Chapter One

"Sarah! Dinner's ready!" came her stepmother's voice from beyond Sarah's bedroom door. The sudden sound, muffled though it was, came loudly to the young girl's ears and rudely interrupted her euphoric state of being. She blinked, her eyes focusing again to comprehend the brief summon.

"Okay!" she yelled back, not daring to take her eyes off the crystal sphere. She still hadn't dared to touch such an immaculate piece of perfection. The magic that flowed from its very core was easily detected by Sarah's trembling hand as it was poised over the object. Her fingers wriggled slightly as she felt the magical aura, feeling something not dissimilar to static electricity. As she did this, amazing – though brief – images flashed through her mind's eye, making her jump and take her hand away. Like a bubble, the sphere popped. Sarah's heart shattered.

"No!" she cried out, distraught.

"Sarah, come on! It's going to get cold!"

Furious at the maddening, irate sound of her stepmother's voice, she turned and finally stalked out of her room and downstairs. Karen, much to Sarah's annoyance, was waiting at the bottom of the stairs with a hand on her hip. The woman's eyes, heavily lined and shaded below perfectly fake brows, were nearly livid at the sight of her step-daughter's rigid form.

"When I say dinner's ready, try to come down a little sooner. Will you? We've been waiting for ten minutes already!" huffed Karen, not waiting for an explanation and quickly turning.

"Ten minutes?" returned Sarah, angry for the loss of her dreams and her chance to finally see them again; angry at her step-mother's mere presence. They never did get along well. "I wasn't up there that long after you called! Stop exaggerating just to blame me for something!"

Karen turned again, her apron ruffling about her as she stopped very suddenly to face Sarah. "It was 6:10 when I called you down and it is now 6:19." She pointed at the clock with an exasperated sigh. "See for yourself." Deciding enough was said on the subject, she went back into the dining room where her husband and son waited.

Sarah looked at the clock, determined to prove the women wrong. Alas, her jaw dropping, she saw to her dismay that the witch was right. Annoyed, she let out a grumble and stopped into the dining room after Karen. She dropped into her seat at the table, folding her arms with a sour look upon her face. Apparently, while Karen was calling her down to dinner, Toby and her dad had sneaked some food onto their plates and already began to eat.

"Oh, you two!" said Karen, drastically changing her mood towards husband and son, playfully scolding them for starting dinner without her and Sarah. She, too, took her seat and began to serve herself something that resembled a Spanish beef stew with onions and green bean casserole as a side.

"I couldn't wait anymore, mommy." Said Toby, still having trouble correctly pronouncing his R's.

Karen looked to Robert, who could only shrug with a half-smile upon his face as he gladly chewed his green beans. Sarah served herself, and the dinner commenced, without much excitement, of course. Everyone was too involved in their meals to ask any questions about anyone's day. Not that Sarah really wanted to talk about her day. Because when that happened, then they'd ask about her week, then her month and eventually it would lead up to her life becoming a complete waste of time.

"Mommy says you're going crazy." Toby said casually, sitting directly across from Sarah. He bounced happily upon his seat, gazing pleasantly towards his half-sister.

Sarah, having been contemplating on her own thoughts with a bowed head and not caring much for dinner, only looked up slightly to stare at her half-brother. Had she just heard that right? She snapped her gaze towards Karen at that point, her eyes narrowed and hurt.

"Toby!" scolded Karen, "Don't talk like that about your sister."

"But you said . . ." argued the five-year-old.

"Now, Toby. Your mother was only frustrated. She didn't mean was she said." Said Robert, mostly to Sarah herself in an attempt to calm her down from the rage he saw building up within her.

"Didn't she?" Sarah asked sharply. She dropped her fork onto the plate still full of Spanish beef stew, standing. "I'm not hungry. I think I'll go to bed. Goodnight."

No one at the dinner table bothered arguing with her, begging her to stay. They all just watched her leave the room and climb the stairs, eventually hearing the door to her room slam shut.

In another tearful fit, Sarah had thrown herself onto her quilt-covered half-canopy bed, burying her face in her soft sham pillows. What Karen might have said about her might not have been far from the truth. Maybe she was going crazy. She certainly felt as if her life was going no where. Nothing meant much to her anymore. She only thought about things that didn't exist, coveted those things and then raged when her mind finally let her know that she couldn't have them. It wasn't fair – and this time is really wasn't!

It wasn't fair that she had to live here.

It wasn't fair that she had to leave her friends behind.

It wasn't fair that she wasn't what she wanted and needed to be!

Damn it, it's not fair at all!

Get a grip on yourself, Sarah, her mind told her. You're supposed to be older than this, smarter than this! You know life isn't fair! You know it! She sobbed, chanting those words in her mind. Over and over, she would say them to herself. Until finally she asked:

"If it's not fair, why do I feel that it should at least be different?"

Then the answer appeared to her, though not in the form of words. As she was looking to her night stand beside her bed, there appeared another crystalline sphere. The happiness and relief that flooded her heart could not have been measured as she saw such a perfect thing silently offer itself to Sarah as it sat there. A small whimper escaped her lips, her mind subconsciously wanting to whisper out a small vow of thanks but the thought never completing itself into words.

Without really thinking this time, and without further hesitation, she grabbed the sphere. An electric jolt ran through her arm, tingling her brain. Images. Thousands upon thousands of images flashed through her mind, images of such beauty and splendor not found anywhere on earth. The experience was disorienting. She was short of breath, feeling a breeze as she watched the alarming array of images pass her by with an amazing speed.

It stopped.

It happened very suddenly, as if everything was sucked up into a vacuum and taken away. Sarah found herself lounged on her bed, half sitting up, the crystal sphere clutched to her chest. Her legs were cramped, as well as her hands from the grip she had on the crystal. It was also very dark. The moon was out and she could see its light streaming in from the window is pale blue hues, tinting everything in her room with an almost magical glow.

Slowly, she stood up from her bed, still holding the crystal protectively to her chest. Looking over towards the clock radio, she saw that it was nearly ten o'clock at night.

"I really am going crazy." Sarah said dejectedly to herself. "Unless . . ." She looked down at the sphere, examining it closely. No dreams floating around inside, she determined. Maybe its magic was spent. Or whatever it did to show her the dreams. Or were they even dreams? Whatever it did, it brought her into a place where time had no meaning, or maybe where time went by differently.

All of it was very odd, nonetheless. It felt to her as if only a few moments passed by, when in fact it was more like a few hours. Exactly what was going on?

The wind blew outside, rustling the trees just outside her bedroom window. The sound made her gaze towards its source, when her ears caught something else coming from outside. Very faintly, she could hear voices; voices calling her name.

"Sarah . . ." called the voices, carried upon the soft breeze. Her heart clenched at the sound. To follow them would be to admit that she really had gone insane, for who in their right mind would follow voices without knowing their source? She was torn, she wanted to go outside, or at least bid them welcome.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to ignore the sounds, deciding it was just the breeze playing tricks on her ears. It's just the trees in the wind, she thought to herself, smiling down at her lovely new prize in her hands.

"Help us . . ." whispered the voices. They had invaded her mind and were whispering all around her now. She turned about in her place, frightened by the suddenness in which the voices appeared. "Help us . . . Sarah."

She was losing her sense of reality, feeling her sanity slipping through her fingers as the voices called. Varying degrees of distances seemed to be the source of the voices. From far away, then from right beside her, they whispered and beckoned for her help. What was more disconcerting and most frightening of all, the voices seemed to speak to her from inside her mind, as loud as a train's passage. They were anguished, frightened, and desperate. As beautiful as they were, it made Sarah's human heart ache to hear such sadness from them.

She had little choice but to follow them and she found herself running outside of her house, the crystal still clutched firmly in her fist. She ran and ran until her lungs burned, ignoring everything around her. Occasionally the voices became so loud, she had to stop and cover her ears; mostly in vain. Letting out a whimper, she finally continued on down the quiet streets of her small town, deserted at this time of night and barely lit with the dim street lamps about the square.

It wasn't until she finally stopped to really rest that she noticed anything peculiar. Her legs ached, her lungs were tight. She tried to catch her breath, leaning heavily against the stone railing of the little bridge in the park. The peculiar thing was that the voices stopped. But something much more noticeable began and it was rather disorienting at first.

As she looked around her park (and she used the term loosely, of course, as she was one of the few people who still visited), she noticed shifting patches of . . . grass? No. No words could easily describe the incredible sight before her – all around her, in fact. She turned around, and she noticed several places were shifting into an illuminate patch of complete, awe-striking beauty before disappearing again. All around her, the patches faded in and out like that. Sarah smiled, her eyes wide.

Magic was at work here.

"What's going on?" she wondered aloud to herself.

"Don't you know?" squeaked a voice from behind her. Startled nearly out of her mind, Sarah turned. There upon the wooden rail of the bridge was a strange little creature. It was grinning at her, casually lounging on the wooden beam, its dingy skin tinged with blue. Her face was somewhat long (Sarah decided that it must be female), her head adorned with small bits of foliage in the fashion of a wreath, and her body was lithe. But what was most unusual about her was this: where Sarah had expected to see legs similar to human form, were instead hoofs similar to the hind legs of a deer. The little sprite's wings fluttered restlessly, her long pointed tail twitching and thumping against the wood.

"What are you?" Sarah was compelled to ask. Her response was a look of annoyance and scoff of exasperation from the little creature.

"That is the rudest thing I've ever heard!" leered the girl-creature. "Why? What are you?"

"Well, I'm a human."

"Well, I'm a moon sphinx." Came the immediate retort, tilting her nose up into the air.

It was after a moment of awkward silence that Sarah realized her surroundings had drastically changed. In place of her familiar moonlit city park and pond was a clearing in what looked like a forest. Not just any clearing and not just any forest. The clearing itself was small and a little cramped, but it was beautiful and it was lush with plant life. Wildflowers grew in sporadic patches here and there, and the bridge she stood on (only now realizing it was wood instead of stone) provided safe passage over a small creak. Despite the twilight, everything around Sarah looked bright and magical.

"It's like a fairytale. A real fairytale."

"Fairy tail?" piped the little sphinx girl. She made a face, "Faeries don't have tails. They have big, big attitudes they like to call proper fae manners. Treats most of us like the filthiest, lowest scum in the Bog at the Labyrinth."

Sarah was still trying to figure out exactly how to take all of this. First the voices, then this "moon sphinx" shows up and talks to her, and to top it all off, her entire surroundings change. Although, before she was going to self-diagnose herself with schizophrenia, her mind finally registered what the sphinx said.

"Did you say the Labyrinth?" she asked timidly, holding her crystal a little tighter. The sphinx rolled her eyes and launched herself into the air. Quick as lightening, she was hovering inches away from Sarah's face, beating her wings furiously to keep herself aloft. The small breeze from the creatures wings wafted through Sarah's raven hair, and she blinked several times to get the sudden gusts of air out of her eyes.

"Are you sure you're human?" squeaked the sphinx. With amazing speed, she circled her larger companion, stopping only a few times to smell a little fistful of hair, tug at Sarah's ear, or poke her round and rosy cheek. "Look human." She determined. Then, quite forcefully and rudely, she pulled on Sarah's eye lid to gaze at the girl's unusual irises. "The eyes, though . . . Hmm." It was all she could say before Sarah batted the annoying creature away from her eyes.

With a tiny squeal, the sphinx flew through the air by the force of Sarah's blow, landing not so gracefully in a pile of leaves.

"That thing's almost as bad as faeries!" Sarah muttered to herself, watching as the sphinx slowly sat up, holding her awkward little head.

The sphinx gave a pathetic little moan. "That wasn't very nice, you know." Managed the creature. Unsteadily, she stood on her deer-like legs, wobbling a little left and a little right before violently shaking her head to clear the dizziness. With a sigh, Sarah relented, looking a little more relaxed and even apologetic.

"Alright. I'm sorry. But you really shouldn't poke and prod people like that. That's not very nice either." The human girl kneeled upon the luscious green grass, to better see her little companion. The sound of the creak was calming and she let her new situation clear her head of Earthly thoughts. Only seemed like the proper thing to do, considering that she was most likely in the Underground again. "What's your name, anyway?"

The sphinx looked up with a confused expression upon her blue-tinted face. "Name?" she asked, sticking out her tongue as she thought very hard about – something. Then it dawned on her, "Oh! A name! Right, name… my name."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Yeah. Your name. What are you called?"

"Hmm…" hummed the sphinx, placing a very long finger upon her lips. Finally, she decided it was time to answer, her mouth hanging open for a moment in reluctance. "Er – I'm not sure if you'd understand it. It's in a Fae language. Humans probably don't know Fae languages…"

"Try me." Sarah shrugged.

"Okay." Said the sphinx, still uncertain. "My name is Jii'chiriche."

To Sarah's ears, the name sounded more musical then vocal, as it seemed to be omitting some important syllables for her human ears. Sarah braved it.

"Jicheeryche?"

The sphinx's face lit up. "Hey! Whaddya know! You heard it! Well, not all of it, but close enough."

Sarah smiled proudly and nodded in affirmation. "Right. My name's Sarah. Can I call you Ji? For simplicity's sake?"

The fae creature also nodded. "Ji it is. And you're Sarah. Hmm, Sarah . . ." Ji stopped a moment to think again, "Now where have a heard that name before?" Just as Sarah was about to answer, suggesting that she might have some sort of reputation in the Underground for solving the mysterious Labyrinth, Ji squeaked in fright. "Eep! The sun is rising! Well, gotta go!" That said, she launched herself into the air and quickly ducked into the trees of the forest.

"Wait!" Sarah pleaded, jumping to her feet to chase after her new friend. "Wait, I need someone to help me find my way! Ack! No!" In her efforts to scurry after the sphinx, her grip on the crystal was forgotten and not soon after was it lost in the creak of flowing fresh water. She fell to her knees by the bank of the creak. It was deeper than it looked. Besides, it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. A clear crystal in crystal clear water would be no easy task to find.

"That's the second time already! Give me a break." Vainly trying to look into the running water for her prize, she soon gave up. She supposed it wasn't that important anyway. Didn't really do anything else besides show her images. Maybe it brought her here. And if that were the case, maybe her only way back was with the crystal. Then she had to think – if Jareth had left her the crystals in the first place, surely he would come and find her eventually.

"What? To sweep you off your feet and live happily ever after?" scoffed Sarah to herself. Without the crystal, she would have no way home until someone else from this place helped her. "Things aren't always what they seem," she reassured herself, "Sure, for now you're all alone, but someone will help you . . . hopefully find you first, hope they're not homicidal, and the rest is a piece of cake. R-Right?" she asked no one in particular. Before long, she sat huddled on the grass by the bank, hugging her arms. It had grown curiously cold – or was it just her?

Ribbit.

Sarah brought her head up from her knees.

Ribbit.

She looked around, her dark hair tumbling down her shoulders. Very near her feet, she spotted a very plain looking green frog over which his front legs stood on a not-so-plain crystal sphere. She smiled, then laughed, and then nearly wanted to cry. So some fairytales are true after all, thought Sarah.

"Thank you, my handsome prince," she said happily, playing along. Gently, so as to not jostle the frog too much, she took back her sphere where she once again clutched it safely to her chest. "I suppose I should reward you with a kiss."

The frog looked at her expectantly, croaking in reply. In compliance, Sarah gently lifted the little amphibian in her hand and placed a very small, quaint kiss on his wet skin. She was a very good sport about it, scrunching her face only slightly and giggling as the frog's cold skin touched her nose. With a musical chime, the frog disappeared from her hand. Sarah, of course, expected no less being quite aware that she was in a land where anything and everything was possible.

But instead of meeting her prince, there upon the boulder near the creak leaned a handsome and lithe figured King.