hit the ground headfirst. She saw their eyes were mad, with pinprick pupils. Other creatures came screaming from under the roots of trees, and as they approached her she managed to sit up, alarmed by their sinister gaping mouths and crazy eyes.

Still laughing, she moaned, "Oh, please, please! I must stop."

"She can't stop," the tree howled, and the whole forest screeched in reply.

She got to her feet. Her body and mouth were shaking uncontrollably, but her eyes were haggard. "Stop!" she whispered. "Stop!" She staggered back toward the open doorway and collapsed.

Shrieking hysteria applauded that.

She raised her head. She could see Ludo just outside the door, and held up her hand for help. He looked very uneasy and wouldn't come inside the door, but he held his arm out toward her, and nodded his great head in encouragement. Her eyes fixed on him, she dragged herself across the last few yards, until he could bend down, pick her up, take her outside, and shut the door.

The laughter stopped dead. The breeze in the leaves of the maze outside was the sweetest sound she'd ever heard.

It took her some time to recover. Ludo watched over her anxiously. When she stood up, sniffed, and gave him a small smile, he said, "Ludo -- glad."

"Buffy -- glad," she answered, and ruffled his head.

There was nothing for it but to try the other door. She walked across to it, picking up the ring.

"I'm sorry," she said, and pushed the ring against the knocker's lips. He pursed his mouth and resisted her.

"Oh, come on," she said, and tried again. The knocker frowned and squeezed his lips together even more tightly.

Then she remembered. With her finger and her thumb, she squeezed the knocker's nose. He held out a while, scowling more and more fiercely, but in the end he had to open his mouth for breath. "Damn!" he gasped.

In a flash, she had the ring back in his mouth, and knocked on the door.

He was protesting. "Kgrmpf. Mble. Mble. Mble. Grmfff."

"Sorry," Buffy said. "I had to do it."

"That's all right," the first knocker told her. "He's used to it."

This door swung open to reveal a forbidding forest. On this side of the wall they were in sunshine, but through the doorway was a dismal and brooding prospect.

Ludo was growling and trying to draw back, but Buffy was not going in without him this time. "Come on," she said, and braced herself. "There's no other way we can go. Except back where we came from, and I'm not doing that."

She stepped through the doorway and waited for Ludo to join her. He followed her, reluctantly. The door swung shut of its own accord, with a resounding thud. The echo lasted a long time.

Buffy shivered. The sky was the color of cast iron, and the forest plants looked shriveled, as though the sun had never shone on them since their first day on earth. She felt terribly dispirited after just a minute in this place, and she looked for Ludo to hearten her. His expression was unhappier than her own.

"Oh, come on, Ludo," she said, trying to sound cheerful. "Fancy a great thing like you being so scared."

Ludo shook his head. "Not -- good."

She shrugged, with a heavy heart, turned around again, and wondered which way to go. A path ran in front of her into the forest, but how could anyone take it for granted that a path was the way you wanted to go? "I don't even know which way the castle is," she said. Again she looked at Ludo, hoping that from his height he would be able to see it, but he had his head sunk resolutely on his chest and took no notice. She tried standing on tiptoe. That was no good.

Nothing was any good. She felt a tear of despair rim her eye and brushed it irritably away. This was a feeling she was used to. She had been feeling it since she had come back from the dead. This she could deal with.

She peered up into the branches of a tree. What she did not see, behind her, was that the earth opened up beneath Ludo and swallowed him into a great hole. He had no time to utter more than the first tremor of a roar before the earth closed up again above his head.

"Maybe I could climb up there," Buffy was saying. "And see the way to the castle."

She took hold of the lowest branch and put her weight on it. It snapped off in her hand, with a dry crack like china, and before she could register that it was dead the whole tree collapsed. Lying before her she saw a pile not of dead wood but of bones. The thing she was holding was a bone. With a shudder she threw it away. There was a dry, rustling noise going on all around, and in dismay she saw the whole forest was collapsing, like a series of dinosaur skeletons.

One bone tree after the other clattered to the ground; each bringing down the next, like dominoes, until the entire landscape had been reduced to heaps of bones, all jumbled together. And Buffy knew it was all her fault, the destruction of this delicate balance. She had snapped off the branch. It was too much to bear. She burst out weeping and sank to the ground. She couldn't do anything right. It was all hopeless. Quite hopeless. Just like at home, she had messed everything up. Giles would never love her now. This time, instead of trying to follow the thought to it's source, she just cried.

She cried and cried, with her hands over her face. Eventually she looked to see if Ludo was crying, too. "Ludo?" She looked all around her. He wasn't there. Distractedly, she inspected the bones on the ground to see if any had ginger fur on them.

"Ludo!" She rushed around the spot where the two of them had been, looking in a panic for any sign of him. She saw none. Above, the sky had grown even darker and more miserable. "Ludo!" she screamed, feeling utterly alone in this desolate bonescape. "Where are you? What's going on?"

She ran, to get away, anywhere. If she stayed there she would be bones herself. She ran through the heaps of bones and into another part of the forest, also grim. Huge gnarled roots stretched across the path. The trees had trunks like tight fists. Fallen branches and dead leaves covered the earth. Here and there a brief vista between the trees offered a way on, but along each one that she took cobwebs clothed her face. From clumps of ferns, clouds of dark moths flitted up at her. "What's going on?" she whimpered as she ran.

The forest got darker as she ran deeper into it. She stumbled into a glade above which the trees were so close that she could not see her feet in the darkness. Still she ran, until a terrifying, bright, savage figure leaped out in front of her.

"Oh crap. The Fireys." Rather than waste time on them, Buffy just yelled and ran.

-----------------------------

Hoggle was hoggling around the hedge maze still, minding his own business, and most of all minding that that girl had gotten his jewels. He'd tried to please both her and the one who gave him orders, and that's what you got for trying to please everyone. No baubles.

When Buffy yelled, he heard her. It stopped him in his tracks, which were heading for the place he had first seem Buffy. He listened, heard a second yell, wrestled with his rudimentary conscience, came to a decision, and began to run in her direction. He knew his way around this place better than the stupid goblins in the castle. "I'm coming, missy," he shouted.

He galloped around the corner straight into a pair of knees.

Ethan was wearing his cloak and looking quite handsomely fiendish. "Well," he said pleasantly, "if it isn't you."

"It isn't me," Hoggle told him, trembling.

"And where are you going, hmm?"

"Ah..." Hoggle was staring at Ethan's boots. "Ah..." he said in a different tone of voice, to hold his audience's attention. Then he spent a little while scratching his backside, suggesting that a person can't be expected to answer a question while he's plagued with an itch.

Ethan was content to wait, with a smile on his lips, already knowing the answer.

"Er..." At last Hoggle came up with it. "The little missy, she give me the slip ... er ... but I just hears her now..."

Ethan's eyes narrowed.

"So I'm ... er ... er, I'm going to fetch her and then lead her straight back to the beginning. Just like you wanted." He wished the sorcerer would do anything but smile that nerve-racking, pleasant smile.

"I see." Ethan nodded. "I thought for a moment you were running to help her. But no, you wouldn't. Not after Giles gave you my warnings. That would be stupid."

"Ha-ha," Hoggle agreed, with a trembling heart. "Oh, ha-ha-ha. Stupid? You bet it would be stupid. Me? Help her? After your warnings? Don't want to end up in the Bog. Nope. Not me."

Ethan elegantly inclined his head to examine Hoggle's belt. "Oh, dear," he said, seeming concerned, "poor Hoghead!"

"Hoggle," Hoggle growled.

"I just noticed that your lovely jewels are missing."

"Uh..." Hoggle looked down at his sadly unadorned belt. "Oh, yes. So they are. My lovely jewels. Missing. There now. Better find 'em, eh? But first," he promised in a profoundly reliable voice, "I'm off to fetch the little missy back to the beginning." He thought of trying to wink, but decided not to. "Just like we planned," he said, and started to march obediently away.

"Wait," Ethan told him.

Hoggle froze. His eyes closed.

"I have a better plan, Hoggle. Give her this."

With a wave of his left hand, Ethan produced a bubble from the air. In his hand it became a crystal ball. He waited for Hoggle to turn around and tossed it to him. Hoggle caught it. It had become a peach. Hoggle looked at it, dumbfounded. "Wha-- what is it?"

"A present."

Hoggle's eyebrows beetled. "It ... it ain't going to harm the little missy, is it?" he asked slowly.

"Oh." Ethan placed a hand over his heart. "Now, why the concern?"

Hoggle pursed his lips. "Just ... curious."

"Give it to her, Hoggle. That's all you have to do. And all you have to know."

Hoggle was torn between fearful obedience, which was familiar to him, and affection, to which he could not have put a name. "I..." He stood more erect. "I won't do nothing to harm her." He reckoned that such a moment of defiance might have earned him a pint of earwigs down his breeches, at least.

Instead, Ethan replied with that pleasant smile that by now was like broken glass on Hoggle's nerves. Ethan's voice came back crisply. "You give her that, Hoggle, or I'll have you tipped straight into the Bog of Eternal Stench before you can blink."

In miserable obedience, Hoggle nodded. "Yes."

-------------------------------------------------

The Firey's had been chasing Buffy, trying to get her to play their twisted game. She knew that trying to slay them was pointless, since they could take themselves apart without her help. So she just ran and yelled, hoping that Hoggle or Ludo could hear her, and be waiting at the wall to help her climb up.

------------------------------------

Giles was watching Buffy from the castle. In his crystal he saw her distraught face looking around for a way to escape.

Ethan looked at him. "Feeling scared for your little bird, Ripper? Bet you would like to go to her right now."

Giles just glared at him for a moment then went back to watching Buffy.

Ethan looked over at where Spike was now being held down and sat on by several dozen goblins and chuckled to himself. "So much trouble for that," Ethan said, shaking his head. He looked at Giles intent face. "But not for long. Soon she'll forget all about him, my fine fellow. Just as soon as Hoggle gives her my present. She'll forget -- everything."

------------------------------------------

"Stop her, someone!"

"We gotta take your head off now."

"Yeah, we get to throw your head around."

"I'll take her head off."

"Hey, little lady!"

"Hey there, come back."

"Come on, everybody!"

They gave started gained on her, but she got to the bluff before they had caught up. Slipping between trees, ahead of her she saw a crevice in a high rockface, and sprinted into it. She found herself in an alleyway running through the rock. As she ran on, she heard the Fireys' voices behind her, echoing. She had hoped she'd shaken them off.

"Hey, lady, you want to take your head off, don't you?"

"Sure she does!"

"It's lots of fun."

She ran on, oblivious, until the alleyway reached a dead end. Her eye ran up the rockface wall patterned with mosses and lichens, and saw no holds for climbing. At the top, the wall looked like the battlements of an old fortress.

She heard them come around the last bend, behind her. There was no escaping them.

"There she is!"

"Wait, lady!"

Buffy closed her eyes.

Something tickled her nose. She opened her eyes and saw a rope. She threw her head back. Leaning over the parapet, high above, was a face. Hoggle's face.

"Grab it!" he called down to her.

She grabbed it. Hoggle hauled. The Fireys dove at her. They were too late by inches. They leaped up, snatching at her feet. She felt fingers brush her shoes.

"Hey, don't you want to look like us?"

"Come on, take off your head!"

"Off with her head!"

"It won't hurt."

Hoggle hauled on. Heads began to fly up beside her.

"Now come on down, lady."

"Come on -- we'll let you play if you take off your arm."

"How about a leg?"

"An ear? Just take off your ear, lady. You don't need two."

One after another the heads rose beside her, yammered, and fell.

"We want to help you."

"Ain't we a-showin' you a good time?"

"Yeah! You come down and strut your stuff."

"Let it all hang out, little lady."

"Aw, c'mon, it's fun. Let's look for somethin' else."

Hoggle had hauled her to the top. He helped her clamber over the battlements and brushed his hand at the flying heads as if they were pestering flies. "Shoo!" he bade them. "Go away."

Buffy was looking around, laughing in her relief. They were standing on the top of a turret. To either side of them the stone platform of the Great Goblin Wall ran as far as she could see, rising and falling, turning, turreted at regular intervals.

She turned to face him. "Hoggle!" she said warmly.

He ignored her, continuing to beat his hands at the last few despondent heads that rose up beyond the battlements. "Down!" he barked at them. "Go on, get away with you."

When there were no more heads, he had to turn back to face Buffy, who was still beaming at him. The look he returned was as grumpy as ever, but it could not puncture the deep, affectionate gratitude she felt. He kept his eyes lowered, maybe checking his baubles, which she had strung from her belt. On his own belt hung a pouch in which he carried the peach Ethan had given him.

She held out her arms. "You've come back to help me. Thank you,

Hoggle." She caught hold of him and the earth moved beneath them.

The paving stones on which they were standing flipped open like trapdoors and precipitated them into a dark chute. They skidded helplessly down it.

To have gotten this far required Buffy to be persistent in threading her way through mazes and in resolving paradoxes. That was nothing, Hoggle would have told her, had he not been skating down the chute on his back, waving his arms and legs in the air like an unhinged wood louse. The chute skittered them down to a sort of vent, and they tumbled out of it onto... "Ludo!" Buffy gasped.

Ludo put his head back, and howled.

"S-M-M-E-L-L-L-L-L-L!"

That's when it hit Buffy. The stench. It smelled worse than any demon she had fought. And if possible, it just kept getting worse as each new bubble worked it's way to the surface and popped.

Buffy put her hands over her face. "Oooh! Aaarghh!"

Hoggle was struggling to get from under Ludo. "Help!" he shouted in spite of the intake of foul air that shouting entailed. "Let me out!"

Buffy could not see where Hoggle was trapped. She assumed he was just frightened. She reassured him. "It's all right, Hoggle. He's a friend, too. This is Ludo."

"S-M-M-E-L-L-L-L-L-L!" Ludo wailed.

Buffy found that it helped if she pinched her nose tightly and used only the corner of her mouth to breathe and speak. "You can put me down now, Ludo," she said gratefully.

He complied, with a gentle care remarkable in so large a body.

Then Buffy saw Hoggle's plight. "Ludo," she said. "Let him get up. It's Hoggle."

Crawling out, Hoggle at once resumed his testy tone. "What do you mean, he's your friend? I'm your friend."

"You're both my friends," Buffy said. "I need you."

"Not as much as I need me," Hoggle answered, shuddering at the lake of muck.

"You're impossible," Buffy muttered from the side of her mouth.

"No I'm not. I'm just as possible as you are. More possible, if the truth be told."

Buffy shrugged. She turned to Ludo, wanting to know how he had reached here from the forest of bones. But Ludo had been using his eyes while the other two were bickering, and now he pointed.

They looked, and saw a rustic bridge. It ran from a point farther along the shoal they were standing on, across a narrow neck of the bog, where a few sick-looking trees grew out of the mire, and finished on the opposite shore. Beyond it stretched a forest.

More forest. Buffy shook her head resignedly. "Come on," she said, and led the way. "Let's get across quickly."

The three of them picked their way along the narrow shoal. The stones and pebbles were loose beneath their feet, and an incautious step could skid them into the loathsome mire.

With Buffy in the lead, they approached the bridge. The sticks of wood of which it was constructed were pretty much the same color as the bog, as though they had been impregnated by it. The very air seemed tinted and heavy with the odor.

The bridge stood on piers of stone. They were only a few steps away from the nearest pier when a belligerent little figure came running out from behind it and confronted them.

"Stop!" he said, with an air of authority, as though there were nothing more that needed to be said.

He was courtly in appearance, wearing a smart jerkin, cut in the military style and a cap with a plume in it. His mustache was white and aristocratically long, and his legs, though thin, were held still and apart. A bushy tail rose proudly from beneath his jerkin. His right hand held a staff. Altogether he gave the impression of a character who, though diminutive, was used to commanding and to being obeyed.

Buffy, by now reduced to pinching her nose and holding the sleeve of her shirt over her mouth to keep out the pervasive stench, recognized the creature, "Please, Sir Didymus," Buffy besought him. "I've only got a little more time left."

Hoggle nodded in eager agreement. "We got to get out of the stench."

"Smmelllll," Ludo moaned, frowning so expressively that his eyes disappeared beneath his brow and the corners of his mouth reached the edges of his jawbone.

"Stench?" Sir Didymus inquired. "Of what speakest thou?"

"The smell!" Buffy removed a hand from her mouth to point at the air.

Sir Didymus took several keen sniff, sampled them in his nostrils, and shook his head, puzzled. "I smell nothing."

"You're joking," Hoggle told him.

Politely, Sir Didymus applied himself to understand their problem. Holding himself erect, he ventilated his nostrils with several cubic feet of air. He shook his head again. "I live by my sense of smell. Yet I detect nothing."

The others, nauseated and dumbfounded, stared at him while he continued to inhale deeply. "The air," he pronounced, "is sweet and fragrant." Gripping his staff, he added, "And none may pass without my permission."

Ludo threw back his head, and howled.

"S-M-M-E-L-L-L-L B-A-A-D!"

Hoggle barked, "Get out of the way!" and attempted to rush past and over the bridge.

Sir Didymus raised his staff and stood in the way. "I warn thee. I am sworn to do my duty."

Buffy closed her eyes and gave it some thought. "Okay," she said, "let's handle this thing logically. What exactly have you sworn?"

Sir Didymus raised his staff high above his head and gazed up at it devoutly. "With my lifeblood have I sworn, that none shall pass this way without my permission."

Buffy nodded. "Ah," she said, and considered the point. "Then," she asked slowly, "may we have your permission?"

Complete silence followed her question. Sir Didymus was thunderstruck. He tried looking at the proposition from one side, then from the other. He turned it upside down and inside out. He went away from it and came back to take a fresh look at it. No matter how he tried it, he could see no flaw in what Buffy had suggested. Finally, he shrugged, drew himself up straight, and delivered his considered conclusion. "Yes."

"Good," Buffy said, trying not to breathe deeply with relief. "Shall we go?" She gestured past Sir Didymus to the bridge. At the far side of it she could see Hoggle still waiting.

Sir Didymus executed a gallant bow, and offered her the bridge with a flourish of his hand. "Milady."

"Well, thank you, noble sir," Buffy said, and stepped onto the rickety bridge. Fortunately for her, it didn't fall apart as it had in the movie. She quickly crossed and was soon on the other side with her friends.

As she turned to thank him, he interrupted her. "Before you go, milady, perhaps you'd like to stay a while and we can discuss my lance?" He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Buffy rolled her eyes and walked away. "Figures Ethan would corrupt him," she muttered.

Buffy looked around for Hoggle. The dwarf was still hanging around the edge of the bog. Could he have gotten to like it there? "Come on, Hoggle," Buffy called.

Hoggle was vacillating in hogglish dilemma. His hand was in the pouch that hung from his belt, fingering the peach. If he gave it to Buffy, he would be betraying his heart. If he did not give it to her, he would be dumped headfirst in the Bog of Stench.

He brought the peach out and held it over the bog. He had not quite reached a decision yet, but he reckoned it would be wise to be prepared to act instantly once he had, with no time to change his mind. The peach might even slip accidentally from his fingers and relieve him of the responsibility of making the choice.

He was still holding the peach over the fetid scum when he heard a voice in the air above his head. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," it said.

Hoggle was so startled that he almost dropped the peach. But his fingers tightened around it. He closed his eyes in anguish. Ethan, wherever he was, was watching him. "Please," Hoggle whispered, "I can't give it to her."

He felt his feet sliding toward the brink of the bog.

"No!" Hoggle squealed. "No! All right!"

He put the peach back in his pouch and walked miserably toward the others.

For a while, they went along in silence. Ludo was thinking how good it was to breathe sweet air again, and how hungry he was.

Buffy shared these thoughts, but mostly she was preoccupied with how Spike was faring, and with how much time might remain of the thirteen hours Ethan had given her.

Hoggle was thinking of the choice he had not made, and of what, in consequence, he now had to do to Buffy. If she knew, he thought, she could scarcely blame me, could she? How would she like to be suspended headfirst in the Bog? No, it's all Ethan's fault. I'm just obeying an order that I can't refuse.

Ludo caught Buffy's glance. "Hungry," he said sadly.

"We can't stop," Buffy told him, "but maybe there are some berries or something."

She looked for Hoggle. Perhaps he might have some idea of the time.

Hoggle saw her looking back for him, and waiting for him to catch up, and he knew that the time had come. He forced himself to alter his demeanor, switched on a glassy smile, drove his feet into a perky stride, and came swaggering up, good old Hoggle, trusty friend. "Missy," he said, beaming, and held out his hand.

In it Buffy saw the most luscious peach, so rich and ripe and tantalizingly juicy that it appeared to be glowing. She looked at the peach. She knew if she ate it, she would be made to forget everything. As much as that offer tempted her, she knew she couldn't take it. Tired as she was of her duty, she also knew that if she didn't do it, innocent lives would be lost. "Sorry Hoggle, I can't eat that."

In a strangled voice, Hoggle cried out, "Damn you, Buffy! Eat the peach! If you don't I'll end up back in the Bog."

"Too late, Hogbrain."

Buffy and Hoggle turned to see Ethan standing near a tree. He walked to them, spinning two crystal globes in his hand. "She didn't eat the peach, and I get the feeling she's not going to. So to the Bog with you." He threw one of the balls at Hoggle. It shattered at his feet and suddenly he was gone. An agonized scream in the distance let them know that he had arrived at his destination.

"Now my dear. Time for you to forget that rotting corpse you call a boyfriend." Ethan threw the second one as he spoke. It landed at her feet and shattered, a thick smoke pouring out of it. She started to feel dizzy. She tried to call to Ludo, who was still walking up the path, but she couldn't get any sound to come out. As she struggled to remain standing, She saw Ethan throw another globe in her direction. This one seemed to grow as it got towards her.

Now Buffy was tottering. She managed to stagger to a tree, and leaned against it. She had already forgotten Hoggle and Ludo and Sir Didymus and Spike, and where she was and why. All her thoughts were for Giles, and her eyes were looking up at the sky.

"Everything's dancing," she whispered.

Buffy was still leaning limply against the tree, too dizzy to move, as the bubble approached her. She stared at it, entranced. She watched as the dazzling sphere floated toward her, slowly descending. It was dancing with the light, and she could hear music, an aching, haunting music, solemn, like a waltz. She was rapt. Her lips parted in wonder. Inside the great bubble was a magnificent ballroom. Giles was already dancing there.

Buffy's body swayed hypnotically in time with the music. She was the music and the dance. She was inside a bubble, dancing, dressed in a blue gown. Enchanted and enchanting, she danced slowly across the sky in company with the other dancers.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The ballroom had known opulence. Between glittering cornices were hung many long chandeliers where the wax, dripping for a hundred years, had formed stalactites. The silk covering of the walls had faded and, in places, worn threadbare. Bubbles decorated the room, and the whole of it was contained within the iridescent skin of one great bubble. A tall, gilt, thirteen-hour clock stood in a corner. It was almost twelve o'clock.

Buffy watched the dance, and the dancers watched her, from behind their masks. The men sported silken shirts open to the waist and tight velvet breeches. Some of them wore wide-brimmed, plumed hats; others had capes or carried staffs. The women's gowns left their shoulders bare and dove low between their breasts. They had their hair coifed high, and many wore long gloves.

The dancers moved in a ring around the ballroom, with a kind of lethargic brilliance, as though the party had been going on all night. Men who were not dancing lounged indolently against the columns, or in a cushioned pit in the center of the ballroom, in the company of women. Maids and footmen, with skin the color of old parchment, served them trays of fruit and refilled their goblets from decanters. And always the dancers were watching through the eyeholes in their cruel half-masks, from which snouts projected and horns sprouted above. Moving together or elegantly reclined, they watched Buffy, or watched each other watching, and beneath the masks the mouths smiled at each other like knives.

Buffy was dressed much as she had been at the Prom. Suddenly she realized that this was when she had fallen in love with Giles. She had been too blind to see it at the time. Her stubborn mind clinging to the brooding charm that was Angel. She remembered how handsome Giles had looked then. If only she had seen it sooner. Her thoughts continued along this line as she walked slowly around the room. Two gorgeously gowned women snickered behind their fans at her. Buffy paused beside a tall mirror and looked at her image.

The people passing behind her, in the mirror, were watching her like ravishing birds of prey. The dancers swayed and swirled. Then Buffy saw something in the mirror that made her gasp. She had caught a glimpse of Giles, entwined with a voluptuous woman, dancing past.

She whirled around, but he had vanished. She stood there, peering through the throng for him. Hidden behind another man's cape, Giles had watched her, but Buffy had not seen him watching. His eyes were following Buffy wherever she went in the corrupt ballroom.

She moved hurriedly around the ballroom looking for Giles. She did not know what she would say to him. She just knew that it was vitally important that she should find him.

When she saw him, he was whispering something to his beautiful partner, who responded by smiling knowingly from beneath her mask and licking her lips, slowly, with the tip of her tongue.

Buffy blushed and turned away in embarrassment. She found herself looking into another of the tall mirrors around the room. Behind her she saw Giles, standing alone. He was even more handsome than he had been at the Prom in a midnight blue frock coat, lace at the neck, shoulders, and cuffs. Ruffs of pale gray silk at his throat and wrists, on his legs he was wearing black tights and black, shiny boots. He was holding a horned mask on a stick, but he had lowered it now, to look straight at Buffy in the mirror. Behind him, dancers were whirling. He held his hand out.

She turned around, not expected that he would really be there. He was, and he was still holding out his hand to her. She took it, feeling dizzy.

Her dizziness ceased when she went spinning around the ballroom in Giles' arms. She was the loveliest woman at the ball. She knew it, from the way in which Giles was smiling down at her. All his attention was on her. The touch of his hands on her body was thrilling. To dance with him seemed the easiest and most natural motion. When he told her that she was beautiful, she felt confused.

"I feel ... I feel like ... I -- don't know what I feel."

He was amused. "Don't you?"

"I feel like ... I'm in a dream, but I don't remember ever dreaming anything like this!"

He pulled back to look at her and laughed, but fondly. "You'll have to find your way into the part," he said, and whirled her on around the room.

She smiled up at him. She thought how handsome he was, and for once the thought had none of the automatic 'eww' she had been making herself do for so long.

"You don't now how long I've dreamed of this, Buffy." Giles' eyes were looking straight into hers. His smile was serious. "Believe me. If you want to be truly free, wholly yourself -- you do want that, don't you?"

Buffy nodded. She was spellbound.

"Trust to me," Giles said, moving his face close to hers. "Can you do that?"

She nodded, and looked up at him with anticipation. He was going to kiss her. She shut her eyes. That was the way to do it.

Something made her open her eyes again. It was the silence. The music had stopped. She saw that they were alone.

The clock struck twelve.

Something started to nag at Buffy's mind, growing stronger with each chime. Something to do with time. Suddenly she remembered. Spike! She had started this to save Spike. Torn between what she needed and what she felt she must do, Buffy looked to Giles for guidance. "What do I do?" she asked desperately.

Giles looked into her eyes. "I can't tell you that."

"I wish we could stay here forever."

"But?"

"But I have a duty. I love you Giles, but I don't deserve you. I'm..." Buffy lowered her eyes. "After all the things I've done to you, I'm not worthy of your love," she finished in a whisper.

Giles held her close. "Don't ever think that. You have always been the light in my life. You've done more for me by simply being than you will ever know." Giles kissed the top of her head.

"How can you forgive me?" she said into his chest.

Giles chuckled. "There is nothing to forgive love."

Buffy leaned back to look in Giles eyes. "What about Spike? I can't just leave him there."

Giles thought for a second. "Stay right here, Luv. I'll see what I can do." He turned into an owl and disappeared.

Buffy looked around puzzled. What did he mean by that? Then just as suddenly as he left, Giles appeared. "Problem solved."

Buffy looked at him suspiciously. "What did you do?"

Giles got a Ripperish grin. "Let's just say Ethan and I came to an understanding."

Buffy stared at him. "What did you do?"

Giles just smiled and started to dance with her again. Buffy looked up at him, love overpowering her need to know. But she did have one more question.

"Giles, how are we going to get home?"

"We're already there." Buffy looked around to see that they were in her living room, the music from the ball now playing on the stereo. She giggled.

"What's so funny?" Giles asked, smiling at her amusement. Buffy pulled him down to whisper in his ear. Giles' eyes lit up. "Now that has possibilities. I'll race you." And took off for the stairs with Buffy close behind.

------------------

Ethan watched the two of them in the globe in his hand. "Well, Ripper. I have to admit. Your plan did work after all." He turned to Spike who was by now limp with exhaustion from fighting the goblins. "Now what to do with you. Hmm." Ethan's face lit up. "I know. I'll introduce you to a friend of mine who really likes vampires. As an appetizer." Spike heard a bellowing howl and looked up to see a wall of ginger colored fur moving towards him.