Chapter 10

As they traversed the castle, Cryn wondered if it were larger inside than out. The rooms and hallways were, once again, maze like and foreboding. There wasn't a soul to be found. Even in the darkest depths, there were no spiders or rats or other such creatures. The pristine silence continued to press little conversation. It was if the whole structure was alive, and one sound would wake the beast. Many a time she had wanted to break away from their travels and study the myriad rooms and halls they came across.

It was beyond her imagination. Some rooms were as decayed and broken down as if millennia had passed without care. Others were brightened with distinct impression of having been meticulously dusted and shined just minutes before.

Great machines with winding gears and odd-looking structures filled gigantic rooms. Some were working, others were not. They all had a similar construction, similar controls. But only their builders could know what they did. Those that did work, were surprisingly quiet and smooth. They seemed to have been designed with an organic approach. Cryn wondered what they were powered by, what they did and how they did it. She made a mental note to ask her host.

Jareth seemed not to notice her curiosity, however, and in fact, he was rather on edge. Once they had passed out of the first Waiting Hall, he had lost his usual manner and had adopted a silent and alert one. He was also uncomfortable, and strung like a wire next to Cryn. She noticed his increasing grip on her.

It was in a particularly large machine room that they heard a noise. At first it was a soft sigh, but loud enough to be heard miles away. Jareth at once froze, and Cryn did the same.

She turned her head with a question on her lips, but remained quiet upon Jareth's look of steel.

'If HE'S nervous...' Cryn decided to follow whatever instructions were given. 'Well, almost any instructions.' She was annoyed at her sense of humor in such a pressing situation.

The next sound was an aching groan, followed by a violent shaking of the ground.

Jareth didn't waste a moment; he bolted ahead, Cryn in tow. As they were running, he let go of her arm and motioned her to break out into all out running stride. Cryn felt the nest of butterflies move into her stomach and ran with all her might behind Jareth. How on earth she was able to keep up with him, she would never know, but one look behind her shook her being to the very core.

At first, she didn't see anything in the darkness and space, but then a huge and transparent whirlwind distorted the whole room behind her. The very center was black. No light could escape it, and it was moving! Though it's transparent walls she could still make out deformed areas of the room, but it's defining groan engulfed any cry she may have uttered. The whirlwind was swaying side to side, bending all it touched, swallowing that which reached it's black center.

The machine the whirlwind was positioned at shook with death throes. The gears that had touched the transparent sides were deformed into totally new structures. Cryn couldn't tell if the whirlwind was changing the machine, or eating it.

Cryn couldn't believe her eyes. She jerked her head around to find Jareth further ahead. She had lost a lot of ground. A wave of panic pumped additional adrenaline to her legs and lungs, forcing her on to save her life.

"Go," she repeatedly puffed to herself.

Cryn was sure that if that... thing, the whirlwind, was after them, they would have had no hope, but it seemed to stay were it had entered the room, and even subsided in it's groaning. On the other side of the the machine room, it almost was insensible. Cryn suspected that it might have disappeared.

Jareth stopped near the exit of the room, hardly breathing heavy. Cryn herself reached him not long after, and was only slightly more winded. She stopped and was suprised to find she still had remaining energy. She couldn't understand it! She certianly wasn't in that good of shape just days before when traversing the maze! Cryn looked at Jareth with a puzzled expression. He merely smiled a rather knowing smile and opened the thin but tall door, gesturing with his hand for her to go first.

As she passed by him, she shot him a suspicious glare from the corner of her eye. But he only put one gloved finger to his lips and winked.

'Grrrr.'

As she stepped into the adjoining room, Jareth slipped in and closed the door behind them, plunging them into darkness. Cryn almost cried out, another wave of panic. She did not want to be abandoned! But the soft feel of leather over her mouth sparked both relief and rage. She could feel her cheeks burning with a foreshadow of their next conversation.

But that all drained away as the hand directed her head in an upward direction.

Cryn nearly fell over with emotion. There was no room, at least, to the naked eye.

As she gazed up, she could make out the faintest tint of a glowing blue mixed into some dark purple. A single star burned it's silver light brilliantly in the center. The room seemed to acknowledge their presence, and the ceiling darkened into black velvet. Another star peaked out to her left, then another, and another, until the whole ceiling, or sky, was abuzz with silver activity.

Jareth removed his hand from her mouth and let her head move of it's own free will. She followed it's movement back to him and locked her eyes on his, a million questions expressed plainly across her face. The left corner of his mouth moved up, along with the left eyebrow and he looked off into the distance past her shoulder.

She turned along his gaze and inhaled sharply as she found the whole room to be surronded by space and stars. She whipped her head back to Jareth for an explanation, but he again looked past her, urging her to turn again to his gaze. She turned again to find a bloated red giant star spinning furiously before her. She scanned about, feeling a strong sense of dejavu, and stretched her hand out to touch the star. Her hand turned transparent and dipped into the red sphere. She instinctually curled her hand into a fist, and was rewarded by the sun expanding in size to engulf both her and Jareth. A gust of breeze caressed her.

The alien currents of plasma and fire cursed coolly around her in a blaze of red and yellow light. She couldn't see Jareth, but vaguely knew he was still there. Her eyes glazed over with the sheer beauty and awesome emotion of it all. She guessed she was still in the upper atmosphere of the star, but knew she would die of beauty if she tried to look further into the star. Human eyes had never seen such phenomena before. She reluctantly uncurled her fist.

The star shrank past her and returned to its initial size. Cryn sighed with the loss of such beautiful light.

She turned to the left of the star and searched for something her mind knew was there. She focused upon a planet, not far from the red giant. A rocky, desolate place burned by the sun on the dayside, and frozen from its neglect on the night side. It reminded her of Mercury, but held little interest.

Next, she found a sister system. Two planets, orbiting around one another, both orbiting the red sun. They shared three moons, all of which had complicated orbits between the two. The bigger planet seemed to dance in orbit between the sun and the smaller planet, keeping her sister in constant shadow. Cryn shuddered at the thought of a world with such little light.

A part of her wanted to study the sisters up close, but her mind urged her on to look for something else. She turned from the twins, allowing for them to slip back into space and their appropiate orbits, and searched for the third orbiting body.

'This is what you were searching for,' her mind spoke quietly.

She reached out with both hands and found a third planet with one perfect sphere moon. It's coloring dramatic and it's aura fantastic. It's atmosphere illuminated the planet with a halo, and it's oceans where a deep purple and red, reflecting the color of it's unique atmosphere. There was one dominant landmass, stretching from pole to pole, covering about an eighth of the planet with various island clusters on either side. As the world turned however, the land mass revealed that it ran full circumference around the planet with more islands flanking either side.

Cryn also saw faint veins running through the vast oceans, and interconnecting bubbles far out from land.

'How interesting,' she thought.

She moved her right hand inside the planet and closed it into a fist. The planet immediately responded and she was placed about a half mile above the ground. Curiously, she was right above the spot she landed outside the labyrinth after spending the night with Grandfather. 'Did I spend the night with Grandfather?' It troubled her that she couldn't recall.

Pushing the thought aside, she saw the mountain range she first viewed, far more inland than where the Labyrinth stood. She studied the walls that were in ruin and how they grew progressively into the monstrosity of the maze she traversed. It was far larger than she suspected. Her eyes opened with a realization.

"I didn't travel all of that!"

"No, you didn't."

Cryn did not let go of her fist, or even turn her body. She had briefly forgotten about Jareth, but only nodded in reply. He walked, well... floated actually, into her view and gestured with his hand at corresponding places in the labyrinth.

"You entered here, My Dear, and made your way to this stream. Quite impressive actually. Few who have wandered into the labyrinth never even get far enough to reach the water." He was fluid with his praise, but stated it more like a nonchalant fact. The stream he pointed to was indeed very artificial. Cryn traced its path to its geometric intersections spreading out from the center castle and ending quite inward from the starting walls.

"Then," he continued, "You were transported here." His hand moved over a significant portion of the Labyrinth to somewhere quite close in proximity to the castle. Cryn nodded.

"Of course, I'm sure you remember the rest."

He seemed content not to explain the last part of her journey, either out of respect or impatience. She suspected the latter, but said nothing.

"Did you transport me?" She asked honestly.

"No."

Cryn nodded again and let go of her fist. The world shrunk back to it's original size and then back into the background of space.

"You watched me though."

"Yes."

Jareth was studing her intently now. She might have squirmed, but at that moment, she didn't care. Once more she looked out into the depths of space and drank in the beauty of its vast unknown and ancient mystery. She let herself float around, literally rotating on an x-plane axis. She stopped when directly upside down with respect to Jareth, but gravity still felt to her like she was right side up. She was delighted to find that she could manuver herself quite free of normal gravity. It was as if her orientation changed with her.

This room gave her a thrill and a happiness she had never known. The possibilities for knowledge were limitless! It put her at ease, and familiarity. She had been there before.

Jareth motioned her back up. She bent her head sideways at him, but still complied. As she did so, her stomach once again growled its presence.

"My Dear, if you'd be so kind as to accompany me once again to the dinning hall?" Jareth held out his arm again, and Cryn took it in hers willingly.
He didn't grip it as before, but instead only guided her to the other side of space.

Cryn was still deep in thought, processing all the new information. Perhaps a daze was more accurate of her condition. She just followed her host without question or hesitation.