Epilogue
Where am I now?
It was midnight black all around; she couldn't even see herself.
I'm dead.
She heard, no, sensed, the rustle of tall grasses on an infinite plain.
Time passed.
She felt no sadness at the loss of the Labyrinth. It had never truly been real. Had it? But it didn't matter now. She couldn't go there again. She didn't want to go there again. An illusion, built on the blood of her innocent past, papered with her broken dreams. It held no meaning for her now.
She clutched at her shoulders, an old, familiar, fearful reflex. So what now? Back home, to a world full of loss and regret, a reality with even less meaning than Jareth's cage? She felt her heart twist in dread as it had many times before … and yet … The habitual reaction now seemed hollow. That world seemed distant, fading more with every moment. Had any of it, that feeling, been truly real? Was it all … him?
He was gone, too. He had destroyed her family, her dreams, her very self. He had controlled her fate for so long, she had forgotten what it was like to be free. Yet she found that she held no hate. It all seemed to have happened long ago.
She felt like she was being slowly reborn. She was here at the dawn of time, in the solace land. No expectations, no constrictions; no pre-built fantasy world with its storybook conventions. No cold, empty apartments in which to hide away from her life; no sorrow, no regret. She knew that she would not miss them.
She became aware that there was a new feeling in her mind, a sensation she hadn't experienced for years … a sense of possibility, a wild freedom. She could even see it … A pinpoint of a glow appeared before her, far in the distance, and it was as though everything was suddenly clear in her mind. She could even begin to see around herself, too. Her fingertips shimmered where she had wiped tears away. She hadn't even realized she had been crying.
The first time she was here, she had welcomed the dark land as a cool contrast from her glaring, too-bright world. Now the dark was oppressive … and this light a salvation. In it Sarah saw six-year-old Toby's laughing face. Her stepmother's proud smile when she graduated from high school. And her father's chin, from below, looking up at the stars. It did matter, after all. Those eight years did matter, and all the ones that preceded it, and all the ones that would follow. They always would.
Just as darkness balances light, so does light balance darkness.
The slightest hint of a warm wind.
Then this truly is a Crossroads.
Jareth would have had me believe that it led only to his Labyrinth.
Let's see where else it goes.