Chapter 4- What is this Feeling, so Sudden, so New?
What is this feeling, so sudden, so new, felt the moment I laid eyes on you. My pulse is rushing, my head is reeling, my face is flushing. What is this feeling? Fervent as a flame, does it have a name?
Wicked
I'm baaaaaaaaaaack! Hello again, just got back from Wisconsin! Land of cheese…and waterslides…and Lake Michigan! It was fun…but now I am back and writing, just for you!
Jareth was staying up late that night. He had many nights recently, ever since he had decided to become king. But tonight he was not planning. He was not reading ancient tomes or scrolls. He was reading a book.
The Labyrinth.
It, in short, was a novel about a Goblin King (the name was blurry) who falls in love with a human girl (the name was also blurry) and gives her the power to wish away her stepbrother. One night she does, and the King takes it. She instantly regrets her decision, so he allows her to go through the Labyrinth to try and solve the puzzle in thirteen hours. She does, and the Goblin Kings powers are taken, and the Labyrinth falls.
Jareth sympathized with the King.
What he didn't understand was why Qr'a needed him to have this book. So he decided to go find her. Where would one find a nymph? The moon was high, and the streets were dark. All the little goblins were asleep in there beds, as visions of chickens danced in their heads…
She was lying in a field in the center of the Goblin City, a field that bloomed only for nymphs for some reason. She was singing.
A star, a star.
Rising in the east,
Lighting up a bit
Of forgotten land…
Jareth stood just out of her line of vision for a while, before finally getting his courage up and going to talk to her.
"uh…"
"Qr'a. Call me Qr'a. No titles or anything."
"Well, Qr'a…"
"yes?"
"I don't understand."
"Neither do I. No one understands anything they think they understand, for there is always another side."
"Well…the book."
"What…what about it?"
Jareth noticed that she seemed to stiffen mentally when the book was mentioned.
"I don't understand why I need it."
"Because you are Jareth, Most Goblin of Goblins. The spirits wanted you to have it."
"Spirits?"
"Sit down Jareth."
He did as was told and let Qr'a spin her tale.
"John Amos was a dreamer. He was also a religious man. He was trying to describe religion as a labyrinth, where you need to find your own way to the center, discover what you truly believe, find your own god. That sort of thing. Well, as he was writing about that, he began envisioning dusty walls, optical illusions, strange creatures, False Alarms. And so the Labyrinth was born. Once it was born, it fell to any dreamer to control it. When he died, it was taken up by a man named Henson. He gave it more definition, a King, goblins, Wild Gang. Then Henson died. So it fell to another person, a girl this time, who had magic in her. So much magic that she was reincarnated over and over, each time with a different name. Angelus, Soprano, Oceania. Now, she is a babe again, a child of the name Sarah. The spirits of all the dreamers come here, and they keep the Labyrinth alive when another dies. They know what is going to happen, they know Lady Fate, and are not about to gamble with her. Fate told them, who told me, that Jareth, Most Goblin of Goblins, needed to have that book."
Jareth sat back, leaning against a thin tree, which held him with an unhappy creak. The fates knew him, they were helping him. He needed to finish the book, maybe there would be a sign.
He looked up again, and the nymph was gone. She left her pendent however. In sparkling letters above it read, The spirits aren't the only ones to dish up help. Take this, you will need it.
Jareth picked it up, and stared long and hard at it. It appeared to be made of bone, shaped like a moustache, with copper wire wrapped around it. He put it on.
What was this feeling?