Hoggle belched, leaned back in the uncomfortably hard (yet shockingly valuable!) plastic booth and patted his round, red-clad stomach. "Ooh, me achin' belly."
Despite his professed discomfort, he nevertheless reached for another chocolate-frosted donut and plopped it into his mouth. Then came another belch, which elicited a laugh from his companion.
"You are supposed to chew them, you know." Gi reached for another donut, demonstrating by neatly biting it into quarters. "Do you want some more coffee, Mr. Vine?" She indicated his empty styrofoam cup and grinned through a mouth full of crumbs.
Hoggle shook his head. He wasn't sure what was in coffee exactly, but he felt like his eyebrows were buzzing and he had a feeling he wouldn't sleep for a week. He eyed the last donut, but then thought better of it. One couldn't be too careful with these crazy Aboveground inventions. He considered the garish sprinkles that dotted the frosting; what made color that bright? It was disturbing- -tasty, but disturbing.
"Well c'mon then." Gi snatched up the last donut and ate it, licking the frosting from her fingers before grabbing the now-empty box and carrying it to the trash can. She stood at the door, one hand on a hip, smiling at her bemused friend.
Hoggle's eyes had tracked every movement of her hands, from donut to mouth and back again. Pink suffused what small part of his face was visible beneath heavy white hair and crept down his limbs, even to his thick-fingered hands.
Oh, but the great Sky King had surely made an error with her. Surely she was meant to be a dwarf, like him. He glanced down at himself, now temporarily transformed into a fat, round human. Well, he thought sheepishly, like I usually is, anyway...
He smiled back shyly, then levered himself up and out of his slightly-too-narrow seat. Say somethin', eejit. Fairy got yer tongue? But faced with Gi's sparkling blue eyes- -the same, improbable shade as her hair- -he was rendered curiously mute.
She held the door for him as he stepped out into the frigid December air. It was shockingly cold.
Sir Didymus had once tried to explain seasons to Hoggle, but the little fox's descriptions of "cold" versus "not-quite-cold" versus "not-quite-hot" versus "hot" had not really registered with the crusty dwarf. In the Labyrinth, all days felt pretty much the same. Unless something upset the balance of magic, temperatures were usually firmly planted in the sunny patch of "just right".
Hoggle thought he had a better idea of seasons now. He craned his neck up to look at the sky as Gi ushered him into the passenger side of her car. It was incredible that such sunny blueness could hang above air so breathtakingly cold. Brrr.
The drive back to Gi and Sarah's apartment was quiet, save for the occasional gasp from Hoggle when the scenery outside his window got moving a bit too fast for his liking. At a kindly suggestion from Gi, he closed his eyes and enjoyed the remainder of his trip much more.
Any other day he would probably have slept, lulled by the motion, but today his caffeinated blood hummed in his ears, keeping him awake. To pass the time- -and because his powers of speech seemed to have deserted him- - he hummed a little tune, tapping the fingers of one hand lightly against the door handle to keep the rhythm. He got so caught up in the melody that he failed to notice the car had stopped moving until Gi leaned over and shook him gently. "Huh?" He started and looked around, embarrassed.
Gi hid a smile by turning her head quickly away, taking the opportunity to climb out of the car. "Penny for your thoughts, Mr. Vine."
Hoggle fumbled a bit with the door latch, muttering beneath his breath. Finally, it released and he pushed out into the snow. It lay thick on the driveway, Sarah having missed her turn at shoveling. He looked up, suddenly anxious that Gi shouldn't see him struggling. Much to his relief, she wasn't watching him at all, but instead had forged ahead toward the house, leaving nice, wide tracks for him to follow.
"Mr. Vine," she called, "come and take a look at this, will you?" She was squatting down near the steps that led up to the front door. The old house didn't have a porch, just a wooden stoop in desperate need of a coat of paint.
"Call me Hoggle," muttered Hoggle, but too low for her to hear. He tromped after her, wondering what she had found.
At first, he didn't see anything. Gi was bent over the side of the first step, where snow had drifted thickly, pushed by the winds that swept the front yard. Noting his arrival, she scooched backward, letting him see what she had uncovered.
Hoggle crouched down beside her, squinting as something on the ground flashed in his eyes. "What the..."
"Isn't that the same stuff you just got rid of?"
Hoggle leaned closer, nose almost in the snow. A patch about the size of his head had been disturbed, perhaps by birds or squirrels, and right in its center sprouted a tendril of Labyrinthaceae. It was heavy with berries that caught the sun, but its deep green leaves drooped.
He reached down and yanked it out. "Bah! It's back. I should've known." He threw it hard against the house, and kicked snow over the spot where it had sprung up. "That's just peachy." He looked up at Gi.
The blue-haired girl was no longer smiling. "It's the same stuff, right? The vine that was hurting Sarah?"
Hoggle nodded. "The Sacred Vine, we calls it Underground..."
Gi broke in quickly, "Underground? I thought you said you weren't- -"
"I meant that's what we calls it when it's under the ground, see?" He wouldn't meet her eyes, fixing his own on the newly covered place where the plant-in-question had recently been. He hocked and spat, disgusted both with himself and his lot in life.
"I thought it was drawn to magic. With Sarah gone..." Gi let the question hang in the air like smog.
"It is." He stood up and stretched, scratching his long beard with thick fingers nearly frozen with cold.
"Well then...Hoggle..." Gi emphasized his true name, then kept speaking, "...what's drawing it now?"
"I'm not..." Hoggle, he started to say, then muttered and spat instead. What's 'e going to do to me, anyways? Ain't no bog here... His face was grim. "I don't know, but we'd better find out."
Sarah stumbled through the corridors of the great Castle Beyond the Goblin City, moving from puddle of light to deep pool of shadows and back again.
Great googly-moogly, she thought, you'd think they would do something about these tilting floors...
Her head felt both fuzzy and painful, as though it were a pin-cushion through which several sharp needles had been pushed. Her stomach lurched with every step, reminding her unpleasantly of the time she lost track of the number of wine coolers handed to her by well-meaning frat boys... Yeah, think about something else, Sarah.
She had only the vaguest recollection of how she came to be in the castle. She thought Hoggle had been involved, and possibly Toby too; if the walls would stop moving, she might be able to remember. One thing that did stand out in her memory was the Goblin King bending over her, touching her.
She stopped, remembering his face, his voice. Is that who she was looking for? She stood still, considering. It did seem to her that she was, indeed, looking for something, only she hadn't really been thinking about it; she'd just been acting on instinct.
She looked around. The part of the castle she was walking through was familiar, but she suspected that was only because all the passageways looked pretty much the same. She passed many doors, all closed, but no windows or alternate corridors.
Something...there was something she should be noticing, but what? If only her brain didn't feel splintered in two...
And then she realized what it was: she'd been walking in a straight line the whole time, no turns, no stairways, no branches, no nothing. It just went on and on and...
Wait a minute. Maybe it doesn't! Maybe I'm simply taking it for granted that it does! A wave a deja vu swept over her, accompanied by a strong desire to start running. She lurched forward, making one, two, three long strides before she nausea jumped her and pushed her to the floor.
Oh, Gods. I can't do it again... On her hands and knees now, she put her head down against the cold flagstones and waited for the nausea to pass. I will NOT vomit. I will NOT...
"Lady?" The voice came from behind, soft and somewhat ragged, like the speaker was not used to speech.
Sarah gingerly raised her head and slowly turned it to see a goblin crone in an ash-grey cloak standing beside her. The crone was smiling at her through a mouth full of snaggly teeth set in a face that was wrinkled and brown like the pit of a peach.
"Lost, are ye dearie?" The crone leaned forward, squinting through small, bright eyes that were black as obsidian. "That's a wee fair spell you've got on ye. You'll never find your way wearing that..." The crone rummaged in a burlap sack that she wore tied on a rope around her waist. "Hmm? No...hrmm...oh! There we go now." She drew out her hand and waved something under Sarah's nose.
Sarah immediately began to sneeze. A burning sensation filled her nostrils and sent fire behind her eyes, making them water. Her stomach, already taxed to its limit, recoiled at the movement and gave a mighty heave, causing her to throw up again and again, gasping and retching until there was nothing more.
And beside her, the goblin crone made "tsk"-ing noises and stroked Sarah's sweaty hair.
Sarah collapsed onto her side, rolling to avoid the mess she had made. She no longer wanted to find Jareth. She no longer wanted to find anybody. She just wanted to curl up and die.
"Ooh," she moaned, as another spasm sent a lance of pain driving up through her skull. "What did you do?"
"There now, dearie. Ol' Mags just be givin' ye a bit o' help." The crone cackled, not unkindly, and helped Sarah into a sitting position.
Sarah leaned against the rough stones of the castle wall and rubbed her head, willing the pain to subside. "Help? That was help? I'd hate to see what you'd do if you were trying to hurt me!" She took a deep breath, forcing calm into her thoughts. "How exactly did that help me?"
"Well jus' look around. You'll see quick enough." The crone gave Sarah a pat on the head and then stepped back, clearly waiting.
Sarah allowed herself the luxury of an exasperated groan, then carefully turned her aching head to take stock of her surroundings. Subtle changes had occurred: now she could see windows- -narrow and deeply set- -through which watery moonlight filtered; looking back the way she had come, she could see deep wells of shadow that she suspected now hid alternate paths, corridors both small and wide; looking forward she saw more of the suspect blackness, more doorways- -open now like gaping mouths- -and something sticking up out of the floor, almost beyond the limit of her sight, that looked like a post of some kind.
"What's that?" Sarah indicated the post, waving in its general direction from her seated position. She wasn't ready to try standing just yet.
The crone sniffed. "Oh that? Jus' a marker, dearie. Nothin' for ye to worry your pretty little head over."
Which guarantees I'll do just that. "Marker? For what?" Sure, I'll bite.
The crone sniffed again, louder this time, and scratched herself beneath an armpit with one claw-like hand. "C'em-re-tog. You don't want to go down there, lady-girl. Dangerous place, that."
Sarah had the distinct feeling that the old goblin did indeed want her to do just that. Let's test this out...
She climbed slowly to her feet, surprised to find that her head was clearing, the pain subsiding. With the cheeriest smile she could manage, she said, "Well I'll just go back this way then and see if I can't find the goblin king." Giving the crone a little wave, she started back the way she had come.
"Wait, dearie!"
Sarah hadn't gone more than two steps when the wizened goblin- -moving faster than Sarah would have thought possible- -came after her, grabbing her arm.
"Yer supposed to go that way, me lass." She pointed toward the post.
Sarah affected a bewildered expression. "But you said that way was dangerous?" And Gi said I had no talent for acting! She swayed a little on her feet, just for fun.
"Ach, dearie. Don't ye know anything? Things aren't always- -"
Sarah didn't wait for her to finish. "I know, I know. Things aren't always what they seem, blah, blah, blah. I've heard it all before." She frowned down at her companion who was still clutching her arm. "How about you just tell me where Jareth is, okay?"
The crone cackled and released her, black eyes gleaming. "I already did, dearie. He's in C'em-re-tog, waiting for ye."