Sarah was bored.
There were only so many things you could turn a goblin into before it just wasn't fun anymore.
Naturally, that wasn't the only thing she had been doing for the last couple of days. It was just something she liked to play around with between redecorating her rooms.
Honestly, the place was depressing enough that it took absolutely no stretch of the imagination whatsoever to have her claustrophobically convinced that she was in an ancient European prison. Something like the Tower of London , except not as pretty.
So as soon as she got away from the Goblin King she began renovating. She added a few more windows so that the light could come in, and to make the best of the magnificent view she had of the Labyrinth. Then, because she was in a tower, and just because she could, she turned the ceiling into a giant domed skylight. To keep the heat out when the sun was right at its peak, she also added curtains, but left them down.
The bed, she decided, had to go. It was a hideous thing that bore a disturbing resemblance to some kind of medieval torture device. Both head and footboards were decorated with demons and monsters, carved in intricate detail in high relief. Some of the creatures were so realistic that they seemed to be trying to fight their way free of the wood so that they could tear her to pieces.
Anyway, not something you wanted to wake up to—or go to sleep under, for that matter.
Instead of vanishing the thing completely, she put her imagination, and what limited artistic ability she possessed to use, and transformed it into something much nicer. She replaced the demons and monsters with owls perched in treetops and flying out to hunt little wooden mice in the wooden grass. She gave it high swirling posts over which she draped blue and green gossamer silk, then just because it amused her to do so, she added a crystal sphere to the top of each post.
Pleased with this success, she decided to do the same thing with her plain old heavy wood chamber door. She used the magic of the wand to coax cat faces from the wood. They were so lifelike that most of the goblins were afraid to go near her chambers after that, which had really been what she intended all along.
She conjured Persian rugs for her floor, comfy plush chairs, and an honest to Christ modern bathroom. She worried that the latter might have been a bit much. The Castle didn't seem to have indoor plumbing, or a septic system, but that didn't stop her from trying it to find out.
Miraculously, it did work.
The only problem Sarah could see with it was that the goblins, those brave few who got past the door, decided the toilette was a toy and thought it was very funny to give each other swirlies.
That done, she was desperate for something to do to occupy her mind—or, failing that, her attention.
With this in mind, she decided to go exploring. This was a Castle after all, and she was going to be here for a while—Jareth had at one point used the word 'forever'—so it would probably be a good idea to become better acquainted with her new home.
She hated the sound of that, even inside her own head, but she wouldn't lie to herself about it; like it or not, the Castle Beyond the Goblin City was now her home.
The first room she entered was very large and round, and had no windows at all. She could see by the faint light of her wand that there were small golden tables lining the wall, and at the centre of each there was a little crystal box.
"Curiouser and curiouser," she muttered to herself as she approached one of the tables and looked down at the box sitting on it. It certainly looked harmless, but then, she reminded herself wryly, things were not always what they seemed. She tapped the top of the box with the wand and jumped back when a deep crimson light flared inside it.
She really should have taken the light as a warning sign and left right then, but, her curiosity piqued, she reached out and lifted the lid. For a few moments, nothing extraordinary happened, then in a sudden flash of sparks a little glowing ball of red light shot out of the box and whirred around the room.
"Oh no!" Sarah grabbed for it and almost upset another table. "Shit! Oh shit! Jareth is going to kill me!"
The little sparkling object whizzed by her ear, then floated serenely up to the ceiling to bounce around.
"Come back here, you . . . you . . . whatever you are!"
She watched the thing bounce gleefully around just out of her reach for a few minutes, before inspiration struck her and she pointed the wand at it. "Come here, right now," she ordered it, and the sparking red ball immediately descended.
It came to rest less than half an inch above her palm. It gave off a throbbing heat that seemed to be in tune with the pulsing light at its center. It was that more than its erratic behavior that convinced her that it was alive.
"I'm sorry," she told it, unsure if it could even understand her, "but you're going to have to go back in your box, or you're going to get me into trouble."
The little orb flared brightly and shuddered. It was quite obvious to Sarah that it did understand her, and moreover, was none too keen to go back in its box. Like it or not, Sarah had the wand, and it could not stand in the face of such power. She lowered the glowing ball back into the box, and with a relieved sigh, clapped the lid back over it.
She quickly left the room and closed the door firmly behind her.
She recognized the next room she peeked into from her last visit to the Castle ten years previous and instantly slammed the door without going in. It was the Escher Room, and she had no desire to embarrass herself by getting stuck on the ceiling and having to scream for Jareth to come rescue her.
She remembered that she had seen Jareth reading a book earlier and went in search of a library.
As she was crossing the throne room to take another flight of stairs, she paused to regard the tarnished gold throne. She glanced around, and when she didn't see anyone watching, she pointed her wand at it. The throne melted, and in its place sat an acid green lawn chair.
Giggling to herself, Sarah hastily climbed the stairs. She would have dearly loved to see Jareth's face when he found it, but she didn't quite dare.
She didn't find a library in that wing of the Castle. She did find several other interesting things, a room full of thirteen hour clocks, paintings with eyes that followed her as she passed, and a door that would not open, no matter how much magic she threw at it. She suspected that the door probably led to Jareth's private chambers.
She finally gave up her search, at least for the moment, and went looking for Jareth.
He'd probably found his 'throne' by now.
The Goblin King was in a dining hall on the main floor, with his booted feet propped up on the table, pealing an orange.
He looked up as she entered and popped a section of orange into his mouth. "I see you've been exploring," he said.
Her eyes narrowed. "How the hell can you tell that just by looking at me?"
Jareth gestured to the right sleeve of her shirt. Sarah looked down and saw a trail of glittering red dust.
It must have gotten there when the glowing thing in the room of crystal boxes was bouncing around over her head like a crazy dervish.
"They're Will-o-Wisps," Jareth informed her. "Nasty, devious creatures if you let them have their way."
Sarah looked at him suspiciously. "How did you know—?"
"What you were thinking?" he shrugged. "I imagine because it's what just about anyone would be thinking if they had gotten as close to one of the dastardly things as you apparently have."
"Oh." Well, at least he couldn't read her mind. For a minute there, she'd been worried.
Sarah crossed the room and plopped gracelessly down into the chair directly across from him. "I'm bored," she announced.
"Really?" He placed another section of orange in his mouth, chewed it thoughtfully, and swallowed. "What do you expect me to do about it?"
"Where are my friends?"
He lifted a brow. "What friends?"
"Don't play coy with me, Jareth," she said. "Or at least, don't expect me to believe it. You know exactly who I'm talking about; Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus."
"Ah, those friends."
Sarah rolled her eyes.
"Sir Didymus has left the Labyrinth for the foreseeable future. Something about valiant quests, or some such rubbish."
That sounded like something the fierce little fox would do, she thought, a little worriedly. He was very brave, but he had a suicidal streak as deep and wide as the Grand Canyon.
"And Ludo?"
Jareth shrugged. "I really have no idea where he is. He got tired of the goblins tormenting him and I haven't seen him . . . since just after you left." He ate the last sections of his orange and sat back with his arms folded. "Can't say that I blame him."
Sarah was becoming desperate. "Well then, what about Hoggle? He's here, isn't he? I mean, he's your subject, so—"
"He's here," Jareth confirmed, and she felt a moment's excitement at the idea of seeing her old friend. "Well, not here, exactly." He grinned when he saw her shoulders slump. "He's the Labyrinth's gatekeeper. He lives in a little cottage at the beginning. There aren't many people who know the words anymore, so it's been a long time since he's had to . . . distract anyone for me. Mostly, he spends his time harassing the fairies with insecticide. It keeps them from breeding like lice and infesting the shrubbery."
Sarah propped her elbows on the table and leaned toward him. "I want to see him."
Jareth gestured out the nearest window to the vast Labyrinth with a wave of his hand. "You better get started then. It'll be dark soon, and you really don't want to get caught in the maze overnight."
Sarah suggested several very creative and interesting things he could do with his fucking Labyrinth—most of them beyond the realm of physical possibility, even for one such as himself—then stormed out of the hall, cursing him under her breath with every step.