Alia fell a short distance, then a tendril wrapped around her wrist yanked her up short. She looked down to find herself hanging about three feet off the ground. "Well, that wasn't nearly worth all of that panic," she thought to herself and looked back up at her wrist. It amazed her that the tendril had held and that it had wrapped around her wrist. She had been moving fairly steadily and she didn't think her hand had been still that long had gotten or had gotten tangled in the vines. "Well, it doesn't matter how it did it, just that it did. I might not have died but I could have sprained an ankle or something at least," she thought as she reached for hand and foot holds to pull herself back up.

"'Allo? You hain't 'urt?" came the voice again as she was working the tendril loose. She almost slipped again, having forgotten about it.

'Allo? Where had she heard that before? That worm in the movie had said it. She looked around her among the flowers on the vine.

"Up 'ere. Nah, over 'ere," it said as she looked around. Finally she spotted it several feet above her and to her right.

"Yeah, thas right, up 'ere."

"You're the worm from the movie," Alia said and continued climbing toward the worm.

"Nah, never been in a movie in me life." The worm shook his head. "Me cousin, on t'other 'and, 'e was in a movie. Cor, 'e gets in on ev'ryfing. Lives near the front gates, 'e does. Wot you doin'?"

"I'm trying to climb this cliff. What does it look like I'm doing?" said Alia rather crossly, for she had just skinned her knuckles, not for the last time she was sure.

"Why?"

"Why? To get to the top! Why else does anyone climb a cliff?"

"Naow, I mean, why're you climbing when you could walk?"

She had reached the worm by now. He looked very much like his cousin, but without the red scarf. "Because, I can't walk on a vertical cliff. Humans aren't like worms I'm afraid."

"Nah, you don' need t' do that, neither." He shook his head.

"Then how am I supposed to get at the castle at the top of this cliff?" Alia asked, eagerly hoping there was an easy short cut involved.

"You use the tunnel a' course," the worm replied as if everyone knew of the tunnel. "Ev'ryone else does."

"What tunnel?" asked Alia, who was not everyone else.

"One at the base a' the cliff, over there," said the worm, bobbing his head down and to Alia's right.

Alia carefully worked her way back down from the wall once she disentangled herself from the fine tendrils already winding their way around her wrists and fingers. Once on the ground she stepped back and surveyed the flowering vines in front of her. Aside from the path of bruised leaves and flowers she had made in climbing, she saw no difference in the vines anywhere. There was simply no sign of a tunnel.

"I don't see anything. What do you mean there's a tunnel?" She scanned the foliage higher up trying to see the worm again, but could not find him at this distance.

"S'there. You jest hain't looking right, you hain't," he quoted.

"Very funny. Thought you said you hadn't seen the movie?'

"Never said that. Said I 'adn't been in one, not that I 'adn't never seen one. Made us watch it at family reunions he did."

"Where is the tunnel? Right in front of me?"

"Nah, gawn furfver to your right. Thas it. Right there. Now s'right in front of you."

"Behind the vines?"

"Yeah, you could say that."

She walked to the vines directly in front of her and reached out to pull them aside so that she could see behind them. When she put her hand among the leaves and blooms, instead of moving aside, they rippled and shimmered as if stirred by a wind or reflected on a pool of water. But these leaves and blooms had more depth and dimension than mere reflections. She pulled her hand out of the illusion and looked at it, expecting it to be wet or colored, to look different somehow. There was no sign on her hand or in the vines that she had interfered with them.

"Do I just walk through it?" she asked the worm as she played with the rippling image.

"Thas all I ever seen t'others do. They jes' disappear inta the wall."

"Do you know anything else about the tunnel? Are there branches and turns I need to know about? Is it lit?"

"Nah, I don' know nuffing. I'm jest a worm. Never been down there. Can' be too 'ard now can it, if goblins follow it? Never seen 'em come out wi' torches, though."

"Nothing else to tell me? Like 'Don't go that way. Never go that way,' or 'If she'd ha kept goin' that way she'd ha gone strayt to that castle?'" she asked, trying to mimic his cousin's accent. She trailed her fingers through the illusion, watching the patterns made by the interlocking ripples.

"Oh, that wye'll tike you stryte to the castle all right. I fought that 'us where you said you wanted t' go. There's nuffing else on top, there hain't."

"Yes, that's where I want to go, but I just wondered if there was anything else, like where this comes out on the other end. Does it come out in the castle? The gardens?" She stuck her arm through the illusion to above the elbow attempting to see it through the vines and flowers. Not even a faint shadow of it could be seen through the illusion. It just stopped where it entered among the flowers.

"Nah, they never say hanyfing 'bout that."

"And it's the goblins that use it, you said?"

"Mos' times. 'E sends 'em off into the desert, don' 'e? Don' know why. Off they go. Sometime they comes back, sometime they don'."

"Well, like you said, it can't be too difficult if goblins can make it. Thank you for your help and information. I'm not sure I would have made it going the other way."

"You're welcome 'Ave fun stormin' the castle."

Alia stopped as she stepped forward to pass through the illusion and looked in the general direction of the worm. "That's the wrong movie."

"Sorry."

"That's okay. I appreciate the thought."

Alia braced herself, preparing to step through the illusion. She found herself holding her breath in anticipation and consciously forced herself to breathe, then closed her eyes and stepped through the curtain of illusion. She felt nothing. She expected tingling, or a sense of coolness, or a tickle on her skin as she passed through, but she felt nothing at all.

She opened her eyes to confirm that she had passed through the vines into the tunnel and saw only blackness. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness after the bright morning, she noticed that she cast a faint shadow – some light filtered in through the illusion. When she turned to look at the entrance she could still see the grassy plain in the brilliant morning light vaguely through the curtain.

She turned back to the tunnel. Ahead a very faint glow crept around a turn. As she walked toward it she noticed the tunnel, already sloping slightly upward, cut smoothly through the rock. The corridor led around the corner to a flight of neatly cut stairs rising out of her sight. Who knew how many goblin feet passing on these stairs had worn a slight concavity into the hard stone treads.

"I hope goblins don't come through here very often and those stairs are even older than they look. I don't really want to meet one face to face just yet," Alia thought.

As she climbed the stairs around the first curve, she found the source of the dim glow. A crystal sphere about three inches in diameter, similar to the ones she had seen in the movie, rested in a sconce shaped like a human hand on the wall above her head. Unlike the crystals in the movie this one glowed dimly with a warm amber light. The crystal rested lightly on the fingertips of the lifelike hand, as if produced just before she came around the bend to see it.

As she continued up the twisted stairs, Alia saw no more than one crystal at a time. By the time the stairs opened into a winding corridor she had lost count of how many of these spheres she had passed. They continued along the hall ahead of her which sloped gently upward as well.

She had been winding back and forth, twisting this way and that for hours, already having lost all of the little sense of direction she had had to begin with, when she heard noises coming from the corridor ahead. At first, she thought she was imagining things, but soon she knew beyond all question that someone walked toward her in the tunnel ahead. She dashed back the way she had come to the rough opening she remembered passing recently. Until now, she had avoided these few natural fissures cutting through the solid stone of the cliff, for they were obviously not the intended path.

Luckily, she did not have to run far to the last one she had passed. She ducked down into it. The floor and ceiling both ran lower than the level of the main corridor. For good measure, she walked yards back into it, well beyond the reach of the light from the corridor. So far in that, not only could she not be seen from the corridor, but she could no longer even see the light from the corridor. She listened intently for her fellow traveler to pass the opening so she could come out. She waited and heard nothing.

"Maybe I'm too far back to hear anything," she thought and crept quietly forward. She waited even longer for any sign of occupancy in the main corridor, shivering in the chill of the fissure. She had not noticed it in her first dash and near panic, but this side fissure was colder than the main corridor. She pulled her cloak around her more tightly and crept further forward.

She heard nothing and thought perhaps she could reenter the corridor safely. She walked further and still could not see the light from the main corridor.

"Did the globes go out after they passed? It's getting colder, too, and I don't remember this passage climbing as sharply as it seems to be going down. Great. I turned somewhere and now I'm lost. Well, it shouldn't be too hard to find my way back. I haven't come that far."

She turned around and headed back up the passage the way she had just come, feeling along both walls for openings she might have missed.

Finally, she found one and turned into it. It, too, headed downward. After walking along it, trailing her hands along the walls for a short distance without seeing light, she decided that she had made another wrong turn. She walked back to the original mistaken passage and sank down to the floor with her back to the wall, resting and thinking about what to do next. Her stomach notified her she had missed lunch, that it wanted to eat, and it wanted to eat now.

"Or have I missed dinner by now, too? At least I won't starve for a while," she thought as she dug into the satchel.

As she sat eating she realized that the swirls she was catching out of the corners of her eyes were not figments of her mind grasping for something to see, but glowing patches on the walls.

"Must be that glowing fungus you read about. It's blue-green like they say and everything. Hope I get more of it. I could use some light."

She got up and worked her way down the passage to the next opening. She walked down this one only to find a dead end. She felt her way around it to make sure. "Nope, not this one either. Back to try the next one."

As Alia traveled down the tunnel, the fungus proliferated and grew brighter, producing large blue-green splotches on the walls and floor, even overhead where the walls met.

"I'm definitely not in the right passage. I think I would have seen this fungus in that fissure even with the light from the main corridor." She sank down to the floor again, thoroughly dispirited, and gave in to her impulse to look for sympathy.

"Tieran!"

.….

Irielen found Tieran pacing agitatedly in the tower. She watched unnoticed for a few minutes before approaching him. He would stop occasionally and look to the north.

"What's wrong? Hasn't she contacted you?" Irielen asked him.

He started and turned around to find her sitting on a bench out of the path of his pacing.

"No, she has contacted me. There is a path through the interior of the cliff that would take her to the top – "

"That's good. I know she was worried about having to climb that cliff."

"But that path is now part of the problem. She lost it." He started pacing again as he spoke. "She said someone was coming so she went down a side turn to avoid them and could not find her way back. Now she is lost. She has no idea where she is and I cannot help her because the map did not even know about the path, let alone see through the solid rock to chart it! She is going to spend the rest of her life stuck in that cliff and I am responsible."

"No, she is not, and no, you are not." She spoke to the pacing form following him with her head as she sat. "You gave her a choice and she took it. She has known all along that it would be dangerous. This is just a danger we did not anticipate. If it comes to the point where she is not willing to keep trying on her own, you can always pull her out. So you have to explain it to Jareth." Irielen shrugged. "I expect you will need to do that eventually anyway."

"Yes, I know. You are right," he said, stopping and looking off to the north again. "But I still feel responsible."

"I know you do," Irielen thought.

.….

Alia considered what to do next. "I have no idea which way to go to get back to the corridor. This must be an underground version of the Labyrinth with changing tunnels. The best I can do is try to take the cross tunnels that head upward. At least that will get me closer to the surface and maybe I'll run into the main corridor again."

She resumed walking, stopping at each intersection to decide which way seemed to lead up and check for drafts. She had remembered the main corridor being warmer than these tunnels and thought that perhaps a warm draft would lead her to it.

She noticed the fungus on the walls had been gradually changing colors. It had shifted from the cold blue-green to a warmer ivory. Still, it did not really cast any light, mainly serving to show openings and side tunnels in the walls.

Despite her efforts to head upward, every tunnel she took eventually turned downward, taking her deeper into the base of the cliff. The fungus continued to shift colors, modulating from ivory through yellows and oranges to a strong red. As the colors warmed, so did the air in the tunnels.

"This is like walking through some movie set of Hell, complete with sweltering heat and evil crimson light. All it lacks are the anguished screams in the distance." She decided to turn back. This was not the way she wanted to go.

"I should have done this a long time ago, never mind sticking with a plan. And I should have tried taking a down tunnel instead of an up one since they all descended eventually anyway." She was muttering more in this vein, when a small creature popping out of a side tunnel ahead of her startled her. It paused to get its bearings and dashed straight for her, blindly running into her and continuing back the way she had come.

"So things do live down here!" She had not been able to get a good look at it, but its silhouette against the fungus suggested something ratlike. She was still considering the creature and why it had run into her, when she heard something else moving in that side tunnel.

"That sounds big. And I doubt I'll luck out and find another Arten'barad," she thought and followed the small creature's lead, beginning to run back the way she came.

As she ran, something passed her, this time a doglike creature, the size of a wolf or a large dog. This animal, too, ignored her, running blindly from something behind it.

"If that was afraid of whatever it is, I must really be in trouble. Now do I keep trying to follow the dog, hoping it knows where it's going or do I go it alone and hope the monster follows its trail instead, so we don't all get trapped together?" She decided to continue following the dog. "The dog knows more than I do and I'm bigger than it is, so with my luck whatever's back there would probably follow me anyway."

She had trouble seeing the dog's retreating silhouette against the red walls and soon lost the animal. Meanwhile, the noise behind her was getting closer.

"Time for Plan B – turn down a side tunnel." She did just that, gasping for breath and hoping this one would not turn into another dead end.

It did not, at least not immediately. It twisted and turned and all the while she could hear the unknown monster following behind her. It sounded like it had abandoned the trails of the other creatures and picked up on hers.

Suddenly this passage opened up into a large chamber and Alia stopped dead in her tracks. A deep blood red light lit the chamber, emanating from an immense crystalline shard embedded in the vaulted ceiling. Strangely, this sudden light did not hurt her eyes or blind her as she would have expected. The floor of the natural chamber had been polished smooth and inlaid in a starburst pattern, like a compass rose, centered under the ruby crystal in the ceiling.

Alia remembered what she had been doing and ran across the wide floor to one of the many tunnels radiating from the chamber. Just as she passed through the circle centered under the crystal, she slipped on the slick floor and went sprawling, her momentum causing her to continue sliding on the smooth stone floor.

As she scrambled to get to her feet, she turned back to face the passage she had emerged from just in time to see the creature that had been following her as it rushed into the chamber. She skittered and slid backwards, trying to simultaneously get up and back away from the thing.

It was huge and powerfully muscled, colored an incongruous, innocuous, fleshy pink, which the bloody light from the crystal above did not improve. It carried its massive head low, moving it back and forth, she assumed to track her with scent and sound, for it had no eyes. Teeth it had in plenty, in huge bulging jaws that composed most of its head. It reminded her of something and she tried to think what.

"What am I thinking? This thing is going to eat me for dinner or breakfast or whatever and I'm trying to think where I've seen it before! Forget that, just get up and move!" she told herself as she continued to scoot and scramble backward.

The Pink Thing began to move forward slowly stalking her. She continued to slide backward, unable to gather enough coordination in her panic and fear to overcome the slick floor and get up and run.

Disclaimers, credits, trivia:

Labyrinth, etc. belong to the Jim Henson Company.