Disclaimer: I do not own Jareth, Sarah, the Labyrinth, or anything else from the movie.
I stood on a pillar of rock inside a pentagram. Sarah stood on the pillar opposite me, with Toby between us. We were dancing and chanting, performing a ritual. I could feel part of the spell we were weaving, but I couldn't tell what it was; it was too complex.
Something started to happen within me. It was my healing magic-it seemed to be-growing?
Then, suddenly, my power within me exploded. I was knocked back onto my back, shocked. I sat up.
Something had broken the demon's control over me. I stood and looked up.
A boy, seated on a horse, was looking at me. He reached over and took my arm. "Elien, come on," he said. "We have to get back to Jareth and Koren now."
"Wh-what happened?" I asked shakily, letting him pull me onto his horse.
The horse began gliding to the ground. "Your mother broke the demon's control of you somehow."
"How?" I asked.
"You should ask her," he replied.
The horse landed on the ground, and the boy helped me down. Koren came running up and threw her arms around me. "Elien!" she said. "You're back!"
"Koren? What's going on?"
"Mother put her power and my power and a chunk of Jareth's power into you, and that broke the demon's magical control of you. We have to keep you, Sarah, and Toby separate for six months now to kill it. You have to put a holding spell on the Labyrinth now."
I blinked. "Me?"
"I told you. We put our power into you. It's not an easy thing to do. Mother is with Jareth and Sarah. They're going to use their power to make the Labyrinth cooperate with you." She handed me a bag of seeds. "The main thing we're going to do is to make these grow, all over the Labyrinth. They'll hold some of the rock fissures and things together."
"I don't know how to make plants grow!"
Koren pointed. "Do you see that pentagram?" she asked.
I turned. There was indeed a star marked on the ground near me, picked out in light. It had runes drawn into it. "You just step inside," she said, "and loose your power. The spell written into the pentagram will do the rest."
The ground lurched below me. "Aftershocks," Koren said flatly. "The demon was preventing them, because it wanted to rule the Labyrinth, not destroy it. But now, well, Sarah doesn't know enough to stop them, and Jareth hasn't the power. It's going to have to be these plants."
I nodded. She took the bag of seeds back from me. "People-anyone or anything that can fly-are already scattering seeds across the Labyrinth. Just do the spell. We'll take care of the rest."
I took a breath, stepped into the pentagram, and closed my eyes.
I felt the power draining out of me into the pentagram. I could see the seeds, lying on the floor of the Labyrinth. They cracked open and sent tiny, glowing roots down, into the rock or the dirt below them. I could see them spreading across the floor of the forest, and, much more slowly, across the stones in Sarah's sliding maze and the Goblin City.
The roots spread, forming a thick network over the ground. They started to turn brown and woody. But they didn't harden completely: I could see that, if another aftershock happened, they'd bend with it enough not to break-while making the ground much more stable.
The roots sent out shoots: tall, gently bending stems that unfurled bright green leaves. Some of the stems remained only a foot or so tall, but a few grewand grewand grew. I could see the tall trunks in my mind's eye, billowing out into full-fledged trees, casting large, full-fledged shadows across the Labyrinth.
The big trees were beautiful, but my attention returned to one little stem on the outskirts of the hedge maze. I could see, just at its tip, a small red bud. I watched it intensely. It split open, emitting blue light. At the core of the blue light, I could see a little round shape with stars on it. Was it a blossom? A fruit? I didn't know. All I knew was that it was beautiful.
There was a sudden wave, and I watched more red buds open across the Labyrinth. Suddenly the entire place was awash with blue light.
I opened my eyes.