Underground A Touch of Memory, a labyrinth fanfic

8. A Touch of Memory

At first there was only darkness, an intangible wall devoid of all light or shape or meaning. David sat within it and waited (hoped) for it to become something other. Eventually, the darkness bleached away to a dull, heavy grey. Edges and outlines began to emerge all around David. Most of them were sharp, the edges of tables and chairs, windowpanes, wooden planks and, a little above his head, a tricycle that looked oddly familiar. As David's eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light, he became aware that he was sitting on a pile of rubbish. And his pile of rubbish was surrounded by further piles of rubbish, stacked to the left and right and as high as the towering heaps of scrap metal at the junkyard his parents never wanted him playing in.

A warm, murmuring wind picked up, scattering bits of napkin and newspapers, magazines and flyers. One piece of paper flipped and stumbled toward David. It caught on his boots and remained there, its edges waving like limp, ghostly arms. David bent down and picked it up. There was a large tear along the top, as if someone had ripped it out of a bulletin board.

"The Mangled Cats," David read, an odd feeling stealing over him. "With Jonesing for Change. 3 October 1976. The Bended Elbow."

He let the paper drop away from his limp hands. He stood from his rubbish pile and looked around him. There was nothing to see, only lumpy towers of detritus and a flat, black sky above his head. He looked down at where he had been seating, and his eye caught on a plastic, red mushroom, half buried under an old, flowered blanket. He knew that blanket, and he certainly recognized the plastic mushroom. He dug into the pile and pulled out a chipped, battery operated clock in the shape of a tree stump, surrounded by red mushrooms. He ran his fingers over it, his mind oddly blank.

"But how…? Where am I? Why is this…?" He dropped the clock and reached out for the blanket. It was his blanket. Sandra had given it to him. It was back at his apartment, above the butcher shoppe. He tossed it away and pulled out a battered, soggy book. The Goblin Companion. "I bought this. I read it to Baby Joe. I…"

David's limbs felt as if the blood had drained from them. He sat on the pile across from him, numb and deeply, completely disappointed.

A trash strewn alley. That's where he was. He was back in Kent. Nothing had been real, any of it. He had likely stumbled into the alley, drunk and miserable. Come to think of it, he did remember having one too many pints at George's the night he… No. No, he had not been drunk, he was certain of it. But this was not The Labyrinth. It could not be. It was only a trash strewn alley. In Kent. Yes, in Kent. He had gone back. He had woken up, or come to his senses, or something.

It was amazing how empty and sad that made him feel.

He patted down the pockets of his leather coat, torn and shabbier than it had any right to be for a dreaming man, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. One part of his mind was quietly surprised that they had both survived falling and the maze and running away from the fairies. He snapped the lighter into life. "Only that never happened," he muttered around his cigarette. Smoke rose up into the night, where it was swallowed by the darkness. "Dreamed the whole thing, Davey. And now you need to get back home." He dangled the cigarette between his thighs. "What a waste."

Above him, two stars had emerged from behind a cloud, or something. They had not been there before, but now they stood against the darkness, dim and opaque, like the beam of a torch under water. As David smoked and gazed at them, a third star appeared. Then a fourth and a fifth. And then something strange began to happen. David's hand remained hovering before his mouth, cigarette forgotten between his fingers, as electric blue tendrils of light began to drape themselves from star to star. More and more tendrils burst from the first star, waving and undulating as they passed from bright white star matter to a pulsing, blue light.

David finally took a puff from his cigarette. "Oh, thank God," he said.

It was a while before the stars and light finally settled on a shape, although it was no real shape to speak of. Depending on where one stood, one was either looking at a very bright Southern Cross, a swan with its neck downwards and its wings flapping behind it, a sceptre and a crown, or the downturned face of a horned elk. David rather liked the idea of the elk, and was pleased when the shape seemed to settle on that as well.

A voice spoke directly within David's mind, echoing away into murmurs and whispers, so that there was no other reality but the figure made of light and the voice.

"What does he wish?"

"Oh," David said. He flicked away his cigarette. "It's you. Or is it you? Maybe you're related, like Pum and Pim. Are you acquainted with an alley in Kent? Sounds just like you."

"He may not be so insolent," the voice said, so devastatingly quiet that David almost hung his head in shame. "Does he regret his wish?"

"He—I mean, no, I don't. Well, not terribly. Not until fairies started biting me." He folded his arms over his chest. "Well, actually, I am somewhat put off by the fact that I've been sent to a never-ending maze. Does it lead anywhere?"

"It may lead to the centre."

David dearly wanted to be horribly insolent. He drew in a deep breath. "What is at the centre?"

"He may find that out by himself."

"Ah." Then, after aborting the thought of lighting a second cigarette, "I don't suppose you've come to offer me some help?"

The shape dimmed and pulsed, its tendrils drifting like windswept grass.

"What does he wish?"

"Of course. I forgot. I wish for some help in reaching the centre of The Labyrinth. Or, at the very least, Goblin City."

A sigh of movement, like wings, caressed David's mind, then passed on. It was unnerving, but David did not even dare to breathe too loudly. The shimmering elk's head dipped, the two stars that suggested its eyes flashing brightly for a moment.

"His wish may not be granted."

"What? But—"

Darkness dropped down around David once more. His mouth opened, and he could hear himself cursing and shouting at the shape (elk) (stars) (alley), but no sound came out. Instead, two large wings flapped above his head. His arms snapped up instinctively to shield his eyes, but whatever was above him had no real interest in him. It swooped down, circling the tallest rubbish pile, until it finally perched on top of it, one talon curled around the tricycle David now fully recognized as a childhood toy.

It was an owl. A perfectly white owl. It gazed down at David reproachfully, and David felt small and insignificant, as if he had disappointed everyone he had ever known and cared for. The owl gave David one last, disdainful look before it took flight once more. With a growing sense of alarm, David realized it was flying straight at him. He put up his arms and tried to crouch, but it was moving too fast and now he was—

"Up ye come," Gritta said. "That's enough o'that fer one night, boy."

David drew in deep, rasping breaths. His arms were still hovering over his head, adrenaline rushing through his body as he waited for impact. "It was—it was—My God, and I—I was—" He turned to Gritta with a terrified look on his face. "I was so small."

"You're still small," Pum said. He sat on a pile of bones on a far corner of the room, by the fire. His taloned feet were propped up on a skull. He was puffing on a gnarled, wooden pipe. "Skinny as a pixie, and small." He shifted the pipe to the other side of his beak. "Had a good dream, then?"

"No," David said. "There were these stars, only they weren't stars. They sounded just like my alley. And there was an owl. A big, white owl."

"Owl, eh? Big, white owl?" Pum puffed at his pipe, smoke rings crashing against the low, dirt ceiling. "Did it say anything, this big, white owl?"

Gritta handed David a cup of tea. "Did it say anythin' to ye? Anythin' at all?"

"It was perched on this pile of rubbish. The whole place was nothing but piles of rubbish." He gulped down his tea and closed his eyes. The dream was already beginning to fade, all he had to do was get a hold of himself and shake off the adrenaline. He gulped down more tea. Always good, tea. Even if it was made by goblins. "I was in a dark place filled with towers of junk. My old tricycle was there. Does that mean anything?"

"It means you no longer need that tricycle," Pum said. "But that doesn't matter. What did the owl say?"

"It… it didn't say anything."

"Not a thing?"

"No."

Pum tapped his pipe clean of ashes. He placed it on a branch protruding above his sitting place, then kicked the skull away. It rolled underneath David's bed.

"The owl said nothink," Gritta said. She took the cup away from David. He watched her set it down on the floor, then fling aside his covers and take a firm hold on his ankles. Pum hooked his hands under David's armpits.

"Um, what are you doing?"

"The owl," Pum said, "told you nothing."

"So it's time fer ye to go," Gritta said.

With that, and before David quite knew what was happening or how fast it was happening, they threw him out, back above ground. David landed, hard, on his bum, a jolt of something like electricity shooting up his spine and into his teeth and eyes.

He spluttered. His mouth opened and shut in indignation. A root banged down in one very final sounding thud, and his indignation grew. From spluttering he passed on to a lengthy muttering of, "What in blazes? What in bloody blooming blinking pissing blazes?"

And then, David did something he had not done in years. He fumed. He sat and pouted and frowned and well and good steamed. He glared so long and hard at a hapless mushroom that it burrowed right down into the earth once more, where it lived in terror of a skinny man with mismatched eyes until the day it died.

"How dare they?" David said over clenched teeth. "How dare this place? How dare that blasted owl?" He directed a furious glance at the trees above him.

And that put an end to his desire to fume.

"A forest," he said, somewhat dazed. "I'm no longer in the maze. I'm in a forest."

He felt his lips drawing back in a smile. He jumped to his feet and looked around. While he was not certain what he was looking for, something told him that things had changed for him. Probably for the best. He did not even want to entertain the notion that they had changed for the worse. He was feeling too good.

And with good reason. There, beyond the forest, were the spires and walls of Goblin City.

"There's a good lad, Labyrinth," David said. "There's a good lad."