Chapter 2

"Where am I? Why did you bring me here?" Sarah had no idea how long she had been in this place. She remembered sleeping and dreaming bright, colorful dreams, but could not recall what they were.

"Ah, she finally comes to the crux of the matter." She found that if she remembered the honey dangerous sly cruel compelling mocking powerful sensual cruel and just pretended that was part of his voice then it was okay to put different things on top of it and it made sense-- well made more sense, she thought, she still couldn't be quite sure of anything. He sounded unconcerned and drawling this time, she decided. "Tell me, Sarah, how did you enjoy my Labyrinth?"

"It was a piece of cake," she remembered the words softly, rolling them around in her mind and letting them out into the darkness though it was not an answer to the question, or at least she did not think it was, she did not think that an answer was an echo without anything to bounce off of a desperate mask back when such a thing was necessary, but was not now. Or was it?

Every time she'd said that, she remembered, something bad had happened. She flinched, expecting something perhaps, but nothing changed, the King's fingers did not even stop stroking along her hair. How much did she remember of the Labyrinth? A lot, or at least she thought she did. It was the last real experience before the whispering began, and it was constantly in her mind during the whispering. Of course it was, the whispering was her punishment for winning, and she was only here now because she gave in. She tried to imagine being back in the real world now, not having given in, being plagued and going to school or sitting at home and crying and holding her ears and praying for peace. She shuddered and found herself curling up into herself. It was a horrifying thought. She was, she realized, glad she gave in. She would a million times rather be here in the dark in the quiet and peaceful than give any more to resistance. She thought it and felt it completely and remembered herself enough to be ashamed, especially as the gentle fingers on her neck so soothing were attached to the same horrible whispering that had made everything so cluttered shaky noisy distressing impossible addled frantic, but could not take it back in her mind and did not have the energy to try.

She remembered how to give maybe a real answer, and the Goblin King had not said anything else so he probably still wanted to know. "I was afraid," she said, "but I liked my friends. I'd liked them more in thirteen hours than the friends I had fifteen years to make. I-- I wasn't so afraid of the Labyrinth. I wasn't, I don't think, really… it was… my brother as a goblin. And-- and you."

Silence from the Goblin King upon this confession. Sarah hung her head, and one of his gloved fingertips found its way under her chin and lifted it up, but that was all.

"The Labyrinth itself, I was… curious. I loved fantasy. I loved being in the fantasy world. I love being the heroine and having the people of the kingdom love me. You-- I couldn't make up my mind about you. Why I am telling you this?"

She didn't expect an answer, but he supplied one. "Because you are mad, of course," he told her casually.

"I feel better now," she informed him solemnly. "Aren't I making sense?"

"Yes, you are, and if you were not better you would not even question telling me. But please, continue."

Sarah was uncertain. "I think I wouldn't want to tell you."

"Would it make you feel better if I told you that none of this is real?"

"No, it would not," she replied sternly, furrowing her brow. "It would confuse me and mess everything up again. Now you've gone and thrown everything off again!" She paused, and asked quietly "…are you real?"

Once more the Goblin King laughed, sounded entirely genuinely amused. The sound rang out suddenly and sharply, and Sarah let out a squeak of surprise. It served as a slight reassurance, however, since she was so surprised, a Goblin King in her head would probably not have done something to surprise her. Maybe. Right?

The chuckle stirred oddly through the darkness. It seemed to spread out and disappear into the black, as though they were within a block of being unconnected with anything else so that sound was dampened and disappeared-- or perhaps that there were just nothing around to bounce off of-- yet at the same time it seemed to reverberate richly and surround her from all sides. Sarah found herself noting for what felt like the millionth time that it simply didn't make sense. She considered briefly that it was just the Labyrinth, or wherever she was, that didn't work the way she was used to, but it couldn't make a noise echo and not-echo at the same time, could it? That had to be her insanity, right?

All of this flew through her head within a moment and the King was speaking again.

"Oh, Sarah," he spoke airily. "You cannot have been so frightened, to admonish me now." He did not seem to expect an answer, and soon simply said, "continue. You loved to be the heroine. You loved your friends. You were unsure of the King of the Goblins-- why?"

"He was the villain, but he was the King and I kept mistaking him for the prince. He sang to me, he danced with me," Sarah spoke as though she were not talking to the object of her contemplation, and spoke dreamily, "he was cruel and he was kind-- he said it himself-- he offered me my dreams, but it was he I was fighting against, he who stole my brother, he who cheated and stole away my time, but he was handsome like the prince and danced with me."

"He said," the Goblin King's voice was low, unlike itself, coming from him but not really, simply prompting her, urging her on, and she obeyed without thinking--

"--fear me, love me, and I already did," Sarah finished softly. "I already did both. But do as he said-- I could not. I couldn't even consider it-- I had to concentrate on my brother, if I forgot about that for a moment then I might forget that he was the villain, not the prince, and the happy ending was to defeat him, not to…"

"To what?" There was hardly any sly honey at all. The voice was just loud enough to not be a whisper and scare her, remind her,

"I…" Sarah realized that there were no longer any gloved fingers touching her, but she could not remember when they had stopped. She had no way of knowing if she were simply alone with a phantom voice. She searched her mind to the answer to the question. It was an easy question, wasn't it? What happened at the end of fairy tales? "I don't know," finally slipped out from between her lips in a wondering voice. "What happens in fairy tales? They fall in love, and then… that's just where it always ends. They live happily ever after." Sarah frowned and hugged herself. "I… I suppose they get married, but I wasn't thinking of that. They… I don't know. The story is over then, I guess."

Pause. Sarah felt a soft shiver, as though there were a sudden draft, except that the air was perfectly still. Too still, she thought for a moment, and the unnatural dormancy of the air made her feel suffocated for just a moment, as though it were impossible to breathe. Was she even breathing before? Was there air in this place at all? She couldn't remember, and right now, she couldn't tell. She held up a hand in front of her lips and blew out hard. She felt the push of the air against her palm.

"The story is over, indeed." Sarah unexpectedly found herself wishing for Jareth's hands again, but they were still not present as he spoke and she did not know how he would react if she reached out for him. Anyway, she could not quit shake the apprehension that were she to that were she to stretch out her arms, he would not be there. The premise that there was somebody corporeal next to her, regardless of who it might be, was too comforting just then to risk shattering. "The same applied, I suppose, to when you won your baby brother back?"

"No-o-o-o," replied Sarah hesitatingly, "then I thought, I guess, I would go back to my old life, and keep on living that."

"Just the same, untouched by your fantasy world?" Was he still next to her? She strained to tell but the motion of the sound through this perplexing air was unfamiliar and unhelpful.

"Not… entirely…" Falter. Think. "More mature. A better sister to Toby, maybe. An understanding with Karen. Leaving behind childhood, making more friends at school."

"So mundane?" His voice snaked around her. "No, no, not quite, I think… Perhaps a wisdom in your eyes? Something to entrance the young men, the hint that you have seen mysterious things, accomplished your fantastic quest? A quiet superiority from knowing a truth hidden from all the others?"

How could he know that? How could he know so much as to speak truths to her that she had not even spoken to herself? Or maybe they weren't truths. Maybe they just sounded real in the darkness. But they sounded so right.

"And I think…" he continued speaking with a relish, as though he were a connoisseur describing a fine wine, "…a yearning for something more? A dissatisfaction with those boys chasing after you, the knowledge that they are… incomplete?"

"Why would I wish for dissatisfaction?" she asked him.

"Am I wrong?"

No. She didn't say anything. She wished she knew where he was so that she could look away. She turned her head away from the direction where his hand had come from before.

"What about your friends?" he asked her. "Do they continue, after the story is over?"

"Yes," Sarah told him.

"How?"

"I call them when I need them."

"And they come? When you need them?"

"Yes."

"How do they feel about that?"

Sarah was confused. "What?"

"They don't mind appearing, at your beck and call, simply popping up when you demand it and fade away when you do not?"

Sarah winced and stared off into the darkness. She still could not see a thing. She felt her breath catch in her throat and she unexpectedly felt the urge to cry at the cruel twisting of her agreement with her friends. She suppressed it viciously, hoping that the childish impulse could not be seen on her face. "We're friends. They want to be there to help."

"And would you do the same for them?"

"Of course!" Sarah cried out.

"In that future, Sarah." Her name sounded strange from his lips-- was it coming from his lips? It was, she thought wonderingly to herself, like a harsh and hissing caress. "When you go home to your happy family and your boyfriends whom you are better than and your friends whom you know more than. Do the coward, the oaf, and the harebrained fool call on you for help?"

He was harsh and she wanted to hide. She was sure that her hurt and her terror shone on her face. She had always felt safe in the dark, never having been frightened of the monster under the bed (not that she did not believe that it might be there, but she always imagined that it was afraid of the light and perhaps if she unlike the other children did not ask her father to chase it out from under the bed, it would stay and come out at night and tell her things about the fantasy world from which it came). But knowing that it was all obscure concealment for her yet this brutal acerbic abasement could see anything she did as clearly as though it were daylight made it seem oppressive for the first time in her life. She wondered if he could read her mind, see her thoughts, but she banished the thought almost before she had begun to think it. The mere idea nearly paralyzed her in fright and shame, and if it were true she did not want to know.

"I… I don't know," she managed to choke out an answer to the question. "I don't control what happens, after all."

"Oh, so the worlds do not revolve around Sarah Williams, after all? Come now, I cannot believe that."

It made the awful brutal tearing down of herself that much more unbearable, that this voice had known her. She remembered before when it (oh she tried so hard to forget who it was for that would only make it all the worse, it, not he, it, it) had articulated so clearly those dreams that she had not even sung to herself. Of course she hadn't the chance to see them through because the whispering began and it was all she could do to hold onto sanity, or a piece of it. She could not let go of that tinge of dubiety nagging that perhaps she was simply insane and dreaming all of this up in a white padded room somewhere.

It was actually a nice thought-- the relentless whispering had not been real and now the acrid accusations were not, either. Perhaps the entire Labyrinth had been a product of her dementia.

The King of the Goblins was much easier to face when thought of as a product of her own imagination, so Sarah decided to embrace the worry as her salvation. Perhaps this was even a dream, simply her own subconscious's way of working out her aversion to growing up and all the normal problems that came with being a teenager.

Usually being normal would not have comforted Sarah, but these were, she reminded herself, highly unusual circumstances.

Being as this voice was really just her own subconscious, she really might as well answer it, she decided. "You aren't being fair. I can't control what goes on in my head, after all," she insisted staunchly. "A person's expectations of their lives always revolve around themselves. It's my life, after all, why shouldn't it be about me? It's not fair that you're judging me as self-centered based on fantasies of the future I hadn't even thought of yet."

"Mmmm. As fascinating as your assessment of the state of justice always is, such a defense would be much more convincing if you had not convinced yourself that I am merely a device your mind came up with to help you deal with your own petty problems."

Her heart stopped. He could see her thoughts. She felt pure unadulterated panic flow through her veins in the form of adrenaline as she desperately searched for some way out of this nightmare, but came up empty-handed.

"Please stop," she whimpered.

"It was you who decided to make this into a personal attack, Sarah," Jareth said smoothly. "I was simply trying to ascertain what you thought would happen after your trip through my Labyrinth was through. I think you've had enough excitement for now, hmm? Why don't I leave you to sleep." His voice was neutral, cold even, but simply the lack of vitriolic accusation was reassuring to a girl who had just been a panicking caged animal. It was the offer of a respite from the inescapable attacks, and she took it gladly. She didn't even bother to note in her mind that the voice was really not quite being fair.

Sarah could not tell when he was gone, but did not want to call out for him. She just laid back and closed her eyes, once again dreaming strangely, beautiful vivid dreams that she could not understand.