Chapter 11
Disclaimer: the end!
Previously: "You will accomplish great things for your home; both here and Above."
It was later the little girl learned, Magi had been right.
One day -when she was about seven years old- she had been playing on the rock bridge in the Bog of Eternal Stench, -not really caring about the smell as like most little kids she was prone to ignore it- laughing at the sounds the rocks made as she stepped on them when something caught her eye. There was something there in the water. Something shiny, something red; it called to her.
"Ludo!" the girl cried out. The rock caller appeared. "Ludo, there's something in the water over there, can you call up the rocks to see what it is?"
"Fish?" Ludo offered his own explanation.
She laughed. "I don't think any fish live in the Bog Ludo. Besides, if they do they would be moving all over the place and probably blend in with the water. This is red and shiny, easy prey. No, I think it's something else. Will you please call up the rocks?"
Ludo nodded and belted out a call that sounded like a mix between a growl and a gurgle. The rocks surrounding the object in the water rose in like a platform, the object lying in the center. It was a shiny red stone.
"Wow!" the girl said, awestruck. "I've never seen anything like that here before! Mommy and daddy would love it! Ludo, can you give me a boost?" the creature nodded and held out a giant paw. The little girl stepped on it and managed to keep her balance as Ludo lifted the paw above his head so the little girl could grab onto the branches and vines hanging down.
Once she had a hold Ludo watched as the little girl swung her way to the platform before dropping down onto it. One of the few things the little girl had like about recess was the monkey bars, with all the climbing she did in the Underground it was best to keep her upper body strength in shape. Once she got her footing the little girl knelt down and picked up the stone. She felt it pulse in her hand, keeping a steady rhythm of pulses. It reminded her of a heartbeat. Pocketing the pulsing stone she looked over at where Ludo stood on the bridge. It was too far to jump, and the vines were too high overhead to reach. A thought struck her as she whistled out into the forest.
"Hey Chillydowns!" she called.
A beat started playing, accompanied by the voices of many creatures, all putting in a different part of the song. Suddenly they appeared all around her, hanging from the branches overhead.
"What's cookin' little lady?" one asked, several other snickered. Little lady was their nickname for her, where they came up with it, she did not know.
"Little bit stuck, I could use a hand here." The little girl replied.
"You mean like this?" another asked, ripping the arm off a nearby firey and throwing it at her. The others hooted with laughter at that.
The little girl picked up the arm and stretched, still too short. "Looks like I'm gonna need more than one."
"No problem!" they chorused, getting together until they formed a chain link of arms and legs while the strongest held on to the overhead vines. Four arms wrapped around her waist and she was swung over to Ludo. When he caught her the other arms let go and returned to being the Chillydown gang.
"Thanks!" the little girl said with relief, as there was no way to get rid of the stench once someone had gotten water from the Bog on them. "I'll be sure to show you a new game tomorrow!"
The fireys hooted with excitement before swinging off. The little girl turned back to Ludo.
"Alright Ludo, I'm gonna head home to show mom and dad what I found. Thanks for your help."
"Bye-bye!" Ludo called after her.
When she got home the little girl rushed to find Sarah. "Mom! Mom! Look what I found today!"
Sarah turned around only to have the girl who was her daughter in all but pregnancy crash into her. "What is it honey?" she asked.
"I was out playing on the bridge today when I found something in the water!" the little girl replied excitedly.
"What did you find?"
"I found this!" and the little girl held up her treasure for her mother to see.
"What a pretty stone you've found." Sarah replied.
"Uh-huh! And it pulses too!"
"Pulses? What do you mean it pulses?"
"It does a heartbeat pattern mama, look!" and the little girl put the stone in Sarah's hand. The child was right; it did pulse like a heartbeat. A story Jareth had told her came to the forefront of Sarah's mind.
"Oh sweetheart, let's show your father. I think he'll be very happy with what you've found." Taking the child's hand, Sarah led her to the throne room where her husband was lounging about.
"Jareth?" Sarah called.
"What is it Precious?"
"Look at what your daughter found while playing in the Bog today." She held out the stone for Jareth to take.
Once in hand, the Goblin King took a good long look before recognition passed over his face. "I dumped this into the bog years ago." He said to himself. Looking at his adopted daughter he asked. "How in the Underground did you find it?"
"It just caught my eye while I was playing on the bridge." The little girl answered truthfully.
"Does that mean it's…" Sarah trailed off.
"Indeed, she truly is part of the special few. To have found a piece of my heart…" Jareth left the sentence hanging for a moment before scooping the little girl up in his arms. He placed a kiss on the crown of her head. "Thank you for this lovely gift my darling daughter."
"You're welcome daddy!" the little girl replied.
When the little girl was eight she had started to pull away from her surrogate parents. For the life of them Sarah and Jareth couldn't fathom why. Their little princess had always loved them unconditionally, had always come to them whenever she had a problem. But as of late she seemed to avoid them whenever she could. She would go back Above far before she ever had previously. She seemed to spend more time with the other inhabitants than she had before. Dinners were a mostly silent affair. And every time one or both of them tried to get her to open up the little girl would just shake her head and say "It's nothing."
It obviously wasn't nothing if she was acting so different. While despite how much he didn't want to Jareth couldn't take enough time away from his subjects to really find out what was going on with her. So he had asked Sarah to find out for him and if necessary he would deal with it posthaste. But the trouble was finding their daughter. Something had happened two years ago, something big, because now whenever the little girl didn't want to be found she could somehow hide her presence from anyone, even from Jareth's crystals. Their daughter often said something about a friend named Magi, who taught her how to do magic. They wanted to find this Magi and teach them a way to keep their daughter from hiding from them. Sarah just wished she knew what was going on, what was happening to her little girl and what she could do to fix it.
It was no use, if her daughter did not want to be found Sarah knew she would not find the girl. But rather than mope around the castle worrying herself to death, Sarah decided to indulge herself in one of her daughter's favorite pastimes. She went out into the Labyrinth to wander. And as she walked Sarah wondered what it could be that was bothering her beloved little girl so. It couldn't be school; whenever asked about it she would tell of all the fun things happening there. It couldn't be that woman and teenaged girl that had brought her to them in the first place; Jareth had made sure they would never hurt their little girl again.
Eventually her thoughts wandered on to other things, like how long it had been since she had last seen her little half-brother Toby. He had been but six years old since she had left for the Underground permanently, he must have been nearly grown by now. Her family had been encouraged to think she had settled down in Europe with her husband, whose job often kept them traveling, but it had been a pretty long while since she had actually seen them. According to her husband, (they had married shortly after their little girl had come back the first time) who often looked in on them for her, they were all alright and in good health, but Sarah couldn't help but want to see them.
Sarah suddenly stopped when she heard a twig crunch beneath her feet. She had been so caught up in her thoughts she hadn't even realized she had walked past the Junkyard and into the forest. Her daughter had often called the forests here the Pixie's Hollows. She had come up with many names for different parts of the Labyrinth, from books she had read or simply from her own imagination. After she named something others couldn't quite seem to call it whatever it had been named before, if it had even had a name. There was a garden within the castle walls they called Eden, the tunnels running under the Labyrinth were the Catacombs, and the outer walls were No man's land. Sarah's daughter, though not of the same blood, had certainly inherited her mother's imagination.
As she strode further and further into the woods Sarah became aware of the soft, muted sounds of sobbing. Following as best she could Sarah came upon a fruit tree that had grown out of the peach she had eaten during her trek through the Labyrinth. After hearing the story behind it her daughter had aptly named it the Tree of Eve, bearing the forbidden fruit. And there, nestled within the boughs of the sky reaching giant, was her little girl. Sitting in the crook of where branch met trunk, knees drawn up, face buried in her lap, and arms cushioning the weight. She was sobbing, something really was wrong.
"Sweetheart?" Sarah called, hesitantly approaching the tree. "Is everything alright?"
With her face still buried in her lap all Sarah caught was a muffled version of "It's nothing. I'm fine." She was reminded of how she often did the same thing when she was younger; feeling upset about something but not wanting to talk about it.
"Darling if everything was alright you wouldn't be here crying. Now please tell me what's wrong, your father and I are worried sick about you." Sarah hoisted herself up into the tree and onto the branch to level herself with the girl.
Her little girl looked up at her. Large brown eyes red from tears she had cried and glassy from the ones she had not. She made no move to get out of her fetal position, it was a measure of comfort for her right now. "You are?" she sniffed.
"Of course we are. We're your parents, it's our job to worry about you." Sarah replied.
Whatever she had said seemed to set the little girl off again because more tears leaked down her face. "But that's just it," she said shakily. "you're not my real parents."
"Darling what's wrong? You've been so different lately. What's been bothering you?"
"I-" She choked up. "I saw it." came the quiet reply.
"Saw what?" Sarah didn't understand.
"I was exploring the castle one rainy day and I saw it. The nursery. And then I wondered why you didn't have a baby of your own. And I thought... I thought..." She trailed off.
"You thought what?" Sarah pressed.
"I thought, that you and daddy had always wanted a baby of your own and I was selfishly keeping you guys to myself. An when I thought that, I thought you guys didn't love me anymore." With that last sentence she burst into tears once more, drawing into herself for comfort.
And it was then Sarah realized that she had been right the day she first met the girl who would become her daughter. She was so fragile, the loss of her birth father on top of a mother who didn't even like her child along with that torturous sitter she had wished away. She wasn't allowed to be herself, had been made to think that everything wrong in the world was her fault. Had been disciplined to the point where one micrometer out of line had her locked up like a prisoner and forgotten about. In a way that girl had been living in an Oubliette her entire life. Her cracks and scars ran deep, and it would take more strength to heal them than anyone would ever guess. And that was because she made it seem like all was well with her, even when it wasn't.
The nursery in question, was one used for babies that had been wished away by jealous older siblings. It was where her brother had been put to sleep when not with her then enemy the Goblin King. Had Sarah wanted kids of her own? Yes, she knew the reason she hadn't had any herself, and it had nothing to do with the little girl crying right now.
"Sweetheart, you should have told us the minute that thought popped into your head. You shouldn't have kept it to yourself like that. Oh, if I had known in the beginning I- I would have told you. Darling, your father and I love you very much; we love you because you're you, not because your our child by blood. That nursery you found is where we put wished away babies to sleep while their siblings run the Labyrinth to try and get them back. Have I wanted a child of my own, yes I have, every little girl's dream is to meet Prince Charming and have a family with him. But sweetheart, I have that now with you and your father. It doesn't matter to me or him that you came from someone else, we love you just the same as we would had you come from us. I don't want you to think something like that ever again. You hear me?"
The little girl sniffed again. "I hear you mama." she said, the words a little strangled thanks to a knot left in her throat from crying.
"Promise me now, promise me you'll never let such a silly though make you cry again. And if you do, you come right to me and you father so we can tell you how much we love you."
She scrubbed her tears away with the back of her hand and laughed a little. "I promise mama."
Sarah smiled. "Good, now let's go home to your daddy. Alright?"
Fully smiling now the little girl nodded. "Okay." she leapt into her mother's arms once Sarah was safely on the ground, and the two began walking home.
"Hey mama?"
"Yes dear?"
"I thought you said the stork brought me to my old parents."
"Oh! um, I did. Didn't I?"
"Yeah, but Magi says that's not where babies come from. Is she right?"
"Well, that's a long story dear..."
"Will you tell it to me?"
"Maybe when you're older."
Ah, such wonderful memories.
The older the little girl got, the more she started to see why the land she called home was where people who were not wanted and wished away were sent. There was something about the Underground that soothed those who entered. A chance for a new beginning; a happy one. Whenever she was picked on by other kids she would run to her special hiding place -ironically enough every school she attended Above had one- and she would curl up into a ball, her mind calling out for her father.
'Daddy! Daddy! Get me out of here!'
Out of nowhere a crystal would roll to her and when she picked it up she could see her friends and family all smiling at her and waving, an indication that they couldn't wait for her to get home. She would smile then, blow them all a kiss, and then throw the crystal back into the oblivion it came from. It was always after those times she realized what the Underground held; no matter what was done, nothing from her past life ever hurt her again down there. She was no longer Above, she was Underground, completely.
In school she grew a reputation of never paying attention in class and simply staring out the window all day long. They thought she was weird, but in truth she was always watching her protectors play outside in the grass. Their antics made her laugh, and more than once she got in trouble with the teacher for not paying attention and laughing at nothing, especially since all too often she would do this while a very serious and sober subject was being discussed.
She changed too over the years; once her freedom from her biological mother had been accomplished, she cut her hair short, refusing to be that completely doll-like girly-girl she'd had to be when the woman was alive.
"Are you sure about this?" Sarah has asked, holding the scissors in hand.
"I'm sure. That woman might have been the one that birthed me, but you are my real mother. I want nothing to remind me of her."
She had never felt freer or happier in her life. Of course, since there was the legality matter of things Sarah had taken the liberty of masquerading as a teacher the girl had once had and offered to house the girl until she was of age.
One rainy day in April, nearly ten years after the deal had been struck and fulfilled; the once little girl was now a freshman in high school. And she was approached by two girls who'd believed they'd managed to befriend her. She was an oddball to be sure, in the girls' minds, but she told the most amazing stories with such detail; if you closed your eyes you could almost believe you were there. The girl shared the same sentiments, but she never let that on to the other two. After all, these boring normal teenage girls were the ones who educated her in acting like one of them, so as not to be suspected by skeptics. She had once been told that only those who truly believed would have the power to open a portal to the Underground. However, it would not keep anyone who saw the portal being opened from following. Knowing she wasn't as pretty as she could be had she half a mind to put the effort in, the girl often shrugged off remarks from her so-called 'friends' about her living under a rock.
'Not under a rock, but definitely under something.' She'd always think.
"Hey Mai," one of the girls, Michiru, said. "You're meeting with us in the AV room after school today right?"
"Yeah," added the other, Keiko. "You said you'd tell us some really good ghost stories this time."
Mai, the little girl-child no longer, turned from her view of the window and her invisible friends to the visible ones and smiled. "Sure," she replied. "I'll tell you one of the best ones I know…"
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