Thursday's Child
"This is some sort of joke, right?" I said, trying hard to keep my voice measured and calm, trying hard to stave off the prickling anger that threatened to rise and run wild if allowed to go unchecked.
"No joke, I assure you."
I raised a skeptical eyebrow at my scaly guide. "Well, it's certainly no library."
"It is," Bartimeo said. "Or rather, it is a way in."
That it was not. It couldn't have been. I was standing in the mouth of a small Labyrinthine square, surveying the dead end before me. The square, completely empty save for a large stone chair positioned at its center, was solidly walled in on all sides by brick and hedge. The only way in or out was through the open passage behind me, back the way we had come. The chair, though admittedly impressive with its clawed feet and its carven stone serpents curling maliciously around its arms, legs, and backrest, hosted only Bartimeo who, perched comfortably on the crest of the chair, blinked those beautiful golden eyes at me expectantly, as if he hadn't just stated something completely bonkers.
"No..." I persisted, speaking slowly and clearly as if addressing one perhaps a few cups short of a tea set. "This is a dead end. A dead end with nothing in it but an empty chair." Perhaps the little devil didn't even know what a library was...
"It won't be empty once you sit in it," he said, gracefully inclining his reptilian head toward the seat below him.
"Sit?" I asked, unamused.
"Yes."
"In the chair?"
"In the chair. Yes."
"You want me to sit in the chair?"
Bartimeo sighed. "That is generally what chairs are designed for, yes. Please sit in the chair."
"I don't have time to waste on sitting in some stupid bloody chair!" I exclaimed, finally losing my patience. This was the last thing in the world that I needed! Why, God, did I have to suffer the misfortune of being lost in a Labyrinth with a delusional flying lizard?
The dragon snorted indignant blue sparks, visibly offended by my outburst. "You are wasting more time shouting at me than you would be if you'd just sit in the stupid bloody chair!"
I meant to persist in my arguing, but Bartimeo cut me off before I could utter another syllable. "You asked for my help, yes?" he snapped.
"...Yes," I grumbled reluctantly.
"Well, then." He readjusted his wings primly. "Believe that I fully intend to give it to you, but in order for me to do so, madam, you must first learn to trust me. Now, please...won't you have a seat?"
Slightly taken aback by his sincerity, I bit the inside of my cheek and scrutinized the dragon. Trust...just how much trust can you afford him, Lara? How much before it's considered naive? You can't really know if he means you harm or good... Alternatively, though, can you afford not to trust him? Before I could offer up any answers to these questions of mine, a certain angular face drifted in front of my mind's eye. Tick-tock, Lara...the Goblin King said, all clever eyes and self-satisfied smiles.
Without another word, I crossed the square and clambered up to seat myself in the chair of stone. It was frightfully uncomfortable and I felt like an awkward, ugly little child with my feet dangling so many inches above the ground...but I can't tell you how nice it felt to be off them for a moment. I twisted round to look up at the dragon perched behind me.
"Now what?"
"Now, you can just relax a moment," he said, seeming appeased by my decision to trust him. Arching his neck, the dragon blew gently into the face of one of the stone adders that curled its way up the style and crest of the chair. The serpent, much to my astonishment, blinked its beady eyes and yawned widely, giving its head a shake that sent ripples undulating rhythmically through its stone scales. Before I could make any exclamations of wonder over the strange sight, Bartimeo looked to me with sudden concern. "Oh...you don't sicken easily, do you?"
"Why would you ask me something like—waah!" A sudden turbulence snatched the end of my sentence forcibly from my throat and all the world went dark. My heart jumped and fluttered in panic as an almost electrical tingling shivered its way through my limbs. A nauseating sense of déjà vu to hit me like a freight train as the air around me beginning to shift and compress. This mad sensation, this horrible, wonderful, foreign yet familiar feeling that flooded my head with a static humming and made my ears ring was eerily similar to the one I had been acquainted with not so long before, when the Goblin King had miraculously delivered me from certain destruction. Only now I could put a name to such unsettling strangeness. Now I knew exactly what to call it... This could only be the touch of magic.
Before I could properly geek out at this discovery all went still. The magic withdrew. It had taken hold so suddenly and was over with so swiftly, I found myself wondering if anything had happened at all, though evidence of the occurrence lingered in a mind numbing dizziness that caused me to slump sideways in the chair, squeezing my eyes shut against the spinning world around me. As if that wasn't bad enough, a strange taste manifested itself in the back of my mouth...almost like peppermint. Did magic have a flavor as well? Why hadn't I noticed that last time? And why was my head still spinning? Magic hadn't seemed so violent before... Had a certain king somehow been shielding me from the worst of magic's effects? Had the pain in my broken wrist been claiming all of my attention?
Come on, Lara...my brutal conscience teased. Anything can be endured when you have a handsome king to cling to. I should have slapped myself for that, and I would have done if I wasn't still reeling from the magic.
"Ta-da," Bartimeo said sarcastically, "Welcome, Champion." At last, my dizziness abated enough for me to realize that, just as I had suspected, the chair, the dragon, and I had indeed been transported. We were now in a small chamber, seemingly underground again, though I was much less troubled by this than I was curious. The chamber more or less mirrored the dimensions of the square we had been in moments before, empty, save for my throne and the torches that burned pleasantly in sconces lining stone walls.
"Well? Is there anything you'd like to say to me?" the dragon continued, slinking down from the back of the chair to perch on its right armrest. "'I am grievously sorry I ever doubted you, Bartimeo? You were right, I was wrong?' Something along those lines?"
I rolled my eyes at the beast's theatrical pettiness, but smiled nonetheless. "I am grievously sorry I ever doubted you, Bartimeo. You were right, I was wrong."
The dragon bowed his head graciously. "Apology accepted. Now come...we must make haste if you wish to reach the castle in time." He took to the air and flew toward the shadowy doorway that faced us on the opposite side of the chamber.
"Where are we, anyway?" I asked, hopping down from my throne and following on.
"I already told you," Bartimeo sighed. "This is a way into the Library. A back door, if you will. You should count yourself lucky... You are now one of but three beings to know of its existence." The door, wrought of iron studs and elegant planks of deep red, glided open on silent hinges, seemingly at the command of the gentle, leathery flapping of Bartimeo's beating wings. The passage beyond held only darkness. More darkness. An involuntary sigh seeped from my lungs and I hesitated at the threshold, preparing once more to plunge into unknown depths.
"Is something troubling you?" Bartimeo asked, moving to hover at my shoulder and studying me thoughtfully.
I gave a tired smile. "I've been spending rather a lot of time in the dark lately, and I'm not fond of it."
The dragon nodded, almost knowingly. "Fear not, Champion... You'll find no darkness here. Come." Even as he glided into the passage a torch therein ignited, completely of its own accord. Another followed suit, and then another. After a moment, I realized that the passage was lined with them, that they flared up golden and reassuring as the dragon approached, and dimmed gently away as he moved on. An admittedly timid investigation on my part revealed that they did exactly the same thing for me and my apprehensions subsided.
"I wish you wouldn't call me that..." I said after a moment of contemplative silence, my voice mingling with the soft echoes of my footsteps and his wingbeats.
"What?" the dragon asked. "Champion? Why shouldn't I address you by your title?"
Title? I almost laughed at the term. "Because I haven't earned it! How can I claim a title when I haven't accomplished anything?" How, with such a high likelihood of my failure?
Bartimeo eyed me over his shoulder. "Believe it or not, you have earned it. By accepting, or rather in your case, claiming the Challenge of the Labyrinth, you forged a sacred contract with the Goblin King and agreed to take part in a practice almost as ancient as civilization itself. As such, you are a rare and honored individual and until the time of either your defeat or of your succession by some future Runner, the title of Champion is yours."
Sacred contract? Rare and honored individual? Look at you, Lara... In way over your stupid head again. Oblivious as always.
"That being said," the dragon continued. "I will call you by your given name if you would prefer it, Miss Tyler."
"Just Lara will do…thank you…." I trailed off as we rounded another corner and I found myself in another world.
"Here we are," the dragon said, moving to hover near my shoulder. "The Library."
The Library. Somehow, barely with my noticing, we had passed into the Library. And oh, how to describe such a room? It was the bookworm's nirvana, the bibliophile's ultimate fix. Rising before me, sprawling, magnificent, and beautifully illuminated by floating glass orbs alight within by gently flickering golden flames, was a forest...no, a labyrinth of books. Just from where I stood I could count dozens of towering shelves, arranged in a strange yet intuitive imitation of symmetry. Shelves of wood, shelves of stone, each looking not so much hewn from nature as perhaps grown from it, rising seamlessly from an earthen floor like the stretching arms of a living thing. Each shelf was lined top to bottom with row upon row of books and scrolls. I gazed upon spines of every shape, size, color, and material. I squinted to make out titles stamped in gold and silver, many of which printed in scripts and languages that I could not understand. Half in a daze, I drifted forward, turning slowly to take in my surroundings. Hardly an inch of the room was bare. In addition to the bookshelves, the walls themselves hosted row upon row of literary treasure and much of the floor space was taken up by delicate reading tables piled high with books and scrolls, armchairs laden with similar burdens, and, in places, stacks of books with no resting place but the floor itself. Tilting my head back to try and discern the height of the room, I could see that the ceiling so far above was composed of gracefully intertwining tree roots that formed a latticed roof as beautiful to me as that of any cathedral. Gilded rays of light filtered their natural magic down through the gaps between those tree roots, kaleidoscopic, mysterious, and enchanting. The sight was at once crude and elegant, inviting and intimidating...much like the Labyrinth itself.
"What about the damp?" I murmured, only half aware that the question left my lips. "Doesn't it damage the books?"
"Oh, no, no, of course not," Bartimeo said, landing on the back of an arm chair to my left. "The Library is unaffected by the elements. Mist cannot form here. Frost cannot spread. Neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor hail can fall here. Only leaves... I have a devil of a time cleaning up after the trees. But then, no one has ever accused a tree of caring a fig for anybody but themselves." He scowled up at the living ceiling. "They think it great fun to torment me..."
"That's a tree for you, I suppose," I grumbled, remembering my own recent encounter with an ill tempered plant.
"Indeed," the dragon agreed.
I turned on the spot once more to take in all the beauty surrounding me. "It's...it's so different from what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"I don't know... Cold, somber rows of philosophies or histories, maybe some cool magic books but this-"
Bartimeo readjusted his wings nervously. "If it's philosophy, history, or magic you want, I assure you it's all here! My—my skills at organization may have lapsed a bit of late, I admit, but-"
"Bartimeo, this is pure Heaven. I love it."
"You— You do?" He tilted his head curiously. "I wouldn't have taken you for a bibliophile..."
I chuckled at that. "Believe it or not, I've been accused more than once of spending too much time with my nose in a book."
Bartimeo blinked in surprise. "Really? Well, then. You can find a copy of almost every single tome of Underground origin here, along with a great many Aboveground creations, namely your classics, philosophies, mythologies, histories, etc. Anything of note, you will find here."
"Have you read them all?"
"Yes. Or very nearly."
I reached out and plucked a smallish tome from its place on one of the crowded reading tables, bound in red linen with a noble looking cat wearing a pair of boots stamped in gold beneath its title. "Il Gatto con gli Stivali..." I read aloud. "You can understand Italian?"
"Sí, il mio Italiano e molto buono. Parlo fluentemente molte lingue. I can speak three hundred seventy-eight languages. Of origins both Aboveground and Under it."
I whistled, thoroughly impressed. "Alright, showoff..." Returning to the book in my hand, I leafed carefully through its pages before closing it once more and looking around at the splendor. "I wish I had more time."
"As do I…." Bartimeo said. The dragon was watching me, eyeing me with something like a sad fondness behind his golden gaze. "There's so much I'd like to share with you. I believe this to be one of the most important places in our universe. It's criminal that I am the only one to truly appreciate it... There used to be others who...well. Now there's only me. Visitors come by here so very rarely... All this knowledge gone to waste... It's criminal."
"Is there... Could there be a chance... If I win, could there be a chance of my returning?" It was a question that was dangerously close to my heart. I knew better than to ask it, but at the same time, I was desperate to know. A bitter sadness threatened to engulf me at the thought of leaving all this unexplored.
Bartimeo just studied me in silence a moment before shifting his gaze away. "Come, Champion... You've a challenge to complete."
He took flight and began to lead the way again, I had no choice but to swallow my disappointment and follow him. Just be grateful that you're here at all, Lara. Savor every moment. You've no idea what awaits you at the end of it... And so I pushed aside all dark thoughts, and bent my attention upon the task at hand.
The dragon moved swiftly. Were I to lag behind at all I would have easily lost him in that forest of knowledge. It was amazing, I mused, just how much this library mirrored the Labyrinth itself. All those twists, turns, and dead ends. "You could get lost in here..." I said. "How the devil do you find your way through?"
Bartimeo chuckled. "Lara, I've lived here for centuries. Don't you think I—"
"Aha! Finally! Halloooo? Bartimeo?! Perhaps you can stop talking nonsense for a minute and lend a hand to the downtrodden?!"
I'm not sure which of us was more startled. Bartimeo, staggering on his wings before composing himself, gave a rasping growl while I jumped, swore, and reached habitually for the sword that was no longer there. My dragon guide glanced around with fierce golden eyes, calling out to the invisible intruder. "What the devil are you doing here?!"
"Oh, you know," the voice answered sarcastically. "Just chilling. Enjoying the terrible cold of your nasty floor, here. I don't suppose you own a broom!"
Bartimeo dove through the air in the direction of the voice and disappeared immediately in that forest of books and scrolls.
"What is it?" I called, staring after the dragon and wondering if I shouldn't try to find a weapon.
"No time for chitchat!" screeched the voice. "He's fallen down and he can't get up!"
"Saints preserve us," I heard Bartimeo say. "Lara, here. Quickly, please, could you lend some assistance?"
Without hesitation, I hurried toward his voice, dodging and weaving my way through the maze as quickly as I could. When I found the dragon, he was perched on the edge of a reading table and staring down at a great pile of dusty old rags on the floor. But wait...not rags. Robes. It was a pile of decrepit old robes encasing the body of a man. Truly, he must have been a terrifically old man. The twisted shapes of limbs gnarled by age angled awkwardly away from his center mass, and the long wizened strands of hair that snaked out from beneath the bizarre, pointed hat upon his immobile head were a dingy white. He was lying face down with a number of books scattered about near his side...and he was unnaturally still.
"Oh, no..." I murmured, afraid that we might be too late.
"What's this? Another one, eh? It's been a while. Give us a lift, will you, Missy?"
I nearly jumped out of my skin. The voice came not from the old man, but from his hat. Long and pointed it was, almost like a wizard's hat, except this one was fashioned in the shape of a bird's head, rather similar to a crane. The bird arched its neck painfully around to scowl at me, blinking beady little eyes of yellow impatiently above a large brown beak. Mother of God, what a strange sight...and yet, still not the strangest thing I'd seen thus far. I wondered if anything would ever surprise me again when I got home...if I got home.
The feathered tuft on the bird...er...hat...thing's head quivered as it addressed me, its accent shrill and irritating. "Please! Take your time. We've only been lying here for an agonizing two hours! Not like I'm dying of boredom or anything."
"Sorry," I said, moving to kneel beside the ancient figure, not entirely sure of what to do. I shot Bartimeo a nervous glance. "He's not dead, is he?"
The old man gave a tremendous snore.
"Does that answer your question?" the hat asked. "Turn him over."
I reached out gingerly and slipped my hands beneath a moth eaten shoulder. The old man was quite short, shorter even than me, but he must have weighed a fair bit because it took an effort on my part to roll him onto his back. His face, once turned skyward, proved to be every bit as wizened as the rest of him. Deep wrinkles creased his leathery skin and a long white mustache sprouted from beneath a massive nose. His eyes, still and peaceful beneath a wild tangle of brows, remained closed. The man snored again.
I gave the hat a quizzical glance. "What happened to him?"
"Are you familiar with narcolepsy?" Bartimeo said.
"Isn't that the condition where a person falls asleep at random?"
The hat nodded. "That happened. Mid-step. Now give him a shake. Let's get this show on the road."
I turned my attention back to the old man, dimly aware that my time was still ticking. But never mind... This was important too. "Sir?" I said shaking the old man's shoulder gently. "Wake up, sir..."
The old man grunted, snorted, blinked his bleary eyes. "Eh? What...what's this, then?"
"Yoo-hoo," the hat called. "Ground Control to Grumpy Old Man! Nap time's over. Get up!"
I had to resist the urge to shush him for his rudeness, instead training my focus on the old man as he groaned loudly and attempted to sit up. He made no complaint as I took his arm and guided him carefully, laboriously to his feet. If my reverence surprises you, please note that I am not always a rude little firebrand. I proudly retain the ability to recognize moments or persons of great importance, and this old man was one of these. There was just something to him…an unspoken and ancient wisdom that simply commanded respect. I wondered, as I helped him to a large red armchair near the reading table, at what kind of thoughts must loop through so ancient a head. He must have the knowledge of worlds behind his eyes.
"There now," I said, smiling as the man settled back into his seat.
He yawned and smiled gently. "Thank you, my dear. I...Oh." His eyes locked suddenly on my face and he leaned forward, squinting hard as if scrutinizing the very contents of my mind. I wanted to squirm under so strong a gaze, but I forced myself to remain still, wondering at just what this old man was seeing. "Thursday's Child, eh? Dear, oh dear."
"Is she?" Bartimeo asked, squinting at me with sudden interest.
"Oh boy... Here we go!" grumbled the hat.
"Quiet!" the old man barked, never breaking his gaze.
"Thursday's Child?" I asked. "What does that mean?"
"Surely you've heard it before?" the old man said. "Bartimeo, could you..?"
"Monday's child is fair of face," Bartimeo recited. "Tuesday's child is full of grace—"
"Wednesday's child is full of woe," I joined him. "Thursday's child has far to go. I've heard it, but I can't be sure I was born on a—"
"When were you born?" the dragon interrupted.
"November 27th, 1997." It's kind of a funny story, actually, because my brother was born on the 26th. While only six minutes separate us in age, those six minutes saw fit to divide themselves almost equally on either side of midnight, the result granting us both a special day of individual recognition. As you might imagine, neither my brother nor myself has ever expressed disappointment over these peculiar circumstances…or the two separate days of celebration annually promised.
"You are a Thursday's Child," Bartimeo said. "According to your Aboveground calendars, November the 27th in the year 1997 Anno Domini fell upon a Thursday."
"How the heck do you know that?" I asked.
"I make it my business to know things."
That would make Will a Wednesday's Child...but I've never known anyone less full of woe. Rather than contest whatever arcane knowledge these Labyrinthine beings might see in the old nursery rhyme, however, I decided to just go along with it.
"Okay. So I'm a Thursday's Child." A small smile tugged at my lips, then, and before I could stop myself, I found myself singing. "Throw me tomorrow..."
"Eh? What's that, my dear?" The old man blinked in confusion.
"Ignore it," Bartimeo said. "She's a bit mad."
"Hey!" I snapped, but the dragon just arched a scaly eyebrow.
The old man nodded dismissively, as if he had already assumed the fact. "You have far to go, young lady... Does this trouble you?"
I nodded. It must have been obvious that I was somewhat troubled. Of course, in my defense, nothing was behaving as it should lately...
"I thought you looked kinda grouchy," chimed the hat. "You should smile more, baby!"
Needless to say, that triggered my already sensitive temper. Both the old man and Bartimeo seemed about to admonish the impertinent hat, but I beat them to it, rounding on the little weirdo with a harshness that was, admittedly, a bit over the top for the situation.
"Listen, Hat," I snarled. "It just so happens that I'm having a bit of a rough day. My sister's children have been stolen. I almost lost a sword fight. I got dropped in a hole. Twice. I broke my wrist. Got my butt kicked by a plant. I've lost my sword. I've lost my goblin. I've lost not one, not two, but THREE of my precious hours. I'm tired, I'm beat up, and apparently I'm a Thursday's Child. I've still got 'far to go.' So forgive me if I'm not the face of levity at the moment!"
The hat just blinked at me as a rough and rolling chuckle rose from the old man's chest, such a dry sound that I half expected to see a cloud of dust expelled from between his lips. "I admire your fire, my dear! Now...some advice, to repay you for your kind assistance."
I could feel my anger cooling almost as quickly as it had risen. "Oh, you needn't repay anything! I'm just glad I was in the right place at the right time. Besides, I really should get going-"
"Nonsense! Nonsense, this shan't take long."
"Lara," Bartimeo said. "If he's offering you advice, you really ought to take it... Whatever he says could be of paramount value to you."
I didn't argue. Bartimeo's solemnity was all I needed to keep my mouth shut.
The old—or rather, The Wise Man, as perhaps I ought to refer to him, offered an encouraging smile, his eyes all but disappearing in a sea of wrinkles. "Tell me...what do you need most in this world?"
I shifted awkwardly, suddenly at a perfect loss as to how to continue. "I...well, I need to get through the Labyrinth. As quickly as possible. I need to defeat the Challenge." And I'm wasting far too much time here...
"Well, doesn't this sound familiar?!" chirped the hat. "It's been rather a long time though, eh?"
"Silence, wretched thing, silence!"
The hat grumbled.
"Now. My dear...if you mean to be Champion you need look no further for the key to your success than this very room."
"I don't?"
"No indeed. Young Bartimeo will be happy to guide you, I'm sure."
The dragon reacted sharply, yellow sparks flashing between his teeth as he gaped at the Wise Man. "But, sir! I can't assist her, that would be cheating. It's not my place. Besides I-"
"Oh, poppycock! The last champion had plenty of assistance and no one's bothered to accuse her of cheating. You'll do a fine job, I am certain."
"But I-"
"Come now, Bartimeo, an adventure will do you good! You spend far too much time in here, shut up with all these old books. Do it as a favor for an old man, eh? Besides, you wouldn't dare miss an opportunity such as this..."
"If this is because she's a Thursday's Child..." Bartimeo said, hushed and somewhat stiffly.
"If my word is not enough for you, then perhaps the Storyteller's would be. He has expressed particular interest in this tale... The girl needs you, Bartimeo. She has no hope without your help."
Man and beast regarded each other in silence a moment, a silence in which much passed between them, though I could not say exactly what. I was very nearly prepared to insist that I did not need any further assistance when Bartimeo surprised me to no end by saying, "I'll do it."
"Excellent! Excellent!" the Wise Man exclaimed, cheerfully. "There you have it, my dear. With Bartimeo to guide you, your mission will be a great success. Remember, failure is an illusion and belief begins with B. Nothing is what it seems, so take nothing for granted... And finally... Listen..." He yawned massively.
"I'm listening," I said.
"Listen...listen to..." the Wise Man's head bowed slowly, his chin sinking to rest on his chest.
"Is he having a stroke?" I asked.
"Nah," said the hat. "Just out of gas."
"Ah..."
The old fellow snored and his hat let out a bored sigh. "How anticlimactic."
"Never mind," I said. "I'd better get a move on... Bartimeo, would you be so kind as to show me through?" Before we could turn to take our leave, however, the Wise Man spoke again, murmuring blearily from the depths of some dream or other.
"Listen to the Labyrinth... She wants you to succeed."
That...for some reason those words sent chills up my spine. "What?" I asked. "What did you say?"
But the Wise Man spoke no more. A rolling snore rose from his chest.
"And there you have it!" chirped the hat. "You're pretty lucky, you know. The last one only got some twaddle about going forward to go back...or back to go forward. Some crap like that."
Ignoring the weird bird, I turned to Bartimeo, finding him staring at me intently.
"What was that he said about the Labyrinth? What did he mean by that?" I asked.
The dragon only studied my face a moment more before saying, "Come, Lara. We should be away."
I frowned, but nodded, turning to take one last look at the Wise Man. I wanted to remember him, every detail. Memory, I feared, would one day be my only link to this dreamlike world. "Thank him for me when he wakes, won't you?" I asked the hat.
"Yeah, yeah, you go. Have fun why don't you?! It must be so very nice to move around on your own two feet with no old man pinning you down..." He was still muttering bitterly as we left.
The dragon and I travelled through the Library in silence. Before long, he lead me to an intricate spiral staircase that wound its way skyward as high as I could see. I stopped the dragon before we began our ascent.
"You know, Bartimeo... I won't force you to go with me if you'd rather not. The Wise Man needn't know if you decide to stay."
"No, Lara. I'm coming with you."
"Why this change of heart?"
The dragon, perched on the intricately carven rail of the staircase, didn't seem to know how to answer.
"Was it something the Wise Man said? About the Labyrinth? Or was it the Thursday's Child thing? And who is the Storyteller?"
After a pause during which he seemed to be contemplating conundrums far beyond my simple imagining, he said, "There's so much history here, Lara...so much that you don't understand. It would take a lifetime to tell it all, and another lifetime for any of it to make sense to you. For now, just know this: I, Bartimeo the Second, swear upon my honor and my lineage that I will do all that is in my power to help you to defeat this Challenge with time to spare."
I frowned at this sudden formality, feeling very awkward and more than a little troubled by all that had just taken place. This story was getting stranger by the minute, and there seemed to be no end to its twists and turns...much like the Labyrinth itself. Unable to put my unease to words, however, I thanked the dragon with all the sincerity I could manage and proceeded to follow him up the staircase.
Author's Note: Good day, my dear Readers. I hope that you have enjoyed this latest installment of my story. Some may find it dull, I know...but, never mind. The story lead me here, and I had little choice but to follow. I make no excuses. Read it. Don't read it. Like it. Or don't. The choice is ever yours! Questions or comments are always most welcome and appreciated, though I promise I shan't pester you for words.
If you spotted the snippets of song, know that they reference Thursday's Child and Space Oddity, both by our beloved David Bowie. Thursday's Child is a great favorite of mine, and served as partial inspiration for this chapter. I adore it beyond words.
Just a reminder: while the girl, the dragon, and the unnumbered hardships (see what I did there?) I will force them to endure belong to me, the Labyrinth and all its original inhabitants have always and will always be the property of the wonderful Jim Henson.
Merry Christmas, all! God bless you.
