CHAPTER THREE
From his position high in the castle, Jareth watched her attempting to negotiate the Labyrinth. After a few minutes of contemplation beneath the dead tree at the top of the hillside, the wretched mortal made her way down, her footprints marking the unbroken amber surface. While the architecture easily caught her eye, the acid liquid in the fountain, held no interest for her. Her true goal lay before her. Improvements made within the labyrinth meant it was no longer necessary to hide the doors, in fact it was better to have them out in the open. Prying them back, she had warily slid inside. Currently the girl was listening attentively to the door guards as they presented their riddles to her.
"One door leads to certain death," said the blue guard of the right door.
The other added, "and one leads to almost certain death."
"Dun dun dah!" they sang in unison.
"What's the difference?"
"Which difference?" a second head popped out from behind the shield of the red guard.
"The difference between certain death and almost certain death." she replied.
"Oh, that's simple," the blue guard chuckled.
A second head popped out from beneath his shield as well. "Certain death happens immediately. Where as almost certain death implies there's still a chance for you to survive for a little longer anyway."
"Well which of you is which," she asked impatiently. Most of them forgot all about the child at this point and ran back the way they thought they'd come only to meet with a dead end or some unsavory creature.
Together they pointed to the guards above the shields, meekly admitting, "We can't tell you."
"Well that hardly seems fair."
"It's not," the first guard continued. "But we can tell you this. One of us always tells the truth and one of us always lies."
"Well which is which?" she asked again a bit more sternly.
The left guard laughed again. "Can't tell you that either."
Jareth watched on to see how she would next respond. "Well then, seeing as how death seems a certainty at any rate," she decided, unbelieving made evident by her tones, "I may as well just rely on luck. If it's all the same to you," she told the guard on the right, "I'd like to choose this door."
"By all means," he sidestepped and through she went, announcing loudly on the other side hat she had done it. Safe and sound.
That was when the floor separated and she dropped into the shaft of hands. There were some stunned cries which split through the labyrinth as she shrieked, but finally she came to rest with a dozen pairs of hands suspending her. "Do you mind!" she struggled.
"No, do you?" a face puppet near her knee inquired.
"Yes, actually!" Releasing their grip, the hands let her fall another several feet before catching her up in their grasp once more. "What are you doing?"
Another face puppet, this one just to her left, replied, "We're helping. We're helping hands."
"Helping? Someone's got their palm square on my backside. Exactly what were you helping yourselves to?" Her response must have amused the lot because the shaft filled with uproarious commotion.
Another face puppet, this one with a particularly broad nose, asked in a deep boom which halted the shenanigans of the other faces, "Which way would you like to go?"
She'd fallen quite a distance, probably closer to the bottom than the top now and time being short as it was, she closed her eyes and guessed, "Down, I suppose."
"SHE CHOSE DOWN! SHE CHOSE DOWN? SHE CHOSE DOWN!"
The words echoed all around her, starting and ending in a scattered pattern like three part harmony. "Was that wrong?" she shouted.
"Too late now," she heard one of the faces reply.
"Indeed," Jareth agreed. It seemed much further than she'd anticipated and the king waited patiently until the tips of several sharp spikes tore through various sections of her flailing form. Her cry was low, short and composed only of her final breath. "Such a pity." The blood that fled from her wounds was an amorous red, plentiful in supply. Slipping the crystal back into his pocket, the Goblin King came down from the window ledge, poured himself a tumbler of brandy and settled into one of the wing back chairs in his master suite. "That's one more goblin mouth to feed."
What surrounded him was nothing like his former castle. On occasion, Jareth missed the haphazard lopsided pile of stones the mortal girl had brought crumbling down around him. Finishing his drink, he pitched the glass into a large fireplace, smirking as the flames temporarily grew, fed by the residual alcohol still clinging to the glass. His head fell back, eyes closed, trying to recall what it had been like then.
Toby remained unharmed, albeit trapped in his room of deceptive angles and staircases to nowhere, but still, the king could have done far worse to the babe, far worse. Certainly the child didn't seem nearly as troubled by being Underground, as did the thoughtless, thankless teen who'd wished him away. In fact, Toby had rather been enjoying himself while in his care, Jareth thought. His sibling on the other hand, was a different story in the altogether. She wasn't enjoying the labyrinth at all, at least not as Jareth had hoped.
Beneath his breath he cursed himself for allowing it to happen, opening himself to her, baring his heart when he should have bared his teeth. What it was about the girl making him so susceptible to her he couldn't have guessed. She wasn't extraordinary in a physical sense. Raven hair, green eyes, porcelain skin, evident her beauty would grow as did the shell it adorned, but this was true with most mortal woman. It was her spirit that separated her from the others who ran the labyrinth. While they whined at him, cried until their eyes were swollen and red, all sorts of useless ploys, she stood strong to him, an even match, a worthy opponent. Where others turned and hid beneath the imaginary safety of a well made cotton sheet, she stepped out of her world only to dominate his.
Each obstacle he presented her, she made short work of, even when her own arrogance got the better of her, she overcame it. The mortal world called it a hindrance, and his maze was designed to challenge arrogance in anyone but it's king, to Jareth the trait made her all that much more appealing. Even when he faced her on his own, despite how charming he knew he could be, she managed to remain focused on her goal, getting back the child she'd asked him to take in the first place. She bested him and with relative ease at that.
He came to her in white then, a color of surrender, admitting she had won the battle. She could have the child back, but that wasn't the reward anymore. No the stakes had grown. It was her he desired now, more than any new goblin, more than every changeling he'd created since his coronation. Just fear me, love me, do as I say. That was all he asked of her. Was that so much? After all, look at what he'd offered her in return. Her dreams, his servitude, she could have had it all with one simple word, yes. Rather it was Sarah Williams, of all the young, impressionable girls who would have gladly slunk to their knees at even half such an offer, who stood toe to toe with him at his most vulnerable and remained unwavering. Refused her dreams, unaffected by the look of desperation his eyes conveyed so strongly all while searching her mind for the phrase she would mutter, the one phrase that would force him to set her free. "You have no power over me."
For some time, Jareth had kept watch over her. After the initial pain subsided, the initial shock faded. Forgiveness is a funny thing. It seemed when you fought your hardest to keep it banished from your heart, it slid in quite easily. With time, his hatred turned to admiration. His rage to make the labyrinth a place of death and destruction became little more than knee jerk reaction to love's rejection. By her window, he sat, listening intently to conversations which transpired over that damned Scrabble board. Jareth knew he remained on her mind, if not in her heart. He'd heard her, his name coming from her lips so very much like music, he often forgot to listen for the words which followed.
Eventually there came a time when upon arriving at her window his creatures were gone. No wooden tiles face down on the hunter green folding card table, instead, mortal girls clamoring about in their under things and giggling at this and that or sobbing at some rented video. Jareth, his world, his creatures, all forgotten. Nothing more than a dream, a snowy white owl she'd seen at the window, probably not even a majestic bird of prey, more likely a trick of lights. Over the years her vision of him had boiled down to just that. A trick of the lights played on a fantasy stricken child late in the evening. "To hell with her," the king muttered, now near sleep. "To hell with her and the rest of the mortals."
Struggling, he shoved himself out of the chair and made his way to the bed. All formality evaded him, his weariness the king's only concern. The knee-high leather boots he'd had on all day remained on. The duvet remained pressed beneath the many decorative pillows. His lithe and lengthy form stretched atop the satin bedding. If it had been his castle from twenty years ago, he'd have slept where he lie, but things were different now, there were expectations for him.
Gone were the days of lounging himself in the throne and watching the goblins do as they would. Letting the labyrinth take care of itself. Waiting for the occasional summoning. Suddenly, it had become all doublets and waistcoats, wait staff and chefs, menus and wine with dinner. It wasn't that he meant to complain, on the contrary. It was a welcome change at the start, even made him feel a bit better, but eventually he missed the beauty of being alone. The Goblin King had made himself quite clear when he commanded in the midst of dinner, no one or thing should be anywhere near him when he returned from the above world. At first he didn't even think he'd watch the girl, after all, the last five people to summon him, didn't even bother crossing over into his world. Odds were this one wouldn't either. Intrigued when he felt her pierce the veil between the worlds, Jareth couldn't resist having a look.
His castle wasn't the only thing to undergo an overhaul. Everything about his kingdom had changed, from his chambers to the furthest walls of the Labyrinth. What he had before may not have been shining, spectacular, full of gems and riches, but it was his. Suited to him, with his odd, semicircular throne and the stone molded ribbons affixed to the walls so the rabble rousing goblins would have a place to join him. Sure, there was a bit of hay on the floors and a few stray chickens here or there. No one complained.
The Goblin City may not have been luxurious, but it was more advanced than most. The concept of a working class having their own homes was not one which caught on. Welcoming them into the castle was even less heard of. Surely he'd been the first to give them free access to the ale barrels. Even Jareth would admit that became a decision he had begun to regret. But he'd always tried to run a progressive, albeit laid back ship, but if he was to command any real respect, if he were to stop the mortals from overtaking their world, that had to change as well.
Once she'd left, before he'd had a chance to be glad she was gone, the king had given his goblins a generous amount of time in which to repair the castle and improve the labyrinth. They did their best, but while they were good masons, they lacked imagination and creativity enough to have done little more than brick together one large room, thatch a ceiling onto it and call it a castle. It was far from a castle. It was barely inhabitable to anyone more than four foot tall. And the labyrinth, Jareth had requested deadly. They'd given him dangerous at best. More so than ever before anyway, but fate had a surprise in store for him.
It sounded cliche to say it began on a dark and stormy night, but that doesn't escape the fact that was precisely how it had begun. Thunder crashed against the curtain of night, chattering rain nearly drowning out the sound of his gentle rapping against the castle door. Though, when the king attempted to recall the exact date, his usually remarkable memory failed him consistently, even so, he remembered everything about the day.
Lounging in his throne, goblins at his feet, Jareth felt particularly fed up with the speed at which his improvements were being made, or, as it were, the lack of speed. His only form of amusement derived from swatting at a passing goblin. Before long he'd discovered the crop gave him another eighteen inches of reach. Boredom seemed to have buried his rage. No other morals had called on him, not for months and things were beginning to feel like they had before she'd come. That should have been his first clue.
"Go and answer it," he told one of the creatures round his feet when the monotonous connection between wood and knuckle would not cease. It took four of them, just to answer the door. Jareth dropped his head into his hands, realizing now why in all this time they'd managed to make only one room.
"Your majesty," one cried as they came running back before the king and bowing. The others who'd gone to assist him, came running in and slammed into his backside, knocking the lot to the ground.
Swishing his crop, the Goblin King barked, "Who is it?"
The biggest and most sluggish of the group, a lumbering goblin with a deep, slow voice replied, "We don't know."
"Useless," the king muttered walking over them to answer his own door. "Whatever it is you're looking for, I haven't got any and I don't want any more." The door swung open when his boot smashed against it.
At his feet was a bloodied, beaten man, barely kneeling, hardly able to speak. "Please," the only word he was able to grunt forth. Elegantly dressed, his coat a fine red, pray, not stained that way, Jareth mistook him for a soldier from the raids. His ebony hair was stained with blood, matting it to his cheeks and forehead, obscuring his features for the most part. A sharp whistle and the king's goblins helped the man inside.
"Take him to a bed," at the freedom afforded by the command, half the creatures supporting the man's weight hastened left, the others hastened right, attempting to split him in two. "Stop!" Jareth shouted. "Take him to my bed, lie him down gently and call for the healer," he detailed for the goblins' sake.
It took the passing of several days and nights under the capable and constant care of the healer for improvement to show, but on the fifth morning, When the king awoke, still slung in his throne, he found their guest sitting upright in his bed, color returned to his cheeks, finally. "I see you've improved," Jareth said as he made his way to the sleeping area.
"Quite, I should say," the patient responded. "Is it you I have to thank for this hospitality?"
Cleaned up, Jareth could better see the barely brown, nearly amber eyes which sometimes hid behind the loose, lengthy curls of coal black hair, full and ruffled which Jareth could respect. His eyes blazed with a band of gold, previously obscured by the dried blood. It made him look very serious and stern, but refuted the Goblin King's analysis of his enrollment in the armies. "No thanks required. One does what one can for his fellow kind."
"Still with so little of your own," the guest motioned about the large but shabby dwelling, "it was most generous of you to see to my recuperation."
"So little? Surely you know who I am?" His delicate eyes grew hard, narrowing on him. "Sir I am Jareth, King of the Goblins and you are recuperating in the very heart of the Underground. I must insist you show a better respect."
"I too am a king," he laughed, "well, was a king. Arven, King of the Mines, your grace, at your service." From his seated position he dipped his head in lieu of a proper bow, humbled before the king.
"King of the Mines you say. Would those be the ore mines east in Welderton, the gem mines west in Kindredare or the quarry south in Mestering."
"You fail to inquire about the northern mines, sire."
"So I do. Suffice it to say, I well know the king of the northern mines, so then which is it?" Surely he knew the king of the northern mines, for they were the diamond mines, once run by a beautiful queen, a fair skinned, fair haired, magnificent, arrogant queen, who he himself had chased a few times through the labyrinth when they were children. Queen Annacuin, his sister. She was a cry older than he, but they got on well enough, for siblings. When she passed, her son Eldamonde took the throne. But even ruined, Jareth was a wiser sort than to blurt forth his family's business
"The gem mines then. They were once mine, until the mortals found what riches lie in our Underground," Arven pronounced.
"Mortals?" Jareth questioned. "The mines make no dealings with the mortals."
"Not as ordinary course," Arven explained, "But as it were we came to find that they take great value in all those precious and semi-precious stones my diggers turn up. We thought, if we were able to use what is otherwise a trifle to our people to trade for their overlooking of our kind then perhaps our lands would be more peaceful than they have been of late."
"You meant to buy your way out of the raids."
"In short," the former king admitted, "although our intentions were better than that assessment makes them sound."
"What happened?"
"The mortals grew wise and curious and, as is often the case with mortals, greedy. Before long they crossed the veil, bought off the diggers, emptied the mines, slaughtered anything that got in their way. Those who formed allegiance to them turned against me. They'd been convinced that I," here he gestured to his chest, a wash of pain staining his pale face, "had enslaved them. That justice would come in treating me the way I treated them."
"So it was your diggers who bloodied you?"
"They managed a good lashing, your highness, but the credit for most of my injuries belongs to your labyrinth."
"You managed the labyrinth?" Jareth crossed his arms over his chest.
"Let's be honest, your maze isn't what it once was."
"Perhaps, but the goblins have been making upgrades and..."
"And," he concluded without the king's consent. "It's still not much of a challenge to an immortal. When my kingdom was in ruin. I fled, hoping they wouldn't be brazen enough to follow me into the labyrinth. Which, bless the spirits, they were not. For a time I hid safely, until your creatures began to sense me and that would account for most of my injuries. Mercifully I had just enough magic left to make it to your doorstep. More mercifully, you took me in. Now I am like you, a king without a kingdom."
"I wouldn't lump us into the same category so quickly," Jareth snapped. "The goblins and I have not yet begun rebuilding the labyrinth. When we do I shall have a kingdom, one exponentially more fine than I had."
"Beg pardon, your majesty. I didn't mean to imply..."
"Silence."
"While I'm pointing out all of your fallacies, let me inform you, Arven, these diggers of yours. They were not quite so modest as you might have expected. In fact they did make their way into the labyrinth, a far ways in, actually and in their wake, they left a fair amount of devastation.. It surprises me you didn't encounter them in your journey."
"As it surprises me, your majesty. Let me assure you I meant only to facilitate my own escape and humbly beg your forgiveness for any harm caused to you or your kingdom. If, your majesty would allow it, I would gladly stay in your command until the kingdom is rebuilt to your precise specifications."
Jareth extended his gloved hand. Arven seemed willing enough to help, after all, and it was his duty to make right. Though the Goblin King planned on having ultimate authority for everything that was done.
It seemed by the next morning the battered ex-king had been returned to his full strength. Over breakfast they discussed what Jareth wanted, Arven joining on his desire to make the labyrinth a deadly lair. Infusing it with his own hatred for mortals, he managed to not only contribute heavily to the modifications, but to fuel Jareth's anger again, until the idea of causing as much pain and loss in the above world seemed nothing more to him than justice for the lives the mortals had taken without thought or care. Jareth's own blood with which he sealed the pact he'd made after the girl's departure tasted as fresh to him now as it had then. He too was revived by Arven's rest.
Beginning with the castle, or the pile of rubble which had once been the castle to be more accurate, etchings and designs for floor upon floor, spires and dungeons. Pleased with them all, Jareth gave the nod, issuing the goblins to build as Arven told them. They built as fast as they could, but rarely fast enough to please Arven. Jareth watched on as his new confidant milled about, barking orders, snatching and tossing anything that wasn't swinging a hammer or smoothing a trough. It was magnificent. No wonder he'd been king.
When he'd finished with his near constant supervision of the goblin laborers, it pained Jareth to admit how efficient the little buggers had become. They'd managed a sturdy stone construction of sixteen rooms, a proper kitchen, a formal dining room, a less formal dining room, a throne room, a ballroom, a full floor dungeon with all sorts of devices he was sure would come in handy if any mortal ever solved his labyrinth again. If! There was a nursery for the collected children, an office for the king and one for Arven, a library, a sitting room, three bedrooms and two baths. Not to mention an impressive foyer that boasted the grand staircase and several fireplaces for keeping the whole place quite cozy regardless of the weather.
Jareth was most impressed, not only with the construction, but with the comfort and ease Arven showed in acknowledging it all as Jareth's. For such an aggressive personality he seemed content to be second in command, but then the king had saved his life and a debt like that could never be repaid in any amount of tangible wealth.
The goblin city took longer to rebuild, mostly because there was more to knock down and Arven insisted on starting with a clean canvas if he was to create something equally significant to the castle. Months gave way to years, but when he was through, there were proper houses, built to their scale. Neat cobblestone road lining the borders and making transportation in and around the city a far cry more convenient than it had ever been before. From his spire top bed chamber, Jareth could see it all. Pleased by what his second had done, he rested well.
Word of the improvements to Jareth's kingdom spread quickly and he received requests in droves to be entertained at the castle. None of which would be answered until the final modifications had been made, that is none but one and she never required his permission to drop in. As the sun cast a crimson coat over the night horizon, Jareth sat in the window of his study manipulating a few crystals effortlessly between his hands. A shrieking caw cutting his concentration, the crystals toppled to the floor, clinking and rolling away. Before him on the ledge, a handsome grey falcon. "Well, well, well," he said, straddling the ledge and using his hands to push himself back against the wall, "always a pleasure to have you." The bird cawed a few more times, Jareth chuckled. "Nonsense," he spoke as if he understood the confounded thing. "I've been arrogant since far before that."
The falcon pierced his hand with its beak. "Ow!" he yelped. "Now you just understand this. What ever softness I showed was only temporary and it was not a good thing." More cawing and ruffled feathers. Jareth reached his hand to the bird. "Most beloved sister," he said smoothly, "it's not that I don't appreciate your opinion, it's just that it so contradicts my own." With amazing gentility, he smoothed down her ruffled plumage.
In earnest, he was thankful for her visit. So few of his family remained. Met their ends by iron, most of them, cast off into the after life forever as their animal shape. His father, once a proud eagle, entrapped by the mortals until his second death. His mother, a sturdy phoenix, returned to her homeland, hadn't visited in more than a century. But Annacuin so enjoyed keeping watch over her son in the northern mines that she frequently, in Underground time that is, stopped by. It had taken rather a long time for Jareth to get used to speaking with her in her falcon form, but they had been close in life, ever able to understand one another, from the crib it seemed, and death couldn't change that.
"I accept that you don't want any part of it. That you don't want Eldamonde to see his uncle this way and I vow to be my most charming when I visit with him, but I must do what I must do to stop mortals from thinking they can destroy our world as they've destroyed their own. I did so hope you would try to understand Anna, my love."
"Long ago," she told him, "I learned I could not stop you from having what you desired long ago. I blame mother for that." Jareth let out a hearty laugh. He knew well enough, there was some truth to what she said. "But I beg you, when you become a mighty, fearsome and all powerful king, do not forget what you first had, what you were given. To do that will mean your death."
"Rubbish," he told her. "You've always been the melodramatic one. Just once it would be nice to see you support one of my pursuits without all the foreboding you are so famous for."
Her next words, spoken in any language would have had as much impact on him. "Darling brother, when the whole world has turned its back on you, I shall remain and I shall stay ever by your side, even when you have turned your back upon yourself." Talons popping tiny holes into his leather doublet, the falcon lowered itself to his chest and rubbed its head tenderly into the Goblin King's neck before gracefully spreading her wings and sailing into the sky.
Until she disappeared into the rich purple of the night, Jareth watched her glide, envious of how well her form suited her, when he at times still felt clumsy and awkward as an owl. Perhaps it took one's death to truly find comfort in what they were, but the Goblin King was in no hurry to find out.
The next morning, he awoke from the best sleep in his most recent memory to find Arven already hard at work on designs for the labyrinth. All the original walls were to be rebuilt, but even to the most familiar inhabitant, that is all which would remain original. Arven worked tirelessly to create Jareth's deadly labyrinth right down to the last detail, including the pit of spikes at the bottom of the shaft of hands which had added another goblin to the population only earlier today.
Jareth didn't mind so much, the modifications being made. They were, after all, serving his purpose quite nicely. It was only that he seemed to be forgetting so much about his old kingdom as of late, remembering what it used to be was becoming more important, especially the more he failed to recall. Especially when he dreamt of Annacuin and her prophecies. But he wanted to move forward at the same time. He wanted to destroy them, the mortals, before they destroyed his world. He had no one to help him in his endeavors, but Arven. He'd turned the goblins into hard working, brutal servants, rebuilt his castle and his kingdom more efficiently than Jareth could have hoped and more beautifully than the king had dreamed. Arven had been his only real contact in the last twenty years and besides, as much as he hated the word, the former king had come to be his one true friend. He had done more for him then just about anyone. That memory was as fresh as the death of the mortal he'd just witnessed.
Tapping the corner of the book against his palm, Arven stood before the Goblin King. "No and that is final," Jareth growled.
"I'm not trying to upset you," he claimed.
"Well you're succeeding despite the lack of effort."
"Your majesty, please. I've been looking through the records. When we first rebuilt the labyrinth we were accumulating over thirty new goblins a year, our survival rates were one in five and those from sheer refusal to participate. Last year we collected nine goblins, nine, in a year Jareth. And the kill from last week was our first in sixteen months."
The king pushed aside what he was reading and eyed his partner just before he slammed his hands against the desktop. "I'm running a kingdom Arven, not an above world factory."
"Forgive me if I've been too technical, but the point I was trying to make was that no one believes in fantasy anymore. If we get these," again he indicated the book, "back into circulation, it will increase intrigue, get people talking."
"Absolutely not," Jareth insisted. "That book does nothing more than tell the reader the key to solving the labyrinth and I won't have it put back into circulation!" Coming out from behind his desk, Jareth took three easy strides before snatching the red leather bound volume from Arven's hand. "This book brought my kingdom to it's knees and you want to republish it?"
"In my defense, your majesty, it was one child, one unrealistically lucky child who managed to, with the help of her little friends, defeat you. The first in centuries."
"The only, in the history of this kingdom!" the king corrected. "What makes you think you know so much about the situation?" he asked suspiciously.
Arven was stunned at the way the king spoke to him. "I've read the journals your highness. How else?"
"Right. I must remember to burn those."
"When we stand so much to learn from her? May I suggest rather that we analyze her story sire, and from it, check point ourselves to be sure we've created an impervious fortress?"
"Something tells me you've already done as much Arven, so why not cut to the chase." Jareth hated being toyed with.
"I may have made a few notes." The king arched his eyebrows. "As I've already said, none of her confidants remain, but for the dwarf and since you no longer allow him within the labyrinth's walls, he can't possibly be aware of the modifications. Alph, Ralph, the guards, they've all been reprogrammed, the helping hands are working for us. It would take more than luck to survive our maze."
"Our maze?" he questioned.
Arven shuddered. "Forgive me your highness, it's just that I've been here so long, it's begun to feel like my home and I have spent so much time in the labyrinth..."
"Get to the point, if you have one."
The king was not a patient man, Arven had adjusted to that over the years. He knew what he was about to suggest would not be well received, but the only way to make a maze fool proof was to test it on the fool. "I've been watching her your highness. She doesn't believe in you anymore, chalks you up to her brother's overactive imagination. Blames the parties with your subjects on her being a lonely child. If we bring her back..."
"No," he growled. "All this time," Jareth paced, his arms flailing, "years, you've spent turning me against their kind and you want to bring her back here? Are you insane?" His hands clenched so hard Arven heard the leather stretch over his knuckles. "And how have you been watching her?" Arven stalled. "HOW!" he blared.
"Your crystals," he admitted with a nonchalance that came from his firm belief he'd been doing the right thing.
The king turned on him as fast as lightning strikes. "If you ever, ever mess with my magic again, I will remind you why this kingdom had only one immortal in it before you came."
"But Jareth, to defeat her, is there any better revenge?" He said it carelessly, like what he had done didn't matter. As if by being discreet he could slip in beneath the king's radar.
"Revenge?" he asked in a strange mix of shock and curiosity, proving Arven's theories weren't totally without merit.
"Think about this, if she were to return, full of arrogance, eager to take on your maze. I bet she'd be dead before she found the first turn." Jareth mulled it over for a moment. "Your reputation would be rebuilt as well as your kingdom and around this realm, you would be legend once more." Arven watched carefully, feeling as if he could see the gears turning in the king's head.
"There is one minor kink in your plan," Jareth explained. "In order for a guest to receive a second invitation to the labyrinth, the first child they wished away must not have been their own and the second child must be their own. Ms Williams is currently without children."
"How does his majesty know that?"
"As if I were going to explain myself to you."
Arven shook his dark hair back from his shoulders, thinning his eyes to slits as he surveyed the king. "Keep your secrets Jareth, but as your friend I find myself left to wonder are you fanning the fires of hatred for this woman, as you should for all mortals, or are you fanning your desire."
"Out," the king instructed quietly. "Go back to your study, forget about this book, find another way to bring me the mortals and I will show you my intentions. If it's thirty goblins a year you want, I shall triple the number." With a satisfied smile, Arven turned to leave, "But," Jareth added before he could escape, "question my intentions again and you will meet the fires that I fan Arven. I have accepted but one friend in all my years, I beg you not to make me regret that choice."
"Certainly not, my lord." Bowing low, he quickly took his leave.
Hoggle's shack was small. Two and a half rooms, a bed, to the extent a sewn together canvas stuffed with forest flooring could be considered a bed, a tiny eat-in kitchen where a stump served as his table and there was no running water, and a small water closet which Jareth was generous enough to provide the last time he caught him at one of the fountains outside the labyrinth.
Moaning, he tossed on his flimsy bed, rolling in an almost seamless transition onto the floor. It had been months since he'd gotten a decent sleep. Working the gates was starting to get to him in a major way. Every time he saw someone descend the hill toward him, his stomach turned to knots and once he shut them inside the guilt would wash him in a cold sweat, but still he did his job. If for no other reason than that he was a coward and Jareth scared him.
Something wasn't right, but because he'd traveled between the worlds so often and for so long, it escaped him what or where the inconsistency was. He hadn't the magic Jareth had, no crystal globe to show him the workings of the worlds, just a gut, a sensitive one at that which wasn't typically wrong.
"HIGGLE!" the king's voice boomed from inside his head. Time for him to begin another day guarding the gate. Stumbling to his feet, he brushed the floor dirt from his pants and slipped on his leather vest.
"Where is it? Where is it?" the dwarf grumbled as he sifted through the contents of his bedroom searching desperately for his leather cap. Snatching it from under some dirty dishes, Hoggle dashed for the door as fast as his stout legs would carry him.
Most days by the time he'd taken his position at the labyrinth gates, whatever uneasiness his restless sleep had left behind managed to disappear. But these days, with no fairies to kill, not that there weren't fairies, there were. It was just that Jareth didn't want them killed any longer. So few visitors stopping by these days, it left him with all too much time to think.
No matter where his thoughts began, inside or outside the Labyrinth, inside or outside the Underground, they were united in one common thread, a mortal girl who called him friend. Never before and never since had any guest of the king called the dwarf a friend. Much like she now considered him a result of her brother's overactive imagination, she had become rather ethereal to him. More an elusive concept than a tangible being, he could keep his companion with him in spirit. Every now and again, he'd catch himself talking to her when no one was anywhere near enough to hear. Each pair of feet to descend the hill toward the gate was inspected for pale slip on loafers, but they never came.
It was foolish perhaps for him to hope the way he did for the return of what was by now a fully grown woman. Still he did hope, each day, that if she weren't going to call him, he could some how summon her, one last time. To hear someone call him friend, to feel her embrace once more, to know there was still something good out there.
Certainly nothing good existed in his world, not anymore. It left when she left. Every now and again the tiny optimist inside his heart would whisper her name. "Sarah Williams." And on nights when the chill made the hair on his arms stiffen with possibility, Hoggle would quietly invite her back, "I need you Sarah." No matter the number of times he called nor the level of sincerity behind the plea, it was never met.
The dwarf sighed as he sat in the dirt, his full face resting in the palms of his hand as his sausage fingers drummed against his cheeks. "Don't know why I bother," he mumbled. "Same reason I sit here every day and talk to thin air, nothing better to do, I s'pose." A fairy nipped the back of his neck forcing him to end the deep conversation he'd been having with himself and rouse him from his comfortable spot. "Oh," he grumbled taking the hint to begin his pacing, after all that is what he was supposed to be doing.
"Don't know why I gots to be the one to guard this gate. S'not like he don't know when someone's comin'. No, it's always, Higgle'll do it. Let Hogwart do the most boring thing in the realm. Hoghead's got no life." His tiny foot launched a stone against one of Jareth's profile structures that littered the maze. Standing stiff, as if he were really speaking to the king himself, Hoggle wagged his pointer at the statue. "You listen to me. I do got a life, no matter what you think. And I had a friend once too, until you drove her away. You...you..."
Behind him like a shadow, Jareth stood in complete silence taking in the tirade for a moment before startling the angry dwarf into turning around. Now eye to eye with his king, Hoggle stammered, "You...r majesty! How nice to see you."
"Huggle, if I didn't know you to be an extraordinary coward, I may have thought you were questioning me, just there, for a moment."
"No, no, your majesty, I thought I heard a few ...eh...neighsayers rummaging in the kingdom's boundaries...yes... and so I was practicing ...um...what I'd tell them when I found them."
"Hoople, you know better than to think I haven't already heard everything you said," Jareth reminded him, crossing his arms over his chest. "Now why not impress me by being man enough to say it to my face." At the challenge, he stooped down, finding it only fair since there was no hope for the dwarf to grow. "Well?"
Hoggle's lips trembled. "I'm waiting," the king taunted.
For a brief second it looked as though he might respond, but his mouth clamped shut and his eyes fell to the floor. "I thought as much." The Goblin King stood tall, turned on the heel of his black leather knee boots and paced away evenly.
"Rat," the dwarf mumbled.
As if a hitch had been attached to the belt of his brown leather waistcoat and the reel of cord had reached it's maximum extension, Jareth halted with a jerk, this pivot was slow, fearsome, purposeful. As he reached the 180 degree mark his narrowed eyes caught hold of Hoggle. On any other day, the look alone would have intimidated him into silence, but today, he found himself meeting Jareth stride for stride until they collided at the middle distance between where they stood.
"What did you say?" the king hissed.
"You heard me, I called you a rat. You've always been a rat. You have been since the first time that pompous ass of yours fell into the throne."
Black leather crashed against his cheek as Hoggle rolled head over heels in the amber sand. "Do you really think she had some sort of feeling for you, you pathetic little fool."
"She needed me," the dwarf defended from the flat of his back.
"Until bigger and better things came along. She needed you until you were replaced. Now as she treads on her earth, she calls you nothing more than an adolescent fantasy developed to help her come to terms with her parent's separation."
Hoggle spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground. "I'm her friend."
"Imaginary friend at best," Jareth snorted. "Forget her, forget her like she's forgotten you." The toe of the king's leather boot kicked a spray of sand over him to illustrate his point.
"I can't do that," Hoggle said struggling to lift himself up to his elbows. "I loves her."
Jareth dropped to his knee, clutching the defiant hireling by the collar of his dingy shirt. "You what?" he hissed.
"I loves her. Always have, always will. Like you," the dwarf stood, eye to eye with the Goblin King. "Don't think I don't know what you offered her. Her dreams, her wishes, all in exchange for her love."
'Fear me, love me, do as I say and I shall be your slave,' those were the terms he'd set for Sarah Williams. In Jareth's mind it was beyond fair, but to the girl, it was as easy to refuse as a cancer. "Love her!" he cried. "Love her?"
"Don't deny it."
"How could I love her? I wanted her left to the Labyrinth. I wanted the child. Nothing more."
Hoggle smirked, something he did rarely. "At first maybe, but then you manufactured that lil' present of yours, the one that brought her to your ball. You held her close. You sang to her. Tell me again Jareth, if you can, tell me again how you don't love her."
Tossing him aside, Jareth stood tall, straightened his jacket and his gloves and announced clearly, "The day I do as you ask of me Piglet is the day I relinquish my throne for a spot in the bog. I don't have to prove anything to you. She should have never been brought here in the first place and she's never coming back. Get that through that leather cap and extraordinarily thick skull of yours. You are nothing to her. I am nothing to her and she," he paused and headed in the opposite direction, "is nothing to me. In fact, she is nothing at all."
Watching him leave, Hoggle couldn't help feeling like Jareth was wrong about more than one of his statements. "Her name," he said with no fear of being heard, "is Sarah."
His exchange with Hoggle had caused the king to forget nearly entirely the reason he'd gone to the veil in the first place. "What are you doing here?" Arven asked when Jareth entered the throne room. "Where's the child?"
"What child?"
"Jareth, the girl, you were going to meet the girl and bring back the child? You did meet the girl didn't you?"
Without waiting around to hear more the king vanished leaving little more than a fine dusting of glitter in his wake.
Disregarding the start he'd given the dwarf with his out of thin air return, Jareth took the veil in one smooth stride, crossing over into the above world with grace and elegance. Sliding open the patio door, he stepped inside, black boots crisp against a thick white carpet.
"Not happening," the fifteen year old before him insisted, twisting her head to and fro while the last rays of sunlight caught the amber streaks in her rich brown hair. "This is not happening."
"'Fraid it is love."
"Who are you?"
Jareth leaned against the doorway, "Come now, you called for me. Suddenly you don't know who I am. I find that hard to believe."
"Jesus Christ!" The girl fell back into the rocking chair next to the now empty crib. "You're him." Jareth made a rolling motion with his right hand. A small circle drawn in thin air by the tips of his first two fingers, reflecting his impatience. "You're the Goblin King."
"I am?" he beamed with an almost nostalgic sarcasm. "My, but that would explain this sensational outfit, don't you think?" She made no attempt to answer him, in fact, she seemed rather unamused by his implied shock. "Oh bugger you're going to be one of those serious types," Jareth sighed. "Alright then, have it you're way," he announced as his stride brought him nearer to her. "You have thirteen hours in which to solve the labyrinth, or your little sister will become one of us forever."
"But it was a mistake, I ... I didn't mean it."
"Don't you mortals ever get tired of your endless strings of excuses."
Defiantly, she contradicted him, "It's not an excuse. It's an expression, like when you say you'd like to kill someone because they make you angry, but you don't really mean you want to kill anyone. It's an exaggeration."
Jareth looked sympathetic for a fraction of a moment, "Let me assure you child, when someone makes me angry enough to want to kill them," his finger lifted her chin so she could better gauge the seriousness in the king's eyes, "that is exactly what I do." Allowing her face to fall, he lifted his hand bringing its back crashing against her cheek, shaking her balance enough to land her on the floor. "Exactly!"
Over her shoulder, she settled her stare on him. How could he be so dangerous, so cruel and yet handsome, no, more beautiful than handsome on second thought. So much so it almost dissipated the ache in her jaw. His wild eyes, his wild hair, that sharp tongue only to be outdone by his rough touch. And yet a grace, an elegance that contradicted the evil he tried to lead with.
"Who made you this angry?"
"What?"
"Who made you this angry?" the girl repeated, still curled on the floor like a frightened baby snake, knowing it could strike, but not with enough force to ward off the attacker. Rather than depend on her bite, she mustered the best bark she could manage under the circumstances, shouting at him. "It wasn't me. We've only just met. I haven't had the opportunity to make you angry, so, who did it? What did they do? What am I paying for?"
The cold line in his lips gave way, going soft and hanging as he listened to her outburst. He felt the sting on the back of his hand finally, making it impossible to pretend her cheek wasn't mimicking the burn. "My people have always been at war with mortals. Each of you is the same, spouting out words without giving a thought to their meaning, assuming that words could be exchanged as easily as ill-fitting denim." Jareth paced in the small room, heels clicking on the wood floor, frustrated at the spot the girl had managed to press. "Well, where I come from, it's not that easy. Once you say something, it's said, it's meant." He kneeled before her. "There is no taking it back, no changing one's mind. It's forever."
Tears welled up in her young and innocent eyes. Not because of the pain now staining her olive skin a merciless purple color, but rather because she had managed a piece of the puzzle no mortal, not even the legendary Sarah Williams, had ever put together. Almost silently she murmured, "The king had fallen in love with the girl."
"What did you say?" he spun on her, the draft from his cape like ice against her exposed skin.
She shook her head, causing one of the tears pressing against her lower lid to leap forth and roll down her cheek. The hand that had struck her only minutes before, now gently swiped her face, almost like a kiss. What Jareth's eyes examined was a perfect drop perched upon his fingertip, a reflection of the room capsulized within it, a twin of the huddled girl hung upside down dangling from the roof of the transparent globe. Lowering it a few inches, he tipped his finger allowing it to roll smoothly over the soft leather of his glove and burst it's fragile shell against the rough terrain of his dried lower lip.
"Pity," he spit, the salt from her tear like acid to him. "You dare to pity me." His arm encircled her waist, jerking roughly until their chests met, her face a breath away from his. "Where did you hear that?"
"W...wh...what?" she stammered, at once unnerved by his closeness and his visible hatred.
With an infallible accuracy his eyes locked on hers, "The phrase, the one you'd like to think I didn't hear. Where did you hear it?"
Immediately she noticed the spicy aroma of his breath, the extraordinary heat compared to that of, how had he referred to her, a mortal. "B...ook," she shook, nerves, the king thought. On the surface it did appear nothing more than the nerves of a fifteen year old girl whose fairytale had flown in through the window when her parents were away. "I read it in a book." But beneath the cool exterior she tried to pull together for fear of what he would do next, was the awakening of a woman. A woman whose first taste of sensuality was being served to her quite unintentionally by a king who couldn't help but exude it, whatever his motive. Worse still, she liked it. Intrigued by how he could take her to the limits of her purity, making her feel as if she'd succumb to desire without ever destroying the barrier that kept her pure. If he'd had asked it, shown some interest in it, she'd have let him. Given him her innocent body to mar, to maim if he wished it, all he needed do was say the word.
Words, she understood their power now, more than ever before, certainly more than when she'd uttered them while frustrated with her infant sibling. Jareth let her fall then, just as her new covenant registered in her mind. Just as she'd felt her eyes begin to droop, the distinct lines of his lips all she could see, her body arching involuntarily to his touch, the distance between them decreasing slowly and purposefully, until her head met with the carpeted floor beneath. Even if he'd shown her the interest she'd craved in that moment, it would have been only his body. His body and her young impressionable heart. The pity she felt quickly switched it's focus from the king to the girl in the story she had read.
Rummaging through some things on a nearby counter top, Jareth asked without looking back at her, "Where is the book?"
Though her knees shook and her legs felt as unstable as toothpicks beneath her. She stood, slowly. Bracing herself on the rim of the empty playpen that had been a child's haven earlier that night. Her heart broke. Why had she said the things she had said? If she had the chance to take it back, would she? Or would she do it all over again?
She looked around the room as if she'd never seen it before. Outside the patio doors the king had come through she saw the red sand hill and the crooked black trees. Jareth noticed her attention waning and slammed his hand against the counter. "Where is the book?"
Jumping at the sound which echoed through the entire house, or so it seemed, the girl pointed. A small red leather bound volume, the cover tooled in gold, twinkled like a night star beneath the light of a lamp on a side table. It bore a cream lampshade which nearly replicated the delicate parchment pages of the book, that was how Jareth knew it was authentic. No matter how quickly he'd risen to his feet and went searching for it the first time, he only looked at it now, as if by looking at it long enough it would come to him. Perhaps he should have never left it go.
As she turned to retrieve it for him, Jareth was behind the girl before she could turn back. His hand covered hers. At the shock, she turned into him, once again, face to face with the Goblin King. Her breath hitched and her heart beat twice as fast. "I'll take that." She dropped her hand away. Jareth filed through the pages, his eyes sticking to certain phrases like picking old friends out of a group photo.
Goblin King, Goblin King, wherever you may be...
It's further than you think...
Piece of cake...
As the world falls down...
It's junk, it's all junk...
Take the baby and hide it...
If that is the way it must be done, then that is the way you must do it...
Look what I'm offering you..
You have no power over me...
Should you need us...
It was like a picture reel, flipping in his memory, echoing like a cry of pain from the bottom of the deepest oubliette. "Where did you find this?" he asked her as she stood still frozen, memorizing the features of his distinctive face. "Where?" he growled.
"An old used book store."
"Which one?"
"I don't remember. We were on vacation. My parents wanted to go to this museum, but I didn't feel like going so I went to the shopping district instead, I found it in with the journals. I thought that was weird because it had writing already in it. Journals are supposed to be blank, but this one already had someone's story. I got to thinking it was meant for me to find so I bought it."
"This was never meant for you."
"I know, I know, but I didn't understand the story before I read it. Now..."
"Now? Now you know better? You think you've unlocked some riddle, solved something." His hand clasped over the back of her neck. His thumb pressing against a spot that made her gasp. Opening the sliding glass door with his free hand, he threw her into the sand.
When she pulled her face up, she spat out the grains. "Here's your real puzzle," he told her. "Here's the riddle you must solve. Thirteen hours to make the trip, from your own back door to my front one, and, if you survive, I shall allow you the opportunity to best me. If you're smart," he began. "Well, if you were smart, you wouldn't have taken for granted the harmless words in some story book. Let's say that if you have in fact gotten any smarter from our time together," his fingertips stroked her face from temples to chin, "you'll let the labyrinth have you. I know your body's trembling at the thought of it right now, at the very idea of you and I engaged in that final battle, me promising you the world, and you're thinking, if I were her, I'd take it. I'd say yes to you."
He wasn't wrong. She'd thought that very thing since he'd first softened before her while she coiled on the floor. What she would say when he offered her the dreams she never told anyone about. When he bartered his servitude for her love.
"You should know before you pick out a china pattern that will match the drapes, the odds of your surviving my labyrinth are substantially low."
"But at least one did."
"One did, it's true." Jareth tucked the book inside the arm hole of his leather doublet, pressing it over his heart where he was sure a good full breath would keep it from working loose and being lost to a mortal once again. "But let's just say I've rewritten a few pages. Forget everything you've read, forget the baby, go back to your petty mortal amusements."
"I can't, don't you see that I can't"
"Then have at it. Thirteen hours, not a second more. And I promise," he hissed, lowering his face until he was eye to eye with the girl, "you won't make it as far as you think."
Switching his stare from her left eye to her right eye, he waited to see how she'd react. Admittedly he hadn't expected her challenging return gaze, nor had he expected her head to tilt back, her lips raising to his where he allowed them to meet for only a brief second before pulling away so that they merely grazed each other.
"You're risking enough just being here," he warned her. Looking around she became aware that her house was no longer there, waiting a few precious steps behind her. "I would highly recommend you not risk anything more." With that said, he faded from her vision, leaving her to decide whether she would die inside the maze or there in the sand. A fairy's bite could be deadly enough if they meant it to be.
"This is what we were to her," he said with eerie calmness as he drew the book from against his chest and tossed it in the dwarf's direction. "Left in a used bookstore for someone else to find. Your dear friend, your only precious friend, trading the memory of you away like an old baseball card. This is what you were, what I was, what the Underground was. You must give up your foolish ideas. Mortals don't care about immortals, they want to come here after our resources, after our blood, after the secrets we have for longevity and healing. We're something to be wasted to them, just like everything else they discover."
"This is exactly why I think we should put new volumes out there your majesty," Arven reminded him, "to bring them here and thin their numbers, to show them this world isn't theirs to manipulate."
"They've romanticized it. The girl who I confiscated this from acted like I was there to seduce her. Proliferating copies of this book isn't going to gain us mortals who will pay for their attempts to destroy us, it will only bring them here seeking salvation, an adventure into self discovery. I would as soon leave that discovery to the backseat of parents' borrowed vehicles in remote locations beneath the light of their world's moon. I'm not running a fantasy camp for little girls Arven. I'll thin their numbers as I take their lives, convert their children. Anything but be made a fool of by girls hungry for their first kiss. Am I clear?"
"Crystal," Arven answered.
"Leave me, both of you. I intend to remain in my bed chamber for the remainder of the night. I do not wish to be disturbed."
He stormed out, steady strides carrying him to the solitude he'd been seeking. He rolled a crystal from his palm onto a golden pedestal at his bedside table. Another twist of his wrist and his leather garments gave way to silk sleep wear. The satin sheets invited him, the pillow, filled with down, welcomed the weight of his head. The king sighed. This one was remarkably perceptive he thought, this mortal, this ordinary girl. He would need to keep her under constant surveillance for fear she might actually succeed. He couldn't allow that, couldn't have two insolent teenagers besting him in the same lifetime. Mumbling an incantation, the orb beside his head blinked twice. The spell was set.
He'd fallen asleep quickly then, welcoming the peacefulness unconsciousness afforded him. Only to be awoken as a dream was beginning to take shape in his subconscious mind. The blinking orb, telling him the girl he was watching was in peril. She was on the edge of the forest, listening closely to what she thought were wolves. "Turn back," he told the figure who couldn't hear him. "Turn back before it's too late."
As stubborn as he had assumed she would be, the girl stepped between the trees, almost silently but for the twig that snapped beneath her foot. The slightest noise summoned them. He and Arven had designed it that way. They were quick, thorough. She'd never see the bog. He'd successfully collected another mortal child.
But that wasn't what kept him awake as he attempted to roll over and return to his dream. It was the nine letter word emblazoned by the glow of the orb that stole his focus. "Just a fairytale," he grumbled. "A figment of your imagination. A fantasy. Some recyclable bit of insignificant paper." He clutched the orb, taking it to his open window. "Perhaps it's time I reminded you just how real I am." The promise carried in the night air as did the orb he blew gently from his open hand and onto the wind.