Disclaimer: I do not own any characters or scenery from "Labyrinth". I do
own the really stupid decisions said characters make in this fic though.
Chapter 11
Sarah landed with a sickening thud.
If she had started to harbor doubts about the man she was to marry in the morning, all of them had now vanished. She was now utterly confident that she was about to marry a complete asshole.
She lay in blackness, the chill air of the oubliette starting to seep through the fur lining of Jareth's robe. She was certain she'd heard the sound of cracking bone when she landed. Happily she was far too pissed off to give into panic. A brief check put the worst of her fears to rest. Nothing was bleeding and everything moved the way it should. What was that bone-crunching noise anyway?
She felt around in the darkness until her hand came into contact with something that felt like a bone. So something had died in here. Goody. Sarah wondered briefly if whatever had died had met its demise through neglect or if something else had eaten it. She remembered that Hoggle had once mentioned that not all of Jareth's oubliettes were uninhabited. The thought made her shudder unpleasantly and so she turned her attention back to the problem at hand - being dumped into an oubliette by a Goblin King.
Oooo.. The thought of that arrogant bastard was enough to make her blood boil. To think that once again, she had almost given in to that seductive rot he kept throwing at her. Well, he's revealed his true colors now, she thought a little sadly. Sarah had been hoping that her marriage to Jareth wouldn't be completely miserable. They had even seemed to be starting a tentative friendship of sorts. Married or not, I'm on my own here, she thought with a sigh. Her situation might be dire, but she really didn't want Jareth to come to her aid. In fact, she would feel just fine if she knew she never needed to see that jerk again.
Or maybe.if this means he's thrown me away, I can escape to my own world? Sarah somehow doubted that Jareth would fling her from his power so easily, but she had yet to test the waters of that spell he claimed he had woven around her. No better time than the present.
Sarah felt around for that bone again. If there was anything living down here, it might be better if she did her pokings about with something other than her own hand. Once she had located the bone, Sarah gingerly tried to stand. Within an instant, she collapsed on the floor in a paroxysm of pain. Okay. No weight on the right ankle then. Running anywhere was getting more difficult by the minute. Telling herself not to be a completely helpless idiot, Sarah made a second attempt at standing upright. Whatever had died must have been pretty large. To Sarah's delight, the bone she held in her hand was long enough to serve as a cane of sorts.
Now.the last time she had been dropped into an oubliette, there had been a door. How had Hoggle found it? Sarah remembered the door as being almost invisible, set deep into the rock. She decided her best course of action lay in tapping around the walls of her prison to check for any promising hollow-sounding spots. The oubliette turned out to quite narrow. Sarah could manage to poke along the walls with her cane while keeping her weight on her left foot. To her dismay, the walls of the oubliette seemed quite thick. No hollow spots there. Plenty of dank, disgusting muck. Sarah lowered herself onto a pile of debris with a grunt of disgust, the bone in her hand scraping along the floor.
Wait a minute. What was that? Sarah rapped lightly on the floor with her cane. That was odd. One section of the floor sounded a little funny. Slowly, she knelt in the darkness and felt along the rock floor. Her fingers came into contact with something that felt like a slab of stone, raised a little above the rest of the floor. Further exploration revealed that the slab had a long edge - long enough to be a trapdoor.
Her heart in her throat, Sarah balanced on the cane and tried to pry one edge of the slab up from the floor. To her surprise, the slab was actually quite light and she had no trouble lifting the edge. Eagerly, her fingers searched for an open space beneath it .and came into contact with more solid floor and dank muck. Damn, damn, damn, damn. Ick too. That stupid slab had just been another piece of junk.
A memory tickled the back of Sarah's consciousness. She balanced on the cane again and this time managed to move the slab into what she hoped was an upright vertical position. With a little shove the slab fell easily against the wall of the oubliette. Feeling along the edge of the slab, Sarah felt a notch just big enough for three of her fingers. Holding her breath, she pulled on it.
With a crash, Sarah was knocked off her feet. What in the hell was that?! After a few seconds when nothing emerged to rip her into nice little bits and then eat her for supper, Sarah decided it might be safe to see what had knocked her down. Feeling around in the darkness, Sarah found what had to be.a bucket? Feeling a little further, her hand came into contact with something soft and then a long handle. A mop. Great. She'd found the broom closet.
Think. Think. Hadn't Hoggle just turned the door another way to create an escape last time? Sarah hadn't been paying close attention back then, which, after all, had been thirteen YEARS ago. Well, she had a husband-to- be who didn't seem that keen on keeping her in daylight and was facing a possibly long and drawn-out death inside the dark hole he had thrown her into. What did she have to lose by opening a door? She figured that at worst, she faced a quicker death than she would by just waiting around.
Within a minute she had struggled to her one good foot and leaning against the wall, managed to feel along the slab with the intention of shoving it into a different position and then trying again. What she found was another notch. What the hell? She pulled on it and the door fell open. Then Sarah's jaw fell open too.
The gardens? What the heck was an oubliette doing opening onto the palace gardens? With a sick lurch she remembered Jareth's words about the spell he had cast on her. You would find that every path you took led you straight back to my palace and that every door you opened would have opened into your room. Sarah wasn't sure that the door to the oubliette really counted as an actual door since it had so many other possibilities, but at least it hadn't opened into her room. Only one way to find out if this spell was really real.
She took up the bone she had been using as a cane and with a combination of hopping and hobbling moved into the garden maze. It was even colder outside than it had been in the oubliette, but Sarah was determined to make her getaway. She followed the path around several curves and found herself facing a side door to the palace. Bollucks. Wrong way. She turned around to see if another turn would lead her out of the hedge maze and found herself face to face with a dead end. She would have laughed if she hadn't been so exhausted.
Seeing no other options, Sarah limped inside the palace door. Door. She had to find a door inside and try it, just to be sure. She found a small red door on the right that she KNEW led to an armory. Hoggle had shown it to her only that morning. All the color drained from her face as she opened the door only to look in on her bed, the covers tossed about from her earlier fight with Jareth.
No. She would NOT go in there. She didn't care where she slept tonight. All she knew was that she didn't want Jareth to find her. If he thought she was in the oubliette, it left her that many more hours to figure some way out of her predicament. Sarah remembered the pillow pit in the ballroom with distaste. She didn't want to think of how she had felt at the ball, dancing in Jareth's arms - especially now that he had left her alone in the dark, and for all he knew, badly hurt. That said, the pillows in there would be a lot softer than the marble floors of the hallway.
She crept down several hallways to where she thought she remembered the ballroom was located and pushed one of the double doors open only to look in on her own bedroom again. So he had been telling the truth and she was trapped here.
Sarah almost burst into tears of frustration and then stopped herself. What about rooms that a person could enter without really opening a door? Her mind flew to the throne room. NO. He might be there. She would just have to cast about and look for the first room she came to.
After another few minutes of struggling down the palace corridors, she found what she was looking for. The entrance to the room was no more than a simple archway in the wall, darkness beyond. Praying that she wouldn't end up in her bedchamber again, Sarah stepped through. The dim light from the passageway did little to illuminate the room. Sarah could make out the space in front of her and what appeared to be a staircase going down. Come on, foot, she thought, gritting her teeth to make it down the stairs. She inched down each step, leaning on her bone cane as much as possible. Finally, she came to a landing and started to tap about with her cane to gauge its size. With the bone, she found what she quickly realized was another staircase. Hmmm.had she found the way to a cellar? But this room seemed so open.
Sarah had hopped her halfway down the next set of steps when she was struck by a chilling thought. What if she were in that awful staircase room? Her first time in the palace, she had gone through the throne room to get to it, but what if it had other entrances? The prospect of being trapped in a maze of stairs with a twisted ankle was enough to make her turn around right there. Sarah started hopping up the stairs the way she came, but found the going up to be much more difficult. She was leaning on her bone cane trying to make the next step when she accidentally hopped onto the folds of her robe and tripped.
Sarah found herself in a heap on a cold stone floor for the second time that evening. This time when she tried to stand, she couldn't. Something was broken and it was her left ankle. Sarah did cry now, great, tearing sobs. She only prayed that the Goblin King wouldn't find her. Then again, who else would? She had yet to see even so much as a single Goblin and she had already been in the palace for a full day and nearly two nights.
She had nowhere to run and no functional legs to run on even if she could. All Sarah knew then was that she was very, very tired. After crying a few more minutes, Sarah pillowed her head on the sleeve of her robe and gave herself up to sleep.
Chapter 11
Sarah landed with a sickening thud.
If she had started to harbor doubts about the man she was to marry in the morning, all of them had now vanished. She was now utterly confident that she was about to marry a complete asshole.
She lay in blackness, the chill air of the oubliette starting to seep through the fur lining of Jareth's robe. She was certain she'd heard the sound of cracking bone when she landed. Happily she was far too pissed off to give into panic. A brief check put the worst of her fears to rest. Nothing was bleeding and everything moved the way it should. What was that bone-crunching noise anyway?
She felt around in the darkness until her hand came into contact with something that felt like a bone. So something had died in here. Goody. Sarah wondered briefly if whatever had died had met its demise through neglect or if something else had eaten it. She remembered that Hoggle had once mentioned that not all of Jareth's oubliettes were uninhabited. The thought made her shudder unpleasantly and so she turned her attention back to the problem at hand - being dumped into an oubliette by a Goblin King.
Oooo.. The thought of that arrogant bastard was enough to make her blood boil. To think that once again, she had almost given in to that seductive rot he kept throwing at her. Well, he's revealed his true colors now, she thought a little sadly. Sarah had been hoping that her marriage to Jareth wouldn't be completely miserable. They had even seemed to be starting a tentative friendship of sorts. Married or not, I'm on my own here, she thought with a sigh. Her situation might be dire, but she really didn't want Jareth to come to her aid. In fact, she would feel just fine if she knew she never needed to see that jerk again.
Or maybe.if this means he's thrown me away, I can escape to my own world? Sarah somehow doubted that Jareth would fling her from his power so easily, but she had yet to test the waters of that spell he claimed he had woven around her. No better time than the present.
Sarah felt around for that bone again. If there was anything living down here, it might be better if she did her pokings about with something other than her own hand. Once she had located the bone, Sarah gingerly tried to stand. Within an instant, she collapsed on the floor in a paroxysm of pain. Okay. No weight on the right ankle then. Running anywhere was getting more difficult by the minute. Telling herself not to be a completely helpless idiot, Sarah made a second attempt at standing upright. Whatever had died must have been pretty large. To Sarah's delight, the bone she held in her hand was long enough to serve as a cane of sorts.
Now.the last time she had been dropped into an oubliette, there had been a door. How had Hoggle found it? Sarah remembered the door as being almost invisible, set deep into the rock. She decided her best course of action lay in tapping around the walls of her prison to check for any promising hollow-sounding spots. The oubliette turned out to quite narrow. Sarah could manage to poke along the walls with her cane while keeping her weight on her left foot. To her dismay, the walls of the oubliette seemed quite thick. No hollow spots there. Plenty of dank, disgusting muck. Sarah lowered herself onto a pile of debris with a grunt of disgust, the bone in her hand scraping along the floor.
Wait a minute. What was that? Sarah rapped lightly on the floor with her cane. That was odd. One section of the floor sounded a little funny. Slowly, she knelt in the darkness and felt along the rock floor. Her fingers came into contact with something that felt like a slab of stone, raised a little above the rest of the floor. Further exploration revealed that the slab had a long edge - long enough to be a trapdoor.
Her heart in her throat, Sarah balanced on the cane and tried to pry one edge of the slab up from the floor. To her surprise, the slab was actually quite light and she had no trouble lifting the edge. Eagerly, her fingers searched for an open space beneath it .and came into contact with more solid floor and dank muck. Damn, damn, damn, damn. Ick too. That stupid slab had just been another piece of junk.
A memory tickled the back of Sarah's consciousness. She balanced on the cane again and this time managed to move the slab into what she hoped was an upright vertical position. With a little shove the slab fell easily against the wall of the oubliette. Feeling along the edge of the slab, Sarah felt a notch just big enough for three of her fingers. Holding her breath, she pulled on it.
With a crash, Sarah was knocked off her feet. What in the hell was that?! After a few seconds when nothing emerged to rip her into nice little bits and then eat her for supper, Sarah decided it might be safe to see what had knocked her down. Feeling around in the darkness, Sarah found what had to be.a bucket? Feeling a little further, her hand came into contact with something soft and then a long handle. A mop. Great. She'd found the broom closet.
Think. Think. Hadn't Hoggle just turned the door another way to create an escape last time? Sarah hadn't been paying close attention back then, which, after all, had been thirteen YEARS ago. Well, she had a husband-to- be who didn't seem that keen on keeping her in daylight and was facing a possibly long and drawn-out death inside the dark hole he had thrown her into. What did she have to lose by opening a door? She figured that at worst, she faced a quicker death than she would by just waiting around.
Within a minute she had struggled to her one good foot and leaning against the wall, managed to feel along the slab with the intention of shoving it into a different position and then trying again. What she found was another notch. What the hell? She pulled on it and the door fell open. Then Sarah's jaw fell open too.
The gardens? What the heck was an oubliette doing opening onto the palace gardens? With a sick lurch she remembered Jareth's words about the spell he had cast on her. You would find that every path you took led you straight back to my palace and that every door you opened would have opened into your room. Sarah wasn't sure that the door to the oubliette really counted as an actual door since it had so many other possibilities, but at least it hadn't opened into her room. Only one way to find out if this spell was really real.
She took up the bone she had been using as a cane and with a combination of hopping and hobbling moved into the garden maze. It was even colder outside than it had been in the oubliette, but Sarah was determined to make her getaway. She followed the path around several curves and found herself facing a side door to the palace. Bollucks. Wrong way. She turned around to see if another turn would lead her out of the hedge maze and found herself face to face with a dead end. She would have laughed if she hadn't been so exhausted.
Seeing no other options, Sarah limped inside the palace door. Door. She had to find a door inside and try it, just to be sure. She found a small red door on the right that she KNEW led to an armory. Hoggle had shown it to her only that morning. All the color drained from her face as she opened the door only to look in on her bed, the covers tossed about from her earlier fight with Jareth.
No. She would NOT go in there. She didn't care where she slept tonight. All she knew was that she didn't want Jareth to find her. If he thought she was in the oubliette, it left her that many more hours to figure some way out of her predicament. Sarah remembered the pillow pit in the ballroom with distaste. She didn't want to think of how she had felt at the ball, dancing in Jareth's arms - especially now that he had left her alone in the dark, and for all he knew, badly hurt. That said, the pillows in there would be a lot softer than the marble floors of the hallway.
She crept down several hallways to where she thought she remembered the ballroom was located and pushed one of the double doors open only to look in on her own bedroom again. So he had been telling the truth and she was trapped here.
Sarah almost burst into tears of frustration and then stopped herself. What about rooms that a person could enter without really opening a door? Her mind flew to the throne room. NO. He might be there. She would just have to cast about and look for the first room she came to.
After another few minutes of struggling down the palace corridors, she found what she was looking for. The entrance to the room was no more than a simple archway in the wall, darkness beyond. Praying that she wouldn't end up in her bedchamber again, Sarah stepped through. The dim light from the passageway did little to illuminate the room. Sarah could make out the space in front of her and what appeared to be a staircase going down. Come on, foot, she thought, gritting her teeth to make it down the stairs. She inched down each step, leaning on her bone cane as much as possible. Finally, she came to a landing and started to tap about with her cane to gauge its size. With the bone, she found what she quickly realized was another staircase. Hmmm.had she found the way to a cellar? But this room seemed so open.
Sarah had hopped her halfway down the next set of steps when she was struck by a chilling thought. What if she were in that awful staircase room? Her first time in the palace, she had gone through the throne room to get to it, but what if it had other entrances? The prospect of being trapped in a maze of stairs with a twisted ankle was enough to make her turn around right there. Sarah started hopping up the stairs the way she came, but found the going up to be much more difficult. She was leaning on her bone cane trying to make the next step when she accidentally hopped onto the folds of her robe and tripped.
Sarah found herself in a heap on a cold stone floor for the second time that evening. This time when she tried to stand, she couldn't. Something was broken and it was her left ankle. Sarah did cry now, great, tearing sobs. She only prayed that the Goblin King wouldn't find her. Then again, who else would? She had yet to see even so much as a single Goblin and she had already been in the palace for a full day and nearly two nights.
She had nowhere to run and no functional legs to run on even if she could. All Sarah knew then was that she was very, very tired. After crying a few more minutes, Sarah pillowed her head on the sleeve of her robe and gave herself up to sleep.