The usual disclaimer... I don't own the characters, places, or words. I just arranged them.
"Why won't you answer me." Sarah grumbled when Jareth did not appear in all his goblin-glory. "What is different this time?" The answer was obvious, but Sarah hated to consider the consequences. Last time she had wished Toby away and so the goblin king had had to come and let her run the labyrinth. This time she offered him no prize so he did not appear. Did that mean she would have to wish Toby away again? No, she would never take that chance. But maybe Winston could get the goblin king's attention – assuming his thirteen hours were not up.
There was only one way to find out.
Sarah had never contemplated leaping out her window to grab the rather thin tree branch that loomed outside, but desperate times called for extreme measures. She had, after all, been suspended over the bog of eternal stench grasping a much smaller branch and lived smell-free to talk about.
Unlatching the window, she climbed onto the sill and crouched like a gargoyle in the window. A fluttering of wings told her that something had been perched outside though she thought nothing of the creature. Her only concern was the potential fall. "On the count of three." She decided. "One... two... and... three!"
Sarah leapt from her window. Her fingers closed around the branch and everything seemed to work brilliantly. At least, it had seemed fine until the branch broke. Her legs collided with the branch below as she tumbled from that one to the next. Down she fell, smacking herself painfully on several branches along the way. Luckily, the ground cushioned her behind.
It took a moment for Sarah's head to clear from the dizzying descent and for her to awaken her sore muscles. No doubt, she would be covered in bruises tomorrow.
When she was back in control of her body, she jogged to the neighbour's house. It was too late at night to knock on the door so she had to try a less conventional means to enter the house. She tried a window but it was sealed shut, as she suspected they all would be. How then would she enter the house? Sarah looked up and saw that a second floor window was open. She ran around the house to where the garden's latticework climbed up the wall to the low roof that covered the entryway. Digging her fingers into the lattice grooves, Sarah scaled the wall and dragged herself onto the roof. She stepped lightly across the surface knowing that if she was sighted, they might think she was involved in the kidnapping.
The room with the opened window was not connected to the roof, but it was just around the corner. Sarah tried to find some stabilizing handhold as she prepared to throw her leg around the house and hope to catch it on the sill. She dreaded to think what would happen if she missed.
"Alright on the count of three again." She told herself. "One..." Sarah did not even get to two. Something stirred from below and she was so startled she flung her leg around the house without thinking. Her hand followed and, luckily, she grasped the sill. Balanced with one foot on the roof and the other on the sill, Sarah found herself immobile. How was she to maintain her balance with her precarious grip and unstable footing? She inched her foot along the sill until she found a slightly more balanced position and then tightened her grip and threw herself towards the window. She had meant to catch herself on the sill, but slipped. She managed to thrust her upper body forward though; despite her lower body dangling out the open window, her stomach folded over the sill. Sarah dragged herself into the room and rolled to the ground in agony.
"This is not the time to rest." She grumbled to herself as she rolled onto her back.
A shadow fell over her and Sarah knew she had been caught. "And what do you think you are doing?" Winston's voice cracked.
"Uhhh. Give me a minute to catch my breath. I just fell out of a tree, climbed a wall, and jumped off a roof into a window to get here."
"You are going to be in so much trouble." Winston smirked.
"Not as much as you are when they find out you wished your sister away to the goblin king."
Winston paused as he considered her words. He had clearly not expected her to know what he had done, "They would never believe it." He decided.
"I have a faerie offering to grant me a wish. Trust me, I will make them understand."
Her conviction was startling and Winston's courage seemed to flee. He was, after all, several years younger than Sarah and a head shorter at least. Though he would never say it, she was intimidating. "Did you come here to threaten me?"
"No, I came here to get you to save your sister. Hopefully there is still enough time for you to go to the labyrinth and save her."
"Why would I do that? I wished her away for a reason."
Sarah's eyes flashed with fury at the arrogance of this boy. "Because it's the right thing to do and you know it."
"I didn't ask for her to be in my life. It's only fair that I get to send her away." Winston retorted. He folded his arms across his chest in defiance.
"You will call for the goblin king or I will tell your mother that you helped the kidnapper." As added incentive, Sarah grabbed Winston's ear and pulled upwards as she had once done with another cowardly, argumentative friend.
"Let go of me, you are hurting." Winston whined.
"Call for the goblin king."
"Fine, fine. Just let me go."
Sarah gave his ear one final upward tug and then let him go. She put her hands on her hips and waited.
"I don't know what to say." Winston shrugged.
"Well what did he say when he first came here? Did he give you thirteen hours?"
"I've never seen a goblin king. I made the wish and then Keira was gone. That's it."
"What do you mean he did not come here? He has to let you run the labyrinth. He came right away last time."
"Well, he never came to me." Winston snapped.
"Try calling for him." Sarah insisted.
"Fine... Goblin king are you there? Hello? Calling the goblin king... It's not working."
"I don't get it. Why isn't he coming?" Sarah wondered aloud. Just the other night when she was in the Labyrinth it seemed like he was always showing up and making things difficult. So why was he avoiding her now?
Truly, Jareth did want to appear before them and he could, what with the boy having a sibling awaiting transformation. But if Jareth went now, then he would lose the advantage. He trusted that Sarah would find out how to demand his presence; he merely needed to be patient.
"We have to think this through logically." Sarah decided. "There has to be some way of figuring it out. The labyrinth always had its quirks centered in logic."
"No we do not. We do not have to do anything." Winston argued.
Sarah ignored him as she puzzled over the situation. "What did you say to call the goblin king to snatch Keira?"
"Who is this goblin king you keep talking about? I don't know anything about him."
"The goblin king is the one who takes the children and turns them into goblin children." Sarah remarked impatiently.
"Well sorry that I did not know that. I just told the goblins to take Keira away. No king was involved."
"Well what words did you say?"
"I wish the goblins would take you away, right now. Just like the book told me to." Winston shrugged.
"No, the book did not say the words." Sarah denied.
"Yes it did. They had a whole page to themselves." Winston insisted. "I was surprised you read a book like that, I always figured you'd be into some sort of princess fantasy nonsense with dwarves and monsters."
"It is a princess fantasy play."
"No it wasn't. There was nothing theatrical about it."
"You must not have read the whole thing."
"I did not have to read the whole thing, I just glanced at the table of contents and it had nothing fantastical about it."
Sarah finally ended the argument by exclaiming, "It doesn't make sense!" She pulled on her hair in frustration and let out a long sigh. "Or does it?" She murmured. "What if Jareth changed the words?"
"That's just nonsense." Winston snubbed.
Sarah ignored his remark. "We have to get that book back." She decided. "The only way to know is if we get the book back."
"Fine, we can do it tomorrow." Winston replied. "Right now I need to get some sleep."
"No way. You need to do it now, before your time runs out. So grab a jacket, we are going to go find that book."
"But Claude lives so far away." Winston whined.
"Then you should not have given the book to him. Now, c'mon."
Winston had, of course, exaggerated the distance to Claude's house. Claude lived on the same street as Sarah and Winston, but was a half dozen blocks away. To Sarah, who frequently went a longer distance to spend her evenings in the park, it was a short jaunt.
"Does that owl follow you everywhere?" Winston moaned between complaints about how tired he was and how sore his feet were.
"Hmm?" Sarah queried.
"That owl," Winston pointed to a raptor perched in a tree that they had passed. "It sits outside your window a lot and when you leave your house, it often follows."
Sarah frowned at the ivory bird but said nothing. She had had an encounter with an owl before, but she doubted this was the same. At least, she hoped it was not the same. "Probably just a coincidence." She suggested. If it were him, he would have appeared earlier.
"Not that I care anyways." Winston added quickly. "Why would I care?"
It was comments like those that made Sarah wish she was dealing with the goblins again, rather than this annoying boy.
"There's Claude's house." Winston pointed to a brick home two doors down.
"Do you think you can get us in?" Sarah asked. It was definitely too late to knock on a strangers door and ask to be allowed in, especially since this was probably the home of the other missing child.
"I am not going to fly through a second floor window, if that is what you mean." Winston remarked.
"Then what do we do?" Sarah prepared herself for another tirade of complaints from Winston, but to her surprise, he remained silent.
Winston held his finger to his lips to silence her as they neared the house. Then tip toeing to the side he located his friend's window. Reaching his finger to the glass, he began to quietly rap on it. Moments later the repugnant boy Sarah had seen take the Labyrinth book appeared at the window. Looking around in consternation, the boy sighted his friend. The window creaked open as Claude addressed Winston, "What are you doing here?" He asked in a hushed tone.
"Just let me in." Winston insisted. "Here grab my hand." Winston extended his arm and then turning to Sarah he said, "Give me a boost."
She hoisted Winston up while Claude guided him through the window. The boys then scattered within the room to ensure they were not heard, leaving Sarah alone outside.
"Winston!" She whispered harshly. "Winston!" But neither of the boys went to the window to help her through. So once again, Sarah had to awkwardly and painfully boost herself through the portal. The sill dug into her stomach where she had thrown herself forward until she could inch forward on her hands. Feeling increasingly ungraceful, she plodded forward on her hands until her feet dropped from the sill behind her. "Oww." She hissed. "Thanks for the help." She added.
"Who is that?" Claude cast Sarah a sideward glance.
"Inconsequential." Winston replied, "Do you have the book?"
"Nope," Claude answered, "I gave it to Peter."
Sarah and Winston shared a look of grief. They would have to do this whole process over again and likely another child would have been wished away. Would they be able to stem the Goblin King's influence, had it already spread beyond their power to stop?
"Just kidding," Claude laughed, "I have it right here. You should have seen your faces. White as ghosts."
"Not funny." Winston snapped. "You have no idea what I have been through this evening."
Sarah rolled her eyes, knowing he was talking about her. "Just give me the book." She told them.
Safely in her hands again, Sarah actually felt a bit nostalgic for the book that had been her only companion for some time. She flipped to the first page, expecting to see unfamiliar words like Winston had mentioned. Yet what she saw was what she had memorized from the thousand times she had read it before.
"Winston," she beckoned the boy, "Read to me what the first page says."
"Read it yourself." Winston whined.
"I see the same thing I always saw; a play about a princess and the goblin king. I want to know if you see something different."
"Fine," Winston grabbed the volume and flipped to the first page. "The ordinances of the Labyrinthian society," he read. "A chronicle of the goblin race, its laws, and its purposes."
"That's not what the book says at all." Claude wrinkled his nose as he snatched it from Winston. "See right here," Claude pointed to a page which to Sarah was part of the script and to Winston appeared a section of the goblin law, "It says, 'How to be rid of unwanted children: the humans guide to goblin wishes.'"
"Interesting..." Sarah pondered aloud. "We each see something different."
"We each see what we want to see." Winston assumed. "You like that fantasy stuff, so that is how the book reads for you and Claude is so stupid the book has to be absolutely clear on its purposes or he might miss it."
"Hey!" Claude snapped. His voice rose above a whisper in his outrage and both Sarah and Winston reach forward to slap a hand over his mouth.
"Well, is there a chapter on the Goblin King or entering the labyrinth?" Sarah prodded Winston.
He opened the book and flipped to the table of contents. "Chapter One – The difference between Goblins and Goblin Men; Chapter Two – The Goblin obsession with Chickens; Chapter Three – Laws created by Goblins... Curious, there is no page listed." Out of curiosity, Winston found the end of chapter two and turned the page to find it went straight into chapter four, which happened to be entitled, 'The Goblin King.' "I found it," he informed Sarah.
She nearly snatched the book from him, but from over her shoulder, she saw that it still read the lines from the play: But what no one knew was that the king of the goblins had fallen in...
Sarah lost focus in what she was reading as Winston spoke, "It says, 'The illustrious king Jareth conquered the goblin nation and made for himself a grand labyrinth to guard his pristine castle. Though he was merely a child of two hundred, the luminous Jareth defeated the previous goblin king and turned him into a dull witted monster. Using his new seat of power and magic... blah, blah, blah. Is this even helping?"
"See if it talks about the wishes or sending people to challenge the labyrinth." Sarah told him.
Winston dove back into the book, skimming the lines for mention of anything related to the topics Sarah had mentioned. "I do not see anything here." He shrugged, "There's a lot about how difficult it is to style his hair though."
"I don't care about that!" Sarah moaned.
"Wait, I think this might be relevant." Winston interrupted her. "It says: If a human should wish a child away, they will become one of the goblin men or women. They inherit the twisted minds of the goblins themselves, though they retain a humanoid form. There is no way to undo the wish once it has been said, even it if is said by accident. The goblin king has never granted a human the opportunity to rescue their wished away child no matter how much begging or pleading a human has done."
"It does not make sense." Sarah scrunched her face in frustration. "I was able to run the Labyrinth and rescue Toby. Why would your book say you cannot. Is that what you want it to say?"
"Let me see what it says for me," Claude snatched the book away. "Say the following words to wish away a child: 'I wish the goblins would come and take you away, right now.' Warning: the wish can never be undone."
"What else does it say?" Winston asked.
"Nothing. Those are the only words in that whole book." Claude shrugged.
"What about you Sarah?"
Sarah shrugged and picked up the book again, thumbing to the beginning. "Once upon a time there was a beautiful young girl whose stepmother always made her stay home with the baby. And the baby was a spoiled child and he wanted everything for himself and the young girl was practically a slave. But what no one knew was that the king of the goblins had fallen in love with the girl and he had given her certain powers." Sarah silently put the book down. She had never really considered the meaning of that last sentence. She read the words over again. And again. And again. What did it mean?
Winston broke the silence, "You're special somehow."
"It's not what you think." Sarah shook her head. "It cannot be."
"But it says-"
Sarah cut Winston off, "I know what it says. But you do not know him. It cannot be true because he is incapable of feelings. He's little more than a stubborn, spoiled child demanding fear, obedience, and..."
"And what?" Claude asked.
"Nothing." Sarah sighed.
Winston shrugged. "So what do we do now?"
"I... I do not know." Sarah replied. "But we have to get your siblings back."
"Aww man, you didn't tell me that was what you were trying to do. If I would have known that I would never had let you in." Claude moaned.
"Be quiet Claude." Winston snapped.
Sarah's brow wrinkled at Winston's remark. She had expected more complaints from him, but perhaps the reality of his sister's transformation was finally sinking in.
Instinctively Sarah's hands closed on the Labyrinth book and clutched it close to her chest. Her thumb stroked the familiar cover, feeling the texture of the lettering.
From within the house the muffled sound of a clock chiming could be heard. Winston's fingers counted out the hours. "No!" He gasped as it reached its final chime. "It cannot be."
"What?" Claude asked.
"I wished Keira away thirteen hours ago." Winston realised.
Sarah's eyes went wide as the reality sunk in. That sweet girl she had seen only this morning would have become a twisted, menacing goblin-minded girl.
"Claude? Why is your light on?" A voice from the hall, followed by steps broke her reverie.
"That's my dad! You have to go. Now, now, now." Claude roused them and nearly shoved them out the window. Sarah fell on her face as Claude's hand pushed her through the portal.
"Not again." Sarah moaned just before Winston tumbled down onto her. "I am going to be in so much pain tomorrow." She mumbled.
Winston's hand slapped over her mouth and pushed her against the wall so they could not be seen from out the window. He pulled her aside just before Claude's father entered his son's room to see if something was amiss.
The walk back was a silent one for Sarah and Winston. When they reached their houses, Winston stopped Sarah and asked, "So, what do we do now?"
"I have no idea." Sarah shrugged.
"You're not giving up, are you?"
"What can we do if we cannot get to the Underworld? It's not like we can just walk there or even drive or fly there." Sarah's head cocked to the side. She felt that she had just given herself a clue; she should know something.
"So that is it? There's no hope for Keira?"
A brilliant smile lit up Sarah's face. "There's always hope."
Winston's pudgy face crinkled at the alteration to Sarah's expression. "So you have a plan?"
"It's a piece of cake!" Sarah exclaimed before bounding towards her home. In her excitement, Sarah entirely forgot about the quarantine she had been placed under and so proceeded to run through the front door calling Winston to follow her. Needless to say, when her parents heard her trotting up to the front door they were furious. They never even noticed Winston, so blinding was their anger.
The next thing Sarah knew, she was back in her room having endured an intense scolding. Her father had even jury-rigged a window lock, though it was hardly necessary. Sarah was not about to attempt that jump again. She had, after all, broken the pivotal branch.
She hoped that her father's workmanship would not hinder her upcoming guest. She donned her jeans and a white blouse, the same outfit she had worn the night before in the Labyrinth, then carefully but securely tucked the Labyrinth book into a pocket. She was not about to leave it behind for a goblin to steal and make the situation worse.
"Faerie Queen. Faerie Queen, hear my call and answer me." She called out.
"I am here." A soft voice materialized behind Sarah. "What is it you want from me child?"
"Can you send Winston and I to the Underground so we can rescue the children stolen by the Goblin King even though the thirteen hours is up?" Sarah immediately requested.
"Yes." The faerie replied as a slow smirk crept upon her face. "You merely need to phrase it as a wish."
"I knew it!" Sarah exclaimed.
A crash at the window startled her before she could phrase her wish. Sarah leapt back as a white owl scratched at the glass attempting to get in, just like it had the night before. This time though it had to contend with her father's improvised lock. Its movements grew more frantic and Sarah realised the Goblin King must have been listening to her and the faerie and must not want her to rescue the children. Not only did it give her hope that she could indeed save them, but it also made her hasty. She did not know how long it would take until the owl burst through the window and so her wish was made quite rapidly. "I wish that I was in the Underground so I can rescue the stolen children."
A flash of light and all was quiet. Sarah covered her eyes to protect them from the effulgence. Sensing the teleportation was over, Sarah opened her eyes and lowered her arms to find herself standing in the middle of a street crowded with people.