DISCLAIMER: I don't own the Labyrinth story or its characters.
CHAPTER SEVEN
She was running, as fast as her tired legs could carry her. She didn't know how long she had been running, for the sun had set long ago. Her only guidance through the twist and turns of the Labyrinth was the bright white circle, high in the night sky. The shadows, casted by the light of the eerie moon, felt threatening. As if at any moment they would reach out and grab her, that they could stop her from her quest.
All this time running, she remembered what Hoggle has told her, when she searched him out after reading the note.
~FLASH BACK~
"HOGGLE!" She yelled across the open space of the garden. "HOGGLE!"
"Sarah? What are you doing here?" Hoggle asked setting down his fairy sprayer.
Panting, Sarah came to a sliding stop on her knees besides him. "Hoggle, I need your help." She said between gasps. "I need to know how you get into the Oubliette."
Hoggle stepped backwards, shocked by his friends strange request. "W-Why would you want to know that?"
"Please, I need to know. I-I think that is where Mamorga is hiding Caleb." She quickly said as her breaths became a little easier. "Please, I need to find it." Hoggle looked around still uncertain. "Please, Hoggle. It's my son."
Hoggle saw the look of desperation in his friends' eyes. Sighing, he rubbed his hand over his forehead, "The only way to find what is lost, Sarah, is to become lost yourself."
"Become lost myself?" Sarah questioned. "But I know ever inch of this Labyrinth, how could I become lost myself?"
Hoggle was shaking his head before she could even finish. "Remember that the Labyrinth is always changing, Sarah. It's never how it was, always what it will be." You may have remembered the certain areas of the Labyrinth, for those are always in the same location, but the way to those areas are never the same. Always changing, always moving. It never can rest."
Sarah waited, allowing his information to sink into her thoughts. 'Always changing, always moving.' She nodded. "Get lost." She said, more to herself than to Hoggle. As she saw her friend nod and point to an entrance into the Labyrinth from the garden. She stood starring at the entrance fifty yards from her. 'Always changing, always moving. I just have to-' "Get lost." She whispered as she took off running.
~END FLASHBACK~
She's been running ever since. At first she didn't believe that the Labyrinth was always changing. It wasn't until an hour into the Labyrinth, she came upon a long pathway that suddenly closed off. If she wasn't running as fast as she was, she might have been able to avoid the stone wall. Unfortunately, she has no such luck, and ran into the wall face on.
At the time her head was in so much pain that her vision became blurred, and she felt so dizzy she thought she would vomit. Now, however, with her mind focused on the more important things, like finding her son, the pain was a dull throb.
She coughed for the thousandth time, as her lungs pulling in cold air that dried her throat up. She knew she couldn't last like this forever, that at some point soon something's got to give.
Yet, she still refused to give up. She refused to stop as the words of the note were played back into her mind.
'Forget to seek what you wish to find, A precious gift with a ticking time, Yet when the clock chimes to ten, you'll never see your son again.'
Those world ha haunted her for the past hours. She could only pray that she wasn't late, that the clock would never strike ten. Tears formed in her eyes as she prayed once again. 'Dear God, let it never strike ten.'
Suddenly Sarah ran into a wall of warm flesh as it held her in place against its warmth. Panting she looked up, thankful for the arms around her, as she felt her knees give way. "Jareth? What are you doing here? How did you find me?"
Jareth kissed her forehead as he pulled her closer to him. "Silly girl, I can find everything within the walls of my Labyrinth."
Sarah tried to push away. "Let me go. I have to find Caleb before ten."
"I know." He whispered into her hair.
Sarah looked up at him. "How do you know?"
A soft smiled found its way to the corner of his mouth. He quickly kissed her before pulling out a folded note with its edges crumpled. "You left this on the table in our room." He unfolded it to read it out loud. "Forget to seek what you wish to find, A precious gift with a tickling time, Yet when the clock chimes to ten, You'll never see your son again." He folded the note and tucked it back into his shirt. "Why didn't you call me, Sarah?"
"I didn't think about it. I knew I was limited on time, so I just left." She confessed. "I don't even have much time left, or I'm already out of time." She whined. "I don't even know what time it is."
"It's twelve past eight." Jareth replied.
Sarah crunched her eyebrows, "Barely? But, that's impossible. The sun sets at half past seven and it set hours ago. There is no way it's only eight."
Jareth smiled, "You forget that I control the time here. As soon as I found the note, I stopped time. I knew I had to find you so that we can go find Caleb. Assuming you know where he is?"
Sarah nodded, "He's in the Oubliette."
"Which one?"
Sarah eyes widened, remembering the first and only time she has been to the Oubliette. Hoggle had found her, after explaining where they were he said, 'The Labyrinths full of them.' Her head sank in defeat as it came to rest on Jareths' chest. "I knew it was too easy to figure out. I bet there are hundred, maybe even thousands, of them through out the Labyrinth. Isn't there?"
Jareth knew it was a rhetorical question and chose not to answer it. Glad that he didn't for Sarah hadn't waited for an answer before she asked him, "What time would it have been?"
Jareth hesitated, not sure if he really wanted to answer her question. When she looked up at him with desperate eyes, he pulled her a little closer. "A quarter til one."
Sarah went stiff as tears filled and pooled over, "So I wouldn't have made it on time anyways." She cried. "What if he's already dead? I could already be too late. Mamorga could have noticed the time and decided to kill him anyways. Oh, my, god, she killed my son. He's Dead!" She yelled grabbing onto his shirt as if it was the only thing that kept her from losing all hope. "CALEB!" She screamed. "WHERE ARE YOU? CALEB!"
Jareth grabbed hold of her shoulders and gave her a few good shakes snapping her head back and forth enough to gain her attention. "He is not dead. Do you hear me? Everyone in this forsaken place my lose faith, hope. But not you, never you. Do you understand?" She quietly nodded. "I need you to stay strong. Caleb needs you to be strong. Now, we are going to find our son, and we are going to stop this madwoman."
"How?" She questioned. "They're in one of the Oubliettes, and I don't know how to get down there."
"Did you already forget that I met you down there as well? You and the Hog brain came upon me, remember? I can get us down there, than all you have to do is sense him." Jareth said. "Can you focus enough to find him?"
Sarah nodded, "Yes." She said nodding. "Yes, I will find him."
Jareth kissed her fully on the lips, enjoying the taste of her. "Let's go get our boy."
X*X*X*X*X
Mamorga was pacing the small room next to the Oubliette that she imprisoned the little boy. Even through the thick dirt walls she could still hear him danging against the wall, his muffled cries to be released reached her ears. She glanced at the clock upon the wall.
"I can't believe it's only twelve after eight. Time goes by so slowly while you wait for someone to drown." She sighed and rubbed her temple. "Well, at least I'll be able to kill him and his precious mother in one go. That ol' looney of a king won't know what's what. All he'll have are my words, and the note that I left for him. God, it was so easy to copy her handwriting. All capital letters, how pathetic is that."
The banging grew a bit louder, faster, as the boy began to panic in his wall filled room.
She ran over to the wall and kicked it. "Shut up in there! You want it to raise faster, than keep your lips zipped!"
She looked into the corner of the room where a small table stood on four short legs. In the center was a small wooden frame that held a long ago picture. Two girls, both blonde haired with baby blue eyes, though one was older than the other by four years, they could have past for twins they where so a like.
"Oh, Cora." Mamorga whispered. "Soon I'll be Queen of the Underground, and with my powers I will conquer all. You're death at my hands will not be for nothing. You will see, they will see, that there is no one as strong willed as the Great Mamorga."
'Will we be together again, dear sister?' A faint voice asked in her head.
Mamorga smiled, "Aye, sister. I will resurrect you, and we shall be together again."
She turned and glanced back at the clock. "WHAT?" She ran over to the gold and white clock suspended in mid air. Grabbing it she shook it. "That's not possible. It was twelve after five minutes ago. What is going on!" She shook the clock listening to the small metal springs and flats rattle within. "You're not even working!" She looked at the clock frozenly. "Time has stopped." She whispered quietly. "But why, how?" Frustrated, she waved her hand over the contraption resting back in the air. "Le campane che i carillon sull'ora, canta a me il tempo dal tuo potere."
She watched in anger as the hands began to turn, passing nine, ten, eleven, twelve, one, and two, they came to a rest at two twenty in the morning. Her breathing became fast and labored. "IMPOSSIBLE!"
"They tried to trick me! They tried to pull a fast one on Mamorga!" She screeched. "I"ll show them. They won't find anything other than the body of a dead boy!" She turned to the wall where the pounding was still heard only more softly now. She raised her hands into the air. "I poteri della mia anima sentono la mia difesa, alza l'acqua più alta, lo fa grida-"
"MAMORGA!" Sarah screamed.
Mamorga turned to see the King of the Goblins and his little woman standing in the far corner of the room. "No."
Sarah gasped, "Did you see that?" She asked Jareth as she stopped in her tracks.
"What?" Jareth replied.
Sarah shook her head. "Mamorga, she-she just flickered." She whispered. "She's not what she looks like." She pointed to the blonde woman starred angrily at them. "That is not her true form."
A/N:
So, sorry that this has taken so long. I am in the process of moving out of state and everything is crazy. But I promise the next chapter will come a lot sooner than this one did. Well, fingers crossed it does.
What do you think Mamorga will really look like?
Thank you for reading, and please review.
