Disclaimer: Sarah, Jareth, and the Labyrinth belong to their original creators. The goblins...well, I tried to keep them out, but they found my bowl of chocolate.

Chapter One: The Changeling

The three goblins on Sarah's apartment balcony were not being particularly stealthy, even for goblins, but they were trying very hard.

"Oof! Get your elbow outta my eye!"

"Well then get your eye outta my elbow!"

"Shut up, shut up, she'll hear us and then the King will find out and dump us in the Bog…"

"Is she even in there?"

"Move over, fatso, I can't see!"

"You move over, you're taller than me."

"Horns don't count!"

"Shhhhhhh!"

The goblins elbowed each other and jockeyed to peer furtively through half-drawn curtains, cackling amongst themselves at some private goblin joke.

A few yards above the balcony, hidden in the branches of a giant old maple tree and nearly invisible among the leaves, a silent shadow watched the goblins hungrily. If anyone had been watching they might have seen the shadow twist in on itself, or shivered at a brief, unseasonal chill in the air. They might have seen a pale scrap of moonlight detach from the trees and glide slowly earthward.

The goblins did not.

A storm was coming. Late summer was turning slowly into fall, but the Baltimore night was still humid and fragrant with the smell of salt air. Heat lightning sparked silently between towering clouds over the Chesapeake Bay, and the sounds of the city were punctuated periodically by the melancholy cry of gulls circling overhead as they battled downdrafts from the approaching squall.

The balcony doors in Sarah's bedroom shook fiercely in the wind, and the curtains whipped side to side. The muted sounds of the television in the living room were briefly drowned out by the low growl of thunder.

Sarah listened until it rolled away into silence before swishing her toothpaste around and spitting into the sink. She deposited the toothbrush neatly into its porcelain holder and padded into the hall in her slippers, going to close the windows against the storm, then into the living room to flick off the television and check the mismatched tower of locks and deadbolts on the front door. A lone siren wailed impotently, somewhere in the distance.

For a moment, while the thunder rolled and flickering lightning lit the dark corners of her apartment, she had the feeling of being watched. It was a feeling she had a lot and she'd learned not to let it bother her, but for just a second she allowed herself to admit what it really reminded her of; doors flying open in the wind of another sudden storm, curtains fluttering like wings, long ago...

The thought crossed her mind, as it sometimes did, that this tiny little second story apartment in an ancient brownstone on the corner of two almost-but-not-quite bad neighborhoods was not where she'd expected to end up. Neither was her job (thoroughly unglamorous, junior copyeditor for a minor publishing house) or her relationship status (single, again, after the latest in a long string of failed relationships). Not much in Sarah's life had turned out like she'd thought it would.

She flicked off the lights and shuffled back to the bedroom. The smell of rain, with undertones of sea and the sour human smells of a large city, filled the air. She was just reaching for the balcony door when a sharp crack and a bright flash made her startle. Her heart leaped to her throat: there was someone behind the curtains, a tall silhouette edged by lightning and dim moonlight.

The frozen moment of panic lasted as long as it took for racing storm clouds to obscure the moon. The silhouette vanished, proving that there was nothing outside except the shadow of the big oak in the back yard. Sarah relaxed her hands on the broom handle and took a couple of deep breaths, entertaining a brief vision of what would have happened if she'd thrown back the curtains to actually find the Goblin King on her balcony after all this time. She took a moment of pleasure in the idea of beating him over the head with a broom.

Now that she was at the window she could hear a high-pitched keening drifting up from somewhere below. What is that, a cat? God, it sounds awful. The muffled sound of pain and fear made something sick-making twist in her gut.

The storm was sweeping in now, rain rapping the roof, fat drops speckling the balcony. The wail below rose to a screeching crescendo; Sarah paused before turning the lock, and slid open one door a little to peer out. The sound cut off sharply, leaving the night in eerie silence except for the rain and the little sounds of wind teasing the curtains to either side of her.

You're him, aren't you…you're the Goblin King…

She pushed the thought down fiercely and locked the door with a deep sigh. Ten years on, Williams, and you're still thinking about that? Get a grip.

She flicked on her bedside light and pulled her hair back into a ponytail, lost in well-worn memories. Whatever magic had thinned the boundary between worlds that night certainly hadn't lasted; she'd seen no more goblins, made no more wishes that even hinted at coming true. For a little while the vanity mirror in her old room had exhibited an occasional tendency to show her things that weren't there, but even that had stopped within a few months.

Lightning struck somewhere nearby; the flash was blinding, the thunderclap instant and bone-shaking. The bedside light brightened briefly and then made a little metallic pop and died, along with her alarm clock and the sounds of all the household appliances. Outside, an angry discordant chorus of car alarms drifted up into the night. Sarah muttered a curse and grabbed the broom again, using it and an outstretched arm to feel her way to the bathroom, where she kept a flashlight under the sink. She found it, pushed the switch up and down a couple of times, and sighed. Dead.

When she emerged flashlight-less from the bathroom, there was someone sitting on her bed.

Before she could consciously react she was scrambling behind her and fumbling at the light switch, praying for the power to come back on, as a shadow unfolded itself in slightly less deep shadow. It was about the size and shape of a man, wearing something around its shoulders that swirled and billowed when it stood.

As if on cue, the power came back. She'd found the wrong switch to flip: the bathroom fan was going on and off repeatedly but there was no light. "Get off my bed! Get the hell away from me! I will broom you in the face!"

The shadows separated a little better after her eyes had a moment to adjust. This person was wearing some sort of tattered cloak: not the usual choice in clothing for Baltimore in the summer. Or any time, really. Goblin King, GOBLIN KING, her inner voice gibbered frantically.

The shadow gave a sharp little chuckle. "I didn't mean to frighten you," he said smoothly, sounding bemused. "I thought you were offering me sanctuary."

"What?" Her fingers finally found the correct switch and the bathroom light came on. They both blinked at each other for a moment, Sarah in her rattiest pajama pants and old T-shirt, the man across the room in a long tunic and cloak—or were they a tangle of leaves and a thick drape of Spanish moss? He had a very narrow, attractive face and long limbs, and some sort of ivy woven into his dark hair. Whatever else could be said about the intruder, he was not the Goblin King.

"Sanctuary?" prompted Sarah incredulously, taking the broom handle in both hands now, but the intruder had lost interest in explaining and was staring at her a little vacantly. His eyes gleamed with what she could only interpret as hunger.

Rain pounded against the roof and windows, drowning out the car alarms, until the sound was all that filled her ears. Would anyone even hear her if she screamed? Doubtful, in this weather; Sarah was on her own. She gathered herself up, slipping with unexpected ease into a protective shell of stubborn anger. "Hey. Whoever you are and however you got in here, you've got the wrong girl. You should leave. Now," she added helpfully, gesturing with the broom when he didn't show any signs of moving.

The man didn't react other than to meet her eyes with his own, which still somehow seemed to be looking right through her. "Do you know what you are? You don't have any idea, do you?"

The Sarah that lived in the Real World and concerned herself mainly with things like paying the rent, and making sure the laundry was done before she ran out of underwear, drew back and tried to deny any of this was happening. But the Sarah who had once spent thirteen hours in the Labyrinth was waking up almost gleefully and getting her feet under her; this was her apartment, and she'd be damned if some creepy costumed freak was going to barge in and stare at her in her pajamas and start using words like sanctuary as if she should have any idea what he was talking about.

"Look," she began firmly, stepping forward. His head snapped up and he gave her so sharp a look that she stopped as if she'd hit a wall. He leaned toward her slightly and sniffed the air—no, sniffed her.

"You're a mortal?" The tall stranger held out a slender hand and insistently beckoned her to come closer. "Come here and let me see you."

"No!" she snapped, and poked the broom at him. Her brain began babbling that something was not right and suddenly didn't want to be one inch closer to this guy, broom or no broom. This was one of the things she'd so carefully packed away with her childhood, a thing that listened in the dark for wishes, waiting to make them come true. But she hadn't wished, not even close to it. It wasn't fair! "Out." Sarah backed away and edged a few feet to her right; her phone was on the desk. "I'm calling the police."

He fixed bright green eyes on her and, with a smile that was not at all comforting, reached out and grasped the battered wooden broom handle with one hand. Abruptly, impossibly, the entire length of the handle began to sprout new branches. Sarah held on to it in shock for a few seconds until the branches twisted around her hand to pin it down. She wrenched away and stumbled out into the hallway leading to the rest of the dark apartment, slamming the bedroom door shut behind her.

The air out here felt heavy, as if it didn't want to enter her lungs. She leaned up against the door to hold it closed and tried to breathe, listening for sounds from inside the bedroom. Lightning flashed, chased by thunder, and rain roared against the roof. After a little while the rain slacked off and she heard the slow thump-thump-thump of booted feet crossing the floor, the clacking of tumblers turning in the balcony door lock. Then...nothing.

Did he jump? What the hell was that?

Sarah pressed her ear against the door, wondering if he was still waiting inside for her. Well, she wasn't going back that way, not even to get to the phone; her elderly landlady had one downstairs, and Sarah could use it to call the police. She told herself this with wavering certainty, even as it sank in that the police would be able to do absolutely nothing about it.

She ran as fast as she could for the living room, sliding a little in her socks when she hit the hardwood floor. Something large and pale fluttered down in front of her like a piece of moonlight that had somehow found its way inside; she startled, then reached up to brush it away,

For one perfect moment the world seemed to hold its breath. The sounds of the storm were very far away, and the features of the room seemed to come into sharp focus. The air—the air, it washed over her smelling wild and green, so unlike the scent of the bay breeze that she had to fill her lungs with the unexpected deliciousness. Then the wooden floorboards creaked ominously as if under great stress, and around her the varnished wood of her decades-old apartment floor found unexpected new life, exploding into a tangle of branches and leaves that shot all the way to the ceiling and hemmed her in completely.

The scrap of moonlight was a large, handsome moth with dusky gray wings. As she watched it trembled in midair, changing shape to become the same person—thing—she'd just shut into her bedroom. She wanted to scream and run, but the scream wouldn't come and there was nowhere to go. Green eyes peered through the branches at her, unnaturally luminous in the dim light. The hand that she'd raised to brush away the moth were suddenly caught quite tightly in his own.

Anger seethed up like a pot unexpectedly boiling over, and Sarah took hold of it to give her a direction to go. Logic was no good here, but anger—that, she could use. "What is the matter with you? Let go of me!"

He ignored her. "No, not a Changeling. And yet you have something of it about you. Taken from your own world, and returned." Now that she looked she could see that the ivy was not woven into his hair at all; it was his hair, or was growing from his skin, and the same delicate traces of green framed his face. A distant dizziness began to rise in her mind. With his eyes still locked on hers the man raised her hand to his lips and licked the skin between her first and second knuckles.

Sarah punched him in the face with her free hand. It wasn't a terribly powerful punch—she was tangled too uncomfortably in the branches to get in much of a swing—but it did the trick; he reeled back, clearly not expecting physical violence. It gave her enough time to start fighting her way out of the tangle of branches, but she was also fighting back the sleepy agreeable feeling that was suddenly creeping over her, and she was losing.

Her thoughts drifted lazily, suspended in pleasant fuzz that tickled at her anger and fear and started to convince her that everything was all right. Out of the corner of her eye she saw his green eyes and a gaze sharp as razors. Wake up, Sarah, said the half of her brain which was still fighting back (it sounded like Real World Sarah). He looks like he's about to eat you. She wrenched herself out of her dizzy reverie long enough to catch him smoothing away a look of surprised anger. With one hand he wiped at an oozing wound where her ring had broken the skin on his face, and straightened with some effort.

"You're a bit more energetic than I was expecting." A tired sigh escaped him. "But, you will be coming with me regardless."

It was so hard to fight off the sleepy feeling of reassurance. The air was heady and seemed to be filled with drifting, distracting lights. "Coming where? Who are you?" she tried to ask, but what came out instead was: "Now? But it's the middle of the night...and I don't even know you..."

Conscious enough to be alarmed at what was going on, she tried without success to keep her knees straight as the branches that had been holding her in parted like a curtain and dumped her into the intruder's arms.

The creature flicked his cloak around Sarah with a smile like the edge of a knife, but Sarah did not see it. In a moment there was no one left in the room, only a tangle of new wood and the sounds of rain pounding against the windows.

They emerged with a gasp from the nothing between worlds, dropping like stones into the twilit sky of the Underground. Ghislain was briefly disoriented; something had pulled them badly off course, and they plummeted earthward without control. The two goblins he'd managed to catch had hardly made a decent meal; between his desperate snatch for the mortal woman Aboveground and the resulting search for a spot where the boundaries to the Underground were thin, he'd already expended most of their meager magic. For a moment he struggled ineffectually against the twilight sky, then screamed in fury and turned all his will to keeping hold of the mortal woman in his arms, fighting the urge to take flight with dusty moth wings.

It nearly tore him apart to turn their stone-heavy drop upward, outward, until they were skimming along the surface of the power that grasped at them. Magical friction threw green fire from the woman's skin, blazing up until Ghislain—desperately holding on as they blazed across the sky—thought he would be consumed. The Labyrinth wants her. What is this mortal woman to the goblin kingdom? The harder she burned the more he could taste her power. If he was consumed it would be worth it; he would not let the Labyrinth take his prize.

They fell onward, and his grasp slipped a little more, the inexorable pull of the Labyrinth sharpening the angle of their descent. They were over the Wastes now, the barren expanse that marked the southern border of the territory of the Goblin King. They would not make the Grove, but he strained and exhausted the last dregs of his magic to coax them in that direction.

In the end he was not strong enough to hold her. The limp shape of the mortal woman tumbled down into twilight, trailing tiny wisps of green flame until she vanished in darkness. Helpless to slow his fall, Ghislain tumbled on through the sky until the onrushing night finally claimed him.

Author's Note: Now we're all caught up to the prologue, for anybody at home who's trying to play along. Thanks for reading! Please review if you have a chance, I welcome any feedback.