Sarah never detected the shift. One minute she and Jareth were in the nowhere space, and the next she was standing in a room she had not seen for a very long time. The cold floor was comprised of filthy flagstone. Chicken feathers of every color littered the room, along with rusted spears and ridiculously fashioned helmets. A rough throne was shoved almost carelessly against the far wall.
"I never understood why you kept your throne room this way," Sarah attempted to joke.
Jareth curled his lip at the mess. "I live in a kingdom of altered children, Sarah; I forfeited cleanliness a long time ago."
"A poor terrain to defend in battle," came a voice from the shadows.
Sarah whirled, trying to track the speaker without success. Jareth had not moved from his spot. He sneered at the empty room.
"Come out, Maeva," he drawled, "you have no time for games now unless you wish to forfeit your claim."
The hair on the back of Sarah's neck prickled unpleasantly. She could feel the weight of someone's gaze resting on her, as heavy as a stone. The muscles in her neck (what muscles? Ha!) creaked as she slowly turned to face the speaker.
When Sarah was a little girl, her mother used to wear a tear-drop pendant of some smooth, dark glass, long before the divorce with her father. Sarah had cupped the pendant in her little fist once, wondering aloud what the beautiful substance was, and her mother had explained that it was called obsidian. Glass formed from volcanic eruptions.
Her mother's eyes had gleamed a little as she had explained the process to her little daughter, fingering the pendant absently. "Imagine, Sarah," she had said, "imagine all that power and heat and devastation. And I'm wearing a little piece of it around my neck like a pretty bauble."
The eyes Sarah found herself staring into now looked precisely like that; black and depthless, they gleamed like polished glass. Sharp teeth glistened in a wide grin. Sarah took an unsteady step back, and the grin widened by a few molars.
"Hello, Sarah Williams," she purred.
She stepped into the light, her movements quick and silent despite the weight of the spear she carried. Her skin was decorated in so many scars, tattoos, and lines of war paint that it was impossible to tell what color her skin was underneath it. Her features were sharp and proud. Her bare arms and legs were hard with ropy muscle, and she wore a breastplate of oiled leather, dark with age, and a dagger carved from some great animal's claw was strapped to her right thigh. Her white hair was tightly bound to her head in a basket of thick braids.
Jareth came forward and offered her a cold bow. "Sarah Williams, this is Maeva," his eyes narrowed into slits. "The Goddess of the fearless."
She turned her attention to him and offered an equally stiff bow, "Jareth," she acknowledged.
She turned her attention to the seemingly empty throne room and clapped the end of her spear against the flagstones. The clang echoed from every corner of the room. Sarah inched a little further away from both of the gods until she was standing in the precise center of the room on the edge of the sunken pit.
"Come out!" Maeva boomed. "We have little time left; let those who would claim Sarah Williams for their own come forth now!"
There was a rustle of wind through the open window and the pungent scent of fresh, damp earth filled Sarah's nostrils. The figure of another, seemingly gentler woman appeared in the throne room. A heavily pregnant, very naked woman. Sarah felt her face heat up in embarrassment, and she looked to Jareth for confirmation that this was expected.
To her astonishment, Jareth had dropped his cold sneer. He bowed deeply to the strange woman (goddess, Sarah corrected herself absently) and made a warm welcoming gesture to the throne room. Sarah gaped at him; she had never seen Jareth show such respect to anyone before.
She stole a glance at Maeva. Even the warrior offered a more sincere bow to the naked goddess than she had to Jareth, although a trace of a frown still marked her face.
The new woman crossed the room slowly, her footsteps booming throughout the castle. Sarah blinked in surprise; the woman was scarcely taller than herself and although her frame was far fuller than her own, she looked as though she should weigh no more than two hundred pounds at the most.
Yet when she strode across the room, Sarah could see that cracks radiated out into the stone whenever she took a step. As she came closer to the center of the room, Sarah was afforded a closer look; beyond her shape, this woman barely seemed human.
Her skin was the color of rich loam, her eyes swam in shades of ocean blues, greens, and earthy browns. Her long mossy hair was drawn protectively around her swollen belly like a shawl. Small insects leapt in and out of the thick strands of hair.
Her legs were thick and strong, but her skin was as rough and craggy as tree bark. She did not appear to have feet; roots squirmed and twisted with every step she took. Green shoots pushed their way shyly through the cracked stone left in her wake. The hands clasped tenderly round her pregnant belly were well-shaped and elegant, albeit long-fingered. Spring green leaves twined round each digit and down her arms.
She smiled at Sarah, and the girl felt as though all the warmth and light of the sun came to bear on her at that moment.
"Sarah Williams," Jareth began, a bit breathlessly, she thought, "I present to you Lorin, the…" his voice trailed off hesitantly. "The Mother Goddess," he finished at last.
Lorin beamed at him, and when she turned, Sarah saw that thick flowering vines hugged the curve of her buttocks and trailed their way up her bare back. What she had initially taken to be insects leaping in and out of her hair were actually diminutive animals – she swore she saw an antelope spring out near the crown of the goddess' head, diving back into her thick green hair as quickly as it had emerged. Somehow, although Lorin overtopped her by only a few inches, Sarah felt as tiny as a speck of dust before her.
"Have any others come to make their plea to the girl?" Lorin's voice came in a gentle rush that reminded Sarah of the stream in the park back home. She felt a little pang in her chest at the memory of it.
A rough grumble responded to Lorin. Sarah resisted the urge to clap a hand to her nose. That same musky odor she had smelled in the woods had come back in full force. A great shaggy shape clawed its way up through the stones of the sleeping pit. Sarah stumbled back, heart thudding in her chest as a great, horned head raised its eyes to hers.
Black fur hung in ropy tendrils and heavy mats. Its eyes glowed deep in its skull like embers in an ash pit. As it forced its way further and further into the room, Sarah was quickly dwarfed by its great size. Even Ludo would have looked small beside it. It placed its clawed hands on either side of the pit and heaved itself out. Standing on the level floor, its great horns drew long scratches into the ceiling, raining fine dust upon the others below it.
Maeva gripped her spear tightly, sinking into a hunter's stance. In response, the beast roared as it caught sight of the fierce goddess and the claw upon her thigh. Sarah could not help but notice that the number of claws on its great hands were uneven. Automatically, her eyes fell back to the scars twisting down Maeva's right leg.
Unlike the other scars on her face and arms, which looked deliberate in design, these scars were brutal, tearing through her flesh as though she'd been attacked by a great beast of some sort. And then Maeva was answering the beast's roar with a primal cry of her own: a great wordless screech like a jungle cat. As she shook her spear threateningly, many smaller teeth and claws and bone fragments hanging on leather thongs from beneath the spearhead clinked together.
The great beast swiped at her suddenly, its massive arm sweeping across the room. Sarah yelped and ducked, despite Jareth's revelation that she didn't really have a body anymore. Maeva nimbly leapt over the sweeping arm and landed tensed and ready to spring forward and attack.
"ENOUGH!" Jareth's voice rattled the stones in the wall. Sarah swore she heard glass breaking from the room below them.
Maeva checked herself mid-leap. The beast sheepishly drew its arm back and let it hang down by its side, long claws gouging chalky white channels into the grey stone. Lorin had wrapped both her arms protectively around her belly and was gazing at the two would-be combatants with icy reproach.
Jareth was glaring at the two, his hair stiffening into new peaks, his eyes radiating fury. "If you two can refrain from starting a war in my kingdom, we will proceed."
At first, Sarah thought that the two would come to blows anyway. Then Maeva relaxed her stance and backed up a few paces, her spear held at least a tad more loosely in her hands. The beast growled deep in its chest, but bowed its head in deference to Jareth – Sarah still could not bring herself to think of him as a God, forgotten or otherwise – and lowered itself into a crude sitting position.
Jareth gave each of them a lingering glare. He drew in his breath. "Sarah Williams," he said a mite testily, "I present the Nameless God, the Beast Master."
Sarah gulped and offered him a quick bow. "Charmed, I'm sure," she managed to say without squeaking in fright. Honestly this was beginning to verge on normalcy. Silence reigned for an endless moment. From the corner of her eye, she spied Jareth looking expectantly at the window.
Maeva finally broke the silence, tapping the tip of her spear impatiently against the floor. "Will no others stand forth?"
Silence rippled throughout the room. Jareth shook his head, looking at the window again with the faintest trace of bewilderment. Sarah jumped a little as Lorin's crashing footsteps resounded again.
"I believe that Miss Williams has herself banished much of the competition, has she not, Half-Father?" she asked smoothly.
Sarah whirled around to face Jareth, who looked away guiltily. "Yes, please enlighten us, Half-father."
Jareth grimaced. "In the beginning hours of Sarah's run through the Labyrinth, she attracted the attention of several Gods, including the Dark One."
A chill zipped up Sarah's spine at the name, although she had not heard it before. The response of the other Gods, however, drove the point home; the Beast Master roared in disapproval, Maeva clashed her spear against the stones so that sparks flew, and even Lorin seemed to grow taller, her hair stiffening around her belly. Jareth held up a calming hand to all of them.
"Peace! The Dark One renounced his claim the instant Sarah cast down her own life for her brother," he assured them.
Sarah felt tears burning at the corners of her eyes and hastily wiped them away. What was done was done. She had learned that about three minutes after wishing away her brother. She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. Her own determination had gotten her this far. She would not give up now. She would not be a weeping, helpless maiden.
"Since that day, many Gods have approached Sarah in the Labyrinth and tried by trickery or persuasion to lead her into their own realms and thus under their own power. She has rejected outright all of them."
Sarah frowned. She remembered none of this. Surely Jareth had no reason to lie about this. Jareth shot her a look that was not quite sympathetic, but kind enough, perhaps.
"Unfortunately, because she is still mortal, once a God was rejected, she was incapable of holding the memory of it," he seemed to be speaking directly to her now.
"Let girl choose," Sarah jumped at the deep voice issuing from the Beast Master; she had assumed that he could not talk at all.
Lorin nodded in agreement. "Indeed, I sense that she has only minutes left," she said softly.
And suddenly Sarah was furious. She had suffered through thirty years of trial and dangers, never understanding why she felt so weary. She had died, been resuscitated, and then trapped on an endless quest to rescue the brother she had saved within the first ten hours of her ordeal, and now she was expected to choose a realm to spend all eternity in, having just been told that she was dying. It was far, far, too much.
"Stop talking about me as though I'm not here!" she snapped. All four heads swiveled in her direction, as astonished as if the throne had begun dancing vaudeville.
"You ask me to choose a realm to spend all eternity in without the decency to tell me what they are? And you expect me to make this decision within ten minutes?" She balled her fists and placed them on her hips, glaring at each of the Gods in turn.
She only hoped that none of them would notice the intermittent tremors in her knees. Or the fact that her heart was beating so hard, she feared it would burst out of her chest.
"If…" her voice caught a little and she coughed nervously. "If you truly want me to come with any of you, I don't think it's unfair that you tell me what that entails. Maeva, you start, then Lorin, and then…." she faltered again, staring up at the great silent beast. "And then you. Please," she added as an afterthought.
Jareth nodded. "I can't say that her request is too unreasonable," he said solemnly. If Sarah didn't know better, she would have sworn that she had heard the faintest glint of pride in his voice.
Maeva tossed back her head and laughed, the proud lines of her face trembling in merriment.
"The girl is indeed fearless enough," she snickered. Her laughter ceased as quickly as it had appeared as she appraised Sarah a little more closely.
"In your run through the Labyrinth, Sarah Williams," she began, "You have faced dangers and hardships that mightier souls than yours would quail in fear from. You did not shrink away from any of the creatures in the Labyrinth, though to look upon them has induced madness in some. You stubbornly clung to this fool-hardy quest of yours, throwing your mundane life away in pursuit of it."
She bared her teeth at the Beast Master. "You would make a fine warrior amongst my ranks, Sarah. With much training, you would come to know the art and beauty of battle. You would come to feel the power inside of you in full force. You would know what it means to strike down your opponent and feel the rush of bloodlust within your breast."
Sarah shivered as Maeva crossed the distance between them.
"Think of it," she purred. "A warrior whose ferocity surpassed even her beauty."
Sarah's breath caught in her throat. She saw herself reflected in Maeva's glass-dark eyes. The black surface showed her clutching a spear of her own, dressed in animal leathers and furs. Blue paint marked her body in broad swatches. Her hair hung loosely, animal teeth and bones threaded haphazardly through the dark locks. She was snarling at an unknown foe, legs bent and ready to spring at her opponent.
Sarah stumbled back, her hard-soled shoes squeaking against the filthy flagstone. She shook her head to clear the vision from it. She had felt as though she had been drawn into those eyes. She resisted the temptation to scrub away the phantom war paint from her limbs.
"But what of a gentler future, Sarah?" a warm voice sighed in her ear.
Sarah was past the point of questioning how Lorin had crept up on her so silently. She turned to face the Mother Goddess. Warm breath, sharp with the scent of crushed pine needles washed over her face. Sarah felt all the tension in her body melting under her kaleidoscope gaze.
"Let me show you richer worlds, Sarah. Green worlds." She grasped Sarah's hand, sending the girl to her knees with the power flowing through her.
"Think of it, Sarah," Lorin's voice seemed to come to her from a great distance.
Sarah's mind spun. She was dimly aware that Lorin was still holding her hand, and that she was still kneeling on a floor so filthy the mere sight would have sent her step-mother into a scolding fit. Yet at the same moment, she smelled high summer winds. She heard the chattering of cicadas nestled in long stiff prairie grass. She felt a blaze of sunlight heat up her face.
The wind rushed through her, leaving her breathless. And underneath it all was Lorin. The Goddess' voice murmured in every brook, whispered in every breath of wind in the trees. Sarah felt all of her childhood resentments drain away. She understood intimately now that she had pleased the Mother Goddess.
And then it all stopped as quickly as it had begun. Lorin had released her hand. She towered over the girl, her changing eyes locked onto Sarah's green-water ones.
"In the Labyrinth, you acted as only a true mother would," she said solemnly. "If you come with me, you shall be part of a new, living world. You may be a mother there to other, younger souls than your own."
The hair wrapped round her belly slipped down a little, just far enough for something blue to glimmer through.
"Come Sarah, be a voice in the wind. Be a presence in a new forest to guide lost wanderers. You could rest as a heartbeat in the land."
Her hair slipped a little more. On impulse, Sarah seized the strands and parted them. Lorin made no move to stop her.
Sarah gaped, Wisps of white cloud drifted under the surface of her belly. Blue seas swirled against the coasts of unfamiliar continents. She even thought she could pick out a couple of proud mountain ranges clustered near the heart of one of the larger landmasses.
She raised her face to Lorin's. "What is it?" she asked in a hushed whisper.
Lorin beamed and clasped her hands tenderly across her belly. "A new world, Sarah," she said. "A younger sister to your own. You could be a spirit of the land here. You would live in peace and fulfillment –"
"Until the new batch of people ripped the forests from their roots and leveled the mountains to the ground," Maeva interrupted.
Sarah had turned her attention back to Lorin's belly, utterly entranced, and so missed the warning look the goddess shot at Maeva. Her fingers twitched with desire to touch the surface of that world, to trail her fingertips through the infant clouds. Nearly a goddess herself above the forming world.
Just as her fingers rose unbidden to touch the new world, the animal musk of the Beast Master assaulted her nostrils with such intensity that she clapped her hands to her nose and turned away from Lorin, her eyes watering at the sting.
The Beast chuffed and growled at the indignant Goddess. "My turn," he grumbled.
Reluctantly, she nodded and stepped away from the young woman, spitefully fracturing the stones beneath her feet as she did.
The intensity of the musk lessened and Sarah sucked in a grateful breath. The shadow of the Beast Master fell over her like a shroud. She shivered, but met his silent gaze bravely.
"You…save Ludo," he said at last.
Sarah blinked. She could not say exactly what she was expecting to hear from the great Beast before her, but that was probably the furthest from her expectations.
"What?"
"Ludo was hurt and scared. Goblins hurt Ludo. Sarah saved Ludo," he explained patiently.
Behind him, Maeva's features twisted in disgust. She produced a whetstone from one of the buckled pouches around her waist and diligently sharpened the tip of her spear. Sarah tore her attention away from the angry Goddess; now was not the time for her to untangle this feud. She peered through the tangled fur, struggling to decipher exactly what it was she saw in the Nameless One's eyes; not gentleness, certainly.
At the same time, there was a sort of a kinship between the expression she found there and the feelings of safety she found with Ludo.
"Ludo is one of your – " she froze on the word, her tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth. Slaves? Subjects? Children? "You are Ludo's God?" she asked at last, hoping that this was at least a tactful phrasing.
The great shaggy head rocked back and forth, his twisted horns tearing new gouges in the ceiling. From over by the window, Jareth shot all of them a sour look. He would have to completely rebuild this room after all the abuse it suffered through. Between the pantheon in his throne room and the reckless force that was Sarah Williams, Jareth found himself considering a vacation for the first time in a millennia.
The Beast Master, meanwhile had knelt down a little closer to Sarah, his arms open in a humble gesture.
"Come with me, Sarah," he growled in as non-threatening a manner as he could manage.
"Be Beast protector."
The scent of his musk washed over her again, stronger this time. She managed to hold herself up under the onslaught, defying the scent that had already floored her once. One last flitting vision came to her.
She seemed to see herself at the end of that long brambly tunnel, crouched in a tree. Sweat and grime were so ingrained into her bare skin that she doubted even the longest shower could remove it all. Her shaggy hair hung like a mat of fur all the way down to the slim branch she was crouching on. Her arms were well-muscled, as though they spent much time hauling her up trees. She appeared to be soothing a small, fanged ball of fur cuddled up to her.
Sarah understood what this God, lacking the eloquence of the others, was trying to tell her: he wanted her to be a comforter in his realm for the lonely beasts who found no kindness elsewhere. The musk was not so terrible now, merely primal. She felt something stirring deep inside her as though in response. Some call to the wilderness humans once belonged to.
Jareth suddenly stood between the two of them and the spell was broken. Sarah found herself shaking her head yet again to clear it as the smaller, flamboyant God stared down the primal behemoth.
"You've made your point quite well," he said sternly. "Now allow her to choose with a clear head in the little time she has left!"
"Yes, Sarah," Lorin chimed in, and across the room, Maeva tucked away her whetstone and nodded agreement.
"The time is nigh. You must choose."