Chapter Twenty-Two: Family Drama

"Oh, Sarah, please don't be upset! I didn't mean it!"

The Goblin Queen took a step back, straightened her back, and crossed her arms over her chest. "Then you shouldn't have wished for it." The words left her mouth before she could stop them.

"Well, I'm sorry!" Her mother bitterly retorted. "If I'd known he was really going to come and take you away I would never have even told you the stupid story!"

Sarah sighed and shook her head, remembering her own experience wishing Toby away. "Mom, it doesn't matter." She started walking in the direction she hoped would bring them closer to the castle. "Let's just keep moving."

"And go where?" Her mother demanded erratically, walking beside her.

"Back to the castle," Sarah answered with a sigh.

"No!" Linda grabbed Sarah by the shoulders and spun her around.

"Ow!"

"Sarah, you listen to me!" She shook her daughter as if rattling her brain against her skull would make her see sense. "Jareth does not love you! And you do not love him! He is evil and he has you under a spell!"

Sarah stared at the woman before her, at the familiar dark curly hair and gray eyes, and at the unfamiliar glow of terror that surrounded her entire face. "How...can you...say that?" Even to herself, her voice sounded small and insignificant.

"Because he said that when he held you in his arms as a baby," Linda paused to force her tears back down her throat, "he knew that you would grow into a beautiful woman and that he would want to marry you. So he brought me to the castle to take you back to Earth so I could raise you properly. Don't you see? He's had you under a spell since you were a baby!"

Sarah yanked herself away and turned her back on her mother, mind scrambling for pieces that would make sense. Their encounter with the Lady of Night flashed behind her eyes, and Sarah's desperate crawl to reach her beloved Jareth through her torturous nightmare. How could a spell do that? Then she remembered her conversation with the Labyrinth and her promise that her first child would become the guardian of the Labyrinth. The Labyrinth works by love, sometimes a cruel love, but still love nevertheless. It would never have talked to me like that if there wasn't real love in my heart. She pressed her lips together and shook her head from side to side slowly, carefully removing every shred of doubt before she turned back to face her mother again.

"You know," Sarah said quietly, face tense and stiff, "Jareth used to try to tell me what was in my heart, and then it almost got us both killed." She shuddered at the memory of sharp-toothed spider that had nearly caused both their deaths. "And then he stopped trying to tell me what I was feeling and just let me figure it out on my own. That was when I realized how much I love him." She took a slow breath before going on, "and you have no right to try to do the same thing to me. You don't know what's in my heart or how it got there or why it's there or anything." Sarah took a mighty step forward, feeling tall and empowered, "I know what's in my heart, and I love the Goblin King. So you are just going to have to deal with it."

"Oh," her mother sobbed, "look what he's done to you!"

"Look what he's done to me?" Sarah shouted. "Look what he's DONE to me! I'm sorry I'm not the wimpy little girl I was before you walked out on us! I'm sorry I don't cowtow to your every whim and desire, and I'm sorry I don't measure up your expectations! Living here in this Labyrinth has done spectacular things for me. I don't whine about life being unfair anymore. I don't try to fix problems by running up to my room and crying into my pillows. I. Have. a. spine. Forgive me for making use of it!" With that, she turned again and marched down the corridor, tears pricking the corners of her eyes.

"Sarah..." Linda followed her daughter, keeping up as best she could. "I had no idea you felt that way."

"What way?" Sarah retorted.

"You think I walked out on you?"

The Goblin Queen paused long enough to glare at her mother. "What else do you call it when you wake up one morning to your father staring out the window and your mother's car no longer in the driveway and no one knows where she is or if she's coming back. Ever." She returned to her march.

"Sarah!" Linda trotted beside her again. "You're not being fair! The whole situation was so much more complicated than that!"

"Fair!" Sarah whirled on her mother then. "You want to talk about fair? Alright, how's this for fair? I fall in love with the most wonderful man I have ever met in my life, and on the day of my wedding, my mother who tries so hard to be so accepting of everyone and everything turns on me and says it's impossible for my love to be real because the man I just MARRIED happens to be the Goblin King! Then, instead of trying to talk me to about it and make sense out of the whole situation, she runs off into the Labyrinth, where she could get herself killed if she's not careful! Oh, and by the way," Sarah's tone lessened so that she was no longer screaming at the top of her lungs, but her words were still just as severe, "Jareth and I have a limited amount of power here, and it took most of it bring you all here for the ceremony, and the rest of it to send you all home, so now you and I are stuck walking around in the Labyrinth until we find our way back to the castle or something jumps out of the walls and eats us alive! AND!" She stuck her pointer finger in her mother's face as she made her final points, "some idiot decided that the exact moment I was walking down the aisle would be a good time to wish their baby away only neither Jareth nor I can take care of the baby or even keep an eye on the relative because Jareth has to keep the goblin city from being torn apart by fireys and I'm stuck babysitting you! THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE MY WEDDING DAY!"

"Sarah, I-"

"Shut up!" The Goblin Queen began walking again. "and come on."

Linda followed obediently.