CHAPTER EIGHTTEEN

Threads of an Old Life

"How do you pick up the

threads on an old life?

How do you go on, when in your heart,

you begin to understand;

there is no going back?

There are some things

that time cannot mend.

Some hurts that go too deep…

that have taken hold."

-Frodo, from the movie adaptation of "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King"

Sarah was not immediately sure of her surroundings once the fog had cleared. It was as though she had woken from a long, strange dream, once where things from the dream still seemed quite real even after you were awake. However, in Sarah's case, it had not been a dream.

She was standing at the edge of a familiar wood, bordered by an orchard whose trees were bright with multicolored foliage.

Beyond the orchard, the silhouette of a familiar building loomed, outlined by the rays of the setting sun. She was home.

Sarah would never quite forget the looks that she received when she walked into the great hall of her home as she carried Aubrey, looking as though she had been to hell and back, regally meeting every once the stunned and amazed looks that she received from the people that stared at her.

Her mother had let out a half-strangled scream at the sight of her children, dashing forward to embrace them tightly. Lord Fabian had staggered in his attempt to rise, clutching desperately to the back of a chair, as if he could not stand on his own.

Sarah fended off the questions of Lady Emeline as best she could. It was too soon to speak of her journeys. For Sarah, they were much too fresh, and there were some things that she would need to ponder alone, especially some of the words spoken by a certain Goblin King.

Her father regained his strength and wordlessly pulled his family into his embrace. The Guillemins were whole once more.

A few days later, Sarah retold her story to her mother and father, safely ensconced in the homey warmth of their library. She told them all about her stay with the Goblin King and their bargain. They looked at her with a strange mixture of terror and pride as she spoke of her journey through the Labyrinth, of her trials and tribulations, and of her final meeting with the Goblin King. Sarah could not bring herself to repeat everything that he had said, though she could still not understand why.

Lord and Lady Guillemin cursed the Goblin King and called him all sorts of vile things, but Sarah was strangely silent when it came to besmirching the name of the Goblin King, though goodness knows she had not refrained from doing so before. Her journey through the Labyrinth had changed her, and Sarah was not quite sure as of yet whether it would be for better or for worse in the end.

This did not go unnoticed by her parents, but they chose to keep their reservations to themselves, thinking and hoping just a bit that Sarah was still shaken up from her ordeal.

And so, life began anew in the Guillemin home, falling into many of the old routines and habits that they had before the Goblin King had interfered in their lives.

However, Sarah found that she did not find the same pleasure in things that she had before her journey through the fae kingdom. She could not quite put her finger on it, but she was certain that she was irrevocably changed. She could not go back to the way things were before her journey, and unexpectedly, nor did she want to. She was different now. She had seen and done so many things that no one else could scarcely comprehend. She had been made an oddity through circumstance and through her own choices. No one else in her world had seen or done the things that she had seen and done. How could they know what she was feeling?

She was back to living on the fringes of the magical world after having been immersed so deeply in the magical world for what seemed to be so long. It seemed strange not to have to worry about constant magical interference or strange creatures or…him.

It was a while before Sarah began to act like her old self again. That is all it was, however, an act. Those who did not know Sarah very well thought that she had handled her journey quite well and that she was lucky to have come through it unscathed. To friends and other acquaintances, it seemed to them like she was back to the old Sarah, but they had their reservations about her condition for some time. Her mother and father seemed to observe Sarah's emotional healing with patient determination, hoping against hope that the old Sarah would return to replace her maudlin counterpart. It seemed as though Sarah's cheery façade had fooled everyone, even her parents. However, whenever Sarah left the room or glanced away, her parents looked at her sadly, knowing that the Sarah that had left to battle the Goblin King was not quite the same Sarah that had returned home.

Sarah was unsure of many things in her life, but the one thing that she was quite sure of was that she could never quite go back to the way things were before the Goblin King had decided to intrude upon her life. She sealed away the artifacts from her journey: the sword she had taken from the trolls' horde, the magical compass Queen Mab had given to her, her feather from the firebird. The tattered remains of the Goblin King's cloak. She could not bear to constantly remind herself of what had happened.

She had come far, too far to go back, in fact. It had been several months since she had emerged from the forest, carrying her baby brother and looking as though she had been through hell and back, and in some ways, she had been, though not in the ways people would expect.

At this point in Sarah's life, she was very much content to remain as far away from magic and the supernatural as she possibly could. Perhaps one day in the not too distant future, she would once more awaken her fancy for adventure and fantasy. For the time being however, Sarah needed to ponder on her adventure and the Goblin King, and what it all meant, and what she discovered about herself in the process. Things were indeed not what they seemed to be in that place, and that was fair. Sarah herself was not what she seemed. Not anymore.

There are some things that you cannot do without it affecting your life in some quite substantial ways, and meeting and defeating the Goblin King is prime among them.

AN: A short and sweet chapter. Sometimes stories are not always happily ever after. There are consequences and repercussions for your choices and for things that happened along your journey. As Frodo said above: "There are some things that time cannot mend." (Our dearly deluded Goblin King heartily scoffs at the idea of time as a quantitative force. Simply preposterous. Also, I just now had a mental mage of the Goblin King and the Doctor having tea and discussing how silly linear time is. Make of that what you will. Augh! Now I'm imagining how each incarnation of the Doctor would interact with the Goblin King! Quickly, next subject!) Thanks once again for everyone's lovely reviews! I'm surprised I actually remembered to post this as I'm on vacation! This chapter of "The Labyrinth" comes to you from the Full Throttle Saloon in Sturgis, SD! (This is after all the bikers have left, of course!) I'll try to get around to answering reviews next week! Tuesday is the Epilogue!

Disclaimer: Labyrinth and its characters do not belong to me. Quotes from the movie belong to Henson, Froud, and Lucas. Quotes from the book belong to A.C.H. Smith.