Alia landed in the soft earth near the shore of a body of water with a bump that knocked the breath out of her. When she was finally able to suck air back into her lungs she knew exactly where she had landed.
"Bah! The Bog!" The surface of the bog near her bubbled and shuddered to emphasize her statement.
Alia jerked involuntarily as something crawled inside her shirt. She panicked before she remembered that Arten'barad had been hiding inside it.
"I am sorry," the dragon apologized. "I was knocked loose by the landing. Where are we? Ah, never mind, I know where we are."
"It's not too bad, really. Better than I expected. Maybe even a little better than the river I had to cross."
"This is only a weak imitation of the real thing, I assure you."
"I've got to get out of here. Which way is the castle?" She looked around, but could not see the castle anywhere in the distance. "Away from the wall is a good guess." She picked her way along the edge of the heaving pool of – "Never mind what it is. I don't want to know."
Alia managed to stay dry until she reached the end of a peninsula pointing across a wide body of liquid Bog at a forest of normal looking trees on the opposite bank.
"This looks like the place where there was a bridge in the movie, but there's no bridge here now." She climbed up on a rise and looked down at the swamp. "No sign of the rocks Ludo called to get them across either. Looks like I'm stuck here unless I want to wade." She grimaced as she sat down on a log to decide just how badly she wanted to get to the other side.
.….
Cara scrambled along the path, loose stones disturbed by her feet rattling down the hillside.
"Loafers," she thought. "Sarah had to be wearing loafers. What I wouldn't give for a good pair of hiking boots right now." She slipped on a loose stone and sat down abruptly. "Ow!" Luckily the hillside was so steep at that point that she did not have far to go – she was nearly on all fours already.
She got up and kept moving, wiping the sweat off her forehead with her dusty sleeve. She glanced up, checking the location of the castle in the distance.
"Yep, there it is. Right on target."
Just as she looked back down at the path, she missed her step and lost her balance. She fell again and kept sliding down the hillside, following the stone that had turned under her foot. She grabbed for something to stop her and finally found a rock large and solid enough to stop her a few feet from the edge of a sharp dropoff.
"Well, that's one way to get down."
Cara looked up as Hadrian crouched above her.
"Yeah, it's the only way to go," Cara said crossly as she tried to get up without sliding the rest of the way to the edge. "Are you going to help me or are you just going to sit there?"
"Would you like some help?"
"Oh, never mind. I probably can't afford the price. What is it with you guys? I just can't get rid of you. Caereh leaves and you show up a few minutes later. I should have known I was getting off too easy with her."
"Really?" Hadrian asked, offering her his hand. "What did she want?"
"As if you didn't know," Cara said as she took his hand anyway. "She wanted me to throw the whole thing and quit trying to get to the castle. So she would get Jareth and I would get you. She even tried to give me a crystal in case I changed my mind."
"You must admit the proposition has some appeal," Hadrian told her as he kept her hand after she got to her feet and pulled her closer to him.
"No. It was her proposition, not mine. You have no appeal at all." She pulled her hand free and walked for the path where it wound its way safely down the side of the hill.
"None at all?" Hadrian demanded, appearing in front of her. "I suppose that Jareth is more to your liking, as well?"
Cara shrugged. "He certainly has more chance than you have." She tried to step around Hadrian.
Hadrian grabbed her and held her, thumb and forefingers nestled behind the curve of her jaw. "Has he now? Well, how is this for a proposition straight from the movie? If he kisses you – if he so much as touches you or you touch him – you'll both end up in the Bog." He released her chin.
"Jealous much?" she asked as she rubbed her throat. "That was a highly original threat. You know, you've never had a chance and antics like that don't add anything in your favor."
"Make light of it all you like, just as long as you understand me."
"Yeah, yeah," Cara called back over her shoulder. "No kissy-kissy with Jareth. No physical contact at all, whatsoever. No problem. I'd have to find him again first anyway."
"Try that way." Hadrian pointed.
Cara looked the direction he pointed – to the left along a wall that sliced through the hill. "Oh, so now you're all helpful. Geez, I wish you'd pick a mood and stay with it," she said as she turned back to him and found herself talking to an empty hillside.
She considered taking the direction Hadrian had pointed out. It didn't really seem like an intelligent thing to do, following his directions, but as Hoggle would have said, "What choice do you got?"
"Not much, really." She couldn't get past the long drop on the other side of the wall to continue straight for the castle, leaving only left or right along it. Looking to the right the wall curved in a general trend away from the castle. As much as she hated the idea of it, following the wall to the left looked like the best choice, the one she would have made anyway.
.….
The key turned in the lock on the other side of the door and Tieran heard Caereh walk away.
"I have become one of those stupid heroes I always scorned in books," he thought as he slid down the wall facing the door and sat on the floor after testing the door. "I just followed her here, did exactly as she said. I should have at least tried to escape, run away from her, something. I thought I was smarter than this." He looked around the tiny room. It was completely empty except for himself and the cat.
"Well, cat, at least we have a light," he said as he looked up at the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. "That makes it one step above an oubliette."
The black cat strolled over and rubbed against him, insinuating itself under his jacket, then slipping back out again. As the jacket fell back from the cat something hard and heavy hit the side of his leg.
"And we have a crystal." He pulled it from his pocket. "I wonder if I can direct its magic? What do I want to do with it?"
He considered a moment. "Remove myself from this closet? Why stop there? Why not wish myself to join the others?"
He shook his head. "No, that will not help the situation. We would still have to reach the castle to have any hope of Caereh and Hadrian releasing us. I should wish them here to the castle."
He concentrated, willing Alia, Cara, and Jareth to materialize in the corridor outside his closet. He felt no response from the crystal and heard nothing from the other side of the door.
"Perhaps it only shows things," he told the cat, trying to be optimistic. He gazed into the crystal, trying to see Alia, Cara, Jareth, anyone, but had no success.
He sighed. "What we have here, cat, is a very pretty paperweight. It only works for Hadrian." He rolled it across the floor and watched the cat, who followed the movement with slight interest then pinned his ears back and hissed.
"Not a great cat toy, I will admit, but it deserves better than that," he told the black cat, then realized, as the crystal ball hit his leg that the cat was not commenting on the ball. A leggy kitten – a real, flesh and blood cat – followed the crystal ball closely.
"What are you doing here?" Tieran asked his Christmas present as he picked him up.
The adolescent feline looked up into his face and delicately sniffed at his chin, following it with a tiny sneeze.
"Yes, I know. I smell different. So would you if you had been animated by a computer. But since you have not been, how did you get here?" The ivory kitten squirmed in his arms, avoiding the question and Tieran let him down.
"I would leave him alone for now if I were you," Tieran warned the kitten as he walked over to the black cat crouched in the corner, growling. Compared to the real kitten, the animated cat, such a realistic creation before, was an obvious, poor imitation.
Imitation or no, it still behaved like a real cat and, when the kitten came too close, it swiped at its face. Tieran could have sworn the cat hit the kitten, but when he scooped him back up out of reach and examined the silvery mask developing on its face, did not see a scratch on the kitten.
"You were lucky this time, but I would not push your luck if I were you. So how did you get in here?" Tieran mused, rubbing the kitten's fur absentmindedly. "Did you walk through the wall? There is no way into the room, so you must have. Since when do you walk through walls? And how did you find Caereh's house? That would mean you can transport from the Underground to Earth on your own. And you can enter computer programming. Just what has Irielen been feeding you?" Tieran asked the kitten, holding him up to look into his blue eyes.
"Mew," the kitten answered innocently.
"I see." Tieran sighed and put the kitten down. "Since you are here, make yourself useful and go find some help."
"Maow." The kitten sat in the center of the room and turned his back to Tieran.
"I know it is not usual feline policy to take orders, but now is your chance to change the perception of the whole feline race."
The kitten continued to give him the cold shoulder. Tieran wondered why Alia could not have gotten him a dog for Christmas instead. Dogs were helpful. They fell all over themselves trying to please you. Then again, a dog probably would not have found a way to get here. Tieran sighed. "Now what do I do with you?"
The kitten got up and casually sauntered through the wall. If Tieran had not seen it with his own eyes, he would never have believed it.
.….
Cara walked quickly along the wall, making good time, but still enjoying the scenery developing on either side of it. To her left butterflies fluttered among the treetops. She had not expected anything so beautiful in this Labyrinth.
"Though the way things have been running, they're probably flesh eating butterflies or something just as nasty." She pulled her eyes from the drifting butterflies to the right side of the wall.
Things had become less pleasant here. It looked like she was approaching the Bog of Eternal Stench. The few, twisted trees grew in sickly hues of brown and black, diseased yellows and greens.
"And of course that's the direction I have to head. How am I going to get down there and across that thing? I could really use that owl again."
"Cara!"
Cara looked up at the voice calling her name. "Jareth! Where have you been?"
"I am so glad I finally found one of you again," Jareth said as he jogged toward Cara.
"One of us? What do you mean? You lost Alia, too? No, don't touch me!" She suddenly remembered Hadrian's warning as Jareth came within a few paces.
"I lost her in the forest shortly after you disappeared," he explained holding his hands up in plain sight as she backed away from him. "I wasn't going to touch you. What's the matter? Are you contagious?"
"Hadrian very forcefully told me," she rubbed her throat as she said this, "that if you so much as touched me we would end up down there. He and Caereh really deserve each other. They're quite a jealous pair."
"Jealous is he? Did he hurt you? Let me see."
"No, I don't think he did. Hey! Get away! What's with you? Do you want to be down there in the middle of that?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact I do."
"What? Why?"
"Because that is the most direct route to the castle. Now what exactly did he say to you?"
"That if you kissed me, if you so much as touched me or I touched you we'd both end up in the Bog. Why?"
"I haven't seen any other way down there. Have you?"
Cara shook her head.
"I thought not," he said as he approached her again.
"But we'll stink!" Cara wailed.
"Only if it touches us. We're animated, in any case. It won't matter what we smell like here, it will be left behind when we get out."
"Oh, all right. But we'd better not land directly in it. What exactly did you have in mind here?" she asked him warily and took another step backward as she caught a glint in his eye.
"I want to be sure to get his attention," he told her as he grabbed her wrist before she could retreat further.
"That's what I was afraid of. Just don't get the idea that this means anything." She scrunched her eyes closed and braced herself.
"I wouldn't dream of it," Jareth told her.
She felt a light touch on her cheek and Cara waited for the rest of it. When it did not come her eyes flew open. "That's it? That's your kiss? All that talk on your List and that's all there is to it?"
"It worked for Sarah and Hoggle." Jareth shrugged. "I was rather hoping it would do here, as well, but it looks as though stronger measures are called for."
Cara did not have time to brace herself before his mouth covered hers.
It began as a fairly ordinary sort of kiss – one of the ones you might have had as an experiment with a friend when young – then suddenly, as if he had flipped a switch, it changed. It became a kiss worthy of a romance novel, a spine-shivering, inside-melting, breath-taking kiss. She would never doubt one of those descriptions again.
"What did you think of that one?" Jareth asked, steadying Cara as she swayed a little. "More impressed now?"
"Yes," Cara panted. Her head was spinning. "Must be the lack of oxygen," she thought, then said aloud, "But we didn't go anywhere."
"Really?"
Cara looked around and recognized one of the reasons why she was having such a hard time catching her breath. They stood in the middle of the Bog of Eternal Stench, complete with fetid water and mutated giant mosquitoes.
"That was quite a show. What have you two been into?"
Cara and Jareth whipped around to see Alia sitting on a log nearby.
"It's not what you think," Cara stammered as she flushed red.
"Exactly," Jareth said. "Hadrian threatened to send us to the Bog if I kissed her. We needed to get here, so..."
"Mm-hmm. Sure. Whatever. And I'm supposed to believe he just set you down here?"
"I guess. That's what seems to have happened." Cara shrugged. "But you're right there. Putting us down neatly right next to you instead of dropping us any old place. That's being too nice for him. You'd think he was on our side. He must be up to something."
"Well, don't think you got through this without stinking yet. There's no bridge," Alia said, pointing at the forest, their goal.
Cara slouched against a tree trunk. "Now that's more like Hadrian."
"There is another way across, you know," Arten'barad said in Alia's ear.
Jareth began to ask about the small silver thing in Alia's hair, when Cara let out a shriek.
"Get it off!"
Expecting to find another killer lichen, Jareth was relieved when he saw the problem. He walked calmly over to Cara and detached the kitten from her head and neck. He held it up, saw the blue eyes, and handed it to Alia.
"I believe this is yours."
"Tieran's kitten! What's he doing here?"
"'Tieran's kitten?' Hasn't he got a name yet?" Cara asked rubbing her shoulder and neck.
Alia shook her head. "Tieran's waiting for something to suggest itself."
"How about 'Hook?'"
"I'll mention it to him," Alia told her absentmindedly. "I wonder how he got here?"
"The same way as this little thing on your shoulder?" Jareth said quietly in her ear, leaning over her shoulder. Arten'barad used the opportunity to transfer to Jareth and hide under his hair.
"However the feline arrived here, Jareth, do not put it off on me. I had nothing to do with it." Arten'barad told him sharply.
"Unless he can take us back with him, how he got here doesn't help us across the Bog," Jareth said. "We may just have to put up with the smell."
"Nonsense," Arten'barad said as Cara and Alia groaned among themselves. "As I was about to tell Alia, I know a way to get across easily. We will only need to distract your adversaries. The feline can do that. Tell them you have a plan."
Jareth's mouth twitched as he suppressed a retort, then announced, "I have a plan."