Act II

Down underground, in Goblin City, at the heart of The Labyrinth, and in a dimension outside any other, Pam was not a very happy goblin. A messenger stood in front of him, and, as if the messenger herself had not been enough of an interruption, the message itself had been enough to unleash an acute, throbbing discomfort within Pam's head.

"Let me get this straight." He pinched the curved end of his beak. "His majesty has requested a shift?"

Pam was tall, for a goblin. In his black, castle staff uniform, he closely resembled a scarecrow stuffed with feathers. A scarecrow with the face of a crow, large, goblin ears tied flat and back with a black silk bow. He was efficient and officious and, as Advisor Royal to the Goblin King, he viewed it as a personal failure if any detail of running the castle slipped past his fingers or was executed outside of clear, strict guidelines mostly only he truly cared about.

"A minor one." The messenger pulled off a leather-clad salute. "Sir."

"No need to salute an advisor," Pam said with vague annoyance. "And how minor is this requested shift to be? I am at pains to instruct you to inform his majesty that shifting The Labyrinth, even one infinitesimal inch to the left, is a time consuming process. Do you know how long it's been since we've last shifted?"

No recollection or comprehension of any sort showed on the messenger's face. She was a young goblin. All things considered, she was not entirely sure why King Jareth's advisor was reacting in this way. Her mind was occupied chiefly by delivering her message, then returning to headquarters for further messages to dispatch.

Pam sighed. "Well, it was quite obviously before your time, yes." He pulled open a drawer, took out a large, ring seal and a honey coloured stick of wax. As he worked on readying the wax, he said, "His majesty's request is a most unusual one. But then, he is himself a most unusual…" He almost said man. Human. Not goblin. That simply would not do. He settled for, "A very unusual king." He stamped the castle seal on the messenger's Successful Delivery of Confidential, Memorized, Oral Message form. "There we are."

The messenger did not take the form. She remained at attention. "I never said, sir."

"Said?"

"How minor the shift is to be." She saluted again. "Sir."

Who was teaching young goblins these things? Pam waved her onto the full message. It was short, also part of King Jareth's unusual way of ruling. Time there was when a simple, "Serve dinner early" would comprise at least five hundred words.

"Pam," the messenger said from memory, "shift The Labyrinth westward, across the Atlantic Ocean, to Londonderry, New Hampshire, the United States of America. No excuses. Yours, King Jareth."

She delivered the entire message in a measured, neutral voice, so that the words "no excuses," likely delivered with a haughty, impatient jab of Jareth's finger, merely sounded like an extra geographical point after the United States of America. What made Pam's brow ridges inch upwards, though, was the closing.

"Yours?" Pam murmured. He had never heard any Goblin King use anything but the formal, "By my hand and seal." The very idea of King Jareth looking at Pam (or, for that matter, the messenger) and saying, "Yours" made Pam mourn for the abuse and misuse of proper protocol. Well, proper protocol was safe with him.

"I, Pam, Advisor Royal to his Eleventh Majesty, King Jareth of The Labyrinth, do hereby acknowledge the receipt and comprehension of this Confidential, Memorized, Oral Message."

After the messenger had saluted (twice), taken her form, and left in a smart clump of boots, Pam blew out air through his beak. Minor shift. All across the full spectrum of the Atlantic Ocean Frequencies. Minor. Of course. He turned the word Londonderry over in his head. Did not sound all that different from English names like London or Kent or Brumby.

"What," Pam wondered, "could be so important about Londonderry, New Hampshire?"


Time was so strange, when Linda was with David. She would meet him after rehearsals for Antigone every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. They first drank coffee on 17 August (to her embarrassment, she found she had circled the date in red on her pocket planner), and the play opened on 10 September. That was—Linda did a quick calculation on her fingers—nine days of rehearsals and nine (possible) lunches at Porter's. Linda made sure never to meet David outside of the professional respectability of, "Just catching a quick coffee after rehearsals, Adrian. Going through our lines together. Obsessing over inflections and details, all that jazz."

So why did it feel as if she had been drinking coffee with David for months now? She had to have downed at least fifteen cups by now, and she never had more than one each day. It made her jumpy. Liable to become scatterbrained.

"What date is it?" she asked David, one fingernail toying with the frayed edge of her menu. "It's starting to feel as if rehearsals for this play have gone on forever."

"Have they?" David said. "It's all been sort of crawling for me." He snapped his menu shut. "Tell you what, it's likely all the routine. Theatre, Porter's, bus stop, repeat. Let's try something different today."

"Oh." Robert might pass them on the street. He might head out to the corner Burger King and see Linda with David. Might think something. Might jump to conclusions. "Well, I…" They might walk past Sarah's school. Might be lunchtime. Sarah might see them as she propelled herself down a slide. Mommy and some strange man. She was too young to understand. "I don't think that might be such a good idea."

"No?" He sat in thought for a while, half-slouching on his diner booth.

The pictures of smiling bathers careened into the distance behind him, cavorting above his head and away behind Linda's shoulders. David's eyes followed the pictures, lips rubbing together in thought. A pale, pink tongue poked out to lick his upper lip, and he leaned forward abruptly, as if he had just been hit with an idea. He placed his hand over Linda's and her eyes snapped down towards it. His index finger was up against the vein that led to her own index finger. It moved back and forth in a quick caress. Linda thought of snatching her hand away.

When she did, David was still leaning toward her, still sitting on the diner booth. The table still stood between them, and Linda still sat at her own booth. They even had their half-drunk coffees and platter of fries, Linda's ketchup on a separate dish. A metal Jiffy Lube sign hovered in the air behind David's head, like a cartoon character caught sneaking away, before it dropped down.

Its edge sunk into the sands of a sun drenched beach that spread out all around them.

Linda's hand hung suspended in the space between her and David. "Oh," she said. Seagulls cried out as they swooped and circled below thick, cumulus clouds above. A buxom blonde with short, wavy hair tossed a beach ball at a man who would not have been out of place in some Cary Grant movie. "Oh my God." Linda's head snapped left and right, taking in bathers, umbrellas, a dog breaking free of its leash, a little girl with a pail and bucket, before she turned uncomprehending, disbelieving eyes on David.

"Oh my God. Who are you?"

"Well, I thought we'd already been introduced, Linda Williams." He smiled. "My name is David Weddell."

"No, no, you're not. You're…" She stared as he reached out to take her hand and lower it gently down onto the table. She snatched it away. "This is—No, I'm—I can't be—"

David watched her with amusement for a while, then he pressed a finger to his lips. "Hush. When these types of things happen, you'll find it much easier going if you simply accept them."

"Accept them? How can I accept this?"

"Simple. We are inside the photograph that was, just until recently, above your head. A little girl building a sand castle. I like sand castles. And you seemed curiously opposed to being seen with me outside of Porter's. So I brought us here."

"Into… a picture?"

"Into a picture."

Linda dropped back against her booth. She studied David silently for a while, head tilted to the left. Eventually, slowly, her breathing calmed down, and the panic in her eyes was replaced by a weary incomprehension, more scepticism than alarm. "If I'm dreaming, and I ask if we're dreaming, it won't matter what you answer, will it?"

"You're not dreaming."

She nodded, never taking her eyes off him. She reached out for a fry. "How?" she said.

As answer, he slid from the booth and held out his hand. When she did not take it, he shrugged good humouredly, "As you will," and merely began to walk backwards, beckoning her to follow with long fingers. He winked, then flicked his hand in the air. A white Panama hat appeared above his head, then dropped down smartly. He reached up to tip it at a fashionable angle. By the delighted look in his eyes, it was clear that he cherished the way her eyebrows rose in guarded surprise.

"The word magic," he said, "is tricky. Because most people can't do it, it has a certain, alarming ring to it. Or a ridiculous ring, depending on your point of view. But when you can do magic," he waved his hand again, and a ladies Panama hat dropped onto the table in front of Linda, "then how you do it is as hard to explain as how you write, or how you breathe. It simply is, Linda. It simply is."

A woman laughed somewhere. The smell of sunbaked skin dripping with salt water, smeared with coconut tanning oil, teased at Linda's nostrils. Her feet sank into fine, warm sand that gave way to denser, cooler sand underneath. It felt deliciously soothing on her toes, and it annoyed her a bit that she had not realized that David had somehow taken away her shoes.

She caught herself thinking that, and a strange, wistful smile tugged at her lips.

"When I was a little girl," she said. "I often dreamed—wished—that people could walk into pictures or drawings, like in Mary Poppins, you know? Bert drawing a carnival for Mary and the children. It would be so wonderful, I thought. I could go anywhere. Anywhere at all."

David held out his hand once more. "I am not certain what beach this is, or where we are, really, but I would very much like it if you would join me. I promise not to startle you needlessly."

Linda placed the Panama hat on her head.

"Lead on."


Sandra never gave up on Joe. George knew this, and he resigned himself to live with it. He stopped asking her to turn his old bedroom into a study, to let go and forget. When he had asked, during the first week after the police had warned them that Joe might never be found, she had not said a word. Merely stood looking at him, as if she could not fathom the existence of someone like him. She did not scream or cry or throw things. She merely looked at him, and he could feel the weight of her grief and outrage like a lack of oxygen, his lungs straining under the need to draw in a breath. He knew then that Sandra needed to remember Joe, to keep him alive in her mind. Not forgetting was what kept her together.

A photo of Joe took place of honour on their side table. George could not leave or return to his flat without seeing Joe's face, smiling in that dazed, pudgy way of his over the copper bowl that held the house keys.

Sometimes, George dreamed of that photo. "Hullo, daddy," it would say, in a high, childish voice George knew he would never hear. He slammed the photo down on the side table, but he could still hear its voice, a crackle and a grate along the edges of the words, as if his son were speaking through earth or through a metal sieve. "Hullo, daddy. How are you doing?"

"Please, leave me alone. I did all I could, I swear. There's nothin' else I could've done, son. Please."

He willed himself to dream of something else. Anything else. Football finals. His new boss at the steel works. Some girl in barely a bikini at the centre of the newspaper. Anything and anyone. His dreams lurched in a stubborn, viscous mass of darkness, and George saw a tall, skinny young man walk towards him across green sands like mist brushed grass topped by black, black skies. David Jones cocked his head at him in a quizzical way, as if he could not quite understand why he was there either.

"Did you lose something, George?"

"They took my son." He sobbed. He heard himself sob. "They took my son."

"They?"

Tears spilled down George's cheeks. "I keep tellin' Sandra 'e's as good as dead, but I know they took 'im. An' I couldn't do a bloody thing. An' I know, I know it's useless, 'cause 'e's as good as dead an' buried, but I can't stop thinkin' about 'im. I see 'is picture every fuckin' day as I walk out an' 'e's jest smilin' at me an' I can't stop myself from dreamin' about him, as if 'e were jest in the next room, Davey. As if I could jest wake up an' go in to see 'im again." He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, nearly bent over. "Oh God, Davey. Why did they take my son?"

David patted his shoulder. "There now, George. Don't cry." He tried to press a handkerchief into one of his hands, gave it up. "Don't cry, you silly fool. Joe is fine."

George's sobs cut off. Pinpricks dug into his spine, hollowing out his insides. "W-what did you say?"

"I said Joe is fine. Aren't you, Baby Joe?"

David drew back his leather coat, and Joe blinked sleep heavy eyes at George, nestled against David's hip as if he were lying on his cot.

"He's such a deep sleeper," David said softly, as if afraid to wake him. "Really, much less trouble than I had supposed from the little blob." He looked musingly at George. "You said they, George. I find that disturbing, that a thought like that could make it into your subconscious. Well," he drew his coat closed again, "that's my own fault. I couldn't resist dropping in on you, and it seems to have caused repercussions. Whether this will be an inconvenience or not remains to be seen."

A fog seemed to lift from George's mind, a thick layer of weight that he barely acknowledged out in the waking world. That he was dazed and lethargic was what he expected from the shock of losing his son. As David spoke, something clear and strong within George said that he knew what had happened to Joe, that he could remember everything that had happened on that night, so many weeks ago

"George," David said. "Don't get troublesome. Your distress is a good thing, a very good thing, but your refusal to forget about dear Baby Blob does not make me very happy."

"What did you do to—"

George's voice cut off, as easy as if David had pressed mute on a remote control. David sighed. He waved his hand as if turning the page on an invisible book. "Oh, do wake up already."

George came to beside his flat's side table. Joe smiled up at him, dazed and placid. George picked up his house keys. He looked at them doubtfully for a moment, unsure as to why he was heading out. He seemed to have blanked out there for a bit. He rattled the keys in his palm for a bit, trying to jog his memory.

Office desk. That's what he had been thinking of. He wanted to get an office desk to put in Joe's old room.

Sandra refused to give up on him, but it was time to admit their baby was not coming back. However hard it might be, they had to forget about Joe.


Robert Williams did not think often about failure. Whether others thought of him as a failure or not did not bother him, never had bothered him. He did well in school, had friends he could ride bikes or rush off to the cinema with. His parents were strict, but they were not tyrants. They loved each other, and Robert listened in horror as schoolmates spoke of their parents divorcing or dying or simply leaving. His parents were so devoted to each other that it bordered on sickening.

On a decent, B average, Robert had been accepted to the New Hampshire College and had majored in Business. Had found himself a nice internship, where he did well enough to impress his manager into hiring him full time. Accounting. It actually gave him satisfaction, tallying up columns of numbers and gaining a sense that, somewhere, somehow, his meticulous work brought order and sense to his undeniably tiny corner of the business world.

"Sounds boring," his friend, Tom, said at their five year high school reunion. The Class of '67. "You're working for The Man." Tom had not even been a hippie. He had dodged the draft simply because he had not wanted to be a soldier either. He spent the 60s listening to the Rolling Stones and working on his car. But he liked saying things like, "The Man's got your soul, bro," to Robert.

All of Robert's school friends, though, could agree on one thing: Robert had not failed in the women department. Oh, sure, Square Robert had gone off and married Linda Cornell before finally getting her into bed, but she was so drop-dead gorgeous that jokes about virginal lil'Robert died off at the mere sight of her.

"You did good," they said, eyes following Linda as she weaved across the room in search of the punch bowl.

Robert tried not to notice how their eyes mostly followed her hips, evident even in a full, knee-length skirt. All he felt as he looked at Linda was love. Deep, pure, happy love. That such a beautiful, dark-haired girl was in love with him floored him every morning, afternoon, and night. That such an artistic, driven girl was in love with him floored him even more. It all but flattened him.

"I'm only an accountant, you see," he said the night he proposed. She smiled and took his heart between her hands after saying, "Yes, I'll marry you," and never gave it back.

So how could Robert even entertain the notion of failure? Their first child together had been a girl. She closely resembled Linda, for which Robert was eternally grateful. He watched—pretending not to watch—as other mothers looked at Sarah in scarcely concealed envy and longing. Such a beautiful little girl, and he—Robert, Square Robert—was her father. He got to lift her up and walk with her across the park to his lovely wife, and he got to drive home with them, safe in the knowledge that other men looked at him and thought, "Some guys just have all the luck."

He slapped a magnet in the shape of a pink, flying pig over the flyer for Antigone, pinning it to the fridge.

"10th of September," he told Sarah, busy digging her spoon into a bowl of Rice Krispies. "And your mommy shines once more."

West End hurt. It hurt Robert as much as it hurt Linda. He wanted so badly for her to succeed. His own failure was immaterial, but he could not bear for Linda to fail. He wanted her to smile, to be happy. Such simple, commonplace thoughts. She laughed at him, in a fond, warm way, and at his earnest, schoolboy way of talking. Sometimes even Robert felt as if he were made of plastic, a dark haired Ken doll with curls. But that was fine by him, because Linda loved him.

Linda loved him.

"Put away those Rice Krispies, sport," he told Sarah. "Make way for some real dinner. Mommy'll be home in a few minutes."

It was their routine. Robert left the house at 8.00AM every Monday through Friday, met up with Linda for lunch on noon every Wednesday, came home at 6.00PM with a newspaper under his arm. Linda came home from play rehearsals at 7.00PM. On non-rehearsal days she was home before him, something you heated up in the oven or boiled on the stove top ready for them. "That's my artist," Robert would say. "So Bohemian with her instant noodles." He was the cook. He looked forward to 7.00PM, when he would pull out a roast or some smoked salmon, braised cutlets, homemade French sauces. If the mood was right—and after Sarah had gone to bed—a bottle of wine. Tonight he had fillet mignon with garlic sauce, green beans artfully arranged along the edges of their plates.

"What's this stuff?" Sarah said, pushing them away. She wore a plastic tiara with purple gemstones, some of them missing. "Daddy, really, nobody eats this stuff."

The front door opened and closed.

"Mommy eats that stuff," Robert said. "And you'll see how much she loves them." He called out to her, sauce jug at the ready.

It was a while before she answered. "Oh," she said. She wandered over to the kitchen entry. She looked at the fillet mignon as if she had committed a horrible faux pas at some fancy casting party. "Oh dear, you've done such a lovely job. I'm so sorry, Robert."

The sauce jug remained poised over Linda's plate. "For what, Linds?"

"I already ate."

"With the company?"

A pause. "Yes." Another pause. "I'm so sorry."

Robert set the jug down. "No problem," he said. He smiled reassuringly at Linda. "I'll save yours for tomorrow. Never quite the same, but it can be reheated." He waved away the guilt on her face. "Don't worry about it. You were having a good time. It's not a crime to hang out with your friends."

"No."

She did not seat with them as Robert and Sarah ate, Robert urging Sarah to eat at least one green bean. The TV came on in the den, the evening NBC news.

"—as Voyager 2 was launched into space today," a smooth female voice said. "The unmanned, interplanetary probe has been launched in the hopes of reaching Uranus and Neptune by the year 1981." Paper rustled on screen as she went through the affected motions of tapping her notes straight. "Today, August 20th, also marks the two year anniversary of NASA's launch of the Viking I mission to Mars…"

"What did she say?" Linda said.

Sarah giggled. "Mommy," she called from her place on the table, "you're the one watching the news."

Something in Linda's tone made Robert leave his seat. He came into the den, placed one hand on Linda's shoulder. The fabric felt damp, as if Linda had been out in the rain and her clothes had dried up. Strange. It had been sunny all day. Robert rubbed Linda's shoulder.

"Honey?"

"She said it's the 20th of August," Linda said, eyebrows knotted in confusion. "That can't be right."

"It is."

"But, it's been…" Her voice tailed off, her fingertips rising to her temples. "I was sure it was…" She looked up at Robert, and there was so much confusion on her face that he knelt in front of her and took her hands.

"Did something happen?" He squeezed her hands. "Linds?"

She looked at him for a moment, eyebrows twitching as she formed and broke apart thoughts rapidly. At length, she looked away and drew a deep breath. She chuckled. "Oh, good Lord, Robert. These rehearsals must be really getting to me. Can't even remember what day it is anymore. I'm gonna be such a wreck on the night of the play."

"You won't. You'll do fine." He kissed her cheek, smoothed back her hair. "Hey," he held her gaze, "love you?"

She nodded with a tired sigh, the shadow of a smile on her lips. "Love you."


A ribbon of stardust weaved above them, bright blue stars darting in and out of the clouds as they scurried across the night sky like little girls at play. Their wide, white skirts brushed the stars, trailing silver and pink and electric blues.

"It's beautiful," Linda said.

David tapped his fingers in the air, as if he were playing a xylophone, and new stars appeared and disappeared, ending with a falling star that trailed fluorescent sparks as it hurtled towards the fields beyond them. The grass rose and fell in the distance, like a dark, calm sea, distant cottages buoys and fishing boats upon the long blades of grass.

Linda watched the shooting star burst into multi-coloured flashes of light. She drew the tartan shawl David had conjured at her request around her shoulders, burying her chin in the scratchy, warm folds formed where the two ends overlapped. "How long have I been here?" she asked.

"Looked at a calendar, did we?" David said. He leaned back, arms folded behind his head. "Truth be told, I have no way of knowing. I don't think there's a real sense of time here."

"Within the pictures?"

"Oh, we're no longer within pictures, Linda." His eyes found hers, and she felt something spike within her, something warm and embarrassing. She hunched further down into her shawl, arranging the skirt of her white, calico Promenade dress over her legs. She could feel his eyes on her as he went on, speaking in those odd little dips and rises of his, nonchalant and completely at ease. "I used the pictures to cross onto this dimension. This part here, this soft and comfortable grass, is what is commonly known around these parts as The Wastes. I think somebody wanted to scare people away from them, but they're quite nice, once you get to re-arranging them."

"Dimension?"

"Dimension, yes." He hitched himself up with a jaunty, "Up we come." He pointed at a shape in the distance. "You see that? It's a tree. And that tree is at the northern border of The Labyrinth."

His breath played out over her cheek, the warmth of his skin making him more real, somehow, than he had been for all the time Linda had known him. Across the diner booth, and by her side as he showed her beaches, mountains and fields from pictures Linda clipped out of books and magazines, he had been David, no more real than the very pictures he pulled her into. Beside her, with his skin close to her, his breath and warmth unfurling between them, he was more than David. Something spiked within Linda again, and she turned her head, just so, just a little bit, keeping his profile in sight as she made sure her lips brushed against his cheek.

"Linda," he said, nonchalant as ever, "I've just pointed out the borders of The Labyrinth to you. I was hoping for a more suitable reaction than that."

She paused, thrown. "Like what? You've pulled me into pictures I know are from an issue of National Geographic. Did you really think the name of this place would be more impressive than that?"

A look that was almost like surprise passed through his face, a flitter of emotion that scurried away as he turned his face, careful to remain within the warm cocoon of closeness she had begun to weave around them. "I hadn't thought of it that way," he said. He lowered his voice, lips murmuring over hers, "Do it again."

"Kiss your cheek?" she said, a smile resting against his own smile.

His eyes drifted half-closed. "Kiss your mouth." And he did, and it weaved the closeness tightly around them, so that what little time still had meaning around them had to surrender.

They held each other, and kissed each other, as only lovers can, so that, even when they fumbled, it was as much a caress as anything else. They held and explored each other and, breathing in the warmth of skin between them, Linda knew that something had changed. At first, it frightened her, and it jabbed into her with the guilt of seeing Robert's face again, so loving and attentive. But then she was kissing David, his fingertips against her chin, and she allowed all of her thoughts to simply be. Guilt. Fear. Lust. Relief. Love. Everything passed through her, as clear and distant as the shooting star David had commanded down.

Let it burst to pieces. Let it pass.

When they awoke, David's arm was looped casually across her hips, his knees within the space created by the arch of her back and thighs. She took up his hand and brought it up to her lips.

"I should return home," she said, a sense of wonder colouring her words.

He stirred against her. "That doesn't sound very convincing."

"It doesn't, does it? It should. I know it should." She frowned. She waited for guilt to crowd around her head, the ten ton heavy devastation of it. A few doubts fluttered about her heart, inconsequential as spider webs, before they fell away. "I should return," she said, almost laughing at the sound of her words, "but I don't want to."

"Stay," he said. His voice came to her as a whisper, the slow brush of fingertips against her mind. "Time has no meaning here. You can return to 20 August whenever you feel like it. If you wish it, we could have forever. Such a short, senseless time, forever." His hand came to rest against her cheek, a gentle, almost pleading gesture. "Stay."

"What is your name?" She turned to face him. "What is your real name?"

He gazed at nothing for a moment, eyes downcast as he seemed to contemplate the way her hair caught between the curve of her jaw and her shoulder. He took up a lock of her hair, twirled it.

My God. He was shy. He was actually being shy.

"You're amazing," she said, frowning even as the absurdity of it made her smile.

"I know," he said. He coughed. "Jareth."

Jareth. She squinted at him. Without his clothes, and with his hair hanging over his eyes, he could very well not be or ever have been David Weddell. She suspected David Weddell would only ever be that hideous, neon coloured sweater. Jareth. It rolled on the tongue easier than David, almost. She said it out loud, "Jareth." She said it a second and third time, then kissed him. "Jareth." She drew her lips to the side in a jaunty grin. "Are we going to move in together?"

"Is that what she wishes?"

He pushed himself up on his elbows. He raised his right arm and began to pull his finger across the empty air. He hummed as he did it, his finger flicking this way and that, like a fine brush over a canvas. "Hold out your palm," he said. He coaxed at the empty air, and Linda could only stare with an uncertain smile hovering on her lips as he pretended to shepherd nothing onto her palm. Only she could feel something, now that she thought about it. Shards. Microscopic shards, like very fine sand.

"Dum dee dum dum," Jareth hummed under his breath. He continued drawing in the air, stopping only to instruct Linda to use both her palms now, please. "House, house," he sang softly. "Little house. Little windows. Two, no, three, no, two. Yes. Two windows, dum dee dum." He waved his finger in a flourish along the centre of the empty space that was swirling shards. "And a door. A door, and—" He paused, tilted his head in thought. "And a porch?"

"Yes, please."

"And a porch," he sang. "Linda wants a porch."

At last, he took Linda's hands up between his own, coming up behind her so that his face was close to hers. He moved carefully, as if Linda's palms cupped water that could spill with any sudden movement.

"Where do you wish your house to be?" he said.

"The hill," she whispered. He smiled at that.

"Watch," he whispered back, a brief caress of lips against her earlobe. He guided her hands so that their edges seemed to rest on top of the hill. "Watch closely."

A shape began to form between Linda's hands, the suggestion of the drawing of a house, drawn in coal so that tiny bits of dust fell from it. The coal drawing became more solid, then darker, heavier. After a while, lights came on at the window overlooking the tiny porch and the bay window on the left side. The gentle prod of fingertips came once more against Linda's mind, and the house darkened again. The roof slanted upwards in Tudor fashion.

"Now, we take your hands away," Jareth pulled them slowly apart, "and we're done."

In the distance, crowning a hill, stood a house.