This is a fix up of the original posting of this chapter. There might be spelling or grammatical errors, but the overall chapter is in the correct format.
Disclaimer: I don't own The Labyrinth or anything close to it.
Chapter 2:
"You bastard!" Sarah yells at the pile of glitter left in the goblin king's retreat. The she realizes she is wasting time talking to a pile of residue and begins to jog towards what she hopes is the entrance to the labyrinth. As she nears the outer walls she notices that they look the same as the last time she was here. She scoffs and begins feeling along the wall to find the hole that will give her entrance into the maze.
"Come on. Come on. Where are you?" she mutters in her search. Suddenly she falls forward and lands on a bed of rose thorns. "Ahh!" she screams out in pain as she tries to scramble from the thorns. Her efforts are in vain because the more she struggles the tighter the thorns seem to cling to her. "Argh!" she yells in fustration.
"Don't fight 'em girlie. More ya' struggle, more ya' bleed and yer blood is what's feeding it." a gruffy masculine voice warned her.
"Help!" Sarah exclaimed frantically when she saw no way of saving herself from the deadly roses.
"Hold still now. Jasper'll get ya' loose." the voice replied. "Now Mable don't kill the child. King will have yer head if you do." Jasper told the rose bed while pruning a few branches here and there. The rose bed seemed to nod its head and released Sarah onto the dirt path on the other side of the outer wall.
"Ow. O thank you, uh...Jasper was it?" Sarah said while standing and checking herself over for serious injuries. Seeing a few deep scratches but nothing major, Sarah looked up to see her savior.
"Name's Jasper for sure. And ya' must be Sarah if memories serve right?"
"Hoggle? Wait your Hoggle! O how I've missed you and Sir D-" Sarah started to babble and attempted to give Jasper a hug in her excitement to see a familiar face.
"No no. Now see here girlie. My name's Jasper. There never was nor ever will be no Hoggle fellow looking fer ya'. Ya' get me?" Jasper told her while pushing her away from his person. "Mortals are silly folk. Now I know he told ya' labyrinth's funny business now that yer older right? Well go on now and get yer lil' self out of me sight for I go and change me mind and keep yer for meself."
"But I could have sworn...I mean...you're not Hoggle?" Sarah stammered as she fell back from Jasper in shock.
"I tole yer there's no such being. Now get on yer way for I change me mind. O and mind the Agrimony. They don't take kindly to women nor mortals and like to spit a nasty vemon,"and with that Jasper turned back to the business of pruning the Mable rose thorn bed. He humed a tune and completely forgot about Sarah.
Sarah still in shock turned toward the dirt path alongside the outer wall of the labyrinth and started jogging slightly. Then realization hit her dead in the face and she turned for one more glance at what she had left. Mable and Jasper Rhodes were her next door neighbors. They were a horribly mean old couple and Mable was always threatening to chop Sarah up and use her for fertilizer when ever Sarah took the short cut home through her rose garden.
"O my," Sarah whispered as she hastened her jog and came to a bend in the dirt path. Puzzled she remembered that the last time she was here, there was cobble stones lining this part. Sarah shrugged and disregarded it as unimportant. She chose the path that lead straight assuming that the bending one would either loop back to where she was now or cross over the straight path. Her assumption was wrong and the straight path quickly bent and wound until it joined the bending path. Ignoring the fustration this brought , Sarah took it in stride and continued to jog.
She was keeping a fairly steady pace, was not winded, and she figured had a good deal of time left.
"Perhaps I can make it," she whispered aloud to herself.
"You shouldn't talk to yourself deary. People will think you crazy," A voice announced from nowhere in particular. "Crazy, crazy, crazy and we don't want people to think that. No, no, no," a chorus of similar voices chanted after the first.
Alarmed Sarah quickly glanced about herself in hopes of finding where the voices were coming from. She had not noticed that the moss covered walls of the labyrinth had disappeared and she was now surrounded by tree-like clumps of flowers that towered over her head. Tiny yellow flowers of every color and a few she never thought could be, swayed in the non existent breeze as Sarah slowed her pace to investigate.
"Nosey girl. It's not nice to stare," the voice from before warned. "No, no, no not nice at all. Apologize or else. you'll pay,pay, pay," the chorus added.
Sarah continued to walk up to the mass of tiny blooms when she felt tiny raindrops land upon her face. She wiped at the drops and looked down at her hand to see that the drops melted into her skin and blood was seeping back through her pores.
"Told you to apologize but you don't listen. Silly girl," the leader of the Agrimony teased. "Silly girl, so silly, silly, silly, but you've learned the way everyone learns," the rest of the Agrimony chanted as Sarah collasped onto the path from the effects of the venom.
The last thing Sarah remembered was a pair of black boots appearing before her eyes and a bright flash of light. Then, there was nothing but darkness as she passed out.
Okay this is the way the chapter should have appeared ages ago. Again I am sorry for all problems and confusion this caused. My computer is not always reliable for spell checking and uploads so bear with me until I can manage to avoid future instances like this.