Chapter 7: Jareth's Story of Orion

Disclaimer: Blah blah blah NOT MINE blah blah blah, Jim Hensen's estate I think.

By Emer

"The first challenger to win his way through my Labyrinth was named Orion. This was quite some time ago, perhaps two hundred years or more. Orion was of the poorer class and just barely into manhood, but so undernourished that he looked much younger than he was. His father was faceless and had left before Orion was even born. His mother was a drudge, a laundry maid, if I remember correctly. She became very sick, but they had no way of paying for a doctor--and there was little one could do for her anyway.

"Orion was determined that she not die. He had little enough chance of surviving with her, but an almost nonexistent one without her, and he did not even know if he wanted to stay alive with no one else in the world to care for.

"He sat by his mother's bed for three days, dozing when she slept, barely eating at all, using up all the meager fuel that had been meant to last the entire winter. On the eve of that third day, Orion made a wish. The wish was something that he'd heard many years ago when he was small, but he never knew just where it came from. Some where in the spaces between sleep and waking, he'd dreamt of The Labyrinth.

" 'I wish that the Goblins would come and let me challenge the Labyrinth for a wish," he said. So I followed the Goblins to Orion and his mother's small, rat infested room, and I offered to let him try my Labyrinth, as he'd requested. When I warned him that none had ever made it through before, he looked at me straight in the eyes and said, "I'll be the first, then."

"So I led him to the outer walls, started the clock of thirteen hours, and left him there.Orion met Hoggle, much like Sarah did. Hoggle has always been in my employ to discourage the Challengers before they even start. It saves a lot of trouble. But if they simply can't be dissuaded, he shows them the door and goes back to waiting for other challengers--and killing Pixies. It's become something of a sport with him.

"Hoggle did his job, trying to talk the young Orion out of it, but the man could not be persuaded. So he was shown the door and the endless corridor, and left to solve it on his own. He did not subvert any of my citizens like a certain later challenger would do. He received no help from the interesting peoples within my Labyrinth.

"Having had a thorough education in the filthy streets of his childhood, he knew that nothing would be as it seemed, and acted accordingly. He drew his hand along the wall of the endless corridor and found one of the many passages inward. Skipping the first part altogether, because of that well chosen door, he went right to the hedge maze. I hadn't hired my door guards at that time, so he was simply left to choose between the two ordinary doors. Surprisingly enough, he chose the same door that Sarah would later choose. Wandering alone in the forest, he met the Fieries, and handled their high spirits considerably well.

"When they began dancing, Orion joined them, took the lead, and led them all on a merry chase through the woods. Since the fieries won't go into any dangerous areas, he used their behavior to judge whether or not he was going the correct way. Then at the edge of the forest, he fled--they never venture out from under the eves of the trees, though I'm sure Orion did not know that.

"Beyond the Fiery's forest lies a little known part of my Labyrinth. The White Owls make a home there among ruined look-out towers built into the walls of the Labyrinth. It is where the original Goblin City lay, but no Goblin remembers so far back. Orion passed through this place.

"Understand that the White Owls are able to speak to anyone, regardless of language barriers. They rarely choose to say more than two or three words to make certain of the travelers intent, especially when passing through their territory. Upon inquiring after Orion's reasons, they were told the story of Orion's dying mother and his quest for a wish. They have no sympathy in the normal sense of the word, and they do not understand death the way that humans do, but they were impressed by Orion's fortitude, his dedication to what he'd set himself to do.

"And so they gave him a gift--they made it possible for him to understand the language of anyone he might come across, as they themselves could.

"Since guiding him through any part of the Labyrinth is against the rules of the Challenge,

they could not offer him a guide without endangering his goal. He went on through their territory, to the junkyard before the gates of the Goblin city.

"For a man raised in slums and poverty, the junkyard did not look like a junkyard at all, but mountains upon mountains of treasure. However, the reason the junkyard holds such danger is that a person can get tied to their possessions, bowed over by the things they own until their worldly good own them instead. Orion did not own anything. His one possession, aside from his clothing, was a small brass trinket that his mother had found in the Laundry of a rich person and had given to Orion for a birthday present when he was small. Presented with this direct reminder of his mother, he marched straight into the Goblin City without a glance backwards at the mountains of junk.

"I had, of course, been watching Orion's progress through the entire Labyrinth. He had played by the rules of the challenge, earning his way here, to the Goblin City, where the last test lay. No challenger had ever gotten so far, and I was curious as to what would happen exactly.

"He snuck past the guards at the first gate, and scaled the second one--I don't think the Goblins had even invented the mechanical guard at that time, but they were all alert by the second gate, so Orion climbed it instead. He dashed through the streets, running in the shadows of houses and down alleys, but always up hill, towards the castle.

"I had no need to call out the Goblins to fight him--the city and my castle should have done that them self. Everything here is a test. So I simply watched from my tower with interest. He came unmolested through my streets, straight to the castle door. He knocked. I was surprised at this show of manners, but allowed the door to swing open for him. While he wandered the hallways of my castle, it worked hard to funnel him into the Room of Mirrors.

"This room shows you reflections of yourself, but they are distorted--they are you in different times, different spaces, different circumstances. They show how you are seen through other people's eyes. It's very confusing. One minute you may be watching your normal enough reflection, but when you turn the corner, the person in front of you looks a complete stranger. I know very little of what he saw in there.

"The Room of Mirrors is in itself magic, and I have a harder time prying there than other places. The trick, of course, is to see through the illusions of your different selves. The way through, and the ultimate benefit of having gotten through, is that you will always see yourself in one way--the truest way--afterward, and no one may shake that. He consolidated the illusions and created his own. He made his idea of himself the reality and banished all the others.

"Once he'd passed that test and made it through the mirror maze, the castle led him to me. I received him in my throne room, with the Goblins laying around and watching Orion in blatant awe. Orion walked straight to me and wished for the life of his mother. He had earned his wish and I granted it easily. But no wish comes without a price, and even I cannot always know what that price is. I warned him of this and then sent him home.

"After that I looked in on him from time to time. I like to think that the first person to ever successfully Challenge the Labyrinth was a rather special person. Orion's mother made a miraculous recovery from her illness, but she had become blind and Orion had to support her since there was very little she could do so impaired. With the gift of tongues that the White Owls had given him, he made himself invaluable to a certain diplomat and Politician. Then he succeeded that diplomat in his position. He became a very gifted Orator and ambassador. Before long, he was able to support both himself and his mother in moderate comfort. Before she died they could have been termed rich.

"Orion also had a penchant for taking in street children. Since he'd been forced to lie about where he had come from in order to get his job in the first place, his peers merely thought that he was an eccentric philanthropist. In his will, he set aside his considerable fortune for a school for street children, which did very well and helped many people. Orion died at an old age, content, with eight grandchildren. He wrote of his travels in the Labyrinth, but I took the account when he died. I can't have every poor fool trying to make it through the Labyrinth.

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