Chapter Two: Something's Wrong
"Give me the child," Sarah demanded quietly as the Goblin King walked towards her.
"Sarah beware; I have been generous up until now. But I can be cruel." He cautioned her as he moved around her in a predatory type of circle.
"Generous?" She looked at him calmly, though her heart was nearly pounding out of her chest. "What have you done that's generous?"
"Everything," he snapped his eyes blazing. "Everything that you wanted, I have done." He continued to circle around her, his eyes seeming to take in all of her at once.
"You asked that the child be taken, and I took him. You cowered before me; I was frightening." Jareth pointed towards the clock floating in midair that had thirteen hours. "I have reordered time. I have turned the world upside down and I have done it all for you!" He exclaimed exasperated.
"I am exhausted from living up to your expectations of me." He looked at her, a pained look overcoming his brilliant eyes. "Isn't that generous?"
Sarah glanced at the clock behind Jareth as he talked. She was running out of time and she had to save Toby. She had come too far to fail.
"Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the Castle beyond the Goblin City." She looked into his eyes her courage growing as she spoke the words aloud.
Then she began to walk towards him, growing even bolder still.
As Sarah drew nearer to the Goblin King she could visibly see him back up.
"For my will is as strong as yours. And my-"
"Stop!" Jareth hissed, interrupting her mid-sentence. "Wait . . . Look Sarah. Look what I'm offering you." A crystal appeared in his gloved hand, "Your dreams."
Sarah barely glanced at the crystal before continuing, "And my kingdom as great."
"I ask for so little, Sarah. Just let me rule you and you can have everything that you want." He said smoothly as his eyes bored into her.
"Kingdom as great. . . Damn! I can never remember that line." She was beginning to panic. What the hell was that line?
"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave." He begged her desperately.
Sarah ignored his words as she franticly tried to remember what she needed to say. "My kingdom as great . . . My kingdom as great. . ."
Then the words came to her and they rang out truer than any words she had ever spoken.
"You have no power over me."
Jareth closed his eyes in agony and dropped the crystal ball and within several seconds he had disappeared with a flourish of silk and glitter. And all went black.
Sarah slowly opened her eyes as she woke from her dream.
It had almost been a year since her encounter with the Goblin King and yet the encounter still haunted her. Every night without fail, her last memory of him would replay itself, and every morning she would wake up in a cold sweat and her heart almost pounding out of her chest.
In the beginning, Sarah had cried almost every night, but now she didn't utter a sound as she woke. She had grown, and was no longer afraid.
Sarah turned her head to look at her alarm clock with slightly blurry eyes and noticed that the light green numbers were currently a five four and six. As her mind began to warm up, she realized what these numbers meant.
It was 5:46 in the morning.
The young woman sat up slowly, for she was still shaky from the dream, and listened in silence. Her family still slept peacefully in the surrounding rooms, unaware that it was almost time to wake up and start the new day.
Sarah got up out of bed and slipped her light blue robe on. She had had it for what seemed like a lifetime and even though it was old it was in good condition.
She crept over to her window seat and sat down slowly.
The moon was still up even though the stars had disappeared without a trace long ago. And a gentle breeze wafted through the trees in her front yard, making the leaves flutter in a beautiful dance. Sarah sat as if in a trance as she watched the leaves, thinking about her friends from the underground: Hoggle, Ludo, Sir Diddymus and Ambrosia the dog. The young woman wondered if they missed her as much as she missed them.
It had been months since their last visit and Sarah had been trying every day for weeks now, to contact them. But there was no answer.
"They must be doing something important," she had reassured herself many times. And yet in the back of her mind she knew something was wrong.
The last time she had seen her friends, Hoggle had been on edge. "Are you alright Hoggle?" She had asked, concerned. "I is alright Sarah. I just. . . It's nothing." And he had left it at that, refusing to say more.
Sarah shook her head, "I should've known something was wrong . . . Hoggle always tells me when something's wrong, or at least he has ever since the incident with the peach." It was with this thought that it hit her.
Jareth . . .
Jareth was the only person that Hoggle was truly afraid of and the dwarf had made that fact clear countless times in the past whenever she had teased him about it.
Quickly she pushed the thought aside. No, she had defeated Jareth. He couldn't possibly be affecting her friends. . . Could he? The thought made her shiver.
Sarah tried to think of something that would lift her mood, because she was rapidly becoming depressed, and she settled on some of the parties she had had with her Underground friends.
When her parents were gone, they had laughed and talked for hours on end and she had really gotten to know them. And within her time being home from the Labyrinth she had become very close friends with Toby.
When she had first introduced Toby to her friends the little boy had taken to them immediately. And in return all of her friends had loved Toby too. Ludo unparticular had grown extremely fond of him. The big creature acted like a mother hen as he cuddled the little boy.
Sarah laughed quietly to herself imagining Ludo in a chicken suit.
When Toby had first met Ludo, he had wanted Ludo to hold him almost immediately.
At first Ludo had been scared of him, not knowing what to do, but thankfully she had intervened. Sarah smiled even wider as she remembered how helpless her friend had been.
"There's nothing to be afraid of Ludo," she had explained. "This is my baby brother, Toby." Ludo had picked up Toby and gently held him.
"TOEY!" Ludo had thrummed happily and in response Toby had giggled loudly and given Ludo a big slobbery kiss.
From that moment on the two were fast friends.
Sarah sighed as she remembered her friends as they had been.
"I will figure out what's happened," the young woman promised the air. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to hug the cold away and trying to wake herself up.
Just then, her parents alarm went off. Sarah groaned and stood up from the window seat . She moved towards her bathroom to take her morning shower and began her pep-talk for the day.
"Only more day before the weekend," Sarah told herself as she washed her hair.
Yes one more day, she would make this day a memorable one. The girl would try to focus on school work and not her otherworldly friends. She could do this. After all, if she could beat the King of the Goblins, what were 7 measly classes?
