Here they are – the long awaited chapters of 'Labyrinth: The Way Back'

I'm still working on finding my final notes, but this is what I have for now.

Title: The Labyrinth: The Way Back

Author: Aviry Nolane

Email: PG?

Comments:

Ta Da!

Every day is a little closer to being finished with this beast of a fic, but I am still far from finishing. Comments encouraged. I want to make sure that I'm doing this right – it's been so long since I've written anything.

I'd like to thank everyone from for staying interested in my project. It's because of all of you and your comments that I am continuing this epic.

Thank you again!

Enjoy!

Chapter 21 – A walk in the Garden

The days passed by then, as they sometimes do, each melting into another until there existed no calculable boundary between them. Time seemed to move differently here, almost like a living being, sometimes it ticked along faster, and others slow and lazily.

Today, it was lazy.

Life had become easier for Sarah with the disappearance of a certain Goblin King from her daily interactions. Easier being the understatement of a century.

She had not seen him once since that night when he wandered into her room seeking to satiate a craving Sarah had no desire to fulfill. It was out of shock, she reasoned, that she had resisted fulfilling her own heart's desire that night, which involved her brass hairbrush and his face.

'Luckily,' Sarah reminded herself, 'for him.'

No, she had now accustomed herself to a much more blissful position in the King's Underground. One of happy-go-lucky denial. It was nothing short of the ordinary for Sarah, and had always served her well before.

Sarah's reasoning abilities had kicked in soon after their… encounter. And she now believed, if not wholeheartedly, that while Jareth (Abominable King of the Goblins) may have been – completely is – a merciless and cold demi-God of pure evil, these three kings of wherever were probably very rational, sensible, and most likely completely understanding of her situation. Most likely.

Nelly had given up on the topic of Jareth and all things relative, and seemed to be treating Sarah as if she were on some kind of extended holiday instead of captive against her will. All things considered, Sarah preferred things this way. Together they spent their days roaming the seemingly endless garden and speaking of more pleasant topics.

Nelly could simply not get enough of hearing about the Aboveground. Everything astonished her to the point of senseless giggling. Especially the subjects of driving cars, television and microwaves.

Sarah had been truly enjoying her time spent with Nelly these last few, well, however long, and was still at a loss to explain how someone so innocent and wholly pure could exist in a world so dark as the Underground.

"You know, Sarah" Nelly thought aloud as the pair made their way through a Pollyspeckle patch one afternoon, "I believe you may be the only friend I've ever had."

Sarah nearly fell over at these words, and leaned up from where she had been petting a sleeping Pollyspeckle on the path. "Nelly, how can that be possible? You're such a lovely girl. You must have had friends before me."

Nelly's brow knotted in frustration as she lifted her hand to shield the sunlight from her eyes. "No," she affirmed after a moment, "I never really have."

She flounced her skirts at this and seated herself, in all her finery, atop a mossy stone and tried to free her ankle from a particularly clingy baby flower as it wept.

"You know, aside from my brothers and my husband, I've never really had anyone to talk to about anything. Least of all how uncomfortable my bodice is, or what nincompoops men are." She laughed aloud now, still enamored with the beautifully funny words Sarah had taught her from back home.

"I didn't know you had any brothers, Nelly." Sarah announced, all too excited that for once the conversation had turned to Nelly's past in the Underground and not her own.

"Yes, two," She giggled back, "but both older and very alike. You know, when I was younger, before I had learned any magic at all, they, and my cousin, used to play the worst pranks on me."

"Like what?" Sarah asked openly.

"Well," she began, scooting closer, "They had convinced me that I had learned to read minds, when all along they had simply enchanted everything in my garden to speak ill of me. Telling me my hair was flat and my bottom was too round and that I had a fig for a nose. Things like that."

Sarah laughed along, "that's awful!" She proclaimed.

"Don't I know it!" Nelly bursted, "I ran straight to my father and told him what happened and they were sentenced to mop the floors for weeks."

She was lost then in a silent moment, remembering. Sarah simply watched as the light of reverie swept through Nelly's eyes, as brief as a dream, and then washed away.

"My father died soon after that though, some say it was of a broken heart." She looked straight up at Sarah as she spoke these words, "You know he only lived two hundred years after my mother died."

"I bet she was a beautiful woman," Sarah said gently, placing a hand on the place she believed Nelly's blue satin clad knee to be.

"I assume she was," Nelly brightened at these simple words, "Though I never met her myself. She died giving me life, and for that much I will always love her." She frowned again now, "though it would have been nice to have another woman around as I grew up."

Nelly's face lit up once again, her moods always as changeable as the sky above, "but now I have you to be my friend, after all. And you and I will be like sisters forever."

Forever.

Sarah dodged the bullet almost quite completely, "You didn't go to school, then?" she asked as she placed herself carefully upon the only other object she trusted herself to sit on, a large wooden swing already in motion behind her.

"I was taught by my father, mostly. And when I did finally meet fae women my own age," She paused, thinking, "Well, I suppose I was horrified."

They both laughed then, and Sarah found it nearly impossible to remain seated upon the log seat of her swing as it chortled along.

"Well," said Nelly as she sprang to her feet, finally freed of the now sleeping Pollyspeckle, "I suppose I should go start dinner, after all," she winked, "nothing seems to get done around here without me."

Sarah nodded, and Nelly spoke on, "you don't mind if I leave you here, do you?"

"No," Sarah replied lazily, "I think I've had enough walking for one day. I think I'll just sit here and rest."

With that Nelly was gone amidst a bursting of petals that floated to the ground where they evaporated.

'I have got to get used to that' Sarah mused inwardly as she allowed the swing to sway her back and forth. 'It really is just as shocking every time.'

Unfortunately, Sarah had not given quite enough thought to where she was or whose company she was currently in. Perhaps she would have thought better of the term 'shocking' if she had.

After bidding farewell to her swing Sarah had another urgent problem to address. She wasn't exactly sure how to return to her room.

'Hmm' she mumbled to herself as she crossed the bridge that had led to the garden, "I wonder, which way now?"

She looked left, and then right, and then left again. Yes, this corridor was no different than any she had encountered in the Labyrinth. They all stretched on seemingly forever and looked identical in each direction.

"Well, feet," Sarah spoke aloud, as she had always had an annoying habit of speaking to herself in the third, fourth or fifth person, "I think we'll go left."

Sarah was never an exceptionally good listener.