CHAPTER ONE
A soft breeze stirred through the curtains and Sarah looked up, losing her place in the People magazine she was reading. The house was so quiet now that her parents and Toby were gone for the weekend. She had fortunately begged off from the trip to Aunt Edna's, but now she was getting bored – a feeling that made her extremely uneasy. After all, it had been only six months since she'd returned from an adventure she didn't dare tell anyone about. Well, there was no use thinking about it or regretting it. She had made the right decision and she would have to live with it. Still, he had been so handsome . . . .
She felt herself captivated by these thoughts and didn't even notice the small figure that appeared from behind her closet door.
"Sarah!"
The familiar voice nearly jolted her off her bed as she glanced up to see the dwarf that had entered her room.
"Hoggle! What are you doing here?"
"Sarah, you've got to come back! We need you in the Labyrinth! Something terrible . . . ." the dwarf gestured frantically with his small, wrinkled hands, but he was too out of breath to speak. Sarah sat him down on her bed and after a few moments he regained some of his composure, if not very much of it. "They've taken over the Labyrinth, taken over everything! Killed all the goblins, even control the castle! We need you!"
"What? What's gone on? Start from the beginning!"
Sarah listened almost stunned with disbelief as Hoggle told her of the terrible fate that had befallen the world of the Labyrinth. An interdimensional portal had opened into Jareth's kingdom only a month ago and through it had come an invading army of demons that had slaughtered any creature it could find, mostly goblins, and actually destroyed areas of the Labyrinth. Worse, the demons had been led by a monstrous, black-armored warrior called the Dreadlord, who now completely controlled the Labyrinth and Jareth's castle. Hoggle and several others, including the great, furry Ludo, had managed to escape the demon hordes and form a very disorganized resistance group in a place that the Dreadlord still had not found. But not all of Sarah's otherworldly friends had been so lucky.
"Poor Sir Didymus," Hoggle mumbled, unaccustomed tears welling up in his dwarfish eyes. The valiant old fox's heart had given out during a pitched battle with the demons.
Sarah herself began to feel the cold, creeping shock that Hoggle was suffering from. The terrible takeover of the other dimension seemed to have happened too fast for it to be real. She didn't want to believe in it, although instinct told her that the dwarf wasn't lying about anything, least of all Sir Didymus' death. Her mind slowly brought itself around to an inevitable question.
"What about Jareth? Why hasn't he done anything to stop this invasion?"
"He's vanished," Hoggle sighed. "After you left, he went back to his castle and nobody's seen him since. Without him the demons will never be driven away. We need you, Sarah. If anyone can bring that wretched old bully back from wherever he's gone to, it's you."
Sarah took a deep breath and tried to pretend that none of this was happening. Did she really want to face Jareth again, after everything he'd put her through? Would she be able to resist him this time if he came back? And did she want to risk facing the horrible demons Hoggle had described? Then she looked down at Hoggle and knew that her decision was already made. All of her friends in the Labyrinth were in trouble, and if they needed her help then she was going to do the right thing again. But first, even though she could feel herself crying for Sir Didymus, there was one last thing she had to do before leaving. Going over to her dresser drawer, she took out one of her gold-colored bracelets and handed it to the little dwarf.
"Genuine plastic," she said.
For the briefest second a smile crossed Hoggle's face as he put the bracelet on his wrist. Then he got up and waved his hand for her to follow him. She stepped across the room into a swirling nothingness and felt herself pulled along until she came to a place where the ground felt strangely different and the air seemed to tingle with magic. She was back in the Labyrinth.
