Chapter 26: Mi Casa es Tu Casa

When Sarah arrived with Jareth in the throne room of his castle, she looked around in surprise. His throne and the room itself were roughly the same shape as the ones she'd seen before, but nothing else was. Pristine marble floors showed their reflections back to them, and Sarah had the sudden thought that she was glad she was wearing trousers. If she'd been in a skirt, people would've been able to see right up it, in the reflection on the floor! With a snort, she wondered if that might have been Jareth's plan with the wardrobe terms. "Wow, this is… beautiful," she said. "It's nothing like I remember it." The throne was draped in velvet and there was a stunning Oriental rug on the floor.

"Yes, well, I decided to stop decorating in Early Goblin Demolition," he said. "Come, let me show you around."

Jareth's castle was a maze in itself, with lots of large, empty, echoing spaces connected by twisted interminable corridors. The room he assigned to Sarah was larger than her whole apartment back at the college. Instead of marble, this had wood floors--"They're so much warmer," Jareth explained--a huge bed, and large windows that were exactly the right height and width to sit on and look out over the Labyrinth.

Toby's room was right next to hers, slightly smaller and with a more juvenile décor. Jareth's room was at the end of the hall. "And I hope you appreciate the distinction of sleeping in the same wing as the king," he teasingly boasted. "It's also a security risk, so mind you don't try to assassinate me in the night."

He brought her down a long set of stairs to his office, an enormous room containing two couches, one very large desk and a very tiny one, and a scale model of the entire labyrinth and surrounding lands. As Sarah watched, some of the walls moved around to block off the passageways.

"That explains a lot," she said. A tiny movement caught her eye and she blinked and looked closer. "Oh, my God," she exclaimed. There was a tiny scale model of Toby, wandering down one of the passageways! She pointed to him. "Is that really him? This is where he is right now?" she asked Jareth.

He nodded. "After you were able to sneak up on me when I was distracted with the baby, I decided I needed a better system than just glancing into a crystal occasionally."

"Who's with him?" Sarah asked, squinting down at the ¼ inch high figures.

"Oh, I sent Hoggle to help him through the maze. Thought it might be amusing for him."

Sarah noticed that Jareth used Hoggle's name correctly, and smiled. She should have guessed that he only mis-used it because it irritated Hoggle so! She looked around the room curiously, noting the disparity in desk sizes. "Whose is the tiny desk? I'm assuming the big one is yours," she teased. "Your ego would hardly allow anything else."

Jareth chuckled. "And quite right, too. You'll meet my secretary in a few minutes. He had a little errand to do in the gardens for me. Shall we wait here?"

Sarah nodded eagerly. She wanted to get a look at the surrounding lands, since all she'd seen was the Labyrinth before, and not all of that. "Where is the Dwarf kingdom?" she asked.

Jareth waved a hand over the map and it changed to show the entire Underground, with the Labyrinth taking up one small corner. "Up here, in the mountains," he said, pointing. "The dwarves live under the mountains and the trolls live on top of them. Over here," he indicated a large forest that went down to the sea, "is the kingdom of the elves. Their land borders mine here," he pointed to a hilly spot, "but it's not a clear border. You've seen it; there are elements of my kingdom overlapping elements of the elvish one. That's where the Unicorns live."

Something tickled at the back of Sarah's mind. "'Between the two kingdoms of darkness and light, an island of purity aids in the fight,'" she quoted, not knowing where she'd gotten it.

Jareth looked surprised. "Yes, exactly. How did you know--oh, I must have put that into your lesson book," he remembered. Then he explained, "The elves are the light, and millennia ago, my goblins began as fallen elves. The unicorns, as a symbol of purity, hold power over the rest of the Underground. That's why their land is in the exact centre."

"That must be why your goblins aren't actually malevolent, just mischievous," Sarah realized. "Because the unicorns are there to keep your kingdom from falling totally into darkness."

"Not just the goblins," Jareth said quietly. "Their king has his fair share of darkness in his soul as well."

Sarah smiled. "I already knew about their king," she said. "There's not much about you I do know, but I've figured out by now that you're not malevolent. I just wish I'd known that last time."

There was a comfortable silence and Sarah decided there would be no better time to ask Jareth about a few things. "So when do I start getting all those answers you promised me?" she asked.

"Getting impatient, are we?" he teased with a grin.

"Impatient isn't quite the word I'd use. Curious bordering on homicidal, maybe," she laughed back.

"Ah, but I'm not a homo sapiens, so the word 'homicide' wouldn't apply to me."

"Faericidal, then. That suit you better? And I'm not letting you change the subject. I want some answers, Jareth. If I'm on a 'need to know' basis, I've just decided I need to know some things. When do I get my questions answered?"

"How many do you have?" he grinned.

"How much time you got?"

"More than you. I'm from a long-lived race."

"Let's start with one and work our way up, then."

"One right now," Jareth decided. "Five more over dinner. Two more before bed. That suit you?" he asked, mocking her own inflection.

"Fine." Sarah drew breath to ask her question, but he interrupted her.

"And I get to ask you just as many. And you have to answer them honestly and completely, just as I will do yours, or pay a forfeit."

Sarah gritted her teeth. Why did he have to make a game out of absolutely everything? "All right, then," she said sweetly. "Same for you. Why don't you go first?"

"Very well." Jareth said.

A/N: Back from my little holiday and had a wonderful time, thank you very much! My mailbox was full of so many wonderful reviews that it did my heartgood to read them all. Thank you, everyone who reviewed. Oh, and the good news is that I've almost finished this story (wrote about 30 more pages of it while I was gone) and will be uploading chapters every day until it's complete. So R&R, my friends, and I'll keep writing.