Coming Home Chapter 7, a labyrinth fanfic

Chapter VII

Sarah would remember the binding for the rest of her life, though it resembled the memory of a drug-hazed dream. As the labyrinth had taken her away from the above, her reality dissolved for an indeterminate time as they wandered freely in each other's minds, the mingling of their memories and thoughts and ideas giving rise to the growth of the labyrinth. The wild magic fed on imagination, and Sarah's mortal, human conceptions were utterly different from anything the labyrinth had ever encountered. Both of them gained rather more than they had expected from the joining.

Sarah found herself stripped of all her defenses, all the lies humans tell themselves to survive glaringly exposed and dismantled, truly naked to the alien mind that scrutinized her every action, thought and dream, however narrow-minded or heroic, vicious or noble, nothing escaped the curiosity of the labyrinth, all of her was appraised. Sarah was cowering in her own mind like a terrified child in the corner of a closet, for the first time in her life did she see all of herself, without any excuses, illusions, or the respite of a failing memory. While she had been an honest woman all her days, striving with all her considerable strength of mind and character to live a moral life and be as honorable a person as she could be, she was sickened by the unadulterated view of herself. She might have surrendered to self-loathing had the labyrinth not embraced and accepted all of her self in an absolute way that defied understanding, without judgment or disgust, for the labyrinth understood far better than any mere chosen the limitations a tiny life in a limited body imposed, forever isolated in absolute loneliness yet desiring union. There was no shame in thoughts and dreams, only in the execution of one's ideas. The complete acquiescence and love of the labyrinth filled a need in her she had never even known she had. She had found the belonging that is denied to humans once they leave their mother's womb, but strive to attain without ever knowing what they search for. She now knew in her bones, in her blood, in her very being, that she would never be lonely again until the day she died.

The labyrinth was elated with Sarah's multi-layered mind, its depths as much as its shallow corners, and her strengths fascinated it as much as her weaknesses. It had never known the mind of any but fae before, and it thrived on the difference. It delved into her perseverance, stubborn in spite of adversity and disappointment - so what if his chosen had indulged in vicious fantasies, she had not acted on them but shouldered on as best she could to try again. And the depth and luster of those fantasies! Thus came into being the quicksand in the fens to protect the hags, a vicious trap of slow, painful death for those who would destroy any who lived their lives in seclusion, with a really nasty horror that lived in the sand, thrown in for good measure. And the sand-snakes liked the hags, of course. Sarah's fantasies ran towards the elaborate and thorough, with no loose ends anywhere. Over countless great years and many goblin kings and queens the labyrinth had grown, its wild magic calling out to their minds and creating itself in answer to their dreams and power. When Jareth had been chosen, the labyrinth had grown considerably, and the wild magic had created some very dark places to mirror the determination of this chosen to keep his subjects safe and protect the land. It had believed that any change for the rest of eternity would be incremental and small, yet then Sarah came, and her dreams and fears and strengths were not any that the labyrinth had ever experienced before, and it rejoiced in them.

Her dreams created the Queen's Palisades at the winter border, ranges over ranges of sky-high mountains in a dizzying array of peaks and canyons, impenetrable and majestic, capped in eternal snow. Somewhere in the frozen silence of the mountains lay a lake, so remote and high-up that it would not be found for many years, a lake as big as a small ocean, as deep as a dream, without feeders or wells but refilling with snow alone every season to make up for the runoff. And in this snow desert lived a cornucopia of strange creatures, huge flocks of flightless birds that undertook long journeys every year to hatch their eggs, feeding of the boundless schools of fish in the lake, snow hares and foxes, huge sheep with dark coats and big, curved horns that soon were joined by mountain goats who always managed to get to new places quickly. The undisputed rulers of all animals in the Queen's Palisades were huge snow-white bears living in mountain caves, without a trace of fear and very curious they were excellent swimmers adept at catching unwary fish or birds, successful hunters on land as well, living their lives in undisturbed peace.

Closer to heart of the goblin kingdom, the low hills that brought water to the central plains had suddenly gotten much bigger and wilder, and reclusive dryads began to make their home in the ancient forests untouched by any kindreds' hands, now a new part of the hills, impenetrable and full of magic. The forests were a place where a girl might meet a challenge to set her on her life's course, or a boy might learn the thing that would give meaning to his existence. The trees whispered of the past there, and none who came to hurt any of the creatures living in the wild ever came out alive, finding their path barred by impenetrable branches and brambles, every living thing in the forest hostile until they succumbed to privation. And a mighty river was born in the wild forests, from many springs, and the tributaries convened less than five leagues before the edge of the hills, creating a huge river delta, dotted with islands of forest, a wide expanse of water moving inexorably to the edge of the hills, and it fell from the edge of the sharp granite rock down to the soft golden plains below. The impact of the countless tons of water created a shimmering cloud of water vapor that reflected the sunshine to create a prism of light to bask the plains in a veil of color, visible as a rainbow in the sky from twenty leagues away. The Leaping Waters were wide, well over of a league, and in parts fell uninterrupted for well neigh two furlong. Three islands on the crest of the falls divided the curtain of water, only two of them breaking the waters in high season after the winter rains. The Leaping Waters created a huge collecting lake at their bottom from which flowed the new river Tanais' sweet waters into the plains, another source of sustenance for the thirsty crops in the fertile earth of the plains, until at length the Tanais merged with the Haliakmon to flow onward to the sea. And in the joining of their minds they created these and many more places of exquisite beauty in all parts of the kingdom, and as many were dark and dangerous additions to keep the oathbound safe from those who would harm them.

The binding had been eternal, timeless, without the limitations of physical reality. In other words, a good start. When the honeymoon was over, the labyrinth dumped Sarah very resolutely in the mists, with the clearly stated expectation that she would spend as long on the fringes of reality as was necessary to learn how to get out of them. Although the labyrinth was supportive and loving, shoring up her strength and power with all it had to give and sharing itself without any restraints to teach her the reality of magic and the underground, it refused to heed her occasionally near hysterical requests for getting her OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW. The passage of time being as spurious in the mists as all else, Sarah never knew how long it had taken her to learn and understand enough to leave the mists of her own power. She knew however that unlearning the biases and assumptions of forty five years and accepting the rules of a magical world had taken a lot longer than the first time around in the above - she was not a child anymore, and unlearning proved to be more time-consuming than learning. She grimaced rather shamefacedly to remember how stubbornly her mind had held out against all she encountered; it seemed the human mind did not like to let go of all it knew and understood, even when faced with irrefutable proof that its assumptions were wrong. Having grown up in the reliable, scientific world of the above, where the laws of nature held sway and cause and effect were tightly and uncompromisingly coupled, Sarah was ill prepared for life in a magic world that abided by a completely different set of rules, and occasionally none at all. The mists were the cauldron of creation, wild magic barely congealed to matter, and the objects in the mists were only in the last stages of their conception, their final shape and nature not yet firmly decided. They were an object lesson in the unreliability of one's senses and the unpredictability of reality. Thus the mists were an excellent preparation for a human needing to accept and learn the underground in all its unpredictable difference, as reality had but a weak and fleeting grip on existence. Sarah was constantly jarred out of her preconceptions and had to face how all she understood of life had changed, set on its heels in a world that did not follow any rules she knew.

If the shedim had been taken by surprise to find the new goblin queen so unceremoniously dropped in their midst, they were nothing but joyful in her reception. The goblin queen in their domain was a pledge of safety for their children, however unwitting, for the labyrinth would guard its chosen with all its power, keeping the mists safe from the terror that had been stalking them. Yet they were a gentle and generous people, and Sarah realized quickly that she could not have found better teachers than the shedim. They had hidden in the mists for many great years as the madness caused by their voices obviated any association with other kindreds, so they could not aid her in understanding the kindreds. But they lived in dreamsong, shaping reality in the mists with their voices, and better than any kindred they understood the nature of magic. They embraced Sarah's presence joyously, never having know anyone not shedim but for Jareth and the labyrinth itself, so the curious, charming, sometimes wise and sometimes aggravating presence of the human goblin queen in their midst was a source of unending wonder and fascination. They even welcomed the countless goblins that congregated around Sarah wherever she went. It likely helped that the shedim were not attached to material things and tended to have few personal belongings, which also were not of a nature to entice the inbred greed of goblins. But goblins loved music, and the shedim were a kindred who created their existence from song, so even though they were not used to listeners, they took to a rapt audience readily. The shedim were by their very nature not judgmental, and so Sarah felt free to be herself, without need for delicacy and circumspection, which she was the first to admit she was no good at anyway. And ever since she had had a good look at herself in the binding, she tried to be as true to herself as possible, and she was intending to be a worthy goblin queen, all of which seemed to interfere with her more secondary attempts to be as pleasant and polite as she could.

As she learned to slowly, carefully maneuver the mists, the shedim were with her every step of the way, freely sharing their experience without holding back on anything. Sarah soon found that one shedim was always at her side whenever she needed help. Nehorai who sang of the night had made helping the goblin queen his life's mission. By a terrible twist of fate, he had lost both his life-mate Chanina and his son Shai, too young to even have tasted life's fullness yet, to the merciless death haunting the mists. Chanina went missing without a trace, and when only weeks later he found his son's dismembered feet amid a flurry of grey feathers at the banks of the Haliakmon, he foreswore the comfort of union with his brethren in dreamsong and vowed revenge, unknowing of any opportunity to make this possible, but hoping against hope that there was a way for him to avenge those he had loved.

The arrival of the goblin queen was the answer to his prayers. Nehorai ever patiently taught Sarah the dreamsongs that sustained life for the shedim by shaping reality with their magic. Sarah learned the ode to earth and water that had helped them survive before they found a home in the goblin kingdom. The dreamsong accelerated growth, pollination and maturation of plants to feed the ever-fugitive shedim who were never allowed to stay at any place for long enough to grow crops, but relied on the magic of their brethren to sing in the space of a song a few handfuls of grains and some seeds to fruition and finally, dinner. There were darker songs as well. Sarah knew pain and loss, and she took easily to the lament for the dead, which would sing into dissolution the remains of those lost to the night, to spare their bodies mutilation and desecration. These and many others that created the structure of the shedim's life she learned, but none of them was as hard to master as the song of joy which lay at the core of what the shedim were. Sarah did not have sufficient trust in the goodness of others to be able to learn this dreamsong easily. The song of joy was the primal sharing of love and hope to sustain them through an eternity of hate and death. Desolate Nehorai who sang of the night could not teach her the song of joy, for it had died in his heart with his family, yet the shedim took pride in teaching to the goblin queen the song that created their union and community, the pillar of their strength, it allowed them to go on when all hope seemed lost, their bulwark against despair. The song of joy was the repudiation of all darkness and the hope for a new, better day, the immaculate simile of the shedim themselves, Sarah felt. The underground was a poorer place for not having such as the shedim mingle with the other kindreds. They had no ill will nor evil in their hearts, and their generosity and love was boundless.

Sarah's education progressed in bounds and leaps, and some of the lessons were more memorable than others. She was starting to suspect that she would stumble, most likely in a far more literal sense than she liked, over new abilities and limitations for a very long time to come, since her learning was often enough hindered by her inability to even understand that there was a question. When she had complained of an aching back to Eek soon after she had arrived in the underground.

Eek had looked at her with astonishment. "But, why Sarra not make better?" he had asked with an obvious lack of understanding.

It had taken a while for Sarah to make him grasp the fact that she had no idea what he was talking about, or how she could make it better indeed. The explanation was as easy as it was dumbfounding. She was the goblin queen, with all of the labyrinth's power, and she was now an immortal presence in the underground, her physical appearance a matter of utter indifference, and impermanence if so she desired. She had to ask Eek for confirmation for this several times, but it seemed that she could look anyway she wanted - the new, improved Sarah, so to speak, her looks a personal choice. She briefly considered going for the charming and universally appealing looks of a golden retriever, which entertained her to no end for a few happy hours as she pondered the effects of this choice on her subjects. She abruptly decided to drop the fantasy when she imagined meeting the goblin king, considering which part of the human - and probably non-human - anatomy dogs tended to go for. Sarah, most unfortunately as far as she was concerned, while not able to muster a perfect memory of the goblin king, was still able to recall his tight pants.

To distract herself she decided that she was going to avail herself to the fullest of the labyrinth's power, and finally she was going to be beautiful. It did not go quite as she had expected. She went for the complete overhaul, her imagination creating the most beautiful woman she could envision, perfect skin the color of hazelnut, huge almond eyes of brilliant unearthly emerald green, a lush mouth and perfect features, and a body that made her seriously re-consider her dedication to the other sex. She looked at the creature she had created, utterly human yet as beautiful as any fae. And so, when she closed her eyes, and slowly opened them again, she knew herself to be beautiful. Her body felt different as she moved, more graceful, more confident in herself, all she had ever assumed to be the benefits of beauty. As she looked at herself in a looking glass, she knew that she was the woman she had always wanted to be - and she did not recognize herself. As she moved about with unaccustomed poise, more at ease in her skin than she had ever been, hearing her own sweet, charming voice, feeling her delicate gestures, she became increasingly despondent. All her life she had wanted to be truly beautiful, wasn't your life supposed to be better when you were? But now she felt a fake - she had grown used to being a decently good-looking woman, stunning only in the seductive words of men who wanted to bed her, yet comfortable in her less-than-beautiful skin, used to her shortcomings and unexpected glimpses of unpredictable grace. Her heart was aching when she decided that being as beautiful as a human could be was not for her, and she slipped back into the body she knew and understood, not the body of a woman to start wars, but one she was happy to be. She did not want to be what she was not, nor had not ever been. And why should it matter anyway? Eek and all her goblins thought the sun rose in her eyes, and the labyrinth had wanted her, out of unnumbered creatures in the underground and the above. It was enough. Which did not mean, however, that there was not room for improvement.

So she would not be someone else, what about it? She could still be herself, but younger and better. And thus Sarah looked upon herself in the prime of her youth, barely twenty and four, and she again was astounded. She had known for a fact that in her twenties she had always been too heavy, in desperate need of loosing five pounds, or better yet ten, with bad skin to boot. Now, where had these particular misconceptions come from? Had she not had had a mirror to check herself out? Rather shamefacedly she recalled Karen telling her that she was lovely, and dismissing the words as the expected und untrustworthy praise of a doting mother. Yet she had been quite lovely indeed, a shapely if more curvy body than the fashion of the day dictated, with no weight to shed, her pale skin fine and clear, if not as flawless as in a commercial, still not bad at all. So what if it was not perfect? From a gulf of more than twenty years she knew that any tiny fault grew to a major catastrophe when viewed from the distance of two inches to a mirror. Experience had also taught her that a man's vision went hazy once he was close enough to kiss you, which was a much greater distance than a woman used to view her skin when she was in major observation mode.
Yet as she looked at the face and body of her younger self, so much more beautiful than she recalled, she could not find it in her heart to even move back into her youth. Lovely, fresh skinned, her skin unlined and soft, her face soft and open, facing the future with hope, her body in her prime, she looked at the girl she had been and could not see herself there over the chasm of the years. Where were the sleepless nights and days of Toby gone and lost? The hollows created by the death of her father, and Karen? The harsh planes of surrender to loneliness before she met Rob? The lines loss cut into her face when she saw him love someone else? The wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and around her mouth that had shaped imperceptibly over years of laughter?
With a sinking heart Sarah admitted to herself that she could not forsake who she was. Past her youth and not beautiful, her looks had still left hooks in her heart. She could not shake the shape of the woman she had become without loosing herself, a price she was not willing to pay. Who she was mattered more to her than what she looked like, and in some way she was glad she preferred substance over surface. So in the end the goblin queen found herself employing the labyrinth's magic in small and outwardly inconsequential ways - nothing ever hurt any more, all the aches and pains of aging gone, her sight and hearing perfect, her teeth, her nails and her hair strong, healthy and without a blemish, her body the most changed if invisible to anyone but herself, her strength, stamina and speed of recovery that of a woman in the prime of her youth. Yet she still looked herself, her dark hair now more uniformly dark if still with a brilliant white streak growing from the parting at her hairline, the lines around her eyes still there yet never getting worse, but the deep lines between her eyes smoothed out. Her skin might have been a little tighter and plumper than it had been, her lips a little fuller as in her younger years, but still, the goblin queen was a proud and glorious woman of indeterminate age, not young but neither was she old, not a girl, not a young woman, but a woman who has lived life and has not been defeated by it. Yet it had been a lesson in humility, to find you could be anything you wanted but realize you did not really want more than you were. Sarah was shaken by the realization that she could not truly envision and embrace better than herself, for she had never reckoned herself a vain or self-obsessed woman. She did not think she was the crown of creation, yet why could she not let go of herself?

But her musings were short-lived, there were things of far more importance than navel gazing. Once she understood to a degree the abilities and limitations of magic and had learned the rudiments of control, she began to ask questions about what was going on in the goblin kingdom. Nehorai told her of the terrors that were stalking the goblin kingdom and had taken his life-mate and his son, among too many others, and not only from the shedim. In the mind of the labyrinth she learned about the suspicion that the unknown enemy employed heart magic and none as much as suspected the possible course of any future plans. She found herself ever more grateful for Eek and Nehorai, for their unerring encouragement and patience, as she relied on them to clarify concepts that made no sense to a human woman. Sarah was amazed to realize that all humans had magic even though they knew not, nor would ever accept it. Yet heart magic was the one magic all living things possessed, even if they knew nothing of magic and could not control it, as was heart magic's wont. Heart magic was unexplainable and uncontrollable to any kindreds, and any attempts at doing so had proven catastrophic whenever anyone had tried. And this being the Underground, and the fae, of course they had tried to harness its power. And failed. As far as Sarah could make sense of the explanations of Eek, Nehorai, or the Labyrinth, heart magic is what sometimes happened when individuals met and, hell, magic just happened. It seemed as indescribable as that. Why do some people look at each other and feel love, or hate? Why do we sometimes know we have met a friend for the rest of our life in the first five minutes? Heart magic was as wild as magic got without being dissolution and chaos, and it was the strongest magic many creatures even in the underground possessed. But it was magic still, and some, with an iron determination and will as much as thorough training in the use of magic could influence it, giving up on the joys of love to control the power inherent in it. Controlling heart magic always meant hoarding it, acquiring it from others without ever giving any back, and it left the person trying to control it ever colder, lonelier and more distant from any true relations with other creatures. As the practitioners of this dark art became more powerful, they could control the emotions of those they encountered to do their bidding, all the while siphoning off some of it, even though it was most inadvisable to try with any possessing strong magic and power, as this could easily lead to detection. At its worst, all heart magic could be torn from the victim, killing them in the process and draining all their magic into their attacker. But heart magic was inherently uncontrollable, and it kept building up in any who tried to restraint and dominate it. Over time, it rendered them ever more unstable until it overcame their minds, at which point they lost the ability to feel any emotion at all. Their ensuing desperate attempts to regain the ability to feel something, anything at all, always made them to frantically gather more power, at which point their disguises fell away. None ever had reached this point without having taken countless lives, and judgment and punishment were quick and decisive.

Sarah felt sickened. She had thought that the underground was a better, more peaceful place than the above, but things weren't always what they seemed. And in the above she had lived a peaceful life in a peaceful part of the world, the horrors that humans inflicted on each other on the other side of a television screen, far away from her. Here in the underground she was the goblin queen, chosen of the labyrinth, in a kingdom that was under attack by a merciless madman who would kill children. Unfortunately dealing with this shit was part of her job now, a job she had accepted with her eyes wide open. Time to start earning her keep. Sarah straightened her shoulders and looked at Nehorai with narrowed eyes. "I must ask forgiveness if this causes you pain, Nehorai, but I need to know exactly what happened to all the shedim that have been killed since you came to live in the mists."

The problem with guarding the oathbound shedim and hags always came down to the difficulty of keeping track of them. Determined to protect what was theirs, both Jareth and the labyrinth expended an inordinate amount of energy on making sure that they knew where even their most elusive subjects were at any given time. As far as Sarah was concerned, this was an utter waste of resources. She might not know a lot about magic, but hadn't the people here ever heard of trip-wires? Sarah may have lacked practical experience, but an insatiable hunger for knowledge and the ability to function on very little sleep had left her with a lot of time to read, which she had done voraciously and indiscriminately, biographies, how-to's, novels, textbooks - if it was printed, she read it. Possessed of an excellent memory, Sarah had always been able to recall some idea or bit of information that might be applicable in any given situation. She gathered from the shedim's stories how they had fended for themselves before they found refuge in the goblin kingdom, and was immediately stuck by how easily the duty of guarding the shedim could be performed by themselves. So, after long and thorough discussions with the shedim, they had come up with an easily workable solution. Sarah created a sanctuary in the heart of the mists, binding the wild magic into unchangeable reality with all her new powers, aided by the labyrinth with all it could give. The labyrinth was instinctively aware of his bloodsworn in the sanctuaries, some small part of its attention unwaveringly aware of anything within the sanctuary trees. Nothing could attempt any kind of attack there without immediately alerting the labyrinth's whole attention and power, a most effective protection of all inside. So the shedim would be the labyrinth's trip-wire. As they had done in the past, when they were refugees without a place to live in peace, they took turns in singing the song of protection; at any time of day and night three of the shedim were in the sanctuary, a duty shared among them in a never-ending course until the mists were safe again. The song of protection kept guard over each and all of the shedim, the sphere of protection extending nearly a furlong from each shedim. Whenever anything sentient touched the outer perimeters of the sphere of protection, the singers knew. In the old days, when the shedim were hunted refugees, this had served the double purpose of protecting them as much as the other kindreds, for the shedim silenced in the presence of others as they hated the effects their voices had on the other kindreds. Yet now, none but shedim should be in the mists, the home and last recourse of the shedim by decree of the goblin king. If the shedim in the sanctuary felt any foreign presence, they would shed their blood on the ground of the sanctuary, alerting the labyrinth and the chosen in an instant that someone was trespassing where they should not. None would ever be able to come up unnoticed onto a shedim wandering alone in the mists and offer them harm, for the labyrinth and its chosen would be ready to face the interloper before the shedim were in danger. It was a beautifully simple solution, and Sarah was quite proud of herself. It might not be rocket science, but the solution the labyrinth and its powerful chosen goblin king had found was a lot more involved and inefficient. Sarah suspected they had simply jumped on the first solution they had seen and not thought of an easier way of doing it. She didn't care. The shedim would be safe after she left, and they were proud to take part in their own protection.

Finally, after an unaccounted-for passage of time Sarah was ready to leave the mists. She had won the undying loyalty and love of the shedim and had gained a sufficient understanding of the underground and of magic, with a certain control over her new powers, even though she was still far from even a semblance of mastery. Sarah knew it was time to find her place in the underground, but she did not know where her next steps should take her. She wanted to see the goblin kingdom in the flesh, not only through her mind's eye when walking through the mind of the labyrinth, but how was she going to go about it? She would not ever have admitted to even herself that the dim and but half-remembered recollection of the goblin king had part in stopping her from even considering to join the court as the goblin queen. In her binding, the labyrinth had been as circumspect as it had sworn, never touching her mind with that of the king, yet she felt the trace of his touch in the mind of the labyrinth, as she knew he had to feel the traces of her. It had been an unsettling experience, and she had shied away from exploring it. She felt confident and wanted in the love of the labyrinth, and returned those feelings with her all her heart, but she neither loved nor trusted its king. She had not thought him a villain since she had grown up, realizing full well that his part had been to teach her to succeed in her quest for her brother, and he had played it exceedingly well, for what good would a victory have been that had been won too easily?

Furthermore, since her ascent as the goblin queen in the mists, Sarah had found herself playing Jareth's part in the testing of runners often enough to understand that the goblin king had not been acting on malice or evil intentions but that he was simply doing what had to be done to teach the runners the lesson they needed to learn. The first time she was called to a wished-away's home to face a horrified runner, she had swept into the room garbed in the glory of the goblin queen, attired in glittering darkness and luminous with all the power and majesty that was the mark of the chosen. She moved the crystal in her hand as if by magic, turning it from seductive toy to threatening snake in heartbeat. Looking into the eyes of the boy who had only then completely realized that his angry wish had come true, she had felt in her heart all the boy's emotions, his tormented anger and love for the little sister favored by his mother, his undeservedly high estimation of himself, his streak of violence and his near-impossible yet heartfelt dreams and hopes for his future. She also felt his true wish to win his sister back, whatever the price might be. So she set out to teach the boy some lesson in tenacity and the price we pay for our choices, a lesson that would weigh hard on him but would make him a truer person, honest and more knowing and believing in himself. She made him face his inborn violence and heedless arrogance, and with the help of the creatures of the labyrinth he was given the choice of a better future, his passions controlled and bent to his control, not riding him like a heedless horse. Sarah knew that in the eyes of the runner she was but a cruel, cold thief of children, playing with him, torturing him, without honor or mercy. Yet this was the price of the teaching, and she paid it gladly, knowing it was a lesson the boy needed to learn. More than ever did she understand what had happened to her as a girl, and she held no grudge against the goblin king.

Yet his faded memory still made her feel small and clumsy, a child facing a power it could neither understand nor control. Despite what she had learned in the meantime, her memory insisted that he was prone to do just about anything to get what he wanted, and she did not believe she could hold up if he set to manipulate her to do his bidding, the willing goblin queen to the king's rule. The goblin king was not happy about another chosen of untried power in his kingdom yet beyond his control, an unknown power in a unstable time. He had, after all, told her so in no uncertain terms.

One of Sarah's first acts after she had got her first tenuous bearings in the underground was a missive to the goblin king. She had thought about it hard and long, and despite all her misgivings she knew she was being childish, and she knew full well that the goblin king as the ruler of the goblin kingdom deserved respect due his position and power, and she did not begrudge him. She knew he had to be livid - hell, she would have been in his shoes. Sarah knew that he deserved her recognition of his power, and she was going to do the right thing if it killed her. Never had she been so glad of magic - she would not have to face him, at least. Her early attempts at writing a letter had been so miserable, she finally gave up on it in disgust. Not yet understanding the possibilities of magic, it had taken the hesitant, cautious advice of Nehorai to come up with a workable solution. When he had been through with his description of what was essentially a magical recording of her, she declaimed in her most theatrical voice: "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you're my only hope." A short look at Nehorai's blank face established that he must have thought her bonkers, and she explained to him that she was only quoting a famous line from the above. "God, I've always wanted to do a soliloquy, and I think I can do a very creditable performance if I actually don't have to face him."

So, on another court day in the goblin city, in the middle of a rather boring afternoon, the doors of the market hall opened with a resounding boom, and in from the road rolled a shining crystal through the hastily retreating crowd, tinkling with a determined ring that moved all and sundry out of its way. The crystal stilled in front of the dais where the goblin king reclined in his chair looking regal and bored, and broke up in an explosion of fiery lights and sound. When it died down, the translucent image of the goblin queen stood in the air before the goblin king in all her glory. She looked stunning, threatening and scandalous, and a sharp intake of breath echoed through the hall. Jareth had turned utterly still on his chair, his eyes narrowed and his smile froze in place on his face as he scrutinized the woman the labyrinth had chosen for its queen.

The scandalous part of the queen's robes were Sarah's idea. The labyrinth's first attempt in dressing the goblin queen in her full royal robes had been less than successful. While Sarah remembered with affection the frothy white Cinderella-confection she had worn as a not-yet-woman in her peach-induced dream, she would not have been seen dead in this kind of dress thirty years older. A dress that looked charming on a very young woman lost its appeal over time, mutton dressed as lamb sprang to mind. Sarah felt that a goblin queen beyond the ... ah... first blush of youth ... needed to project danger and threat as well as allure, and to her adult mind the labyrinth's choices did not do the job. She was not even going to mention the fact that all of the labyrinth's samples were astoundingly unpractical and uncomfortable, restricting not only her breathing in the tightly corseted bodice but also her free movement in the countless yards of silken petticoats and high heels that made walking difficult. How had she not noticed when she had worn this kind of dress the first time? Ah well, considering that this specific memory was a hallucination, the dress had probably been fitting like a dream.

So Sarah had put her foot down. Of course she did want to look impressive and as alluring as possible, but she had no intention to sacrifice either comfort or sense. And what was the point in dressing like a cut-rate fae? She was human, and she had none of their heart-stopping beauty, nor their tall, willowy frame. At over six foot she was tall for a human woman, but still a few inch shorter than most fae, and willowy was not the word to describe her body. She was going to play up what she had, and she while she did have a weakness for medieval clothes with chemises, corsets and overskirts, she wasn't planning to run about like refuge from a ren faire. So she started out with the kind of pants the goblin king seemed to prefer, the type that seemed spray-painted onto the legs, as black as midnight. If they had impressed her at a tender fifteen, she figured she could certainly impress a bunch of males rather more mature than that. And so what if women in the underground did not wear pants? There was a reason guys wore 'em, most of them practical. Sarah figured if she was ever going to face an enemy, she'd prefer to wear an outfit that allowed her to run, preferably away. Since she had grown wary of high heels before she had even reached her final height, she happily decided on a pair of knee-high boots of dragon leather so black they seemed to swallow the light. Eek had told her that a whole ascension of dragons lived in the furthest reaches of Ikh Bogd Uul, the canyon lands on the western reaches. The dragons shed their skin at the beginning of each growth cycle, and this dragon leather was rare and most coveted in the underground; water-and flame proof and well neigh indestructible it even offered some protection against spells and magic attacks. The ascension had sent her a whole bale of their dried skins as their tribute. Over the pants she wore an open skirt fashioned of two exquisitely embroidered panels of black spider silk cut like tulip petals that overlapped at the swell of her hips down to a hand span over the knees, curving to the ankles at the front and back of her legs, gracefully opening up as far as necessary to allow her a free stride when she needed it. Her shirt was of the finest silver-grey spidersilk cut close to her body, with a low neckline front and back, dripping with finest lace. A medallion hung from a finely wrought silver-colored necklace mindful of a braided plant around her neck, down from the hollow of her throat, the twin to the medallion on the goblin king's chest. On the front, her waist and ribcage were encased in an armor of finely wrought dragon leather that did not cover her chest, an nicely seductive touch Sarah approved of. On her back however the armor extended up to her neck, her pale skin glowing against the black dragon leather at the shoulders and the neck, where the leather was carefully curved outwards to hold graceful sprays of the deadly spines of the leviathan. Her shoulders and neck stood out very white against the black leather and the silver silk. Around her narrow waist hung a heavy arms belt that held a long, slender side-sword of midnight blue cobalt in the hanging on the left and a short dagger on the right, her hand, gloved in black, rested lightly on the pommel of her sword. Sarah was still trying to use the bloody thing properly as it was nothing like the epee she was used to, it had killing sides as well as a deadly point, and the handling was rather different from what she knew of fencing. But she had no plans of sharing this piece of information, not actually of using the sword. She figured it made for a lovely piece of dangerous ornamentation, but any real soldier would likely skewer her like shish kebab if she had to use the bloody thing. Her short wild curls were a riot of darkness on her head, the white strand in the parting standing out like a white flame. She had lost some of her nerve, however. Sarah did not like to admit it, but while she thought she cut a fine figure of a goblin queen, she still felt the need to hide her face from the fae as they made her feel small and plain, so she had the most fantastic goblin mask cover most of her face, a wild, distorted face of strange colors and inhuman proportions, the mask affixed to her face by magic, unmovable but by her own request. The shedim had been most impressed.

The goblin queen gracefully bowed her head low to the king and stood up to her full height, poised before the dais with a careless ease that had taken her days to perfect, a self-possessed smile on her lips. "I offer you my greetings, goblin king," her low voice carried easily to every ear in the great hall, carried by magic. "I beg forgiveness for paying my respects so late, but I needed to attend to some pressing matters that could not be delayed. This unfortunate time lag however offered me the rare opportunity to learn of the ill-natured rumors making the rounds about my arrival, and while I am sure that a wise ruler like you pays no attention to idle talk, it seems necessary to set the record straight." Sarah had figured that being scrupulously polite to the goblin king and even flatter him a bit wasn't going to kill her, but she had found that it had been a lot harder to than she had imagined. Using the most formal expressions she could come up with had helped, and as she kept rehearsing her little speech, she knew that she could never had spoken to him face-to-face. It had been hard enough to even think about the fact that he was going to see her performance. "I have heard loose talk about power struggles, and even assassination," she continued with a amused voice. "It is enough to make you wonder about people's sanity. Who would ever believe a mere human could best the goblin king when so many fae have failed?" The translucent image of the goblin queen bowed deeply if mockingly to the king. "I have neither the disposition not the aptitude for ruling, and I am not minded to interfere in the goblin king's affairs. Some few humans have always been able to use magic, and through magic and luck I have attained power and a source of magic here in the goblin kingdom." Sarah understood and wholeheartedly supported the need for secrecy about the nature of the labyrinth, but she needed to come up with some explanation why she had shown up in the goblin kingdom. She knew it was a weak story, but sources of magic inherent in the land or some artifact were not unheard of, so at least it was not impossible. She grinned maliciously. And it would not be her who would have to go around explaining anything, one of the major advantages of staying away from the power games of the courts. "It has never been my wish to interfere in ruling of the underground, or raise any doubts on the undiluted powers of the goblin king. I vow that my interest is not in power among the kindreds nor a position in any court, and I shall not meddle with any decisions or policies of the goblin king, and I shall consider any conspiracy against him as an assault on myself. All I care for is the use of magic, and the love of the underground. Yet words are cheap, so let me I make my meaning crystal clear, beyond any doubt." With an elegant movement the pale image of the queen created a crimson crystal on her hands and threw it in the air, and as the orb fell towards the floor, it gained in reality and shattered on the stone pavers, the shards and the blood that had been contained in the crystal spilling on the ground. The goblin queen's very real blood was slowly absorbed into the granite pavers as her pellucid image swore a blood oath that she would neither aid nor abet any attempts against the goblin king and would, should the need ever arise, come to the aid of the goblin king if asked. As the voices in the hall were rising in volume, she smiled a last smile to the dais as her image slowly faded.

Sarah had been quite pleased with her performance, a feeling that lasted exactly as long as it took for the goblin king to send her a scathing letter, faithfully delivered by the labyrinth while keeping Sarah's whereabouts utterly concealed as promised. Jareth clearly did not suffer from any difficulties in expressing himself to the goblin queen without preparations. The letter was short, curt and rude, and it laid down the law about the appropriate demeanor - and robes - of a queen, followed by instructions to how to get herself to the palace where she belonged before she got herself or others into difficulties. Sara was livid. Who did this arrogant bastard think he was? She had no intentions to give into his bullying, but at least his letter had removed any residual guilt she might have felt. Her public obeisance had been the right thing to do, but he chose to insult her and treat her as if she were a unruly child. She had never intended to put herself into his power even if he had spoken to her in the tongues of men and angels, but this just strengthened her resolve to stay as far away from fae as she could.

Sarah squinted into the bright sun. "Tell me, Eek, why is it called Underground anyways when it has a sun, a lot of stars in constellations I've never seen above, and even some moons?" She groan as she lifted the heavy sack of flour onto the back of the carriage. It was hard to believe what difference two measly feet made. Well, at least her upper body strength just had to be fantastic these days. She was sure that she was a lot stronger than she had ever been in the above, even if she only woke up at four foot on a good morning. It had taken her a good, long while to get used to her much shorter height and reach, and she often regretted not standing six feet in her stockings any more. It made her especially cross to have Ankimo tower over her since the hundun was not even six foot.

Eek was balancing precariously on the edge of the carriage, knees pulled close to his body, and watched Sarah and Ankimo stow away the flour. Ankimo stood hunched down in the back of the brightly painted caravan, and every time Sarah dropped another sack of flour at the edge, he grabbed it and stacked it behind the driver's bench. Eek rested his chin on his knees. "Kindred always have big celebration at Samhain and Beltain. Long ago, sometimes humans cross on them night, join our celebrations. Humans only ever pass through fairy rings, fall down through rings into middle of celebration, and is night, often in ball rooms, and they think they is underground. Kindred not have name for all place, only for own country, so they use Underground - fun, and why not? Is nobody's name, so no kindred fight about."

"I suspect it's no dumber than earth, the old sod or what you have," Sarah laughed as she hefted the last sack. "And I like the two moons. Say, do the moon-tears sing at each full moon, or only when both moons are full?"

"Each full moon," Eek managed to squeeze out a full mouth. He had spied Sarah's baskets with baked goods, and practically inhaled a shortcake tart from the heap. "But sing better when both moons are full."

"Now remember, Eek, only one! Well, perhaps two. But we need to sell some on the market today, so don't leave any paw prints on the glazing. And give one to Ankimo as well, you greedy little rascal."

With a smile Sarah walked up to the mill. As she drank the offered mug of larak, she entered a good-natured bout of haggling on the price of the obviously inferior flour she had just loaded, explaining in lurid detail how the astronomical prices the miller charged for goods that could never be resold at a profit would drive her into the poor house within weeks, if not to her early grave from destitution. She had had dealings with Sulio since she had taken up trading for a living years ago, so the miller answered dryly that she looked quite alive considering how long she'd bought his flour now, the best she could get anywhere in the goblin kingdom as well she knew. Another two mugs of larak later she had managed to lower his price by two farthing for each sack of flour, which he told her he did from the goodness of his heart, because he could not stand to take more money from such a hardworking old dwarf lady like her, even if it were his ruin. The parted on excellent terms as always, both of them well content with their business.

As Sarah walked back to her caravan, Three and Shuck ran up to her from their sleeping spot underneath the caravan as if she had been gone for ages. The labyrinth had brought Isshy and her dogs over to the underground with her, but after only the scantest of explanations she refused to hear further as to their whereabouts during the time the labyrinth had decided the queen needed training. It gave her headaches. As far as Sarah was concerned, her animal were returned to her once she started her own life in the underground, and it was all she really wanted to know. While Isshy had gone off on her own and only came for visits, if quite regularly, when she expected to be fed and petted and be made much of, the dogs were her constant companions. The magic of the labyrinth kept the animals hale and strong, with the energy of puppies, and if she understood correctly they would be with her for many more decades before they died. Back in the above, her one complaint about pets had been how short their life spans were compared to that of their owners, yet it had been a regret considerably leavened by the suffering of so many dogs and cats she'd seen in her office, mistreated and neglected by those who should have loved them. For many pets a short life had been the best thing you could hope for. She was brought out of her reverie by Shuck, who like any lab was hunger - or rather greed - on paws, trying to push his nose into her skirt pockets. As far as her dogs were concerned, her short stature was a good thing. She still smelled the same, but now it was pretty easy to lick her face and her pockets were easy to nose - change had done her good. She fed them some treats she always carried in her pockets - after all, you never knew when you'd come across a child, a goblin or a dog. Luckily, they all tended to like the same things.

Not for the first time she pondered how much her life had changed since she had come to the labyrinth as its chosen. At first immortality had seemed the scariest part of the labyrinth's invitation, as she had been rather sure that forever was a very long time indeed, and probably a whole lot longer than she could possibly stand. She had been easily bored in her human life already, which explained her expertise in countless generally useless skills like contact juggling, Thai cooking, ballroom dancing, as well as a mastery of Latin and, not that she had ever admitted it to even her friends, Elvish. Well, THAT had proven to be an utter waste of time, now that she lived among the real thing. Tolkien's elves spoke a lovely, melodious language, but in the reality of the underground, magic acted as a translation device, and as far as she was concerned, everyone seemed to speak perfectly good English. Unexpectedly, sign-language had proven a godsend to talk to Ankimo in the company of strangers - everyone knew that hundun had no voice, so it was the perfect disguise for Nehorai. It did not hurt that hundun were exceedingly fierce, so even the most suicidal of thieves was going to think twice about bothering her. The presence of Ankimo-who-was-Nehorai practically guaranteed her safety, and the labyrinth had been quite insistent on his company. And so sign-language had proven useful even though she had considered it one of her more useless skills. She did not think, however, that her abilities in falconry were ever going to do her any good. And so to her surprise eternity did not loom as terrible as she had feared, she had indeed lost track of time very quickly, as there never seemed enough of it.

It had taken a lot of effort to get used to the different life she had here, but Sarah knew she had been lucky, nothing but her pride rested on her success. Had she found it impossible to be make a living for herself in a strange world, she still would have been the goblin queen, loved, needed and with a lot of work on her hands. For work was just another word for goblins, as far as she was concerned. It was a good thing she had never needed much sleep, because at the end of every day she would usually spend a few hours with her goblins, listening to their stories, singing with them, scolding them when necessary, loving them and generally taking care of their needs. While she loved it, it was work still, as taking care of a babe was work, if gladly performed. And it came on top of the work she did during the day to keep herself going. Sarah might not have needed to labor for a living, but she was proud to know she could well look after herself. It made for a lot of background rumbling in her mind as the labyrinth tried to convince her to live the life it felt the goblin queen should live, concentrating on her dreams and the goblins. Sarah suspected that a life of leisure would not suit her, and indeed might make eternity seem much too long to be tolerated. A busy life had convinced her that nothing made time fly as fast as keeping occupied. Only now time was not running away from her - there were more tomorrows than she could count, and she had become glad of it. She had been in the underground for decades, yet she knew she had just begun to see even part of the goblin kingdom. She could barely wait for the rest of her life.

A distracted glance at her caravan convinced her it was time to give it a new coat of color, the old paint was peeling at the bottom of the boards, and she had tired of the royal blue color anyway. She decided to be going for vermillion this time, with many gold stars painted on it, and the canvas covering would be of the palest blue, with flowers all over. And green spokes on the wheels, woven with silver bands. She cocked her head in happy thought. Some might think it was a tad loud, but everyone knew it was her when her caravan came up to a village. Nobody painted their cart the way she did. Sarah told herself it was just a way to practice her use of the labyrinth's magic, for she still found it confoundingly difficult to use magic in any sensible way, having no comparison on how to do it right, or even what right was. But truth be told, she simply loved the bold colors and the loud patterns, and her caravan gave her an excuse to go as wild with color as she dared.

It was a pity that Lazarus got stubborn to the point of refusing to follow her directions whenever she tried a magical dye job on his coat. She could not understand why, the short, grey fur on his solid body just called out for beautification. Sarah put her fingers into her mouth and called to him with an earsplitting whistle. As she took the bit from the post and picked up the harness, the donkey ambled from the meadow up to her and pushed his head into the groove between her body and arm. She turned around and petted and cooed to him, then put the harness over his head and fixed it to his barrel chest, then walked him to the cart and fixed the harness to the cart shaft. Finally she put the bit on his head and carefully disentangled the reigns. Sarah never used a mouthpiece, she had seen too many draught animals with torn mouths, and animals had all her live willingly done her bidding without the need of a mouthpiece to force them where they would not go on their own. She snorted as she recalled how she had found him. Back then, she had just decided that she wanted to go a-wandering and had finally put away enough money to search for a caravan and a dray horse. Now THAT had worked out well, she though dryly as she climbed onto the driver's bench of the caravan. Dray horse, my ass. She had saved the donkey from a knacker. His resigned eyes had drawn her as she was passing by the man dragging the donkey behind him as she had been searching for a good animal to pull a cart, and while he was nothing but skin and bone, neither did the knacker ask for a lot of coin for an animal headed for the sausage. Coaxing the pitiful donkey back to health had postponed her plans for several months, but she though contentedly that it had been well worth the wait. Lazarus had turned out a gentle and obliging donkey of superior strength and willingness, and if his stubborn streak occasionally came through she willingly obliged his whims until he was ready to cooperate with her again. Laughingly she gave a crack of the horse whip over Lazarus' head. She'd bought the whip since she liked the look of it, but could never bring herself to actually use it on an animal. She had however gotten very good at making it go it exactly where she wanted it, even if it wasn't the donkey's back, and it made great sounds. Learning how to use the whip well enough to make Indiana Jones jealous had kept her happily entertained for countless hours on the empty road, and she held out hope that one day it might come in handy.

Sarah's caravan made its way on the king's road to the weekly market at the city wall of the goblin city with no attention of her at all. It had taken her very little time to appreciate the advantages of being pulled by an animal, as driving under the influence or when asleep was definitely not a problem when your donkey knew the way home. Lazarus did not need constant attention to stay on the road, and when he knew where he was going, it left her to chat with Ankimo, hands gesticulating wildly and quite unable to hold the reins, or talk with Eek or whatever goblin might be visiting with nary any attention on the road. It nearly made up for the lack of modern suspension on the cart, although after a long day of traveling, after nearly having been rattled to death she was usually disinclined to agree with that sentiment. Her gypsy wagon had the best suspension money could buy in the underground, made of the finest hardwood, but she did not feel it was up to the cushioning abilities of proper steel. Yet since cold iron was a deadly poison to most kindreds in the underground, the development of comfortable travel had reached its limits pretty early.

As traffic picked up as they got closer to the goblin city, a quick look over her shoulder reassured Sarah that Eek had gone. She did not dare having him around in public, there was always the risk that someone might recognize the queen's goblin, and that just would not do. Travelers on the road called out greetings to the woman on the coachman's seat, her colorful wagon well-known to people. Sarah answered her greetings and at some point stopped to invite a familiar dusty gnome peddler to join her on the cart. With a grunt Ankimo climbed to the back of the caravan and lay down on the blankets. Shuck and Three did not need more invitation and jumped into the back of the caravan to join him, all three asleep in just moments. Sarah and the gnome Andreu were soon in deep conversation as she described to him detail the tools she wanted him to get her. Andreu was selling the wares of the gnome smiths in the Simien mountains all over the goblin kingdom, and he took specialty orders. In the beginning Sarah had used bronze tools for her doctoring, but she was less than happy with the soft metal. The scalpels did not hold their edge as she wanted them to, and most tools were just not up to her high standards from the above. Things had happily changed when she happened across Andreu. The gnomes and dwarves of the underground could use iron without any ill effects and were renowned as metal workers, but they reached the height of their skills when working with cobalt, a metal not found in pure form in the above but abundantly common in the underground, a metal which had no ill effect on the kindreds. Cobalt could not be used for crude tasks like tree cutting or digging holes, but it made deadly blades of midnight blue for dirks, swords and protective chain maille, harder, tougher and more resilient than steel ever was. While Sarah now was the proud owner of iron axes and shovels for the hard labor, she used fine tools made of cobalt, superior to even stainless steel, and had begun to acquire a whole doctor's set of tools which she kept adding to whenever she met the gnome peddler, paid for in advance as she knew she could trust the peddler. When they reached the goblin city, Andreu helped her and Ankimo carry the sacks of flour to the baker's storage shed and bid her goodbye. Sarah finished her dealings with the baker and walked back to her cart, taking in the crowd with pleasure.

When the labyrinth had brought her home to the underground and made her its queen, she had gained the immortality of the fae and the use of all the magical power of the labyrinth. While this made her more powerful than even the fae with their inborn magic, she still lacked the skills to use the magic on more but an instinctive level. She was however human, and would remain so until the end of her days. Only children turned fae in the underground, for once a sentient being was an adult it could not change its nature. Only few adult humans ever came to the underground of their own volition and stayed, and as a group they were not highly regarded in the underground, especially not among the fae. Some of the humans even lived their lives as pampered pets of fae who were charmed and attracted by their difference from fae perfection, but they were never considered equals as their magic was usually very weak and their emotions were considered violent and intractable. Sarah had not cared be noticed and commented on as the human goblin queen, her every action observed and dissected, her every misstep fodder for disdain. Her first condition for joining with the labyrinth had been that she would live her life by her own choices and decisions, and the labyrinth would let her be, whatever its own wishes were. She was going to be the best goblin queen she could, but she would live by her own rules. Since she had a mind to live her life quietly and unknown, as far away from the eyes of the fae as possible, she could not live as a human. Remembering her old friend Hoggle, she had asked the labyrinth to disguise her as an elderly dwarf woman, knowing full well she would not stand out from the many thousand new denizens of the goblin kingdom under such a disguise. Unconsciously she had assumed that a dwarf woman would look like Hoggle, with longer hair, and had been quite surprised when she had first spied herself in a looking glass. Dwarf women were far more graceful than their menfolk, and while they did not grow above four foot, their bodies, while strong, were supple and elegant, their skin like cinnamon velvet. The labyrinth had shaped her as a woman in the last quarter of her life, and Sarah thought that if humans managed to age so pleasingly plastic surgery would not have been invented. With wide-set eyes and a wide laughing mouth in a strong-boned face Sarah found herself handsome, and the lines around her eyes and mouth were familiar and comfortable. Breaking with tradition, she had cut her salt-and-pepper hair short in a pixie haircut. She went by the old-fashioned dwarvish name of Eir.

Yet even looking as unobtrusive as she did, she realized quickly that trying to blend into teeming crowd of the goblin kingdom would have been a lot easier had she grown up in a country that hadn't given up markets and haggling for supermarkets and debit cards. In the beginning, when she had no idea how to get a good price and simply paid the first sum that was asked, she was taken advantage of mercilessly. The coin pouch at her belt never emptied by the grace of the labyrinth, yet it rankled being taken for a ride, ignorant, helpless, a useless fool. Sarah found to her chagrin that all her understanding of magic and the rules of the underground were no help in navigating everyday life unless she was prepared to pull out all stops and use magic every step of the way. Considering that she had the power to do so, but none of the skill required, this was not much of an alternative. A kindly gnome trader took pity on the desperate dwarf woman and in exchange for food and a bed at night she ran his errands, from picking up merchandise to cooking dinner. Sara had ever been a smart and determined woman, and she learned the lessons needed to survive fast and well, as she had learned all lessons before. Thus it did not take her long to realize that she would be able to make a living at many things, and in the end she settled on starting out with trading, which she had found she had both a talent and a liking for, and on attending to the illnesses of those she encountered in the scattered settlements she traveled for her trading. Her training as a vet, aided by the unconscious magic that was part of her now, was most advantageous when facing the ailments of the poorer kindreds as well as their livestock and pets who did not have access to the healers that treated the maladies of the well-to-do. As she worked all hours of the day and slowly gained acceptance and recognition as a trustworthy trader and an excellent healer, she could feel the labyrinth grumble in the back of her mind, and in her sleep she found herself defending her choices, not always as easy as she would have liked it since she never was sure whether she did the right thing. The labyrinth tried to tempt her with visions of the life she might have, a life of ease and joy, in the rightful place of the goblin queen in the castle beyond the goblin city, with all the time in the world to dream and spin the labyrinth from her imagination. Yet Sarah had gleaned enough from her constant connection to the labyrinth to understand the dangers of her new home. She knew she would be at a disadvantage in court to try to win over her new subjects when she knew still next to nothing about the underground and its denizens. She also had the strong suspicion that being queen of a country that had just gotten much bigger by one's arrival was not quite the sinecure that the labyrinth suggested. Not to even mention the thought of having to deal with the goblin king on a regular basis, a fate worse than death as far as Sarah was concerned. She had not been given to diplomacy in the above, and she was going to be damned if she started now at the onset of eternity. She was going to be free, unbound by any obligations but those imposed by love and duty, and free to act as she pleased.

Sarah stretched out her back like a cat. Hunching over with a pony's hoof on your knee while you were cleaning out some badly wedged-in stone was murder on the back. But she had managed to get everything out, and the judicious application of a disinfectant together with the unconscious healing magic of her hands should make sure that no infection set in. The farmer also bought the herbs for a poultice from her, so the animal should be fine again within a few days. The farmer was good-naturedly haggling over the price with her, and finally left happily after paying her a few coins. Sarah gruffly turned to her next client, a human woman with her coughing child. "I've told you, Barb, you need to see one of the healers about Elin. I'll give you more of the tea for her to drink when she finds it hard to breath, but it won't take care of what is ailing her, only make her breathing easier for a time." All the while she was talking to the woman, Sarah put her hands on the child, barely more than a toddler, and ordered her to breath deeply, cough and do various other things. Barbara always came to see the old dwarf healer who had such a way with herbs, the woman did not trust the magic healers, having been born in the above in the 1950's she had not been able to completely convince herself that magic might work better for her daughter's ailments than some tangible treatment, even though she had lived in the underground for centuries now. Sarah sighed internally. She wished she could heal the child, but she did not know how to use her magic properly to take care of the girl's troubles for good, and the labyrinth could only supply her with its power, but not with the control to use it. Elin was suffering from asthma, and every time Sarah saw her she went through a lengthy rigmarole of physical examinations that allowed her to keep her hands on the girl's skin as much as possible since her unconscious magic seemed to work best. Elin was symptom-free for weeks every time she had seen Sarah, and Sarah made sure Barb always had a generous supply of larak beans at hand to brew a tea for the girl when her magic wore off. Larak beans were not commonly used for consumption since it was the leaves of the larak bush that produced the aromatic and stimulant tea, the seeds of the shrub were bitter and only used for treatment for lung and heart ailments. The beans contained high doses of theophylline, and a tea made of the ground-up beans opened the girl's airways when her breathing became labored in an asthma attack, however the tea had side-effects that Sarah wished to spare the girl. Sarah turned determinedly to the Barbara. She had reached the end of her endurance, that woman would have tried the patience of a saint. It was obvious that she was not amenable to kind entreaties. "I will not take your money for the beans, Barb," she looked at the worried mother grimly. "I have told you too many times that the king's healers can make her well if you will just swallow your dumb prejudices and bring Elin to the healer's consultations. You know as well as I do that they are open to everyone every tenday in the courtyard of the castle. I am tired of helping you make your daughter suffer unnecessarily when she could be as well as other children. I will not help you again if you see me the next time because she cannot breathe right. You have been here for long enough to know that only magic can help her, but you are just being a selfish, stubborn human, too dumb to do what is right even though your daughter pays the price." Barbara began to wail how well Elin always felt after she had seen the dwarf healer, but Sarah was having none of it. "Elin is getting worse. Some day soon she will find it difficult to breathe, and the tea will not help. She will suffocate, slowly and painfully, as you look on because you were willfully ignorant. I do not care to see your face again here, Barb, unless it is for buying my cakes or some other complaint but Elin's breathing." Sarah looked up at the other woman with fury in her eyes. "If you do not get Elin to the healers by the next market day, I will lodge a complaint with the city council against you, Barb. Mothers have no more right than anyone else to hurt children. There are many people who would do anything to have a child of their own, and Elin is such a lovable child," she finished threateningly. Barbara looked at her in horror and picked up her daughter, turning on her heels to vanish in the crowd. "By the next market day, Barb," Sarah called after her. As she put away her herbs into the chest, a man's voice addressed her from behind.

"That was rather cruel, don't you think? I would imagine there must be a better way of getting a scared woman to seek help for her child." Sarah carefully finished sorting in the herbs, it would certainly not do to mix them up, and slammed the lid shut.

"And what would you know about that?" she growled viciously, her voice low and angry, turning to her interrogator with her fists on her hips, and looked over the young man who had addressed her. Damn it, she should have known it was a fae, with a voice like that, pure caramel. Sarah looked him over furiously from head to toes and felt her anger drain out of her. God, but was she glad that the fear, loathing and attraction she had felt long ago for the goblin king had obviously been the effect of her overheated teenage hormones. This young man was the loveliest creature she had ever seen, but he did not make her feel weird all over, and he did not scare the living daylights out of her either. Tall and slender as all fae he did not seem completely at ease with himself however, moving his limbs like a colt, a young man yet then. His smiling face was square-jawed and strong, with open grey eyes and beautiful mane of honey-colored hair falling in a long braid over his shoulder, and he looked at her with an apologetic expression in his face.

"I did not mean to insult you, lady," he said with honest embarrassment in his voice, "I just happened to overhear the end of the conversation, and it simply struck me how threatening a mother might not be the wisest way of proceeding when you want something done. I must apologize for intruding on what is none of my concern." While the young man was speaking, the direwolf who had ambled up to his side looked towards Sarah with what seemed like a grin on his muzzle and, sniffing the air with an interested glint in his eye, he ran up to her like a puppy and pushed his head searchingly into her pockets as the young fae let out a loud shout and ran forward to stop his wolf from attacking the woman. He stopped dumbfounded when he saw the old dwarf woman push Cuchulain's head to the side without a worry and begin to scratch the direwolf behind the ears, the animal closing its eyes and leaning into her touch with relish. The young man looked at her with utter astonishment. "I have never seen him do this, lady, he is usually much better behaved than this," and he cringed in embarrassment as the direwolf unabashedly pushed his long nose into the woman's voluminous skirt pockets. The woman just laughed and pushed the wolf back and bid him to sit with a sharp order, rooted around in her pockets and fished a piece of dried meat from their depths which she fed to the huge wolf who sat obediently before her like a ladies pet and drooled as he followed her every movement with his eyes.

"Don't fret, love," Sarah said to the blushing young man in a hugely improved mood. "Nobody can be held responsible for the greed of a dog or wolf, their hunger is a force untamable by any." Her voice was still low and dark, much deeper than most women's voices, but all anger had left it, and Toby found himself drawn to her. "You only heard the end of a conversation that has been going on for much too long, and a child suffering for it." For a moment her voice hardened again. "Barbara is too narrow-minded to ask the healer for her sick child, but Elin will not get better unless they magic her. I have tried everything I could to get her to bring the child to the healers, but she will not hear. If she will not do what is right by her daughter, she does not deserve her." The old dwarf woman suddenly grinned at him blindingly. "My name is Eir, and I am the healer for the animals and any in the countryside who cannot go to the healers in the city." She extended her hand to the young fae. He smiled at her and courteously shook her hand, then he stepped back and executed a bow fit for a queen.

"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, my lady Eir, and if I may introduce myself to you, my name is Tobias O hEachtianna, a most minor and unimportant member of the court, and this rude animal that has just tried to raid you pockets is my companion Cuchulain," and he hissed at the oblivious direwolf trying to coax him to back to his side.

Sarah laughed outright. "The hound of Ulster? Good name for one such as him. I did not know that direwolves ever attached themselves to people, but I believe he would not stay with you if you were not a good companion. But come on, boy, I have already fed your wolf, so I believe it is just right that you should get your due as well. And I think I need to introduce your Cuchulain to my dogs, just so he knows they are mine. Shuck is too stupid to understand that growling at a much bigger wolf might not be a good idea, and while Three knows better, he will still fight to defend his friend, however bad the odds."

With an impatient gesture Sarah called for Toby to follow her around the colorful caravan. On the other side big baskets with bakery goods stood on the lowered side panels of the cart, breads, small cakes and the likes stacked inside, but much of the merchandise was gone already.

Toby looked with surprise at the hundun standing before the cart, a bird-like creature with a featureless head, without eyes, nose or mouth, the heavily clawed hands gesturing in the air before Eir, and to his increasing surprise he saw her return the gestures, the hundun and the dwarf woman engaged in what looked like a conversation with their hands and arms stopping in exact positions, a strange and strangely attractive form of communication. Now that he thought of it, nobody knew how Hundun communicated, they seemed to lack all the necessary equipment. And as much as this looked like talking, how did the Hundun see anything? He didn't have eyes. Then his own eyes fell on the two dogs that had moved next to Eir's skirts, a lovely silvery white retriever and what looked like an English sheep dog - Toby felt a sudden pang of loss. Merlin had looked just like that, he thought, strange, I had forgotten all about him. I have never seen this kind of dog in the underground before. But then he realized that Cuchulain at his side had gone tense, and the dogs next to Eir were positively glaring at the direwolf. Before he could say anything, however, Eir turned away from the Hundun and grabbed her dogs by the scruff, not the easiest maneuver since they reached to her waist. With a voice that brook no resistance she made both dogs sit down and called for Cuchulain who slowly walked up to her. Toby tensed, ready to intervene physically or magically should it be necessary, but it seemed Eir had all animals well under control. She had them very carefully sniff each other and petted all of them constantly, murmuring to them in a voice too low for Toby to hear, all the while feeding them dried meat from her obviously well-stocked pockets. After a few minutes of this the hair on the back of all canines lay flat again and the tails began to wag cautiously.

With that Eir called the young fae over. "I believe some further introductions are in order," she told him with her startlingly deep voice. "This one is Three, I believe he is some kind of sheepdog, as evidenced by his tendency to nip your ankles when he feels you really should be going where he wants you to go. I found him in the foothills of the Simien mountains when he was but a pup." She broke into a infectious laugh. "You should see him around children, my lord Tobias. He obviously feels they are a flock of especially aggravating sheep, and he will make sure that none of them gets away too far. His nips can be very convincing."

As Toby went to his knees and rigorously petted the white-and-grey sheepdog, he noticed that Eir was busy scratching the ears of the other two animals, obviously to keep them from being jealous. That woman certainly had a knack for getting animals to do her bidding. "I am much too unimportant a person to be addressed by so exalted a title, my lady Eir, and I have reached my maturity only recently, so I would be honored if you would call me Toby, as all my friends do." He saw a sudden shadow fall over Eir's features, a fleeting sadness.

"I knew someone called Toby once," Sarah said softly, half to herself. As she noticed the concerned face of the comely young fae looking at her from the side, she smiled. Just as Toby would have gotten such a thrill out of knowing a goblin wore his clothes, she thought he would have thought it a really cool thing to know that a fae had his name. "Toby it is then, but only if you will call me Eir. I am no lady, and I just feel old and foolish if you call me so. Now, Toby, let me introduce you to Shuck here, he is lovely, sweet and very stupid," and with a grin Eir walked up to him and put a few pieces of dried meat in his hands. "If you feed Shuck, you will have a friend for life. And just to be sure that Cuchulain doesn't get pissy, feed him too. And Three. I've never know a dog that cannot be bribed."

As Toby fed the direwolf and the dogs crowding around him, he looked down shyly on Eir. "I did not mean to cause you any distress, lady ... ehm... Eir. And I certainly did not want to make you do anything you do not care to do. If you rather addressed me as Tobias, please, do so by all means."

Sarah smiled at the disconcerted young man and calmed his worries with gentle words. "Do not worry yourself so, Toby, you have not caused me any distress. It is only an old memory. Don't we all have memories that sometimes may cause us a moment of anguish? It is what comes from living - only those who have wasted their lives without love have nothing to regret."

Toby looked at Eir and smiled back at her. Had he not just looked at Three and felt sharp regret for the past? He might be young and inexperienced, but he knew what the dwarf woman was talking about.

"Now, I believe you have to learn about my real talent, which would be baking," Sarah's cheerful voice interrupted his thoughts as she handed him a fruit tart. "Let me first introduce you to my friend Ankimo. I met him before I came to the goblin kingdom and we decided to travel together. The two of us make an excellent team. We earn our money together, I make a little extra with healing, and he makes sure we keep it safe from anyone who would want to liberate it. We have learned to communicate by gestures, and we keep getting better by the day." As Toby opened his mouth to ask about how Ankimo could see without eyes, Sarah continued. "I cannot be sure what you want to ask, but I suspect like everyone else you want to know how he can see my gestures, or, if he can see them, why doesn't he simply talk?" When she saw his look of confirmation, she continued. "I have absolutely no idea how he does it, nor does he. He can see, always could, and he cannot quite understand how other kindreds need something like eyes." Ankimo came up to the young fae and put his hand up from his forehead and outwards from his face in a downward fashion. "That meant hello, by the way." Toby smiled and copied the movement back. Sarah smiled quietly. "And now you need to try my other famous cakes. People come from all around to buy my pastries, but I'll let you try one of each, completely free of charge. Simply because you are such a nice boy."

"What a perfectly lovely offer, Tobias. You should take the lady up on it before she changes her mind." The amused voice behind her back made Sarah's blood run cold. Please no, let it be someone else, she silently prayed as she turned around. It was him. She should never have come to the bloody market in the bloody city in the first place, she just should have know this would happen some day, she harangued herself. Not letting her jaw drop open was about all she could do. Damn, damn, damn, it had not been her youthful hormones. The goblin king before her sure was a sight for sore eyes, with the inevitable narrow pants in a pale color that showed his leg muscles rather too well, a beautiful linen shirt open low over a lightly muscled chest Sarah most determinedly was not looking at, a dark green riding jacket open over his shirt. For a moment Sarah gave thanks to her lucky stars that she wasn't a foot shorter. As it was, it was hard enough to keep looking UP at him. Sarah concentrated hard on the fact that a man advertising like a bloody peacock probably needed to and completely ignored the fact that she had not even noticed that Toby was wearing the same kind of pants and shirt as the goblin king. And that presumptuous smile on his arrogant face! Oh, so they were mismatched eyes, she had never been sure whether her memory had served her right. One of then was a mixture of grey and blue, the other nearly black with a light green ring at the outer perimeter. As she was slowly building up enough steam to survive the next couple of minutes, she barely noticed the goblin king's companions, another fae a tad shorter than the goblin king, but with a fighter's body, his midnight-black hair loosely tied back at his neck and a good-looking dwarf and his lady in elegant clothes that clearly bespoke them as members of the court. The dark-haired man was more beautiful than the goblin king if looking as if cast from the same die, yet Sarah barely noticed him. That bastard's face still haunted her dreams, narrow and angular with those sharp cheekbones and a nose like a knife, the wide, thin-lipped smile of arrogant superiority, and his strange white-gold hair standing on edge. She had thought she'd forgotten him, but it seemed she had been wrong. The memory had but gone underground. Luckily for Sarah all these thoughts went thorough her mind in barely any time at all, and despite the fact that she gave the king a good once-over scarce more than a moment had passed.

Her voice as low as anger had ever made it and as cold as winter, she managed to choke out a nearly polite greeting. "Greetings, my lady, my lords." She bowed perfunctorily to the small group before her caravan and looked up at the goblin king with narrowed eyes. "And let me tell you, I never change my mind once I have made it up. I know a nice young fae when I see him, so why would I begrudge him some cake I offered him of my own free will?"

Sarah turned her back on him with some asperity and walked to the baskets, closely followed by her dogs and the direwolf who were determined to get their share and kept pushing their noses against Sarah's back, yipping excitedly and nearly climbing over each other as they tried to get to the optimal spot. For a moment Sarah forgot the fae behind her back as the simple love of the animals flooded her mind, and with a light laugh she grabbed some broken pastries and fed a piece to each of the animals, her movements fluid and graceful, her voice gentle. But then awareness came flooding back and Sarah tensed again, her face set in mulish determination. She wrapped an especially nice tart in a piece of paper and handed it to Toby as she walked back. She proceeded to stand next to the young fae, her arms folded over her chest, and glared silently at the group before her cart.

While the faces of the dark-haired fae and the dwarves expressed indignation, the goblin king seemed highly amused. "Your judgment of young Tobias' character is perfectly accurate, my lady, yet I doubt it is well-advised to make up one's mind without recourse to changing it, should the need arise. Pray tell me, lady, have you never misjudged anyone before?" Sarah's eyes flashed and she got ready to give him an earful when he held up his hand. "Why don't we continue this conversation while we are eating some of these delicious-looking tarts? I am sure we would all like some." Impatiently Sarah turned around and exchanged some quick gestures with Ankimo, who put several pastries in paper and brought them to the little group. "I do not believe I have ever had the pleasure of meeting a hundun before," the goblin king said musingly as he gracefully took a pastry out of Ankimo's hands. "So you do converse with your hands, my lady?"

Sarah looked at him with some satisfaction. After all, that had been the idea, Nehorai who sang the night needed to be transformed completely and beyond a chance of recognition, so what better than turning him to that which none had ever seen? "We are from out-country, and as you so brilliantly observed, yes, we do talk with our hands. Seeing as he's lacking a voice." she said curtly without any further explanation. "And that would be four coppers for the cakes."

Porr pushed himself before the defiant woman and addressed her with barely suppressed anger. "Have you no idea whom you are talking to, woman? How dare you talk to us with such familiarity?"

Before he had a chance to go on, Sarah cut in with a voice a sharp as shards. "As far as I can tell you are a bunch of well-dressed loafers who would steal from a poor woman working hard for her living. I don't care who you are, you are eating my food and I don't run a charity here. Or is four coppers more than you can spare?"

Tiernan moved closer and looked down at the short woman who stared back up into his eyes without the slightest bit of fear or hesitation. "You might want to change you tone, trader, when you talk to your betters," he said with an indolent smile. "If your king deigns your food edible, you should feel flattered. It is generally said that dwarves understand manners, but yours seem to be lacking sadly."

Sarah was beyond all caring. Meeting the goblin king without any preparation had thrown her off-kilter already, but those other jerks had raised her temper to boiling. She spat on the ground, a hair's breadth next to the dark-haired fae's foot. "My manners are none of your bloody problem, fae. And since you obviously consider it proper manners to treat me like a piece of dirt under your feet, I wonder what your basis for comparison is? I have no king, and I never will. I'd rather go on to the other side before I swore myself to anyone who will not swear the very same oath to me." Her eyes were flashing with anger. "I am paying the city council for this spot in the market to sell my wares, and I have as much right to be here as anyone. If you don't like it, just sod off. But pay me what you owe me first, fae, else you're nothing but a thieving bully and I will call the guards on you. Are you telling me the king does not have to pay? Perhaps you are in the wrong kingdom, fae, it seems you would do just fine in Ardar Iforas. And what would make such as you, fae, think you are my better is beyond me." Tiernan seemed struck numb and stared at the furious woman growling at him with helpless fascination.

The goblin king had no such compunction. He walked up to the livid woman and smiled down at her with true amusement. "Ah, my lady, please, do not give yourself a bout of apoplexy. Not only will you be paid for your pastries, I actually would like to request a basket of them to be delivered to the castle whenever you make them. They are excellent indeed, and I would love to continue this delightful acquaintance. It has been such a long time since anyone has been able to strike Tiernan wordless, and it is a treat I would not mind to see repeated." He looked at her shrewdly, his head aslant. "Please accept my condolences for any mistreatments you may have endured before you came to the goblin kingdom, but lady, be assured that none is above the law within my borders, as I am sure you know. The law applies to all within my borders, be they oathbound to me or not, lady, and the law knows no difference between the kindreds, and neither do I. Yet do not be angry with my companions, lady, they are but defending me, although why they should feel the need to do so is beyond my understanding," and with this remark he threw a dark glower at his retinue.

His reasonable, courteous, even kindly words resonated within her, and Sarah felt her anger deflate however much she tried to hold on to it. "We'll see how that plays out," she said as gruffly as she could and held out her hand to the goblin king. "But that would still be four coppers."

He handed her a small gold coin which Sarah promptly bit into. Toby looked amused and mortified at the same time, the two men in the king's company just seemed affronted, and the dwarf lady flashed her a smile while the goblin king threw his head back and laughed out loud. "Please, lady, by all means tell me if it is fake gold," he said with laughter in his voice. "I'd really need to have a word with my treasurer if there is a problem with this coin." Against her will Sarah grinned at him for a split second, since his coins as much as hers came from the labyrinth, they were reliably pure and not cut with lesser metals. "And now, if you please, lady, we would like some more of the pastries," the goblin king said with a smile. As Sarah handed out more of the pastries, they fell into a strange conversation, with Sarah countering the goblin king's each remark with her most acerbic and bitchy responses, which seemed to entertain him to no end and wound Sarah up ever tighter. His companions ended up listening to their repartees as if they were watching a match, amused and slightly offended for their king at the same time. When they finally left, after Sarah had promised to deliver pastries to the castle whenever she came to market, she turned to Ankimo tiredly. "What the hell have I gotten myself into, my friend?" she asked him with a shake of her head, signing away furiously. "Well, at least he is not as bad as I had been expecting. It seems he is a pretty decent king, I probably should have know that anyway. I mean, he is the chosen and all that." She grinned. "I guess he is keeping his nastier side for the runners and for the goblin queen. I can deal with him as Eir, but lets make sure he never meets Sarah, shall we?"

The rest of the afternoon passed quickly, with more patients for Sarah, and when the market closed Ankimo and Sarah climbed on the cart, more than ready to go home. It had been a long day.