Act I
Chapter One: The Fool
The Nephilim were on the Earth in those days—and also afterward— when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, people of renown. Genesis 6:4
Soundtrack for Chapter One:
"So Alive"—Love and Rockets
"Everything in Its Right Place"—Radiohead
The beast snuffed the air, tracking his prey. Human. Human boy, full of meat and the savor of youth. Despite its size, the beast moved quickly, silently, following the boy in the city dark. The boy had been foolish to enter his territory without any propitiatory offerings. Now he was lawful prey.
The boy obviously wanted to die; he was choosing the darkest street, the alleyways, the places where the uncertain city lights refused to penetrate. The beast felt the thrill and the glory of the slow chase under perfect conditions, as the boy turned into a dead-end alley between two locked and silent buildings. He would leap upon the boy. He would tear him apart and drink his blood, and then, belly full, he would sleep until hunger and desire drove him out to kill again. The boy would be a dainty delicacy after years of hard-spiced vagrants, and make for sweet full-bellied dreams.
The beast reached out with his claws and struck sparks from the cinderblock walls, and had to repress a chuckle as the boy peered nervously over his shoulder and stepped forward into the trap with a quicker step. The boy sensed the predator, but could not see it. The beast smiled. Fear would season the meat. This would be quick. It would be certain.
The boy stopped short, looking up at the unexpected chain-link fence blocking the alley. And then he turned and stared out into the dark.
"I know you're there," the boy said. "I'm not afraid."
The predator paused. Humans, in his experience, sometimes attempted bravado in the moments before the kill, before they saw the manner of their death. The boy was afraid—his manchild's voice cracked with it—but there was something else to him as well. Defiance? Anger? The beast shook himself free of the cloaking glamour and growled, stepping out of the shadows, letting the boy see.
Tall, but not tall for a man. A body made of muscle and fat and covered with patched and scabby skin, fur ripped out or fallen out from mange. Upright, now, almost a foot taller than the boy, with long, long bent-joint arms that ended in long, long fingers and claws in hands meant to snatch and grab. Yellow teeth. Pulsing red pig's eyes. The beast roared, daubing the pavement with spittle. Slowly. He would go slowly, and enjoy the terror he inspired before he snuffed out the prey's life, perhaps by blood loss, perhaps by strangulation.
The boy went white and took a step back, stopped by the rattling fence.
"Killer," the boy said. He held up his hand in a warding gesture. "Leave me alone, or you die."
The beast tipped his scabby neck back and laughed. His bulk filled the alley. His back arched and he crept slowly closer, claws outstretched to tickle and snatch and rend. Those long stick-pin fingers scratched open one long tear across the boy's winter coat.
The boy screamed.
And then the beast felt a strange, new feeling. Pain. There was intense pain, in his head, in his neck. He grasped at the source of this pain and felt a length of sharp metal extruding from his neck, in a place where no metal should be. Killed. He had been killed.
"I'm sorry," he heard the voice of his murderer say, behind him. It was a warm voice, a gentle voice, even regretful. "But Bee did warn you."
The beast felt the sadness and anger of being cheated, and cried out once in outrage, blood bubbling from its impaled throat. In the next moment, the beast was dead.
The boy gasped for breath, close to hyperventilating, as the swordsman, the monster-killer, wiped his long iron blade clean on the cooling flesh of the beast. "You okay, Bee?" he asked, sheathing his sword against his hip.
"I'm fine," the boy wheezed, staring at the downed creature and bent over, putting his head between his knees.
The swordsman stepped over the beast and felt the boy over for injuries. The blond boy shoved him away. "I said I'm fine!" The swordsman gave him a penetrating glance and then turned to look at the corpse he'd made. Behind him, he heard the boy throw up.
"You should have aimed that for over here," the swordsman said. "Drop some gravy on this roast." He grinned as he heard the boy throw up again, and looked over his shoulder at him.
"Thanks so much for that, Finn," the boy said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "Why do I always gotta be the bait?"
The swordsman grinned. "Because you're the pretty one." He clapped the boy on his back and wrapped his red-sleeved arm around the boy's narrow shoulders. "Come on, Bee, I'll buy you a slushie."
As they left the alley, the quiet and hungry inhuman denizens of the city crept closer to feed on the fresh meat left so tantalizingly alone. So the eater became the eaten. Even the bones would be carried away, to be gnawed through. Even the blood would be licked clean away. It had happened before. It would happen again. Finn hummed the Doxology under his breath. World without end, city without sleep, a labyrinth of commerce and magic. Amen, amen.
Feeling their approach, Finn led Bee quickly away, out into more well-lit and populated places, places where a dark-skinned horned man in a long red coat, and a pale blond youth with a naïve face could eat and drink and discuss urban hunting without raising any interest. The city's darkness had seen it all, but Finn didn't want Bee to see the final result of their night's work. The city was blasé; the boy was innocent.
"I mean it," Bee said, the cherry slushie staining his lips and tongue red. Finn knew if he were to kiss that mouth now, it would taste sugar-sweet, perhaps stain his own mouth, too. Bee licked his lips and daintily picked at the paper tray of nachos before them on the metal table. "Why do I always have to be the bait? If I'd had a sword—"
"If you had a sword, you would have gotten too close." Bee had pulled a small sketchbook from his pack and was carefully drawing a picture of the beast. The size of a calf on all fours, in shape not unlike a sloped-back hyena, or a gorilla. No fur. Finn flicked the drawing around to his perspective perused it a moment, then took Toby's pen. Flesh Shuck, Finn labeled the entry.
"What about a gun?"
Finn made a rude noise. "Do tell me, Bee, what is this family fetish with firearms? If you'd had a gun, you would have fired it."
"Damn right," Bee said, grabbing a particularly cheese-rich chip.
"At the creature." Finn added some notations about approximate weight and standing height.
"Duh." Bee ate, and then sucked a bit of grease from his fingertips.
"And at me. I was standing right behind it, remember." He spun Bee's notebook back to him, smiling at the youth with a fond expression.
"I wouldn't have hit you." Bee sucked at his straw.
"You could have. You think, honey-Bee, that a bullet cares where it goes?"
"And a sword does?" Bee said petulantly.
"A sword does," Finn said darkly, caressing the hilt at his right hip. "My swords care, very much, where they go."
"So let me use one," Bee insisted, slapping his cup down on the table.
"No," Finn said with finality. "I know what," he said, with sudden inspiration. "Let's go visit your sister. That'll cheer you up." And me, he thought. Toby, you're adorable but it's exhausting keeping you both entertained and unhurt. He kept the thought hidden from his face.
"You just want to see him," Bee said. Finn grinned. Bee's jealousy was naked and sweet. "The Goblin King."
"Your brother!" Finn cajoled, still smiling.
"Brother-in-law," Bee said. His red lips curled into a reluctant answering smile. "Okay. I guess."
"I thought you liked His Majesty," Finn said, finishing off the nachos and snagging Bee's unfinished drink for good measure. "Don't you like him?"
"I do," Bee sighed. "It's just sometimes… I don't like the way he looks at you. Like you're something he owns."
Finn reached out and took the boy's hand and held it gently. His golden eyes lit with an emotion somewhere between remorse and desire. "But he does own me, Toby. The Goblin King owns me, body and soul."
"That's slavery," Bee said, trying to jerk his hand away, but Finn was stronger, and had practice keeping his grip. This was a conversation they'd had before, in bits and pieces, well-worn as a familiar piece of clothing.
"Some vows last forever," Finn said quietly. His index finger stroked gently over the boy's palm. "What's promised is promised. What's said is said." He released Bee's hand sooner than he would have liked.
"I could talk to him," Bee said. "Let him understand. It's not fair for him to—"
Finn laughed and finished off the last of the boy's sweet drink. "Fair! You know, I do believe you're the one person on Earth or Under who could say that to him and get away with it. Fair. Feh. Finished those nachos?" Bee nodded. "Good. We can catch the subway and be at the Goblin Market before dawn if we hurry."
"Or… we could go see my parents," Bee asked reluctantly.
Finn hid a sigh. He disliked humdrum humanity, and Bee's parents were as hum as drum came. Though Bee had apparently won their permission to leave school for a semester to follow Finn about the darker corners of New York City, and though they'd behaved themselves with decorum at Sarah's wedding—at which they were the most unusual guests, being themselves so human, so normal—Finn had an inkling they might not be best pleased to find a handsome dark-skinned man who wore swords under his long coat as their son's chaperon through the wilds of New York City. They might ask specific questions about their mutual activities, which included slicing and dicing up monsters, protecting the humdrum human beings who had no idea what death they might find if they turned down the wrong street at the wrong time. They might make other assumptions, and Finn didn't like being found guilty of sins he hadn't committed.
He hadn't so much as kissed the boy yet, nor laid a naked hand to that soft and tender opened-armed flesh, despite how much Bee obviously longed for him. Bee wanted Finn the way a cavity wanted an ache. Finn had been resolute, but he wasn't sure if, condemned by the accusing looks and carnal assumptions of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Williams, he might just couple with the boy out of sheer contrariness. And then, oh, disaster, unless Sarah relented…
All of these thoughts circled through his mind in a few seconds, and when he responded to Bee's suggestion, it was with no break in the conversation.
"It'll be good for you to see your parents," Finn said. "They'll be overjoyed to fuss over you. Cook you some wholesome food. Wash your undershorts."
Bee blushed. "That was just the one time!" He'd peed himself on their first hunt, when the kelpie slithered out of the Hudson and laid cold fingers on him. Tumor-ridden, hateful and hungry, it had intended to drown the boy. Finn, of course, had had other plans.
"Poor kid," Finn cooed. "Yes, let's definitely take you home tonight. You need your own bed, and your own mother to tuck you in. Not bad old Finn with his monsters."
"I'm not a baby!" Bee said fiercely.
"Yes," said Finn, tenderly tugging a long wavy strand of the boy's hair. "Yes, you are."
On their way to the Labyrinth, as the rattlesnap of the subway car rocked him to sleep, Toby pressed is face against Finnvah's shoulder. He felt the older man wrap his arm and the edge of his coat around him, holding him warm and close.
I love you, Finn, Toby thought.
The Labyrinth and the nurseryland dangers of the Goblin King's realm were Disneyworld compared to the wonders he'd seen in the night city with Finn. The Labyrinth was where Sarah lived now. As he began to fall asleep, Bee remembered his sister.
Sarah was almost his first memory. If he tried, he could recapture it. She was standing on a great height, far above him, and she opened her arms and flew. She flew to him.
Another memory unfolded from the first. Cold winter air and the sound of Christmas music blaring tinnily out of shops and stores always made him feel this memory, even if he refused to recall any images. Bee let it take him now, smelling Finn, feeling the prickle of his wool coat against his cheek, knowing he was safe.
It was the night before Linda and Jeremy's funeral. That was what he dreamed. Dad and Mom had insisted Sarah stay at their house. And all Toby could do was see how utterly miserable Sarah looked when she thought no one could see her. Mom had mentioned in passing to Dad that it would be a good thing if Sarah could only find a way to cry. Toby didn't know if that would be a good thing or not. He just didn't want his sister to feel so… lost. So he took something from his room and tiptoed through the eleven-o'clock-silent house and went to find her. He found her in the kitchen, polishing off a bottle of wine, more than half-drunk. She had given Toby a wobbly smile that faded when she saw what he carried.
"Who've you got there, Toby?" Sarah asked. And Toby pushed the stuffed bear into her arms.
"Wan Sue," Toby said gravely. "Have him. He's my best thing. I think you need him more than I do right now."
Sarah held the bear out at arm's length and stared at it. The fur was stiff from repeated washings and worn away from affectionate hugging, but his red ribbon was as jaunty as ever. Sarah had stared at the faded yellow teddybear and then put it to her face and sobbed violently for a full minute. The tears stopped like turning off a tap, and then she'd half-fallen off her stool and clutched Wan Sue in one arm and Toby with both.
"I can't believe this," Sarah said, looking at Wan Sue and wiping her eyes with one of Mom's just-for-important-company embroidered serviettes. She uncorked another bottle of wine and poured Toby a generous measure, and twice that again for herself.
"Mom'll have a bird if she finds out I've been drinking," Toby said carefully.
"What Karen doesn't know won't hurt her. Drink up. I have a story for you."
"What kind of story?" Toby had asked. He always liked Sarah's stories, the games she made up, the toys she played with that slowly but inevitably ended up being his toys. But something in her tone and in the general situation told Toby that this wouldn't be any fairy-tale.
"This is the story of how I gave you Wan Sue." She cuddled the slightly-damp bear against her breast. "But when he was mine, his name was 'Lancelot' and he wasn't even my best thing. This is a true story, Toby. I need you to listen. Once upon a time, when I was just about your age now, I had to baby-sit you all the time. And I was a spoiled child, and I wanted everything for myself, and I was nasty and selfish. But what no one knew was that the King of the Goblins had been watching me, and when I made a bad wish, his goblins came and took you away…"
It was the best, most frightening story Toby had ever heard. He drank automatically as Sarah fell into her narrative, dragging his imagination with her, as she described the challenge, the chase, the reversals of fortune meted out by the Labyrinth and the Goblin King, and her final confrontation with her adversary that ended in both of them being whisked away back home, safe and sound… but perhaps not unchanged. "And then I gave you Lancelot. You couldn't say his name right, but his name was your first word. 'Wan-soo-whoa.' Wan Sue. And you loved him better than I did. It was easier to let go of things I didn't need once I'd run the Labyrinth.
"Things were different after that," Sarah said, splitting the very last drops of their second bottle between Toby's glass and hers. "I was different, after that." She rested her head on her fist and smiled sadly, closing her eyes. "Now's the place where you ask me if the story's really true."
"I know it's true," Toby said. He spread Mom's fancy napkin out on the island-top like a canvas and dipping his finger in the red wine. He drew a face with the rough unthinking slashes of a Zen painting. Spiked hair, beaked nose, domineering spare mouth. He remembered, even in the dream, how easy it had been to capture that likeness, an ease that had eluded him ever since. "That's him, isn't it? That's the Goblin King."
"Yes, that's Jareth," Sarah said quietly. She ran her fingers over the stained fabric like she was touching a living face. And then she clawed the napkin into her fist as the wine-paint bled out into random patterns signifying no shape at all. She looked at Toby, and he saw that her tears were threatening again, but not for her mother. "I called for him two days ago. I wanted to wish myself away. I wanted all this to stop. But he never came. So I was wondering if it was all true." She tossed the napkin at the sink. "If he's real, he despises me."
"No he doesn't," Toby insisted, the wine in his belly making him certain. He grabbed Sarah's hand. "Why would he?"
"Because I'm despicable," Sarah said. She stood up on wobbly legs and handed Toby back Wan Sue. "Time for bed," she said. "Tomorrow's another terrible day."
She'd paused, swaying and slightly drunk, and looked back at him.
"It's not a story to tell Karen and Dad," she said.
"Duh," Toby said. They smiled at each other and she staggered out.
Toby didn't think Sarah ever knew that he followed just behind her as she made her way up the back stairs to the guest room, once her childhood bedroom. He'd been afraid of her falling down drunk those stairs, of dying. She'd fallen on the bed instead, face-first, and Toby had taken off her shoes, and tucked Wan Sue under her shoulder before he turned off the light.
The next morning, she'd stood as chief mourner at her mother's funeral, dry-eyed and straight-backed, as if none of it had happened. She didn't seem to remember their conversation at all, or at least she gave no sign.
She'd left the bear behind, propped up in his usual place on Toby's bed.
"Wake up, Bee," Finn said quietly. "Our stop is next."
Of course, Finn had had his way, Bee groused fondly to himself as they walked up the subway steps into the Goblin Market. In the square, vendors were just setting up their wares in the gloomy day. A few greeted Finn with a friendly wave and a call of his name. A few others spat and turned away. Finn paid the latter no mind and escorted the boy through the wide plaza and into the castle proper.
Bee hadn't wanted to go home and see Mom and Dad, not at least until Thanksgiving or Christmas, when there hopefully would also be a very pregnant Sarah and the enigmatic, glittery Goblin King to keep Mom distracted. Bee hadn't told his mother exactly what he was up to during his year off from college, because she wouldn't understand. Or, scratch that, she wouldn't want to understand. Magical creatures and a ghetto Harry Potter lifestyle would most certainly be on the do-not-call list for Karen Irene Williams.
"There are certain conditions I have," his father had said, a few days after the wedding party in the Labyrinth, when Bee had broached the subject of Finn's invitation to spend a year exploring New York with him, seeing all the strange and wonderful things there were to see. "First, you do this and you're doing it completely without my financial support. You're not going to spend a year living it up on your tuition money like some sort of half-assed Prodigal Son. Second, you'll call home once a week. Tuesdays at 9 PM sharp. You miss a call, and I will pull all my vast tapestry of strings to find you, since you'll be needing rescue, because there's no other reason you'd ever miss the opportunity to reassure your mother and I of your health and wellbeing. Third, if you ever need me to bail you out, literally or figuratively, your trip is over and you come home. Gratefully, quietly. Agreed?"
"Yes, sir," Toby replied, hands clenched behind his back. "That means… I can do it?"
"It means I'll talk to your mother about it and be a little vague in some of the details. But if she agrees you should be allowed to take a year off school…I don't see why you can't."
"Don't tell her about Finn," Toby had said nervously. Karen still referred to her stepdaughter's husband as a 'foreign noble' whenever she was asked about her stepdaughter in polite company.
Bee skewed a glance over at Finn. Definetely foreign, despite his claim to American citizenship. Definitely not human. Definitely something strange and beautiful and alien and dangerous, and definitely someone of whom Mom would not approve, especially not for her one-and-only son.
"I won't tell her about Finn," Robert had said, and given his youngest child a cagy look. "I won't tell you not to do anything illegal, but avoid needles and prostitutes and people on the make. You may wake up one day and be forty and enjoying the thought of a comfortable next forty years. Illegal activity can fuck that up for you." Toby had been rather taken aback by his father's use of profanity, but he nodded, holding the advice close. "One final thing," his father had said. "Please come home for Christmas and your birthday, Tobias. And when you see your sister, remind her to come home, too. I miss you both something terrible at the holidays."
"I will, Dad," Toby said. "I promise."
And that had been that. Bee wondered to himself, looking over at Finn again, if what they'd been doing together in the last three months qualified as illegal. He looked over his shoulder at the plaza in the Goblin City and then into the myriad shifting corridors waiting inside the Castle at the Center of the Labyrinth, and decided there were probably ten thousand unwritten laws against monster-hunting, but none written. He resisted the babyish urge to hold Finn's hand. He was nineteen, but Finn still treated him as if he were a child. He wondered why, because sometimes the sexual energy between them seemed to crackle and light up the city streets. He wondered if he were crazy, believing the attraction was mutual. Had his father or the Goblin King had a discreet word with Finn regarding the enforcement of Bee's increasingly chafing virginity?
The throne room was thick with goblins gamboling and singing and drinking. At the apex of all this chaos sat Jareth, the Goblin King, lounging on his throne and occasionally snapping off Polaroid pictures with a benevolent look on his strange face. The goblins grew quiet in a breaking wave as Bee and Finnvah came forward, but Jareth made no sign that he saw them until they were standing at the lip of the recessed pit before the throne. Jareth raised the camera and took their picture with a flash that momentarily blinded Bee.
"Your Majesty," said Finn, executing a complicated bow that was somewhere between a gesture of worship and a curtsey. Bee looked sideways at Finn and knew those graceful calisthenics were beyond his ability, and instead bowed awkwardly at the waist.
"Such ceremony," Jareth said, smiling, straightening on his throne and flapping the ejected photo between his fingers. "I'm not holding court today. No need for formalities, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix." His tone was reassuring, but Bee had the feeling that despite what the Goblin King said, he would have been irked if Finn hadn't made the proper gesture of humility. "And you need never bow to me, Toby. Unless you're interested in swearing fealty to me?" His smile became if anything slightly pointed and predatory. Toby knew he should have felt uneasy, but didn't. He smiled back and shook his head. He liked Jareth, for all his weirdness. Slowly the goblins began to sing and swear and shuffle around again, endlessly distracted and distracting, and the throne room returned to its customary social chaos.
"We came to see Sarah," Finn said cheerfully. "It's not an official visit."
"But you have things to tell me, nevertheless. We must talk," the Goblin King said, kicking his feet up in the air and getting up from his throne with a bounce. He traversed the perimeter of the pit, benevolently kicking a few slow goblins out of his way, and stood before them. Even down off the raised dais, he seemed to loom over Finn like a thunderhead. Heels, Bee thought, observing the Goblin King's boots. He wears heels. He's not really that tall. But it was more than the lift of his shoes that made Finn look at the Goblin King the way he did. Bee's eyes skittered away from the Goblin King's revealing trousers. "Here you go," Jareth said, pushing the dim picture into Bee's hands, who took it with surprise. Jareth came between them, hooked them both by the elbows and strolled them out into the corridors as the goblin chaos continued on unabated.
"Where is Sarah?" Finn asked. Bee tried to peep around the Goblin King's narrow chest to look at him, but they were all walking too quickly to make the attempt.
"My lady wife is sleeping in. Sleeping into what I'm not particularly sure. Perhaps a melon of some kind, or a second moon." Jareth halted before a massive pair of doors and dropped Finn's arm. "In there."
"You aren't coming in with me?"
"What, and wake that dragon? I think not, noble knight. You do it." Jareth laughed an insane laugh and pushed Finn at the doors.
"I thought you said we were going to talk!" Finn said, as Jareth dragged Toby with him down one of the endless corridors of the castle.
"We will. Later! Come, young Toby!" Bee felt uneasy. He didn't particularly want to be separated from Finn, but it seemed a much better option than being sent in to visit his cranky, pregnant sister while Jareth and Finn engaged in the type of courtly, flirtatious dialog that had been the hallmark of their last visit.
Bee was very conscious of being travel-stained and unbathed and tatter-clothed and smelly and itchy, linked arm-in-arm with Jareth, who seemed to be perpetually well-dressed and comfortable no matter what mess he surrounded himself with. No wonder Finn likes him so much, he thought. They're just alike. I wish I was like them.
"You are, you know," Jareth said, as they rounded a bend and tripped quickly up some steps. They curved up and up; they were climbing a tower.
"I'm what now?" Bee asked, wanting some clarity.
"Attractive to him." The Goblin King stropped at the top of the stairs; they were in a faceted glass dome that had already absorbed some of the heat of the day. The tower room was sparsely furnished with a tatty old armchair and a rickety endtable; it smelled of stale cigarettes. Jareth cranked open a window and stared out, then pulled back the tattered cuffs of his left sleeve and looked at his watch. The room cooled quickly as November air spilled in.
"Are you a mind-reader?" Bee asked. "I feel like Pig Pen, I feel like I'm twelve, that's how attractive I feel. So how do you know?"
Jareth tilted his head and stared down at Toby's hand. "Because it's something I can see."
Bee looked down and saw he was still clutching the underdeveloped picture. His thumb had smudged a deep yellow mark on one corner, but it was still clear despite that flaw. There he was, in the picture, looking babyish and worried and tired and dirty. In the picture, his eyes refused to look the taker in the face. Bee frowned, expecting Finn's eyes to have met Jareth's, to be boldly looking forward. But instead Finn's golden eyes were glancing at Bee, with a look of desire and pride so intense it took his breath away. He blushed and clutched the picture tighter. He looked up at Jareth, expecting to feel more embarrassed, more exposed. But the Goblin King was carefully neutral, even kindly distant.
He's on my side, Bee realized gladly. He found it easier to breathe, like an extra weight had been lifted from his backpack. He slipped the picture into his pocket, next to his phone.
Jareth opened the drawer of the table and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, an ashtray, an Altoids tin, and a lighter. "Don't tell Sarah," he said, lighting one up in clenched teeth. "She'll be jealous." Jareth blew smoke out the window, and followed it with his eyes. He looked at his watch again.
"What're you looking at?" Bee asked, coming up beside Jareth and staring out. He couldn't see anything unique, just the Labyrinth. The Labyrinth was pretty impressive, Bee had to admit, but there wasn't anything particularly unusual going on. At least not that he could see. The Goblin City looked like a doll's village, and there was a parkland beyond that, all gold and red leaves, and beyond that a series of interlocking indeterminate maze-walls that seemed to extend to the stormy-looking horizon. Bee casually reached for Jareth's cigarettes, intending to smoke one, but Jareth slapped his hand without looking.
"I'm checking the time," Jareth said. "What time do you have, young Toby?"
Bee checked his watch resentfully. "Ten," he said.
"New York time? I wonder," Jareth said. "Is it cold in your city, Toby?"
"At night, yeah," Bee said. He blushed to think. It had snowed in mid-October, and he and Finn had made their makeshift beds over a subway exhaust grate that gave out intermittent heat which only made him feel the cold more strongly. Finn had called him into his sleeping bag, first offering and then demanding that the boy come in beside him, stop being foolish, human beings freeze to death all the time in this city. And Bee had, resisting only because he wanted to be close to Finn so badly. Warmed by Finn's body under the warmth of his coat and their trash-bedding, it had been a species of Heaven, but he had been ashamed at how obviously aroused he was. "No matter, no mind," Finn had said, tucking his leg over Toby's thighs like a mother cat. "Just get warm and sleep." And Bee had, but Finn most likely had not, keeping watch over his flock of one by night. "Yeah, it gets cold. Rain. Snow."
"And the leaves in the Central Park, they're no longer green?"
"What are you getting at?" Bee asked. He looked up at Jareth, worried by his worry.
Jareth stubbed his cigarette out and took a mint, and offered the box to Bee.
"Winter is coming to the Labyrinth. That's the long and short of it." Rain began to spit out of the grey sky, cold rain with a hint of snow to it. Jareth looked out the window one more time and cranked it shut. "A change in the air," he said, brooding.
"I get that it's a problem for you, but I don't understand how," Bee said. "Winter comes after summer and Fall. That's the way it is."
"Your coat is torn quite badly," Jareth remarked conversationally, putting his smoking accessories away. "Would you like it mended, or would you like a new coat?"
"I'd like a new everything," Bee said, "And a hot shower on top of that. So why is Winter a problem?" he asked, insistent.
"Because it's something I can't see," Jareth said. His black eye and his blue one were lit with some nameless anxiety. "Because it's never happened before."
Next… Chapter Two: "The Empress"
Author's Note: This story is a sequel to my novella "Labyrinth: Kingdom Come." Although I'm going to do my best to ensure that new readers can understand this story, there are several key original characters, such as Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix and John Company, who've been introduced to readers in that first story. "Kingdom Come" also discloses how Jareth and Sarah arrived at their unusual marriage. These events begin approximately three months after the conclusion of that story.
I'm really excited about this story. There will be twists and turns and surprises-for you, and for me too. I've got Frances Osgood riding beta shotgun on this one. If there are spelling or continuity or reference errors, I assure you the fault is mine.
And like "Kingdom Come," I've got a thematic soundtrack for this story. Please feel free to download and enjoy the music that goes with each chapter. -E.W.