Darkness. Wild cries, screams. Unearthly roars. Blistering light. Terror. Salvation. A flurry of feathery hair. Embrace. Confusion. Tenderness. Uneven pupils in storm cloud blue eyes. Peace. Darkness.
Sarah carefully opened her eyes, the bleary light of midmorning filtering through partially drawn blinds. On the edge of her bed sat Irene, her stepmother. Since Sarah had let Irene be more a part of her life, the woman had taken up with fervour the adventure that was mothering a teenager. It seemed like today was going to be one of those chicken-soup-and-tissue-boxes days. She didn't mind, it was nice to be looked after when she wasn't feeling great. Puck meowed as Sarah stirred, purring when she reached out to scratch his chin. The human had a magnificent way with chin rubs.
Sarah strained to remember what had happened last night at homecoming that had led to her feeling this poorly. The last thing she could remember with clarity was Chip with the glasses of punch – that jerk! It had better not have been spiked, or his ass was due to be kicked into the next millennium.
"That was one heck of a homecoming, huh?" Irene smiled sympathetically, patting at Sarah's hair.
"What happened?" Sarah asked cautiously.
"The gym roof collapsed. A bunch of kids got pretty hurt, but everyone is alive and in one piece."
"Oh." Bright eyes flashed in her memory, causing Sarah to jump. Irene took it as a response to the news she had just given her and tilted her head in understanding. Sarah managed to maintain her collectedness as she very clearly and suddenly remembered what had happened the previous night.
"It's a trying thing you've been through. Your friend brought you home after the nurse checked you over and declared you fit but exhausted. We let him stay the night when we saw how worried he was about you." Irene's face took on the appearance of a knowing mother. Her stepdaughter had an admirer. Finally. She hoped that he was man enough to stick around, for Sarah's sake and his. "He wanted to see you when you woke up. Is that okay?" Irene asked gently.
"Who is it?"
"Yves."
Sarah looked away and frowned. Yves had looked very at home around the Goblin King and the muscular Scottish guy. And the violence. And the weird magical stuff. What happened to Chip?
At length Sarah chose her response carefully and supplied it. "Yeah, I'll talk to him." Sarah shimmied herself up in bed, rubbing her head. She saw that her dress was draped over the back of her chair, smudges and dust through its skirts.
"Alright, I'll let him up. Make sure you two leave the door open."
"Irene!"
The older woman laughed, glad to see that Sarah still had her spirit about her. "And don't worry about your dress, we'll get it dry-cleaned. There's nothing really wrong with it, just a few marks. You came out quite well for someone so near to the impact." Irene handed Sarah a glass of water and patted her affectionately on the knee through the bed sheets. Sarah smiled at her step mother as the woman left the room.
In the minute between Irene leaving the room and Yves arriving, Sarah mentally assessed everything she had been through the night before: the pleasant first couple of hours, the unease of Yves, the creepy band that had turned out to be… something beyond weird and quite frankly horrifying… and then their bizarre fate. And Jareth. And why had Yves looked so different? Sure, he wore the same clothes and had the same physical features. But his very being had radiated a faint light, and his hair looked like it was full of leaves as well as longer. And the tattoos. They were weird too. Maybe she had hallucinated. Given her run with the mythical in the past few years, however, she doubted it. Sarah had always found it easy to except the surreal and the impossible, that was a part of who she was. But deception still hurt, and not having all the information was frustrating.
Yves walked in. Sarah looked hard at him. He looked the way he had always done. She felt a combination of deep confusion, anger, frustration and gratitude. Mostly the confusion.
"So, uh," Yves started, scratching the back of his head nervously, "How are you?" he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back again a few times in the awkward silence that followed.
"I'm… a lot of things."
Yves began to pace. "I'm not going to assume that –"
"Yves, I remember everything. And it's confusing." Sarah blurted out over the top of him.
"Oh. Well. I should probably expl–"
"Yeah, you should. Also, sit down. Your nervous pacing is making me even antsier."
"Oh. Okay." Yves looked carefully into her eyes. Yep, there was a lot of anger in there. Also deep confusion… and… hurt? Hurt.
"I want to understand. We're friends, right? What the hell happened last night?"
"This is going to take a while. Promise not to yell until the end?"
The first that's not fair in literal years presented itself in Sarah's conscious mind at that comment, but she chose to stamp it out. Yves had protected her, and had been a good friend so far. He deserved a chance to explain himself, and a chance for redemption if necessary. In the moment that Sarah chose diplomacy over her childish desire to scream and stamp, she took another step towards becoming the remarkable woman she was destined to be. She still reserved the right to use sarcasm and roll her eyes at Yves and made sure she did so with dramatic flair. "Whatever, Sure."
"I'll start with the bombshells. You can yell at me for these, I suppose that's fair. Just not too loud though please, I don't want your parents to kick me out. At least not until you have the full story."
"Go on," Sarah sat up straight, her face going a slightly greyer shade than normal.
"I know about the Goblin King, the Underealm, the Labyrinth, and the creatures there. And, uh, there's also this." Yves stood up and before Sarah could respond, he lifted his hands above his head. Tiny leaves spun out of nowhere around him for several seconds, a quiet whispering filling the room, and then they were gone again. Yves' hair was longer, a lot wilder, and filled with leaves, feathers and various small metal and wooden charms. His arms and neck were covered with winding tessellating leaf patterns and his entire physical self radiated soft green light. Sarah shrank back against her headboard, pulling the sheets tightly up to herself. She was in too much shock to scream, she just stared at him in slack jawed terror.
"Hey, please don't be scared of me." Yves backed into the opposite corner of the room, his hands raised in supplication. "I would never dream of hurting you." His face was a picture of sorrow and anxiety, which cracked Sarah's heart. One of her best friends was a dwarf who talked to her through a mirror, another a giant hairy rock caller, and still another was an anthropomorphic fox. She was not about to judge Yves for being something other than human, she was not speciesist. If she hadn't been so utterly terrified after the crazy events in the past twelve hours, she'd have ignored the present weirdness and jumped out of bed and given him a hug. But this new and completely insane arcane demonstration was the icing on her twelve hour magic freak-show cake. This sure as hell demanded an explanation. Pronto.
"Yves?! What the hell?!" She squeaked out.
"Like I said, loads to explain."
"Uh, fuck yeah."
Yves looked at her slack jawed.
"What?" Sarah asked, thrown off-guard by his shocked expression.
"In all the years I've known you I have never heard you swear."
"Are you serious?!" Sarah couldn't help but laugh. "After everything, I mean EVERYTHING that has happened… torch eyed guys destroying the gym and anyone in their path, the freaking GOBLIN KING blustering in with you and some kilted commando and beating the living shit out of them" – Yves winced once again at the expletive – "And then waking up here to be told there was a structural problem that everyone believes in and nobody is talking about the… I mean, seriously. And now you with your twig hair and secret glowy tats. All of that, and you're shocked to hear me swear?" Sarah began to laugh hysterically before breaking into hiccups. Yves cautiously approached the young woman, proffering the jug of water her step mother had left on the dressing table.
"Um. More water?"
Sarah held out her glass and Yves filled it. Sarah took a sip and looked her friend over. "Okay. Sit. Talk, leaf man."
Yves sat down on the edge of her bed, fidgeting with one of the charms in his leafy hair. "Uh, okay. The correct term is Dryad by the way." Yves paused, looking back up at her.
"Keep talking." Sarah's face was stern. Her emotional state was all over the place, but she wanted to understand. She wanted to trust Yves. But she was so freaking angry with him for hiding such a massive secret all this time from her! She wondered how much she'd have trusted some random mythological creature introducing itself and asking to be friends, and remembered Ludo the first time she'd met him in the maze. It was super weird, but even then she went along with it. For some reason it had made sense. This conversation was already super weird. She supposed it couldn't get much weirder, or worse.
"When you were five, my mother found you wandering in one of the forests inside the Labyrinth."
"Is she a Dryad too?"
"No, she's human. That's why I can look human as well as like a tree spirit." Yves thought Sarah was taking this rather well. Most human beings would have gone insane by now.
"Okay."
"Anyway, like I was saying, she found you and sent word to Jareth, because human dreamers rarely found their way into the woods – "
"What do you mean, dreamers?"
"People in your world sometimes find themselves walking the Labyrinth in their sleep. They dream themselves there accidentally. It happens to maybe one in every 100,000 people, once in their lifetime. Twice, maybe, if they're special. Or lucky."
"Okay. So you say I was there when I was five?"
"Yeah, in the forest. Please try not to interrupt my story."
Sarah nodded, frowning.
"So, my mother told Jareth, who came to watch over you. He likes to make sure children who find themselves there have pleasant dreams. I think he likes the break from all the politics, too." Sarah chose to leave that one alone – the King she thought she knew lived for his own pleasure and it made no sense, his dabbling in whatever politics existed in the Underealm. "Only, he recognised you. You'd been there not two days beforehand in the hedge maze. He remembered seeing you touch its walls, and watching the Labyrinth grow flowers for you. You were someone very special. So, he told my mother to find you a playmate. So she went and found me. We spent a lot of time together… got ourselves into a lot of trouble." Yves laughed. "You had a knack for bringing things from your world with you. No idea how. You brought a massive bronze train, once."
Sarah opened her eyes wide, remembering one of her very vivid dreams as a child, the kind that had stayed with her all these years later. "You… you're the blonde boy I used to dream about? We ran from that train faster than I thought it was possible to run when it derailed on a sharp corner. Another time we sky dived from the back of a phoenix without parachutes in the mountains! You! I thought I made you up. I never told anyone about those things." Sarah had lost all hope for expressing herself accurately; she didn't even know how to feel accurately at this point.
Yves smiled. "Yeah you didn't." It all stopped when we were fourteen, though – "
"No wonder you were familiar when I met you – Oh, God. The last time I saw you before this year. I kissed you. My last dream of you was kissing you. It turned into a nightmare."
"Yeah, that was weird, I wasn't going to mention it, but since you did… and Jareth by that point had decided, well. He didn't take too kindly by then to people expressing more than caring devotion towards you. No human in nearly 1,000 years has spent as much time a dreamer in the labyrinth as you have. Anyway, I cared a lot about you, but by then you were like a sister to me."
"Friend zoned, even in my dreams." Sarah laughed bitterly.
"Come on, Sarah. It wasn't like that. And I thought you didn't believe in the friend zone."
"Well yeah, but don't go using that against me now!" She laughed. Remembering herself, she resettled her frown on her face. "Keep talking, leaf man."
"Dryad. Of the Great Yew. Don't patronise me, Sarah Williams. Flesh woman." He stuck out his tongue in a childish manner, which made Sarah want to laugh again, but she maintained her cool veneer. "So from then on, I watched you from afar to make sure nothing dark came near you. With that much Labyrinthine magic a part of who you were, the king was extra concerned with your wellbeing both day and night. That same year, I started attending your school and keeping the shadows away from you during the day, too – "
"You've been stalking me for three years?!"
"Not stalking, guarding."
"Shadow creatures?"
"That's where it gets weird. We don't know why they're following you…" when Yves said this, Sarah shivered. "Hey, it's okay –"
"No it bloody well isn't!" Sarah retorted. "Keep going anyway, I want to know everything." She folded her arms tight against her chest.
"They're called the Bolg, and Medwin, that's the kilt guy – he's half elf, half dwarf," Sarah raised an eyebrow at this. "Loooong story," continued Yves. "Anyway Medwin thinks they're attracted to the Labyrinthine Magic that courses through your system from all your unguarded exposure to our realm in your formative years. Jareth thinks it's something else, but they both insisted I take care of you."
"So…your friendship has been fake? Something you were forced to do, all this time?!" The pain was evident in the voice of Sarah as this potential horrible reality dawned on her.
"No! No, you're one of my dearest friends. You have been since before you even knew I existed. Please don't ever think otherwise, Sarah. My job has been to guide and guard you, but my choice was to befriend you. You seemed like such a fun person. When you weren't whining."
"Hey!"
"Don't deny it, you were a brat when you didn't get your own way."
"Shut up, Twiggy." Sarah smirked despite herself. She could tree-pun all day and Yves was going to pay for being a secret keeping ass.
"Dryad. Cut that out."
"Sheesh, anyone would think it was your best friend who turned out to be hiding, oh, everything from you," Sarah retorted.
Yves sighed and their conversation returned to its previously serious note.
"Look, Sarah. I get that this has messed around your world… yet again…. You can choose to end our friendship; no one is making you be kind to me. I'd understand that." Yves face held a new and inexplicable sorrow in that moment when he paused. "But there is no way in this realm or any other that I will ever stop watching over you. Jareth may have tasked me with your wellbeing, but over the years you have become my sister." The dryad turned his face away to hide the pain his own words brought to the surface, but not before Sarah caught a glimpse of the emotion hidden within him. Her eyes filled with tears as she gripped his hand.
"This doesn't mean I'm any less mad, Yves. Or whatever your name is turns out to be. But thanks."
"Just Yves, for now."
Their friendship had survived the great gym collapse. It would never be quite the same, but that didn't mean that it would never be as wonderful. If anything, with the truth now aired, a new bond of familial affection was formed between them.
Sarah still had a lot of questions, but she was tired. A lot of what Yves had said had raised more than double the questions she'd started with. But her faith in her friend was restored, and even though it sounded like a horde of dark creatures were after her, she felt protected.
"Ugh, my brain. I need to rest." Sarah stroked Puck who was sitting on the opposite side of her to Yves. The cat continued to purr.
"That's okay. I'll come visit you later. Or tomorrow?" asked Yves uncertainly.
"Later is okay, if you check with mo- Irene." She smiled at her own slip up. That woman had really grown on her. "One more thing, how come the goblins haven't been around much?"
"Oh, the king ordered them to give you some space. Hoggle told him that they were annoying you." Yves walked towards the door and Sarah smiled after him.
"Hey, Treebeard,"
Yves rolled his eyes. She was almost as bad as the King with the name-calling.
Sarah continued, "You might want to de-twig-and-tat yourself before you go through that door."
"Oh yeah." They grinned at each other as Yves did his swirly leaf thing again, and once he was back to looking like a regular person, Yves walked through the door.
Once the door was closed, Sarah sipped her water and pulled Puck unceremoniously onto her lap. Running her fingers through his fur, she let tears spill down her cheeks. She pulled the cat into a hug, sobbing into his fur. Puck swallowed the indignity of the situation and kept his struggling to a believable minimum. After all, she did seem rather upset. This human was worth it. Besides, the king had visited yesterday and promised untold treasure for his cooperation in the Sarah Protection Effort.
Outside her window, a white owl watched her deal with her emotions. Jareth wished to be trusted enough to share her burden. One day she would let him. Hopefully.
"Everyone thinks Chip and I are dating since the gym incident." Sarah huffed one early November afternoon as her and Yves worked on a script for their drama class together.
Yves sat back and regarded her with a mischievous grin. "Well, aren't you?"
"No!" Sarah replied emphatically.
"What would make them think that?" enquired Yves.
"Well, everyone remembers his heroics at pushing me to safety, or something…"
"Ah." Yves looked back down, scrutinizing his handwriting as Sarah continued to talk.
"And I hugged him when I saw him on the first day he came back to school…"
"I see."
"But everybody hugged him!"
"They sure did."
"And he follows me everywhere."
"Uh huh."
"But he always has!"
"Truth, little sister."
"Are you even listening?"
"Definitely."
"Can I have one of your hair charms?"
"Of course you – hey!" Yves had explained that they were a part of his coming of age ceremony in dryadic culture, and that to lose one was shameful. To give one away was a marriage proposal. Yves had also told Sarah about his beloved, a princess in a neighbouring kingdom by the name of Mirana of Marmoreal. Sarah didn't believe it, but Yves insisted it was true.*
Sarah laughed, and then sobered once again. "Good, you are paying attention. I'm sick of the dirty looks from random girls and the others attempting to befriend me for social status, now that I am viable social property to invest in."
"Welcome to the high school popularity hierarchy, my lady."
"I don't get how you know so much about all of this. You don't even come from here."
Yves laughed at the unintentional Mean Girls misquote. "Research. And as for the psycho juniors and seniors after your throat or your friendship points, that's a part of being in high school at any level of the game. I'm surprised you hadn't noticed sooner, to be honest." He smiled genuinely. "Don't worry! We're nearly halfway through the year already. Not long until we're thrust into the world of college."
"Thanks, you're real good at the whole assurance thing," said Sarah with dripping sarcasm.
Yves laughed and went back to poring over their script.
"Oh dear," Said the Goblin King loudly and deliberately, lounging on his throne in the currently bustling throne room full of goblins and dwarves. It was late December and his subjects were preparing for the Feast of the New Year that he had invited the nobility and important political figures to. Well, the dwarves were preparing. The goblins appeared to be more of a hindrance to the effort. The king continued, "Whatever am I going to do with this?" A piece of jewellery dangled from his leather gloved index finger. He sighed dramatically, catching the attention of a small number of his goblin subjects. A dwarf noticed too, but rolled her eyes and continued on to the kitchens.
"What is it, Kingy?" asked a small goblin with a shy, gravelly voice. It wore a finger print and stain covered apron as a cloak.
"This, my dear little Quoke? This is a gift fit for a Queen. I just can't think of a lady lovely enough to give it to for Winter Solstice, though. What a shame," he continued, looking sideways at the increasing horde around him, "I think I'll just have to…throw it away."
A pot bellied goblin with a red ribbon woven through his thin hair piped up enthusiastically. "We know, Kingy! We can gives it to the Lady!"
"I have no idea what you mean, Choom."
"The Lady Sarah!"
"Lady Sarah of the Labyrinth!"
"Lady! Lady lady lady!"
A cacophony of varying odes to the Lady and other solstice gift ideas erupted, and the Goblin King smiled archly. Excellent.
Choom the red ribboned goblin sang loudly, "And we can wrap it and gives it and tell her it's a gift from kingy and they will be friends and won't it be – Aaaargh!"
A frowning goblin king had, with an elegant turn of his hand, caused the goblin to be suspended in the air. The red ribbon unwound from its hair and wrapped loosely around its body and limbs, tying bows and knots from its nose to its knees. With a dark grin, the Goblin King sent Choom flying out through the nearest window.
"Wheeeeee–!"
The goblins calmed down a notch.
"What a lovely gift for you dear, dear goblins to give to Lady Sarah. A fitting gift indeed." Jareth ignored the disgusted mumbling from the dwarves attempting to clean up the mess made by the goblins on the other side of the room.
Ffft.
Sarah looked up from her English homework towards the short fizzing sound coming from the other side of the room. It was winter break and she was sprawled on her stomach and surrounded by books and papers, feet swaying in time with the music coming from her record player in the corner. She wore a mismatched ensemble: grey tank top and brightly coloured shorts with knee high white socks, and a long brown woollen cardigan over the top. Her cat, who had up until this point swished his tail at appropriate intervals while napping on an important text book, woke with a start and his attention followed Sarah's. Her large green eyes met the small black ones of a goblin wearing a feather-tressed colander on its head.
Pop.
Another goblin appeared right next to the colander topped one, and for reasons unknown this one was wrapped and knotted from nose to knees in a dirt-stained red ribbon. They peered at her from the dresser they perched on, a mess of hessian and string in their grubby little claws. "Merry Solstice, Lady!" they called excitedly as they jumped down and scurried over to her, fighting over the bundle on their way. Several more bizarrely dressed goblins fizzed and popped into physicality around her room and scurried to the edge of her bed with greetings, gifts and cheers for Solstice and the Lady. Sarah laughed heartily as the goblins chattered over one another excitedly, wondering what their Lady was going to think of their presents.
Solstice had been nearly a week ago, but Sarah was not one to burst the bubble of a bunch of bright eyed, eager-to-please creatures of legend. Besides, having just celebrated Christmas with her family, her room was already somewhat in disarray with stray pieces of wrapping paper and handmade gifts from her three year old brother and numerous young cousins. How could a few more from the goblins hurt?
The goblins piled small wrapped concoctions around her on the bed and bickered over whose was to be opened first. Sarah managed to sort the goblins into some semblance of order and set about unwrapping bundles of interesting sticks, metal thingamajigs and shiny plastic beads concealed in large leaves, hessian scraps and cast away parchment obviously found in the otherwise ignored corners of the Underground and the human world.
Sarah couldn't believe how much she'd actually missed having these little terrors around. They were quite dear to her, and seemed to be rather fond of her too. She half wondered what had made the king suddenly decide to let them return.
After waiting what he considered a long enough time, the feather-decked-colander goblin thrust a bundle onto her books and amongst the other unwrapped presents, right under her nose and the goblins quieted, looking intently up at Sarah.
"My! What have we here, Murk?" She asked the colander clad goblin with an eyebrow arched ever so slightly.
"Solstice present for the Lady from all the goblins," responded Quoke who was pressed up against the edge of the bed next to Murk.
"You're very kind, Quoke. Thank you, all of you." The apronned goblin smiled a pointy little smile and batted her eyelashes at Sarah's praise. Sure, their timing was a few days off, but she wasn't about to point that out to her thronging fan club who now buzzed with near tangible glee.
"Open it, Lady!"
"Open, open!" The now substantial crowd of goblins chorused excitedly over the top of each other. Sarah smiled at her increasingly raucous companions as the package practically fell apart at her touch. She looked down and gasped. Lying there amongst the rough wrappings was a deep blue velvet pouch with silver dwarven runes stitched around the edge. She looked up again at the goblins.
"Open it lady!"
"Oh please open the pretty present!"
Sarah loosed the matching silver strings keeping the pouch closed and upended its contents onto her hand. She stared agape at what laid there. So, this was Jareth's reasoning for letting the goblins back Aboveground. The goblins cheered joyously at the look of wonder on her face.
"Lady likes the present!"
"Hooray Lady!"
"Where did you find this, guys?" Sarah enquired innocently as she spread the piece of fine jewellery out on the pouch it had arrived in. It was a bracelet of intricately carved and linked leaves and feathers of various varieties. It was a pure and bright silver colour, and it seemed to glow in her hand. Each leaf was studded with tiny white jewels along one edge.
"Kingy will be cross if you say," a sullen little voice said from the corner of the room. Sarah pretended not to notice.
A beat of goblin near-silence should have made Sarah much more wary than it did, but she was far too wrapped up in the finery resting in her hand. She was mesmerised by the beautiful gift now, as if by magic.
"It was in the street, Lady."
"Just like all the other special things we gots for you."
"Yeah, in the woods and we founds it and bringsed it to you, Lady. Cause you's our Lady!"
Choom broke into song, "For our Laaaaaadyyyy…." and promptly found himself being smacked about by the others.
"Goblins don't do the singings to the Lady," one voice hissed out, poking Choom in the ribs.
The sullen little voice whispered, "Don't make kingy sad. No goblin singings to the Lady, only kingy."
Sarah, not concerning herself with the last few whispered words, laughed and slid the bracelet on to admire her gift better. The glitter of the tiny jewels was mesmerising, the intricate carvings stunning, the glowing silvery metal warm to the touch. A slight wrinkle creased the corner of her mouth as she studied it further – surely no mortal jeweller could ever have created something this otherworldly. The goblins certainly hadn't found it lying around on the street outside, or in the woods on the edge of town as they had with the other gifts given to her. This was definitely a Jareth gift. "I wish this made sense."
Something in the corner of her eye glimmered and Sarah looked up. She was no longer lying on her bed, but on plush cushions on a balcony. Looking around herself, Sarah realised that the balcony was attached to a castle, and that the balcony overlooked a city and the Labyrinth. Jareth!
"This is your eighteenth Winter Solstice, and your third since you mastered the Labyrinth," that familiar voice purred. "Welcome back to the Labyrinth, precious." He wore a white shirt, open almost to the navel, and skin tight, asset enhancing leather pants. His boots and gloves were in matching black soft leather.
"How did I get here?" Sarah asked, openly unimpressed at the apparent involuntary moving of her person through dimensions.
The Goblin King responded calmly to Sarah's accusatory tone. "You wished for understanding. I happened to be listening at the time. You are only here as long as you want to be, you need only wish yourself home in order to go there, right now." He allowed himself a smile as she gathered herself and stood up to face him.
"What a view," she murmured to herself as she looked away from the king and out to the horizon.
"Indeed," the king responded as he drenched his memory with her physical presence. At length, he turned her around and sat her down on a chair which had not been there a moment ago. He sat down on the one matching it and smiled, pulling something from his seemingly bottomless coat pocket. With a smile, he handed her a baseball sized sphere, which shimmered the same way as his previous gift to her had in a certain light.
"Thank you," she said, reverently inspecting the trinket.
"Oh, this isn't from me," Jareth remarked in a way he hoped sounded offhanded. "Take a closer look at the markings on the petals." Sarah looked closely through the solid maze-like pattern in the lace and into the short stemmed, many petalled flower in the centre of the orb. Tiny words were inscribed around the outer edge of each petal in elegant calligraphy. It appeared to Sarah to be carved out of one singular giant pearl, and she was in awe of its beauty. The words were poetry. The parts she could make out went:
"Sarah, dearest wanderer mine,
Traverser of my paths and lanes
…Riddle mistress, champion fair…
Old friend of purest speech…"
"This is a gift from the Labyrinth. The flowers you loved when you were so small. I assume you remember..?"
"Yes," was Sarah's reply. Beautiful, impossibly large carnation-like flowers in every colour imaginable were still vivid in her mind's eye.
"This, however, is a gift from me." Jareth plucked a crystal from thin air. With a caress from his other hand, the crystal became a long silver chain, the same bright material as the bracelet on her wrist. Charms hung from the centre, matching those on her bracelet. He draped it around her neck and it hung down low, past the swell of her breasts. Jareth ignored his natural urge to smirk with sultry eyes at the rather pleasing way with which the chain swung freely at its end. "Sarah, please give me your hands." The Goblin King reached underneath her hands which still held the pearl-like orb. From between their fingers floated three small crystals, each attaching to a petal inside the caged sculpture. Another rose up and encompassed the whole thing, and Jareth moved his hands around Sarah's, wrapping both their fingers around the crystal orb and bringing them together.
"What are we doing?" She asked breathlessly.
"We are making it smaller, so that you may keep the Labyrinth's gift to you on your person at all times. I assume that would be something you'd like?" Sarah nodded at this. They continued slowly bringing their hands together until the orb was the size of a large marble and their hands were held tight together. It was a simple act, and yet the moment was incredibly intimate. Sarah kept her hands there for a moment longer than necessary, as did the king. He smiled tenderly down at her, and she returned the expression. The bonds of friendship, indeed.
"What were the three smaller crystals for?" The world breathed again as the moment passed and Sarah resumed her questioning.
"Protection wards. Yves will be away for some time."
This was the first Sarah had heard of Yves going anywhere. "Where are you sending him?"
"He is required by his people for a cultural rite of passage. You should ask him about next time you see him." Jareth's eyes sparkled mischievously and Sarah expected that it meant the question was going to be an uncomfortable one for Yves to explain.
"Hey, why didn't you give me protection wards in the first place, all those years ago?"
Jareth sighed. "You can't bring physical things back through dreams. As for sending something back with you at the end of your Labyrinth journey, I did try. You were still expecting me to play your villain, though. It is very hard indeed to aid someone who believes only ill of you."
"Oh, well that makes sense."
Jareth continued to explain the gift. "If anything should be amiss, the charms inside this orb shall alert me. It is indestructible by human and most magical means, and will protect you while you wear it."
Sarah nodded. "Thank you," she replied softly.
"It is my honour and pleasure, precious one," Jareth murmured. He stood and held his arms out to her. She accepted his help out of the low seat and without warning wrapped her arms around his waist, resting her head against his chest. He encircled her in his arms, overwhelmed with unspoken love for the mortal young woman in his embrace.
"Thank you for playing the hero this time." After an eternity and mere seconds, she stepped back and wished herself back home.
A/N: so, Yves and Sarah's dream adventures are actually based on ones that I had in my dreams as a child, with a blonde boy that I had never met before in real life… that I still remember to this day, because they were so vivid.
Thank you once again for the follows and reviews! I enjoy hearing your thoughts and making sure your questions are answered in good time. This fandom has grown on me quite a lot, you guys are great! :D
*I don't think Yves is going to end up paired with anyone in this realm or the Goblin Kingdom. I kind of ship him and Mirana from Alice in Wonderland, I think they'd be fun to write together... If enough people are interested, I might just write that one-shot.
