CHAPTER THREE

After several hours of trudging through a Labyrinth that no longer shifted positions, Sarah and Hoggle came to a set of underground caverns marked only by a simple carved "X" and lit by some antique oil lamps mounted in the solid rock. As she followed Hoggle into the depths, Sarah was suddenly greeted by a loud, deep bellow and engulfed in a mound of shaggy orange fur.

"Sarah friend!"

"Ludo!" Sarah cried, hugging the big beast with relief. Soon she found herself whisked into a well-lit, homey area of the caves crammed with furniture and every kind of creature imaginable (and a few that weren't). Ludo dragged her over to a table loaded with food and pushed a bowl of fruit in front of her before grabbing a pile of it himself. After the simple meal, Sarah was introduced to a dozen new friends and acquaintances, but her eyes still searched for the old friend that wasn't there. Finally she spotted something that nearly tore her heart out – over in one corner of the caverns sat the big, hairy sheepdog Ambrosius, pining away for his master. She went and scratched at the dog's ears but he barely seemed to notice. Hoggle came over too and saw the tears that started streaming down Sarah's face.

"The last time I was here, it was all like a big, frightening game," she whispered. "Suddenly, this isn't a game anymore."

Hoggle, not knowing what to say, excused himself and wandered off to another part of the caverns alone. Eventually Sarah regained her composure and forced herself to look around and find something to keep herself occupied with. Ludo and most of the other creatures had gone to sleep and she didn't want to wake them up. Stepping over an obstacle course of hands, hooves, fur, and scales, she looked for Hoggle. Instead as she reached a corner of rock, she nearly tripped over a small being that seemed as forlorn and unaware of her as Ambrosius had been. It was a tiny, straw-haired goblin that had apparently escaped the wholesale massacre the dwarf had told her about, and far from being asleep, it was guarding with vigilance a burlap sack nearly twice its own size. As Sarah approached, the goblin at last noticed her, snatched the sack and bared its teeth in a gesture that wouldn't have frightened a gerbil.

"Not yours," the little goblin complained.

"Don't worry, I wasn't going to take it, honest," Sarah said, crouching down next to it. "My name's Sarah. What's yours?"

"Runt," the goblin answered, pointing to itself.

Trying to strike up an intelligent conversation with a goblin, Sarah soon found, was a little like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle with all of one's fingers glued together, but after an hour she had actually made friends with Runt, who didn't seem as bad as she had thought all goblins to be. Eventually it too fell asleep, still clutching its sack, and Sarah tried to get some rest.

"Everything I've done, I've done for you," a voice sang in her head as she slept. A figure dressed all in white stood before her, holding out a crystal globe. "Fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave," the voice said. But she didn't dare reach out for the globe, and the figure in white began shifting before her. Now it was a white owl flecked with black. It called out her name.

"Sarah . . . ."

As she reached out to it, the owl shattered and turned into dust at her feet.

"No!" Sarah yelled, being startled out of sleep by the strange dream, waking the little goblin next to her. Ludo, also hearing her shout, woke up and lumbered over, his gentle, furry face wrinkled with puzzlement.

"Sarah OK?" the lovable beast asked with concern, putting a huge arm around her. She nodded and tried to shake away her sleep.

"I guess I really am upset about this," she sighed, considering the recent news of Jareth's death. All the guilty, romantic feelings she had kept pent up for the past six months suddenly welled up inside her, and as Ludo sat down next to her, she began to pour out all her most heartfelt problems to him. She talked about her last faltering attempts to date the boys in high school who seemed like such unsophisticated, stupid klutzes, about the school dances she couldn't even be bothered with going to despite her stepmother's constant urging, about the boredom that had recently re-entered her life. And she talked about something she had never confided to anyone before – her last encounter with the goblin king and the temptation she had forced herself to refuse. Throughout it all, Ludo nodded dumbly and listened though he had no idea what his human friend was talking about. Finally, he gave her a big hug, since it was all he knew how to do.

"All right, don't you understand?" Sarah shuddered. "I had to get Toby back. I never meant for the goblins to take him away in the first place. And anyway, I'm sorry Jareth's dead."

Sarah broke off from her mumbling as she felt a sharp tug at her pants leg. She looked down to see the goblin named Runt staring up at her earnestly.

"Jareth not dead."

"What?"

"Jareth not dead! Runt know."

Sarah and Ludo turned to the little goblin and began to prompt a long, terrible story out of it.

[-]

The Dreadlord snorted and slumped down angrily in his new throne as neat rows of demons stood at attention before him. He dismissed them all with a wave of one hand and considered again his problems. Jareth was proving to be an annoyingly uncooperative prisoner. Aside from scaring all the demon guards with his strange eyes, he was resistant to the Dreadlord's sternest means of extracting information. Oh well, the goblin king (ex-goblin king?) wouldn't last much longer. He was scheduled to be executed in another week no matter what happened. And soon the two wanderers that the Dreadlord had encountered today and cleverly let go would spread to word to all the remaining inhabitants that Jareth was no more, and that there was no hope.

[-]

"But that's the craziest thing I've ever heard," Hoggle grumbled.

"But it's true!" Sarah had dragged the dwarf out of his sleep to hear what Runt had to say. "Jareth's alive and we know where he is!"

"Ah, how can you believe anything a goblin would say?" Hoggle eyed Runt suspiciously. The forlorn creature bared its teeth again and chattered at Hoggle.

"Is true! Is true! Runt never lie about Master!"

"Come on, Hoggle," Sarah insisted, carefully choosing her next words. "What choice do we have? You want to be rid of that demon-monster and Jareth's still our best chance, whether we like it or not."

The dwarf stared at the ground and shuffled his feet as if trying to decide between the lesser of two evils. "All right," Hoggle finally said. "But I hope you know what you're doing."