CHAPTER 2

Stina

"This isn't necessary, you know." He leaned close and whispered in my ear. I could feel his warm breath on my neck and smell his deep musky scent with every breath I took. I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. 'It wouldn't be so bad' I thought 'we'd live right outside his castle, see him everyday... Wait a minute! Christina! Snap out of it! You don't want to be a slave for the rest of your life, what are you thinking!' I looked up and the next thing I knew my beloved Goblin King had disappeared, leaving behind a swirl of glitter and that evil laugh that I had come to love. I looked up at Jen, 

"Well, let's go, if I recall correctly, it's further than we think, and time is short."

"Isn't this the part where you say 'Come on feet!'?"

"Alright, come on feet!." Just then I fell over, my face landing barely an inch away from a mud puddle. "Ow!" I said as I looked at my hands to make sure I hadn't acquired any cuts. Jen turned around after hearing me 'THUD' on the ground.

"What are you doing?" she asked, looking at me like I was crazy.

"My feet…won't…come.' I said as I struggled to get up and walk towards Jen. We slowly made our way towards the entrance of the Labyrinth, until my feet decided to work again and I practically went running down the rest of the hill and had to catch myself before I went flying again. As usual Hoggle was spraying down fairies.

"Oh, good, Hoggle! We can bribe him with some of my jewelry." Jen had a penchant for jewelry, and was currently wearing earrings, a necklace, and a ring on almost every finger.

"Um, excuse me." Jen called out.

"He's not gonna hear you." I told her. "You need to be louder, like this. YO HIGGLE!" The little dwarf twirled around

"Ugh ooh! It's Hoggle! And who are you?" Jen slapped my arm.

"Hey, be nice! Why did you do that?" she asked me.

"Because…it's fun. And because he doesn't like Jareth." I answered. I squinted my eyes and glared at the tiny dwarf that had gone back to spraying his fairies.

"Ugh! There you go again. Is that all you ever think about?"

"Yeah pretty much, or just David Bowie in general since Jareth is the spitting image of him. Or Bowie's character in "The Man Who Fell to Earth", he looked really-"

"Will you stop babbling and come on? We need to get through this Labyrinth." We walked over to Hoggle.

"Um, excuse me, I'm Jen and this is my friend Stina. Do you know where the entrance to the Labyrinth is? We need to get to the center and we only have 13 hours to do so. And she-" Jen pointed to me "is being of absolutely no help right now because she is off in Jareth Wonderland."

"No I'm not!" I retorted

"As a matter of fact I do." Hoggle interjected, "You get in there-" he pointed as two large doors opened up. 

"Thank you!" Jen said. We entered the Labyrinth and the doors shut behind us. We looked to the left then the right seeing nothing but barren paths both ways. "Which way do you think we should go?" Jen asked me.

"Um, right."

"But didn't Sarah go right?"

"Ya but I wanna see if the little worm is sitting out there again. He's so cute."

"But-"

"Pleeeeease." I begged her.

"Fine. Go."

"Thank You!" 'Ha-ha' I thought to myself. 'She's so passive, I love it' "We should walk with our hands pressing against the wall so that way if there is an opening we won't miss it. Just don't press it to hard or you'll fall." I said.

"Alright, that's a good idea." We started off and before long I heard an OOF! come from Jen. I whirled around to find just her legs sticking out of the wall. I rolled my eyes

"I said you were gonna fall if you leaned to hard."

"I know but I wasn't expecting it. Help me up." I grabbed her hand and pulled her up.

"Alright, don't go anywhere yet. I'll be right back." I ran down the path a little more, careful to avoid tripping over any logs or getting slapped in the face by random branches. After about 25 or so feet I heard a little voice call out.

"'Allo." it said. I turned and looked down.

"Hello." I said "How are you?"

"I'm doing just fine. What brings you here?"

"Oh, I need to get to the castle in the center of this Labyrinth."

"Sorry, can't help you there. Come inside, have a nice cup of tea."

"No thanks." I said. I scooped up the little blue worm and began walking back to Jen.

"Alright let's go." I said to her

"What do you have in your hands?" she asked me.

"Nothing." I said, putting my hands behind my back.

"Christina, go put him back." she ordered.

"But he's so cute! Look," I brought the little worm out in front of me to show Jen.

"'Allo!" he said to her.

"Oh, he is really cute...NO! Go put him back, he has a wife at home, you can't just take him." I sighed,

"Oh, alright." I began walking back to put him down. "That's my friend Jen." I told the little fellow, "She's not very nice sometimes."

"I heard that!" she yelled to me. I turned and smiled and waved at her. I squatted down and placed the worm back where I had found him.

"There you go. Tell the missus I said hi."

"Sure. Nice to meet you." I smiled,

"Nice to meet you too." I said as I headed back towards Jen. She looked at me and shook her head,

"Can we go now?"

***

Jen

"Can we go now?" I asked in exasperation. The Labyrinth was cool (and as a die-hard fantasy fan, I found it extermely interesting), and the worm certainly was very adorable, but we were in a race to save ourselves from eternal slavery here, seriously…

"Oh, fine," Stina grumbled. We walked in silence for a few minutes. Then I got an idea.

"I've got an idea," I said. "I'm good at solving mazes usually, but I'm stumped here. I think the reason is that I can't see it from the top, like a maze on paper."

"Ok, Jen. It's too bad we don't have a plane with us or that would be a great idea…" Stina said. I shook my head.

"The walls are relatively low here, but they're really thick. If we got on top of them, we could walk on them like a sidewalk up to the castle!" Stina looked skeptical.

"We could try, I guess. It seems kinda like cheating though…" She said.

I stared at her.

"Cheating? You mean, like, you think it wouldn't be fair to do that?" I asked pointedly

"Oh. Right." She said, remembering the Labyrinth views on Fairness, or lack there-of.

"Right." I agreed, "Now give me a boost up." She gave me a blank look.

"Like this:" I said, locking my fingers together and pantomiming what I wanted her to do. She raised an eyebrow at me.

"What? The kids on my block used to do it all the time when we wanted to climb trees." I explained.

"And it worked?" Stina asked incredulously.

"Usually. I got stuck up a tree a couple of times, but on the whole, it worked quite well." She shrugged, sighed, and made a step out of her fingers. We moved closer to the nearest 6 1/2 foot stone wall. I stepped up and tried to scramble onto the top of the wall. Stina grunted.

"Sorry!" I called. "I'm heavier than I look."

"You're telling me!" Finally, with a lot of pulling on my part, and pushing on Stina's, I got on top of the wall. The many rings I was wearing on each hand did nothing to help my hands gain purchace. With one leg on either side, I could see the castle in the distance. We were still a long way away from it. Fortunately, we still had a lot of time left. 'I hope', I thought. Then I turned back to Stina and tried to pull her up the stone wall. This was not easy, as my arms are not what you would call very strong. Even so, between the two of us, we managed it. The two of us sat on the top of the wall, catching our breath. Then we got up and began walking. Stina was in front, and she didn't seem to need extra balance, but I did. I put my arms out to either side as we walked the shortest path to the castle on the 1 foot wide wall.

We had been walking for a good half hour, and making a pretty quick job of it, when suddenly, the section of wall we were on began to move. We shakily kept our balance till it stopped again. Now the wall had rotated to block one passage that had previously been open, and do exactly the opposite to another. I grinned at Stina.

 "That would have caused a lot of trouble if we had been down there." I pointed out. As we crossed onto another wall segment, I turned my face to the castle. "Ha, Jareth. Thought you had us there? Well, we're too smart for ya." I grinned smugly.

The wall disappeared.

Stina landed on her feet, but I was not that lucky. I am never that lucky. I landed quite hard on my… pride.

 "Are you ok?" Stina asked as she helped me up.

 "Yes. I'm just very, very annoyed. That was so not fair." I stuck my tongue out in the general direction of the castle.

The walls all shot up about two feet. My eyes narrowed.

"That wasn't even unfair. That was just spiteful." Stina shrugged.

"That's just the way Jareth is. Come on." She said. 'Oh, yeah, defend him… Sheesh, she's fallen hopelessly hard for that guy.' I dusted off my bottom and followed her.

"Stina, can you try to remember that your wonderful Jareth is the one who's going to make us into slaves? Could you just attempt to remember that?"

She ignored me.

***

Soon, Stina had an idea of her own. She started looking around on the ground. "Find me a loose rock or something." She said. I looked around and found a whole bunch of them. I gave her one, and put the rest in my pockets. 'Never know when they might come in handy' I thought. Stina took her rock and scratched an arrow onto one of the square floor stones. Then she moved behind a stone outcropping and motioned for me to do the same. 'What is she doing?' I asked myself. I got my answer a few seconds later when a small creature pushed the stone up and began an angry tirade that I could only understand a little bit of. 'Something about an aardvark. And my mother. And- was that in Spanish?' Stina darted forward and grabbed the tiny goblin before it could duck back under the stone.

"You weren't going to change that around, were you?" She asked, giving it a little squeeze.

"Urk! I-ah donaknow wha you arrr fraggina talking abou!" She narrowed her eyes and gave it a little shake. "If you change around my arrows its going to go very badly for you."

 "Aiyiyi!" It cried pitifully. I decided to step in.

"She can be very picky about things like that. I don't want to hurt anyone, but if she finds you reversing her tiles, she's going to be very angry." I said sympathetically, stepping into the role of "Good Cop". "I'd suggest that you leave her arrows alone for the next 11 hours at least."

"Si, si, yeah, gotcha!" It agreed quickly.

"You can let it go Stina, it won't be moving any tiles today, will you?" It shook its little head emphatically.  Stina let it down and it ran off.

"And tell your friends!" She called harshly after it. Then we looked at each other and laughed.

"Well that takes care of that problem." Stina said.

***

"But not this problem, lassies!" a Scottish accented voice came from behind us.

"What problem, exactly?" Stina asked, as we turned around. Behind us were two doors, guarded by two two-headed dogs. They cleared their throats in unison, getting ready to present a speech that they had obviously delivered many times.

"Well the only way out of here is to try one of these doors!" Said the guard on the top right. Then the top left guard took over.

"One of them leads to the castle at the center of the labyrinth, and the other one leads to..." Here Right came in again

"Babababum…"        

"Certain death!" the Left guard cried. At this, all four guards chimed in with an impressed sounding.

"Oooooo!" Stina cracked up. I stared at them.

"You have got to be kidding me." I said, exasperatedly. "The two doors riddle is so overused. Gee, lemme guess: One of you always lies, and one always tells the truth."

The guards looked slightly abashed at not being able to continue the rest of their speech. "Well, yes." Right Top said.

"Ah-ha! You must be the one who tells the truth!" I said, pointing to the guard who had just spoken. The guards exchanged a glance. The Right guards second head, Right Bottom piped up

"No, we only do that for talking about the doors. Otherwise we both tell the truth." It explained. I nodded perceptively.

"I see. But I imagine you'd have lots of trouble deciding who always gets to tell the truth." I said

"Ach no, lass," said Right Top. I was getting the impression that he was the talkative one… "We alternate everyday! Today I get to tell the truth, and tomorrow-"

The little dog stopped and gasped, eyes wide, and clapped two small paws over his mouth. The Left guard's heads both made "Shush"-ing  noises, while the bottom half of the first guard just shook his head and moaned in disappointment.

I grinned. Turning to Right Top, who by now was looking very embarrassed, I asked,

"Which door leads to the castle?"

"This one." He said, dejectedly. Something in his voice made me stop. He sounded very depressed.

"Stina? Can you solve the riddle properly please?" I asked. All four dogs perked up visibly. She shrugged and turned to Left Top.

"If I asked him if this door," She pointed to the door on the left "was the way to the castle, what would he say?"

"He would say: Yes!" Said Left Top cheerfully. All four dog heads looked quite happy and relieved, I supposed because this way Jareth couldn't punish them. I gestured to the door on the right.

"Shall we?" I asked.

"Yes, let's!" She agreed. We stepped through the door, and promptly fell through a hole that should not have been there.

'Oh, nothings ever FAIR!' I thought as I fell.

***