Questions

Tobias turned from gazing over the Labryinth, startled as his sister appeared.

"Sarah?" he said, wonderingly, then shook himself. He quickly bowed, "Your Majesty."

"Toby?" she caught his chin in her hands and turned his chin up to her. His head came almost to her shoulder. He was the image of the perfect page, a boy approaching manhood, where should have been a child of three.

"How many years has it been, Toby?" she asked, gently.

"If it please Your Majesty, I have been in the court of His Majesty, the Goblin King, for 11 years," he said, bowing again.

Eleven years, thought Sarah, turning from him. Time flowed faster in fairy, it seemed.

"Has the king treated you well?"

"Very well, Your Majesty," he said. "He has seen to my education himself."

"I see that he has," she said. Her brow furrowed as she regarded Toby.

"I tried to rescue you," she said. "Through the Bog of Eternal Stench, the oubliette, the room of stairs. I thought I'd won your freedom, but he cheated me with a changling."

"But you wished me away, the king said you wished me away," he said, staring at her.

"The goblins tricked me," she confessed. "I didn't know that I was wishing you away. When Jareth told me what he'd done with you, I fought my way through the Labyrinth, through the Goblin City. I defeated him and he cheated me."

Toby stared at her in silence, emotions warring on his face. Sarah took a deep breath.

"I'm sorry I wished you away, Toby," she said. "It was a stupid, selfish thing for me to do."

He looked at her in disbelief.

"He said you never admit when you make mistakes."

"I've changed."

"So is Sarah really the Fairy Queen?" Hoggle asked a fairy as they settled into the shade of some trees.

"Yes and no," the fairy replied. "She has the queen's memories and some of her powers, but she is not the fairy I remember."

"That queen would have let us stay in the king's crystal until we begged for mercy and made promises," said another. "She didn't do that."

"So what's she gonna do?" asked Brunga, cowed by the presence of so many strange creatures but assured by the lack of violence directed at him.

"I don't know," said a fairy. "We don't know her anymore."

"Oh," said the goblin. "And I thought you were the only dwarf left," he said to Hoggle. "What's up with these guys?"

Hoggle looked at the dwarves.

"Jareth killed most of the dwarves after they got done buildin' the stone parts of the Labyrinth so no one else would know those secrets," he explained. "He kept me around in case more work needed doing. He thought I was the only one."

"Hoggle found some of us that had hidden out in a part of the Labyrinth the king didn't know about," explained another dwarf. "But Jareth saw it and killed most of who was left. He said Hoggle had betrayed us, but we knew better after we saw him stand up to that bastard when Sarah was here to get her brother back."

"Her brother!" Brunga slapped himself and tumbled over. "He still has Toby, don't he?"

The fairies buzzed together.

Jareth clasped Sarah to him as they spun about the empty ballroom. She gazed innocently at him, enraptured, the decorations in her hair quivering with her trembling.

"My Sarah," he said, drawing her closer. Jareth was exalted. He had her. He drew her to a stop against him and let his lips find her neck. Her trembling increased., her fingers tracing the embroidery on his coat, clinging to him.

He wrapped an arm around her waist, lifting her against him and spinning as he plunged a hand into her hair. His mouth found hers and he felt her soft lips give way under his kiss.

"Jareth," she whispered as he broke the kiss, gazing into his eyes with a soft and loving stare.

"Mine, once again," he murmured against her neck. His hands found the ties of her gown and quickly undid them. Her eyes went wide. His clothes vanished as he slid the gossamer off her still form. He slowly pulled her toward him, his eyes burning her as he gazed at her naked flesh.

"All mine."

She trembled as his fingers caressed, then seized.

"Is that really what you want?" Sarah asked the Goblin King. She lowered the crystal, its vision of the entwined couple still within. The pair stood beside the restored fountain in the ruined court.

Jareth's eyes followed the orb for a moment. That vision had been everything he'd fantasized. Every tremble of her innocent frame as he'd taught her, that was what he desired. He pulled his gaze to his foe's face.

"It was," he admitted.

She closed her hand on the crystal and it vanished.

"What did you learn while I was gone?" she asked, not looking at him.

He stared at her. She waited. The silence was marred by the sound of dust blowing against the crumbling walls.

"I learned," he said finally, striding toward her, "how to rule a kingdom all my own. How to deal with faithless fairies and how to survive without you."

"Did you?" she asked. "Do you want me to leave you to the Labyrinth, to your rule?"

"Why could you not have accepted my offer?" he cried. "We both could have had what we wanted."

"You have learned nothing," she said sadly. "I learned much in my time among the mortals. Perhaps not as much as I could have if I'd been left undisturbed by Faery."

At this Jareth looked disturbed, but he quickly recovered himself.

"Yes, I see you learned much among mortals," he said, pressing in toward her. "Their ways kill our world and here you carry their weapons. Is that the greatness you learned among humans?"

"I learned to use the tools that come to hand," Sarah replied. "And I learned that in your Labyrinth."

"Cruelty comes all to natural to you, Majesty," Jareth said mockingly and stalked away from her. "You see our world crumbling and blame me, when it was your faithlessness that broke the charm that held our realm together."

"You cannot hold me to those sins," she said angrily. "That was a different time."

"Oh really?" the Goblin King asked, turning toward her again, a crystal between his fingers. "Was it so different?"

The crystal held her gaze for a moment, then she was lost in a memory of the past.