Chapter Seven: Riddling
Jareth was very still in the void, reaching out gently with his mind to probe the darkness. It cringed away from him and molded itself around him, hissing like a pile of snakes. "They're broken," his whisper crashed into the emptiness, "the seals are broken!" How? His mind raced. They've held her for centuries! I know they were old, but why break now? "Sarah..." the shadows hissed louder as his voice echoed. "Oh, Sarah, what have you done?"
***
Sarah and Jeremy came up through the floor of a dead-end with three brick walls and one large, intricate black-painted iron gate. Beyond the gate, they could clearly see the beginnings of the hedge maze. Sarah took a deep breath and walked right up to the gate, studying it carefully to find where the two doors met.
"Why not just push?" Jeremy asked, reaching over her shoulder to push at the gate. "Or pull," he added when it didn't budge. His face creased into a confused frown when the gate still didn't move.
"Things aren't always what they seem." Sarah said quietly, standing straight. "How do we get into the hedge maze?"
"Mmm," the iron gate groaned, "that's a good one."
Jeremy gasped and stepped back, but Sarah only watched with a bemused grin. "Hello."
"Hello." The design in the gate reshaped itself into a face, complete with eyes, nose, and mouth. "There are many ways into the maze, but you'll never get in." It smiled mischievously.
"Why is that?" Sarah asked, looking the gate over carefully.
"Because you must first correctly guess the answer to my riddle." The gate answered with the groan of iron rubbing against iron.
"What's the riddle?" Jeremy demanded, standing tall next to Sarah.
The gate chuckled. "The bane of children, hides all things, can't be bought with gold or rings, it fills up space where things still stand, and with the light comes hand in hand."
Jeremy and Sarah stared at the gate for a few minutes in silence, running the words through their heads, forcing their brains to turn and search for the answer.
"The bane of children," Sarah murmured, "like monsters in their closets?"
"Or the absence of their parents," Jeremy muttered.
Sarah glanced quizzically at Jeremy, but then moved on, "hides everything, like a cloth? A wall? A child playing hide-and-seek?"
"Can't be bought," Jeremy continued, "means it's not a material thing, right?"
The gate shrugged as only a gate can. "No hints allowed, I'm afraid."
Sarah's brow wrinkled. "It fills up the same space where other things are, so it's definitely not material."
"Hope?" Jeremy watched Sarah's face twist with her thinking, "comes hand in hand with light?"
The gate grinned smugly. "Nope."
"Hope isn't the bane of children," Sarah said, "and it doesn't fill up space."
"So what else goes hand in hand with light?" Jeremy asked, looking back at the grinning face in the gate.
I think I know what it is, Sarah thought to herself, but if I answer the riddle, then it's like I'm doing the quest for him. If Jeremy has to earn his chance to get Brian back, just like everyone else, then me answering the riddle is probably against the rules, and won't help me get my powers back. "Think about it, Jeremy," Sarah suggested carefully. "When someone turns on a light in a room, what do you get in the corners?"
"Cobwebs?" Jeremy guessed.
Sarah frowned and looked up at his puzzled face. "What are children afraid of when you put them to bed?"
"The monsters in the closet?" He hazarded.
Sarah's frown deepened and she looked around her in the small space in front of the gate for inspiration.
"Look, Sarah, if you know what the answer is, why don't you just tell me?"
"I don't think I can," she admitted with a huff.
"Why not?" Jeremy demanded, putting his hands on his hips.
"Because it's against the rules." The Goblin Queen looked up at her step-father.
"What rules?"
Sarah sighed, trying to remember how Jareth had explained to her. "They're like the law of gravity. If you break one, things start to fall apart. They're the rules of the Labyrinth."
Jeremy rubbed his face in his hands. "Okay, Sarah. Give me a hint."
She bit her lip and glanced at the smug expression on the gate.
"Something, please, Sarah." Jeremy folded his hands together and held them under his chin.
"Well, just think about the first part," she said carefully, "what are the banes of children?"
Jeremy blinked, "um, well besides the monsters in the closet, I guess, there would be things they could choke on, open electrical outlets, things to fall off of, things to make messes with..." his voice trailed off as he watched Sarah's expression shift. "I'm not getting anywhere close, am I?"
"Remember what you figured out before, about how it can't be bought."
"It's immaterial." Jeremy dropped his hands from their pleading gesture. "Okay, so a bane of children that you can't reach out and touch. Like monsters in the closet, but not monsters in the closet. Fear. Something their afraid of?" He searched Sarah's face for some kind of sign. "Like the dark?"
Sarah nodded her head at the gate. "Tell him. It's his riddle."
Jeremy turned to the large black iron shape, which seemed to have lost its grin. "It's the dark. Children are afraid of the dark, you can't see anything in it, you can't buy it, you can stand in the same space as it, and you always have it when there's light because light makes shadows."
"Fine," the gate grumbled and swung slowly open from one side. "I'll have to think of a better one next time."
Sarah smiled at the gate as she passed through. "I thought this one was very good. I'm sure you'll be able to come up with a really good one." She patted it gently as it closed behind her, muttering to itself.
