The usual disclaimer... I don't own the characters, places, or words. I just arranged them.


Not a single goblin followed Sarah. There was no reason to. The king and his subjects merely watched as Sarah plodded forward. She reached a certain distance and then, though she was moving, she made no progress forward. She was on the bridge to nowhere and it went exactly where its name declared it was going. She could walk for eternity and never make any more progress.

"Remain here until she returns. When she comes back pleading for my help, take her to the throne room and keep her there. I think it is about time she starts having to wait on me rather than I on her." Jareth instructed the goblins. Then he returned to the castle, oblivious to the noise of the gathered goblins. Surely only the king of the goblins himself could be comfortable in the racket, for it was nauseatingly cacophonic even to Sarah who was a fair distance from the army.

Since he planned to have Sarah held in the throne room, Jareth could not go there to rest. He climbed the stairs leading to the Escher room and then following his gravity-defying path, he made his way to his private chambers.

As he travelled to his room, he recollected his conversation with Sarah. Replaying their words in his mind he grew more and more frustrated. How could Sarah be so blind? He wondered to himself. How did she not know that he thought her worth was far greater than the sum of the Goblin Men? Why would he want her to become one of them? He already had plenty of them. They but were fish whereas she was a net. He could have hundreds of them but without a net, he could not catch more. How could he make her understand... without her realising that though he had no power over her, she had power over him?

Of course, the power she had only existed according to his own whim. He could easily discard her and choose another to be his envoy in the Overworld. Already Sarah had awakened others and he could just as easily choose one of them. Surely, those spoiled boys would do his bidding if he came before them and offered them their dreams.

But no, he wanted it to be Sarah. That she presented an inkling of a challenge would only make his victory sweeter.

The question remained, however, as how he would convince Sarah to abandon Nerissa and come under his power. Unfortunately, as she was now, his magic over her was severely limited. He could not transport her anywhere nor could he manipulate the labyrinth using his magic. Just as the faeries could only bite and scratch Sarah when she came to the Labyrinth under his power, so he could only cause physical inconveniences while she was under Nerissa's power.

As it was, the Goblin King had not yet even considered that he had something to fear with Sarah treading to nowhere.


The goblins found their king sprawled out on his massive bed. "Your highness!" they squealed.

"What is it?" Jareth asked calmly, not even bothering to incline his head towards them.

"The girl..."

"What about her?"

"She jumped."

"She what?"

"She jumped off the bridge to nowhere."

Jareth leapt to his feet and grabbed the goblin by his collar, hauling up to eye level with the goblin. "Do you know what this means? That chasm empties over the whole labyrinth. She could be anywhere!"


It had taken Sarah an embarrassingly long time to realise that she was not getting anywhere after she fled the goblins via the bridge to nowhere. The bridge presented itself as ever onward and though she was quite certain she was moving forward, she never got anywhere. "There's no turns or corners or anything!" she whined. It was just like the labyrinth except that she was not likely to learn that she had missed an opening - the bridge had no sides.

Turning around, Sarah wondered why she heard no pursuit. To her dismay, she saw all the goblins waiting not far from her present position. They knew something she did not, of that she was sure. They had no reason to pursue her for she had nowhere to go except back to them. And it would not be long before she would have to. She had done alright keeping her balance when she felt the rush of adrenaline after being chased, but now that she was not being pressured to move forth she felt her stability waning. How long until she fell?

"Maybe I should just jump." She told herself. "It would be better than returning to the Goblin King to have him gloat over me." The idea definitely had possibilities. The last time she had fallen into a chasm helping hands had slowed her descent. What if the same was true of this abyss? She stopped moving forward and turned her feet so they ran in a direction perpendicular to the bridge. Then leaning over she looked down into the chasm.

Yes, she would hazard the abyss rather than confront the Goblin King. She flashed a confident smirk to the goblins and then leapt off the bridge.


"Find her! Find her now!" Jareth raged.

"But how?" The goblins queried.

"Follow her. Jump the bridge."

The ever loyal, though increasingly stupid goblins hastened to jump off the cliff.

One or two stopped though and asked their king another question. A particularly bright, at least by goblin standards, soldier asked, "But what if we don't end up where she is?"

"I don't care. She must be found. She is still cloaked by Nerissa's power. She could be anywhere. We need her. Now go, I don't care if that abyss spits you out into the bog!"

So one by one the goblins threw themselves off the bridge to nowhere, each landing in a unique location. Not a single one landed near another.

It was not long before the futility of his hasty plan had the Goblin King regretting his decision. Before the last goblins had the opportunity to dive off the bridge he had a change of orders. "Stop." He told them. "Bring me the dwarf."


As Sarah fell, she felt magic entomb her in a crystal not unlike those wielded by the Goblin King. Her heart sank as she realised he had captured her again. She had not had enough time to decipher how to rescue the children, let alone herself.

Several dreadful moments passed as Sarah's descent continued. Any minute now and I'll crash unceremoniously at the Goblin King's feet, she thought to herself. But the anticipated eruption did not occur. Rather she glanced down and saw that she was hurtling down towards a funnel shaped tunnel. The walls closed around her until there were mere centimeters between her barrier and them.

Sarah screeched as the tunnel suddenly curved to the left. Just as she regained her bearings, it turned to the right. Then it curved to the left again as if it was following a snaking pattern down. Just as Sarah was beginning to acclimate to the rapid contortions of her descent, the tunnel ended and she was descending into an abyss again. Only this time it was not an open abyss; directly below her was an obstacle.

Sarah crumpled into the fetal position to protect herself from impact. The spherical barrier hit the obstacle but rather than splattering Sarah onto it, the obstacle cushioned her fall and then thrust her back up into the air. A moment of relief was met by a renewal of terror as Sarah witnessed the next obstacle she was aimed to collide with. Like the first, it cushioned her and then threw her into the air.

"AAAAaaaaAAAAaaaaAAAA!" She screamed as the pattern of being thrown affected the volume of her voice.

Moments passed and the thoroughly dizzy Sarah witnessed several other bubble-shaped objects, each carrying goblins. "Oh no, oh no, oh no!" She squealed as one of the goblin bubbles bounced towards her. The goblin was squealing something too as their spheres collided and then bounced off each other.

It's like a pinball machine! Sarah realised as another of the paddle shaped obstacles thrust her in the air. Goblins kept filtering into the pinball arena and it soon became quite crowded.

Then one of the goblin bubbles sent her ricocheting off a paddle at a peculiar angle. Her sphere entered a tunnel and sent her out of the pinball arena.

The next thing Sarah knew, she was flattened on the ground in the hedge maze. Not that she had crashed though; the bubble had descending quite smoothly. But it seemed her body had not been prepared to handle the speed, curves, or bouncing. Sarah had no choice but to lay on the stone path waiting for the labyrinth to stop spinning.


As goblins were thrust over the Labyrinth by the pinball arena in the abyss under the Bridge to Nowhere, Hoggle was recalled from his post outside the Labyrinth to wait on his majesty.

Jareth lounged on his throne as the dwarf was thrust into the room by a dozen or so goblins. Hoggle turned to glare at them and then brushed himself off as though he had not noticed the Goblin King sprawled on his throne. The look of surprise on the dwarf's face confirmed Jareth's suspicions that the dwarf had not seen him. "Your highness?" Hoggle's voice fluctuated with a combination of cowardice and questioning as it usually did when speaking to Jareth.

Rising from his throne, Jareth sauntered over to the dwarf and lowered himself to Hoggle's eye level. Speaking in an unusually sweet manner he addressed the dwarf, "Horrible, I need to talk to you."

"Hoggle." Hoggle corrected.

Jareth cleared his throat attempting to be patient at the correction. The dwarf was part of the Labyrinth and thereby one of Jareth's subjects. He would be Horrible if the Goblin King so decreed it. "Right, well, Hodgepodge, I need you to find someone."

"Hoggle."

The second correction of Hoggle's name, ended Jareth's attempt at cordial conversation. "The girl is back and I want to know where she is headed." He demanded.

"Pardon?"

"The girl, the one you call your friend," saying the word made Jareth burst into laughter. Sarah certainly knew how to manipulate his subjects to get what she wanted; this poor fool actually believed she wanted his companionship. "She is back in the Underground and I want to know where she is headed."

Hoggle gaped at that. Why was Sarah back? What was Jareth planning to do to her? And most importantly, how would he get out of this situation without betraying Sarah or being harmed by Jareth? "Why is Sarah back in the Labyrinth?" He asked.

"She thinks she can rescue all the wished away children." Again, Jareth found himself laughing at the futility of it all. There was no way of doing that. Once thirteen hours had passed, which it had, there was no way of converting the new Goblin Men to their original selves.

Feeling overly raw at Jareth's perpetual amusement at Hoggle's and Sarah's expense, Hoggle straightened his back to face the Goblin King. Though he was a self proclaimed coward and was rarely one for courage, Sarah had a way of inspiring the trait in him. "How should I know where she is? I've been outside the Labyrinth." He snapped.

It was evident to the Goblin King that the dwarf was hiding something though. "You know where she is heading." Jareth insisted. "And you will tell me or you will be suspended head first into the bog."

Hoggle stepped back in fear and opened his mouth to speak, but his jaw clamped shut as he remembered Sarah. How often had Jareth threatened him with the bog? How many times had he been bullied by the childish king? "I know no such thing." He insisted. "I have been doing exactly as you said: keeping the faeries out of the Labyrinth."

"You lie to me." Jareth accused.

"What are you going to do? Dunk me in the bog?" Hoggle gambled. "Maybe I want you to; then you would never call on me again!"

"You will do as I tell you!" Jareth insisted. He gritted his teeth. Why did things concerning Sarah always have to be so complicated? But no matter, he was a better manipulator than she was. If fear would not work on this servant, then Jareth would resort to a different method. A patent predatory grin spread across Jareth's features. If the dwarf had hoped for some incentive to reveal information, Jareth was not going to give it to him. He had other ways of extracting the information of Sarah's destination from the horrid little being.