Chapter 1: Excerpts from the Published Copy of The Labyrinth's Touch by young author S. Williams and a Preface of Sorts
"…the dwarf was not given to chuckling, but in the presence of such a strange girl who was intent on making a fool of herself, a chuckle was the result of a gurgled swallow of air and a stifled hiccup. She was not pleased with his humor, she was indeed quite angry. Her eyes flared and she turned away from him facing the dark hallway before her. Avoiding Cleaners was the least of their problems, as was Hoggle's need to satisfy his happiness with an eruption of laughter. Sarah pursed her lips and took a step forward, the sand grains and small rocks of the ground crunching beneath her weight. Hoggle's laughter died as she moved into the darkness.
'Shouldn't take that path, little lady.' He remarked.
'Why not?' She turned back to him and her eyebrows bent down in a frown.
'Leads to places unlike what you've ever seen before,' the dwarf said. He sensed the disturbance in what she was doing; it was not along the lines of the story. The direction she was turned to would lead her straight to the secret passages. Passages that led to the Castle's Underground System, a twisting maze within the great maze that only the King was permitted to wander. No one knew what was inside, though they all knew the entry ways. She was walking straight to it.
Sarah ignored him, and kept walking for the darkness. She suddenly paused and then vanished all together. Hoggle shook his head and turned to meet the King, who had undoubtedly appeared beside him.
'Why the devil did you let her go that way?' Jareth asked, watching the glinting dust flutter in the air where she had once stood.
'Figured it would be a nice place for you to have a sensible conversation with her, show her you're sensitive side if you wanted.' Hoggle smirked and began to walk away. There was a change in his step, a brighter, smoother jaunt that Jareth didn't notice but would have been noticeable for any other. It spoke of courage; it spoke of a dwarf being greater then a High Fae, but for justified reasons. The Fae as it were was a fool, for all who trespass on the waves of love are fools. And this King was very much in love…"
Jareth stopped reading and placed the book down caringly. He slide his gloved finger over the cover, tracing the face of the King the artist of the cover had portrayed, laughing at the sincere caution that Sarah had been taking in her book. She must have known he would read it, but it wasn't as if he was totally oblivious to the fact that she would write of a romance between the King and the Runner. It was not a question in his mind. The only fact that surprised him was that she used her own real name for the character. This was unlike the other Runners who had gone on to write of their adventures. Though none of these others had been successful they had fragments of memory that were mistaken for dreams that were considered their own ideas and they were made into books. It happened all the time. This time shouldn't be any different. He had a wildly vast collection of novels about his Labyrinth; they had their own special bookcase in the Castle Library, and were always free for the public to read. Not that goblins were adapting readers; the books were shared, loved even when the world was portrayed in a positive manner. Sarah's book was by far the most detailed and accurate, for she was the only Runner left with her memories in tact. The book Jareth was reading was the first of her novels, and though the romance was vague there was an underlying honesty in it. More vibrant in the descriptions she made of him, Jareth could see she was not so naïve to what he had been implying all those years before. Maybe in the end she really just didn't like him that way. But no…. That didn't correlate with the second novel of hers, the one that had a most interesting cover. Titled Love's Last Maze, it depicted the Goblin King again, but this time cradled in his arms was the image of a dark-haired girl, one with green eyes, and a devilish grin. It had to be Sarah. He picked the second novel, which he had not come to read yet, off the shelf and flipped through the pages. No words struck a chord with his interest as he skimmed until he was flipping through the page of the last chapter. The word kiss caught his eye and he stopped to read.
"…her eyes drooped, heavy with the final sleep, very near ready to shut forever when Jareth had finally found her. The tusk of the Wild Boar was enclosed in her stomach, the blood did not spill though the puncture swelled as if waiting to burst. Her face was nicked and bruised, orange smears, boar blood, were streaked across her skin. Her sword was nowhere to be found, but upon hearing a muffled grunt Jareth spotted the lump in the darkness of the Boar, her sword trapped in its ribcage. Jareth approached the girl cautiously. The girl was no longer a girl, he realized mournfully, the child was a woman now, just in her prim and she was dying. He kneeled down next to her, unable to speak, hardly able to breathe. Her hair had been braided earlier, meant to keep out of her face, but it was loose and soaked now, shiny in the glow of his lantern.
'Sarah…' His own voice surprised him, dry and morose. He hadn't ever been so sad before. It didn't make any real sense, why the death of an insignificant mortal girl meant so much to him. But it didn't really, did it? No, he decided. She had said yes to this mission, failed obviously and that didn't matte. Mortals were expendable, easy to take, though just as easy to harm. She had at least killed the Boar, though the bloodstone it had in its chest was not retrieved. As if in answer to his thoughts, a hitching sound came from the girl, and he turned to her. The blood had begun to seep down the sides of her body, sinking into the grass around her. Her eyes rolled blindly in her head, but she thrust a tight fist forward, presenting a bloody wad when she uncurled her fingers.
'Bloodstone.' She said plainly. He took the wad gingerly between a thumb and forefinger. He looked down at her, and smiled faintly. He didn't know what to do. Kiss her? Thank her? Kill her quickly so she wouldn't feel anymore pain?
Her voice interrupted his thoughts. 'Jareth….sir….'
'What is it you want?' He whispered as gentle as he could.
'To…say… that I know you never did…' she coughed and a surge of red slime leaked out from her lips. 'But…I always loved you.'
As if this confession was the only thing that had kept her alive, its birth became her death and she coughed for a long time, blood everywhere until her little body could no longer take it and she finally slipped into death.
Jareth winced at her dying breath, waited for the blood to stop, then stood. Gathering her up in his arms, regret hugging his throat tightly, he began to walk. He didn't know where he would walk, or if he would ever stop. He walked and thought, hard and without fail. Finally he came to a conclusion. He pulled the girl up in his arms, her corpse still just slightly warm. He smoothed the hair out of her face and laid her down. The next hour of the night he cleaned her. Using water from a crystal he washed the blood away. He removed the tusk and wrapped a ripped square of his cloak around her middle where the injury was. He shut her wild green eyes, which had turned grey slightly with emptiness, and rubbed the smears of dirt away from her dainty face. By the time the ordeal was done she was cold as ice and Jareth was exhausted. But using just a little bit of magic he dug her grave. Unable to bear the thought of her being eaten to scraps by the maggots he took a crystal from his sack and whispered an incantation. The crystal changed, melted and grew until it became as large as her body and wide as her hips and shoulders. The Crystal Casket was a lovely piece of work; one he knew would have been a collected art if he had produced it anywhere else. But he had made it for her. Sarah. Never his Sarah. Only Sarah. He took up her body in his arms and kissing her cheek he laid her down in the coffin. He had traced the bottom with a smooth cushion and with a flick of his wrist her scrappy shredded garments became lace and silver ornaments, silky and shinning like a moonbeam. Her hair twisted and curled, long and clean and beautiful. He draped a thin, near translucent blanket over her and let white rosebuds drop from his ungloved finger tips to adorn her. The only mortal he had remembered. He covered the casket, and let his eyes take their last glance at her. For a long time he was unable to bury her, and then he realized he did not need to. He whispered a youth curse on the corpse, so she would never rot, her body would never change. He then split three trees, using only his grandest magic he built a small gazebo, dying the wood white, and spinning silver strands into it. Very soon the monument was done and her casket lay in the middle. He set one last spell to make it impossible for her body to be moved. He left then.
He left her there, his Sarah. His sweetest love. He mumbled endearments as he walked, his arms empty, his heart finally open and beating with passion that was slowly draining away to nothing. Nothing. Nothing tra la la."
Jareth stopped; appalled that he had reached the end of the book. He flipped the page to read anything else he could find and sighed. There was nothing else.
"Well," He said aloud. "Might as well go ask precious what it is she intends to do about this abomination of a book." Casually he slipped out of Underground. He appeared to be in all the state of calmness though inside his heart was wild and his fear was rising. Her depiction of him was a horror. He was a monstrosity in her eyes who wouldn't even try to save her if she were dying. Seeing as she was totally wrong, it was fit to go along and correct her. He knew she wouldn't want to live under false information. He smiled.