Labyrinth 1. Forgetfulness

Jim Henson, David Bowie and the various corporate machines own everything! Oh, except Greensleeves, the original lyrics of which have most definitely fallen into public domain. But anyway, I own nothing except the order in which the words were written down… and the Lake Country (but you've not seen that yet), and some new critters (ditto)…

Thanks go to "mi­guida" for beta reading and a level of planning which enters the realm of co-authorship.

Here is Chapter one for your delectation, there may be a bit of a wait before posting again, exams are truly imminent, but this story will not be forgotten!

Xxx

PaintR.

**Forgetfulness**

A snowy owl soared and wheeled through the wide open sky, heavy soft feathers creating a soundless, mesmerising dance as the dazzling bright white plumage of the bird cut through the glorious explosion of blue and mauve and lavender. The setting sun washed the clouds with a delicate pink tint, colouring and defining the great turrets of cotton wool, and the hazy spider silk of the higher clouds. The bird, still silent, changed direction with a swoop and began a lazy spiralling decent, intently scanning the ground below. Suddenly it plummeted towards the ground, the tinted clouds and the dappled gold and green of the hilltop trees in the distance blurred past, their colours streaming together behind the white plumage as the bird plunged to the ground, trapping some small creature in its feet, tipped with dark heavy talons, and crushed its prey to the turf. Hopping off the crushed animal corpse the owl inspected its dead prey, clutching it firmly with one foot, as similar creatures scuttled to hide in the crack of the large, old sandstone wall.

Transferring its dead prey to its beak, the owl took off; a single quick whooshing noise was all that signalled its take off, as it resumed its silent flight. The world spun beneath its wings as it plunged through low wisps of cloud and fog; the sandstone wall fed into others, like some immense, almost organic maze, giving way here and there to hedges and rivers, before climbing an immense far off hill, to some indistinct golden structure shining bright in the distance.

The land beneath his wings changed and shifted, the walls ended, giving way to pasture, and then dense dark forest. The owl plummeted down over the canopy of the trees, losing altitude in the cooler air, before catching an updraft as the woods in their turn gave way to golden fields of ripening wheat, then buildings and roads… a town, tinted gold in the evening light. Finally the owl landed, settling on an old, decaying tree trunk, not yet claimed for timber. It firmly grasped its prey in its claws, and, since the captured prey was too large to swallow whole, the owl began to plunge its beak into the soft, still warm flesh of the creature.

The lightening-blasted ancient tree trunk stood amid carefully manicured lawns which sloped gently down to a river. Standing on the grey stone bridge over the river was a young woman, leaning idly on the crumbling stone wall, fingers gently tracing the lines of old, eroding cement as she stared out towards the fruit trees on the far bank, their foliage just starting to shift colour, glimpses of golden and red invading the green, the odd few leaves swirled down in the light breeze which whipped up eddies every now and then, causing some hidden wind chimes to start their echoing song, before depositing the leaves on the gentle surface of the water. Straightening up, Sarah watched with lazy interest as a leaf was swept under the bridge by the current and she crossed to the other side to follow its progress. After a few moments, idly playing with a loose curl of dark hair that has escaped the shining gold ribbon binding it back from her face like a coronet, she realised that the leaf had not emerged.

She crossed the bridge, and strode down the bank to the water's edge, looking for the leaf. Eventually she saw it in the shadows, caught, and trapped by an eddy in a maze of sticks. She smiled, wistfully and headed back up the grassy slope towards the open space and the strangely incongruous tree trunk.

The light, as she looked up at the owl perched on the branch, dazzled her, and she raised a hand to her head to shade her eyes. The wind picked up, whipping her pale dress around her legs, revealing her smart little black shoes. "Well hello," she smiled up at the bird, imagining that it could understand her, "what have you got there?" The owl looked out imperiously, tilting its head in such a way that Sarah had a clear view of its blood stained beak before it turned back to its meal without even glancing at the girl standing below. "It doesn't look like a mouse, but it's definitely not a bird… where did you find it, whatever it is, hmm?" The bird just continued to devour the increasingly unrecognisable creature, completely oblivious, or perhaps just supremely disdainful of her presence. "What do you think he's got, Merlin?" she asked, slightly louder, turning round. The park was empty.

"Merlin!" she called, before pursing her lips and letting forth a piercing whistle. Within a few moments, and with a great rustling clatter, an Old English sheepdog lumbered out of the undergrowth of the fruit trees and rushed across the bridge, wagging his tail happily. "Look at you, disgusting dog, what am I going to do with you? Were you off down rabbit holes?" Merlin shook violently, forcing Sarah to jump backwards to avoid getting her dress covered in mud. "Not rabbits, then… what about squirrels? No…badgers? Or were you chasing those pesky goblins again?" Merlin wagged his tail happily, tongue lolling out as he sat to look up at her, recognising the indulgent, amused tone in her soft voice. "Look at all this mud." She leant down to pat him noisily, through his long hair, matted with mud. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, you fought your muddy way to the castle of the goblin king, beyond the labyrinth, to take back the bone that they had stolen…" she smirked to herself, as she perverted the lines from a story her mother had told her so long ago.

A bell began to chime in the distance, the sweet clear sound carrying across the park. "You know, Merlin, I don't think he's coming…" she cocked her head to one side, listening to the bells "I think I've been stood up again… honestly, being willing to break curfew just to get stood up again…" her dark eyes opened wide as the bell chimed for the seventh time, and then began to fill up with tears. "Oh no, Merlin, it's seven o'clock, he's definitely not coming now! Oh it's not fair!"

Suddenly the owl, which had finished its messy meal, took off into the air, flying over her head, and off across the river towards the denser trees. Sarah's eyes followed its path even as the tears began to roll down her face.

Hitching her skirt she began to run, she whistled for the dog, unable to call, feeling the tears beginning to choke her. She crossed the river, and sped down the path leading her home, the dog gambolling along behind as the heavens opened, crying for her, hiding her tears.

Sarah burst out from the cover of the trees, and down a bank, and along the road as Merlin sped up to run in front of her. The rain slashed down around her, droplets bouncing off cars and pavement with little tinny noises, the road growing slicker and harder to navigate. Sarah sped up to avoid tripping, imagining her feet lifting almost before they were set down.

Finally Merlin turned, and Sarah followed him up the inclining path to the house, her way less slippery, sheltered by the trees which lined the roadside. She collapsed against the wall, under the eaves of the porch, and sluiced the rain from her face with her hands.

Suddenly the front door slammed open, startling the birds in the trees. Sarah looked up at the pigeons as their wings clap clapped as they took flight. She squinted up at them. Surely not… no, not the owl, it must just have been a white pigeon or a dove. Sarah wondered if they were the same thing as she stared up at the grey sky, the cords of rain falling from the sky less thick, and less frequent.

"…are you even listening to me, young lady?" Her stepmother's voice snapped her back to reality.

"I'm sorry," Sarah said quietly. "I…" Her stepmother cut her off waving her hand, adorned with beautifully lacquered red nails,

"Never mind, come into the house before you freeze." Sarah looked down, toeing off her shoes and picking up her skirts to step past the woman in the evening dress.

"C'mon Merlin," Sarah called softly.

"No, not the dog. Garage, Merlin!" she chirped.

The dog just sat there in the mud, his tail thumping dully down into a puddle. "Go into the garage, Merlin!" Sarah called, as the front door swung shut behind her.

"So Sarah, where have you been? I asked you to be home by 6.30, your father and I have decided to go out," her voice grew softer, "we so rarely get the chance," she said wistfully.

"You go out every weekend!" Sarah called resentfully as she made her way up the stairs, flicking her wet hair back over her shoulder. "You don't even ask me if I can baby sit anymore, you assume I can, but what if I had plans?" She demanded, leaning over the balustrade to look down at the immaculately dressed and coiffed woman below.

"Well I assumed you'd tell me if you had a date. I'd like it if you had a date, you should have dates at your age." Her deep blue eyes followed her stepdaughter as she rounded the corner at the top of the stairs. "A girl your age should be having dates!"

Her father appeared on the landing, holding the baby and a bottle. "Sarah, you're home. Where were you? We were worried!" She just brushed past him as she went up the stairs.

"What was all that about, dear?" he asked, turning to his wife.

"Sarah doesn't have any dates," she answered simply.

Sarah stopped abruptly outside the door to her room. "I do have dates," she murmured resentfully, "I have so many of them and the same bloody thing happens each time. I get stood up, and they never talk to me again." She opened the door, and stepped inside. Her movements were brittle, overly controlled, as she gathered up her things and went into the bathroom, slowly closing the door so that it shut almost painfully quietly behind her, as fresh tears rolled down her face, eventually merging with the steam rising to fill the air and the water in the bath. "Am I some sort of challenge?" She asked herself quietly, "Is it a dare for all of the local sports teams?" She put on a snide voice "Ask out the loner and then stand her up. It'll be funny!"

Sarah stripped down to her underwear, nice matched bra and knickers, sensible white to be sure, but with pale blue lace decorating them, not that anyone was going to see, and stared into the mirror, as the steam climbed up the still cool glass.

Sarah heard her father call through the bathroom door, telling her that they had put Toby to bed, and that they were on their way out. If he said what time they would be back, then Sarah didn't hear it, sinking below the water level in the tub, and listening to the pipes gurgle. At length she resurfaced and stood up, drawing a deep breath, which, given the humidity and heat of the bathroom made her feel light-headed. As she sat down on the edge of the bathtub, waiting for the world to stop spinning and for her vision to clear she thought, just for a moment, that she saw a face that was not her own staring back at her out of the mirror.

At length Sarah emerged fully dressed from the bathroom and, towelling her hair dry, walked through her parents' room to the baby's cot. He was sitting up, holding onto the bars, with a pathetic, hopeful expression on his face, like a convict wrongfully accused.

Sarah sat down heavily on her parents' vast four-poster bed. She felt bile rising in her throat as she remembered how it had been before her stepmother moved in, before the baby, when it was just her and her father, after her mother had gone off with him, that bloke from the theatre. The room now was so different, but in some ways it was like her parents' old room, back in their old house, before the move; frilly, lacy, cluttered and stifling.

There had been arguing in the beginning, her mother's strong personality ground her father down to next to nothing, and had clashed with Sarah's own. There had been tears, and slammed doors, upheaval and histrionics with every new play, every new casting and each review. Then there were tears and hoarse cries from Sarah the child when her father had, over a badly made breakfast at which Sarah was given her first cup of black coffee, announced that "Mummy has gone away, and she may be away for a very long time, maybe even forever."

But, gradually, as breakfasts improved, and the coffee lost its bitter edge, the tears and shouting were replaced with comfortable silence. They moved, and their new house became a calm little world within four walls, where the space was filled with soft music instead of soft rugs and fussy doilies. Companionable silence and understanding without words grew. It was a pure clean lifestyle, undemanding, except when Sarah, still young and upset would bring back the spectre of a perfect loving mother to hurl at her father, using that same, but in this case occasional, temper to do so. Then the photograph albums, old awards and scrapbooks came out, were dusted off, and reminded her of the instability of that young life.

Of course, eventually the spectre of a loving mother came back, in the form of a woman, who, less dramatic than her mother, retained a similar cutting temper and flamboyant style. The house was gradually softened, feminised, filled and finally baby-proofed. But Sarah had grown up and despite her father's hopes, she could not bring herself to call Amanda "mother". Her father's calm, easy going identity slid, once again, behind a dominant, ceaselessly enforced femininity, just as his oak bed, with its bare pillars and dark sheets, had been covered with a duvet, then a quilt, then cushions and curtains.

The baby was still staring at her, with Amanda's blue clear eyes, so different from Sarah's own, which held a torrential darkness at bay behind them. She let the towel slide to the floor, as she went back to the cot, and extracted the bear from the corner. "Lancelot has to go back to his bed now sprog, but if you're good while I sort him out, when I come back I'll tell you a story. How's that for a deal?"

Sarah gathered up the towel on her way out, and, hanging it over the rail on the radiator, she tossed Lancelot through the open door to her room and onto her bed before heading downstairs. She walked through the kitchen to the door to the garage, and let in the now dry Merlin. She locked the exterior door, sliding the heavy bolts with difficulty and moved his food and water inside, before locking the internal door as well, leaving the key in the lock. She rinsed her hands off under the tap, watching the rain pour down the windows, and realising just how quickly night had descended. She stared out into the inky blackness, lost in thought. Suddenly, a face appeared in the window, and she yelped, leaping back. She looked out cautiously, and laughed nervously when she realised that it was just her own reflection which had shifted suddenly as Merlin knocked into the door to the hall, shifting the light source.

Her heart still racing, and feeling rather embarrassed, considering that only the dog saw her moment of fear, she checked that her father had locked the front door behind him and quickly went around the house drawing the curtains.

Running up the stairs she went into her own room. Her dressing table was a clutter of cosmetics, pencils and piles of books which had overflowed off her shelves. A photo of her mother, cut from a newspaper was rammed between the glass and the frame of the mirror, and a playbill from one of her productions was wedged between two of the books on the desk. Reminders.

More books on the shelves were crammed in, some lying flat on top of others, some shelves with a second row of books hidden behind the first. Here and there were stuffed toys, old friends from childhood, still too dear to leave behind, and it was onto the one entire shelf filled with more of these childhood treasures, that she placed Lancelot. He went behind a pack of cards and between a group of little china figurines and a single, old fashioned, porcelain faced doll dressed in lace and silvery wire.

Her posters were not what her friends would have expected, had any of them ventured to the house. No teen idols, or horses, or pretty landscapes. Instead there were art prints. All of them a little too grownup, a little too bizarre; there was Escher's room of staircases over the bed, a few Dali postcards scattered around, and a there was a print of Hegel's Holiday, a glass of water on a floating umbrella, in the blank space of wall.

Her room was neat, in its own way. Everything was, to her, very obviously where it should be, and to put things away, like the pencils on her desk, would just be inefficient. But the floor was clear, the bed, with its bright cheery spread was neatly made, and once Lancelot was safely put back in his place the room was complete.

Sarah picked up a thin book, bound in red leather, with worn, gilt-edged pages, and began to leaf reverently through the pages, caressing the spine with her fingertips, making sure not to strain it. She flipped open a little carved box, which turned out to be a music box, but instead of a twirling ballerina, there was a stationary male figure attached inside. She hummed and then finally sang softly along with the familiar tune as she read; "If you intend thus to disdain, it does the more enrapture me, and e'en forgot, I still remain your lover in captivity."

Toby's crying carried across the landing and through the open door, interrupting her. Sarah snapped the book shut and with a single finger she flicked the music box so that the lid shut with a satisfying heavy click. She scooped up the box, and walked into the room with Toby, flicking on the lights as she did so, as the rain and clouds really had settled in for the night very quickly, bringing thunder and lightning with them. She put the book and box down on the bed, and scooped up the baby, and strolled around the room, jiggling him up and down. "If you don't calm down, I won't tell you a story, Toby!" she warned. Eventually the baby stopped crying and she settled him down in the cot, and tucked him in, "There, isn't that nice?"

"Do you think that Merlin wants to listen too, Toby?" She interpreted his gurgles as a yes, and let out another of her piercing whistles. Thumpety, bumpety, thump went the dog's footfalls as he made his way upstairs, wagging his tail furiously, delighted to be allowed upstairs.

"Once upon a time there was a girl, who always ended up staying at home, looking after the baby. She didn't mind the looking after the baby so much, it was just the constant expectation that she would look after the baby, coupled with her fading hope, night after night, week after week, that maybe this time, this one time, she would get to go out. That someone would notice her, remember her, make her feel extraordinary, even for a moment. But hope fades, and dreams grow brittle without help. So she turned to the old tales, the magic of her sisters in times long ago, and tales of the deeds of her grandmothers, lost to history, and nearly disappeared from literature behind the tales of brave deeds of men."

She picked the musical box up off the bed, and wound it as she spoke, pacing backwards and forwards in front of the rug Merlin was laying on, which was nearly as fluffy as he was. "Once there was such a girl, who always ended up staying at home, looking after the baby, and she found a book of another such girl, who found such a book, so that the story's roots are lost to tales and myth. But in this tale, the lonely girls, each and every one of them, found help in the book, and began to dream again. Their dreams were so poignant, so beautiful, that they awoke the ancient spirits. The girls each in turn grew old, and died, but the ancient spirits did not, they remained, and they remembered, and some of them shaped themselves like the dreams," Her voice grew softer, as she walked, gesturing every so often, or stopping to grip the rail of the cot and look down at the baby, who was staring up at her, entranced.

"Do you know what happened then, Toby?" She asked, eyes glittering with excitement, "I'll tell you! These dream spirits waited, and found the souls of the dead dreamers, and made them live again for a while. In each generation the dreamers were born anew, as lonely girls who lost their dreams and found them again. The dream spirits called them, and the dreams became greater, with each passing year. But then the books, in time, grew hard to read, and became lost, and the dreamers forgot. Now the spirits are nearly always sleepy. But if a dreamer calls them, they will awaken."

"And they clues, the ancient spirits, to remind their dreamers of them, to remember them by, and the songs echo all around. Do you want to hear one?" Toby was silent, but Merlin thumped his tail happily, so she flicked open the musical box, and began to sing that old familiar song, but with unfamiliar lyrics.

"Alas, my love, you do me wrong,  
To leave me thus discourteously,  
For I have loved you oh so long,  
Delighting in your company.

"Sweetest dreamer you are my joy  
And your sweet dreams were my delight,  
Sweetest dreamer your heart seemed gold,  
As you made me slave to your dreams.

"Your vows you've broken, like my heart,  
Oh, why did you so enrapture me?  
Now I remain in my world apart  
My heart trapped in captivity.

"I have been ready at your hand,  
To grant whatever you desire,  
I have moved all the stars and land,  
For thou hast set my blood afire.

"I had my servants dressed in green,  
To do your will and wait on thee;  
I gave you gems, the finest seen,  
And yet it seems you forget me.

"All thy desires I gave to thee,  
I placed my might beneath your hand  
And, oh! Beloved, eagerly  
I made you queen o'er all my land.

"In your sweet voice and deep dark eyes,  
I planted magiks readily,  
And if thou callst, 'tis no surprise,  
I have no choice save come to thee.

"If you intend thus to disdain,  
It does the more enrapture me,  
And e'en forgot, I still remain  
Your lover in captivity.

"Ah, Sweet Dreamer for thee I wait,  
Fear not for my fidelity,  
For now as ev'r thou art my mate,  
Come once again and love me."

The music box exhausted, its final notes finally decayed into silence. Toby had fallen asleep, and Merlin was lying, oblivious on the floor. Poor Sarah, the tears were running down her cheeks. She picked up the musical box, and, switching off the light went into her room. She launched herself onto the bed and lowered her gaze to the pages of her book, periodically swiping at her eyes with her loose sleeves. "And one night, when the world seemed particularly cruel to her, the girl took the powers the goblin king gave her, and summoned his servants to rid her of her troubles."

What a pity I can't do that, she thought, putting the book and musical box down on her bedside table, and crawling under her sheets, still fully dressed. But how could someone take me away from my troubles? "Goblin King, Goblin King, rid me of my troubles!" She whispered softly. "I wish the goblins would… I don't know… make it better, or something. I wish I could find out what's wrong with me. I wish they could make it better." She reached a hand out from under the cover and turned off the light, as the thunder blotted out the muffled sniffing sounds from the bed.


	2. Forgotten

Jim Henson, George Lucas, David Bowie and the various corporate machines own everything you recognise!

Thanks, once again to the inspirational beta and sounding board that is "mi­guida".

So, here's chapter two. Remember, reviews feed the muse and keep me motivated! (Thanks notwritten - the aim is to take the original elements of the story and give them a good shakeup to end up with a new take on the story and characters.)

Xxx

PaintR.

**Forgotten**

* * *

Sarah sat at her desk, staring down at her folder, oblivious to the world around her. The drizzly grey day affected everybody's mood, forcing them under cover, which is why they were sitting inside catching up on homework in study hall rather than participating in their governmentally decreed obligatory hour and a half of some team sport or other. The depression and dull weather pressed itself down on the world, and the smell of thunder was in the air.

Sarah sat at her desk, nose almost touching the paper as she scribbled frantically at her pad. Doodles of an owl emerged as she concentrated, letting the time slip away. The teacher walked past her twice on his slow, monotonous patrol of the classroom, up and down the aisles of single desks, his footsteps like a metronome, punctuating the melody of hushed chatter that lessened as he approached and then crescendoed again in his wake.

As the metronome of footfalls ceased, silence crept up on the large room, almost echoing, as that innate drive which is so strong in young people, kicked in. That instinct which whispers that trouble, sport, entertainment, is imminent, which forces you to watch the downfall and emotional nadirs of others. A false cough cut through the silence like some great cacophonous explosion and alerted Sarah to the fact that her English teacher was right behind her. She stiffened, tension in her frame, but she did not move, did not stop drawing to look around. "Now then Sharon, that doesn't look like homework to me…" the light, reedy voice, so incongruous when the man was built like an opera singer petered out as Sarah finally laid down her pencil and shifted in her seat to look at him, her eyes were dark, teenage anxiety confusion and that indefinable sadness of the outsider hidden behind malevolence, and the safety of rage and ire. An angry blush coloured her cheeks as the silence shifted, calling out to her to fill it.

"My name is Sarah. SARAH! Remember me, Mr Wilson?" Her voice was loud and harsh, captivating the already rapt attention of every last person in the room. Her fury brought background noise to a standstill far more efficiently than a patrolling teacher ever could, and seemed even to drown out the wind from outside, rattling the window panes d as she continued to vent her feelings at her teacher, loud enough for her voice to be heard echoing down the corridor.

"No tardies, no unofficial absences, in every play and I only ever missed one rehearsal. Remember me? The prize-winner, I won an award with my essay on Jacobean theatre! You called it "masterful"! MY NAME IS SARAH!"

The teacher gaped at her before finally gathering together his wits and pointing at the door. "Go to see the Headmistress, right now!" He declared in a rather shaky voice.

Sarah grabbed her folder and swung her bag over her shoulder as she stood up, before storming out of study hall on the crest of a wave of renewed chatter. She flung the door open, and slammed it shut behind her, before collapsing back against the wall breathing heavily as tears pricked at her eyes and the rain thundered on the flat roof and echoed down the bare corridors.

"Who does she think she is…?" drifted a voice from inside the room she had just left,

Sarah felt a glimmer of hope, suddenly quashed, as another voice responded, in tones of honest curiosity, "Who does who think she is?" Sarah forced herself to her feet, and walked dejectedly to the headmistress' office. She knocked on the door with her heavily ringed right hand, and on invitation, entered and sat down before the incongruously plump and smiley disciplinarian.

"So, why are you here, Miss…"

Sarah rolled her eyes, anger and sarcasm replacing sorrow, "Williams, Mrs Endicott."

"So, why are you here Miss Williams?" The aforementioned headmistress asked, removing her frameless spectacles from her nose and setting them down in their case on her desk, before pressing her fingertips together, and flexing them. "Be honest."

"I yelled at Mr Wilson in study hall." She announced blandly, dropping her bag to the floor by her feet and playing with her rings.

A raised eyebrow prompted her continuing speech. "He forgot my name again, despite having asked it not five minutes before and having been my form tutor, English professor and study hall supervisor for over five years." She muttered, not meeting the headmistresses' eyes.

Silence fell on the lavish office and stretched, as Sarah's gaze slid over the awards cabinet, and the diplomas and certificates, along with prized pieces of work framed on the long wall, to the window, with the rain splattering against it.

As she stared a fork of lightning split the sky and sighed, hoping that the thunderstorm, the second in two days, would finally break that niggling headache at the back of her mind. She stood up suddenly, and walked to the window, stroking the frame which contained her prize essay on Jacobean theatre on her way past. She stared out through the rain, looking to the trees in the distance, where she saw, as she almost knew she would, a white blur moving in the tree line. That it was there did not surprise her, but she found the fact that it did not surprise her to be in itself surprising. Why should she know where this owl was, why indeed was there this owl there at all, in the daytime, in the rain, in the centre of town?

"Are you listening to me, Miss Williams?"

Mrs Endicott dragged her attention back to the here and now, and, throwing caution to the wind, Sarah chose to reply completely honestly without turning round to look at the woman, "No, I was looking at the owl."

The sound of heavy chair legs scraping across wood flooring, followed by the tap, tap, tapping of stiletto heels announced the headmistresses' approach. Her perfume was floral and cloying as Sarah turned to face her.

"I said, Miss Williams, that your attitude and uniform both leave much to be desired. You will serve detention tonight, and you will hand over all jewellery above the limit set by the school rules, that is, one plain chain, and simple studs or sleeper earrings."

"But…"

"You can collect the jewellery after detention. See that after today it does not appear in school again."

The thunder matched Sarah's mood, as, with a mutinous expression on her face she stripped her fingers bare of her rings, all ten of them, spread across five fingers and two thumbs, and the beaded necklaces from around her neck, and dropped them into the desk drawer which the headmistress indicated.

"Until this evening Miss Williams." Mrs Endicott announced with a toss of her curly head which indicated dismissal.

With a dark expression on her face Sarah took herself to the library, and gambling that she would not be missed until the school day finished, sat down in one of the squishy chairs at the end of the balcony where the Career Advisor held her weekly meetings. She grabbed her bottle of water from her bag and drank, quickly, sneaking the bottle back into her bag before the librarian looked up and noticed. The headache still pressed down on her skull.

She fumbled in the bag and drew out the thin red leather book with faded gilt edging from its protective cocoon between her diary and a textbook. With her habitual reverence she opened it up at the page marked with a ribbon, and began to read.

The ancient tale left out most of the real adventure and the fighting behind simple reported speech, "For I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the goblin city, to take back the child that you have stolen." Why would a goblin king need to steal a child? Was it to turn the child into a goblin, and make his army grow? To keep as an heir? To sacrifice to some arcane god? Or just to punish the poor unfortunate who gambled away a loved one to some eldritch being. There was no explanation, which made the joy and the mystery all the greater. "For my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom is as great… you have no power over me!"

Sarah smiled wistfully, imagining that she were the girl in the ageless tale, and that, if no one had power over her she would be free. But to do what? How would Sarah ever be free to do those things which crept into her mind at night and spread between the pages of her sketchbooks, fermenting and transmuting in to a dull ache at the back of her throat and chest.

The bell rang, but Sarah did not move, she stayed, sitting there in the library, finishing the tale. When she looked at her watch some ten minutes later she realised that it had been the final bell, marking the end of the day and the end of detention, not the bell announcing the return to form rooms for registration.

She placed the book hurriedly back in its secure position between two books, and then, bag and hair flying behind her she sprinted to the headmistresses' office, praying that the woman had not yet left to go home. She arrived at the office only to come face to face with the woman in question, who appeared to be about to leave.

"Can I have my jewellery back please Mrs Endicott?" she asked breathlessly. "You said I could collect it after detention." Sarah crossed her fingers behind her back, hoping that the teacher did not know that she had not been in detention. At Mrs Endicott's blank expression Sarah prompted her, "In the top drawer of your desk, you put them there for safekeeping."

The hazy expression cleared from her face and she crossed the room to her desk, "Of course Miss…"

"Williams." Sarah filled in automatically, as the jewellery landed in a messy pile in her cupped hands, she scanned it quickly relieved to see it was all there, and, since she was being shooed out of the office, put it in her pocket rather than put it all on.

She walked home quickly, the rain had stopped, but the moisture still hung in the air, puddles everywhere, and the wind was chill. She arrived home to be met, once again, by the frowning face of her stepmother.

"Where have you been? You knew you were meant to be home on time today, your father and I are going to a dinner-meeting. We told you last night when we got home."

"No you didn't." She said plainly, stepping past Amanda and through the front door. "Anyway, there was nothing I could do. I was given detention," even though I didn't go, she added silently.

Her father came down the stairs, making a hash of tying his tie. Amanda stepped in and relieved him of the problem, tying a half-Windsor knot with economical flicks of her wrists and fingers. "Detention, Sarah, what for?" her father asked over the top of Amanda's head.

"Being rude, incorrect uniform, it was something like that. I wasn't really paying attention." Sarah said avoiding eye contact. "Where's Merlin?" she asked, walking over to the kitchen and opened the door. The big, shaggy dog met her, and jumped up at her. She patted him heavily as he settled down.

Amanda whirled round to face her, a predictable hurricane staring down at the nigh on oblivious girl. "You weren't paying attention? Young lady, your attitude will get you into serious trouble, you'll need good grades and good reports to get into a top university,"

"Yes Sarah," her father chimed in, "You want to rely on being able to get some stability in your life, look at your mother's thrill seeking and spontaneity causing more trouble than good."

"Don't bring her into this," snapped Sarah, finally looking up from the dog, ready to work herself up into a rant.

Amanda took up the refrain of attitude again, interrupting Sarah before she could get into her stride. "What is your problem young lady?"

Sarah glared, shifting her gaze from her father to the precise slender woman in front of her. "This is about me, not my mother, and I want to be able to make my own mistakes, have my own false starts and fall over so I can pick myself up again! Stop running my life against examples, let it be my own!" She took a deep breath and continued, her words cutting through the tension crackling in the air. "You wanna know what my problems are? They are just that, mine! Stop using me as an example of the middle step between what Mum was and what Toby will be. Let me be myself, let me be noticed for me!"

Sarah dashed past the adults and headed into her room, dumping her bag on the bed, and chucking her jewellery in the box on her dressing table. "Go on, go!" She yelled over her shoulder and down the stairs. "Precious little Toby is fine, and the babysitter has finally arrived, just all of you get away from me! Leave me be!" Sarah stared at herself in the mirror, her mind blank.

The front door swinging shut snapped her from her reverie, and once again Sarah turned to bathing as a way to calm down. The water from the shower hitting her back and the glass of the stall mirrored the drops pattering against the windows as she let it purge her of her anger and tension and stress.

Finally, clean and dry and dressed she sat down at her dressing table, brushing her long dark hair back from her face, and pinned it out of her face with a big clip. She idly rummaged through the canvas box of jewellery, feeling slightly naked without wearing her jewellery as usual. The chains and beads went back around her neck, and the chunky bead bracelet her father had brought her last summer sat comfortably next to her watch. She slid her rings back onto her fingers as normal, all the fingers of the right hand, with two each on all of the fingers except the pinkie, and just the middle finger and thumb of her left hand. She smiled as her fingers closed on something in the jewellery box and she pulled out an old enamel and fabric floral coronet from the box, a prop from a school play, years ago, that she had worn solidly for over a fortnight after the play had finished, grinning she put it on, admiring herself in the mirror. It would have looked better with the dress she had been wearing yesterday, instead of her boring sensible ankle boots, tight dark jeans and loose shirt.

Toby's bawling, starting up suddenly, dragged her to her feet and through into the fussy prettiness of the main bedroom. She sighed resignedly as she saw Lancelot back in his crib, but this time she left the bear there. "It's you that's the problem, little man." She announced to the bawling infant. "It's not you personally, but the idea of you. You're the final improvement, the upgraded model child, and I'm practically an adult, a write-off. A sort of 'Oh well, we'll try harder next time'."

She flopped onto the bed, as she continued speaking softly, "I feel like Cinderella. But people barely even notice me in order to yell at me. And your mother, and our father, they tell me what I should want, what my dreams should be, when I hardly know what my own dreams are, not realistically, anyway."

She sighed deeply, "Imagine if it was true, that once upon a time there was a young girl with a story like mine, not desperate or truly unhappy, but unsatisfied and uncertain whose stepmother always made her stay home and take care of the baby, as it seemed that she had nothing else to do with her time."

In an almost trance like tone she repeated lines from her little red book, "But what no one knew was that the King of the Goblins had fallen in love with the girl, and that he had given her certain powers, and when he wished it, he and his goblins took away the source of her troubles." Sarah fell into a light doze, as the baby's crying softened into the sleepy gurgles of a baby with nothing really to complain about.

She was woken from her repose by a great clattering from downstairs. She stood up, in the pitch dark with nervous energy coursing through her veins. Slowly she went over to the crib. The baby, Toby, was missing.

Sarah screamed his name, and ran to the doorway, flicking the light switch on and off to no avail as the lightning tore the sky outside. She saw movement out of the corner of one eye, the bedspread was moving; perhaps Toby had climbed out somehow and was now crawling under the bed. Frantically she flung herself to her knees and lifted up the covers, only to come face to face with a small twisted visage straight out of her nightmares.

Once again she screamed, and launched herself backwards, stopping when she felt the bars of the cradle pressing against her back. There was more scuttling movement, there, by the mirror, no wait, in the mirror! A small creature, with a pinched rat-like face, and long, claw like fingers seemed to be climbing out of the mirror, stepping slowly over the wood of the frame to stand on top of the chest of drawers.

There were more of them now, approaching her, penning her in. There was a lumbering fat one, which would have been as tall as Sarah, had she been standing, and a group of tiny hairy things, making a sound almost like giggling as they approached tentatively from by the wardrobe. The one with a twisted face, and long curled horns pulled itself out from under the bed, and sat down, staring at her. She didn't dare turn her head as she heard a rustling noise behind her, and she knew that there was another of these monsters in the baby's bed.

Suddenly there was a series of thumps and noises at the window. The creatures stopped, and stared at the window, silent. Looking up, she thought she saw an owl, the owl, fighting the storm to get to the window. She rubbed at her eyes, but the owl and the creatures were still there. With a crash the window flew open, the wind lifting thick strands of her heavy hair, and making her throw up her hands to defend her eyes.

The owl flew in, and landed in the shadows, its silhouette lengthening and stretching, and a man stepped out into the illumination of the lightning.

Blond hair, irregular in length and spiky like so many horns, cast bizarre shadows onto the floor in front of her. The pale colour of his hair seemed the only link to the owl that he had been, for he was dark like the shadows, lean and tall and dangerous. Sarah cowered on the floor, and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the figure looming before her slid into focus. The long cape, hanging from the fixed high collar of his leather jacket softened his silhouette without giving any hint of real softness as he stood there, unmoving. He looked dressed for travel, or maybe for war. The leather of his jacket fit snugly round his form like armour. Leather climbed up his legs in the form of thigh high boots, giving way to form fitting breeches. Jewels the size of birds' eggs adorned the buckles of his belts and fastenings, catching what little light there was and throwing out strange patterns onto the floor and walls.

He stared down at her, she couldn't see his face, but could feel his eyes on her. A hand which seemed clawed for a second was lowered into her field of vision, but turned out to be nothing but a glove made of thick leather. The hand grabbed her wrist, and harshly jerked her to her feet.

Even once she was standing he towered over her. His skin was as pale as his hair, but the eyes were dark, under strange arched eyebrows. The mismatched eyes stared at her coldly, and some emotion, perhaps scorn, caused a quirk of his thin lips. He released her abruptly, and she stumbled back away from him.

"You're him, aren't you? You're the Goblin King!" Her voice sounded thin and weak even inside her own head, and it did not make much of an impact on the ethereal hush of the room. He gave a mocking half-bow, and sneered, settling his hand on his hip. The creatures were still staring up at him, silent.

"I want my brother back please, if it's all the same to you." She had intended to shout, to demand that he returned Toby, but instead a semblance of polite conversation left her lips.

"What's done is done," he declared, crossing his arms, his face impassive and cold. His voice was musical, hypnotic as he continued, "You commanded, and the goblins obeyed." He stalked forward suddenly, lithe as a cat, and walked in a circle around her, his cloak brushing against her legs. "Though as to why they should," he murmured, inhaling deeply as he stepped in front of her once more. His eyes flew open, perhaps in surprise, "A new dreamer, perhaps."

"But, whatever it was, I didn't mean it!" she exclaimed, surprised. He looked at her, scorn and disbelief plain on his face, as if to say, "Oh, you didn't?" and she continued, desperately pleading with this strange being "Please, where is he?" she begged, tears creeping back into her eyes.

He stared at her, the emotionless mask sliding back over the expressive features, shutters closing behind the demonic eyes. "I think you," he whispered quietly, hauntingly, "know very well where he is, and what that means." He stepped closer, moving further away from the window, keeping her pinned with that hypnotic stare and voice, like a mouse hypnotised by a snake. "Please," she begged again, tilting her head right back to look him in the eye, "Please bring him back, please!" She could feel the warmth of his body, he was so close, and smell him, spice and the electricity of the thunderstorm.

His hand hovered beside her head for a moment. "Sarah," her eyes widened in surprise, "Go back to your room, play with your art and your costumes; forget about the baby." Laughter seemed to be bubbling below the surface of his voice, and once again his lips quirked, more in amusement it seemed.

"I can't," she declared defiantly, stepping back away from him with a great effort of will.

He cocked his head to the side, resembling a bird just for a moment, before raising his hand. Light exploded between the tips of his fingers, and tiny motes coalesced into a beautiful, pure sphere of light, which seemed to solidify. "I've brought you a gift."

"What is it?"

"It's a crystal, nothing more." He seemed to drop it from his fingers and Sarah almost reached out for the beautiful object. He rolled it across his fingertips, flicking it smoothly from the palm of his hand to the back defying gravity and the laws of motion. "But if you turn it this way," he continued to speak, his voice and the gyrations of the crystal, which he looped across his forearms, backwards and forwards, in perfect rhythm, "and look into it, it'll show you your dreams." It rolled back up to rest on his fingertips, and he held it out to her. "But this is not a gift for an ordinary girl who takes care of a screaming baby."

"Do you want it?" His voice was darker now, raw and honest sounding for a moment, as she stared at him, transfixed until he added, in a more mirthful tone, "Then forget about the baby"

Thunder crashed outside as he waited for her answer.

"I can't. It isn't that I don't appreciate what you are offering me, but…" she paused, wondering if she did appreciating appreciate the offer. What was this crystal, just a window into her dreams, or an assurance that she would realise them? And to make it work did you have to manipulate it like he did? "I… I… I need my brother back here." She thought of Toby then, "He must be so scared." she whispered, thinking of her own reaction to the goblins.

"Sarah!" The Goblin King commanded, lifting the crystal high, like a weapon. He twisted his hand, and as he spoke it became a snake, coiled loosely around his fingers. The blue of the serpent's scales matched that of his cloak. He lowered it, taking it in both hands. His gaze shifted from her, to the serpent and back again. Suddenly the calm mask dropped from his features, and harsh fury was etched into the lines of his face. "Don't defy me!" He flung the snake at her throat before she could move.

She felt it coil around her neck, and panicked, she scrabbled at it, shaking it loose. As it fell it became a thin, silky scarf, and when it hit the floor a small rat-like goblin emerged from inside it, hissing with laughter. The other goblins, almost forgotten due to their silence echoed its mirth. They all fell silent again as the Goblin King spoke, "You're no match for me, mortal child."

"But I have to have my brother back!" she declared, desperately.

The king shrugged, an eloquent gesture of part defeat, part acceptance part permission, and moved to Sarah's side, allowing her an unobstructed view out of the window. He pointed. "He's there, in my castle."

Sarah ran to the window, not believing her eyes. The smell of spice assailed her nose, and his voice, soft and quiet asked "Do you still want to look for him?"

Out of her window the world was tinted pink, and red, and the labyrinth, held back behind a high masonry wall filled the land to the horizon in all direction before her. There are walls and hedges, wild forest -like areas, and waterways between the dry, dusty land before her and the castle, gleaming like a jewel on the horizon, its organic spires straining for heaven. Sarah answered his question with one of her own: "Is that the castle beyond the goblin city?"


	3. A New and Dangerous Game

I crave your indulgence for the delay, which has been hideously long. I promise I'll try not to leave it so long again.

Jim Henson, David Bowie and the various corporate machines own everything!

Thanks go, as always, to "mi­guida".

Here is the third instalment of this beast.

Xxx

PaintR.

**A new and dangerous game**

"Is that the castle beyond the goblin city?" Sarah had asked him, as they stood there, on top of the rocky outcrop, the wind whipping sand up into their faces, and scouring the glittering dark stones, even as it scarred the small, twisted trees, but there had been no need to ask.

It was dusty and dry. Sandstorms wailed in the barren land outside the maze, a more striking boundary than the great high wall which stood there, reaching for heaven. Down by the outer wall life seemed to have a better hold, olive green creepers, and flowers clambered up the lines of cement, and twisted around the cruel spikes which adorned the tops of the wall. Beyond the wall were more walls, and beyond them hedges, and over there, still further away there seemed to be rivers, sluggish, sickly waterways they seemed, leading from some unseen place into a dark forest, which wound its way up the mountain, before giving way to the sheer cliff and high walls.

That, then, in the centre was the goblin city, and there, reaching up was the castle. It could be nothing else. It was hard to see, parts of it shinedshone, reflections and glaring light blinded her, but it seemed beautiful, so beautiful, especially in comparison with the dry decay surrounding it. What she could see of it resembled no castle she had ever seen. It looked alive, like it had grown up from the cliff upon which it rested and dared to shape itself. Its spires swirled and twisted like fine stone tree trunks and were linked to each other with golden vines.

She sighed, looking at it. The Goblin King, nearly forgotten, made his presence felt behind her. "Turn back, Sarah." She turned around to look at him, and saw that the world she knew had entirely disappeared. Behind him the hill sloped down and away, an ugly, dull, dry, barren plain, nearly desert. She turned back to the castle and the labyrinth, relieved to see that it still existed, a bastion against the encroaching expanse of sand desert. "Turn back, before it's too late," he said, and it sounded as though he thought he was being kind. He stood there, almost unblinking in the face of the dust and sand being swept back from the labyrinth and away out to the desert behind him, even as she held a hand to her face, defending her eyes from the wind. He looked different here, still terrible and warlike, but less pale, less ghostly. His eyes, she realised, were not different colours, but one had a pupil much wider than the other. She wondered why.

His eyes were hypnotic, and it was only with a great effort of will that she remembered that he had spoken. Questions warred in her head, the 'why' and the 'what' and the 'how', but "I can't," was all that she could say, and she found that it was true. Not just because she had to retrieve Toby, but there was something about being here, in this strange realm, there was something calling her on. There was something attractive about this strange place, despite, or perhaps because of all its harshness, that was magnetic. She wondered that he could not feel it, "Don't you understand that I can't?"

He stared at her, blankly. Behind his face, his mind might have been whirling, he might have been conjuring tiny, invisible magic, or he might have been thinking nothing at all. At length he spoke. "What a pity." His words and his tone of voice were as unhelpful as his angular, striking face. He could have been referring to her, her words, the world around them or even all three.

She studied the Labyrinth again, forcing her eyes to go slowly over everything she could see. The castle stood glimmering, on top of the city, which was the colour of sand. The rooftops and towers were asymmetrical, and refused, no matter how she looked at them, to line up to any sort of road pattern that she could imagine, or even to give a reasonable indication of the height and shape of the hill on which they stood.

The forest, which was dark, shadowed by the cliff, clung to the foothills, close and high on the left side, winding around lower to the right. There were more of the high, pale walls which broke into it here and there, walling off hidden things, separating it from the hedges and rivers which bordered it to the right and left respectively. More to the centre the hedges and forest seemed to pen in the river between them, the expanse of hedge stretching for miles in every direction, before at last, giving way to the walls which stretched from the middle distance to the foot of the hill beneath her.

The wall maze was intricate, full of dead ends and forked paths. The roads seemed to go off from each other at crazy angles, sometimes they curved, like whirlpools, around great pillars and obelisks that reached high up into the sky. Sometimes they opened up into little courtyards, full of who knows what.

"It doesn't look that far," Sarah stated, lying boldly through her teeth, looking out across the grand vista. Something moved in the corner of Sarah's eye, but when she turned to look, she could see no difference in the vast expanse of maze.

"It's further than you think." His voice came from right behind her, and as she turned in surprise towards him she wondered how she could have missed the approach of that distinctive spice and static smell of him. He smelled different here too, she realised, a blush faintly colouring her cheeks. The static was less noticeable, and less acrid. He smelled more of spice, almost like cinnamon, and there was a hint of summer, the smells of fruit. He was staring out at the labyrinth, his jaw set angrily.

He pulled away from her. "Time is short," he announced sharply, ignoring the way the wind played with his hair and light cloak, as he pointed towards one of the gnarled, scrubby trees nearby. Sarah's mouth opened in question, but before she could speak, a strange carved clock appeared, hanging in the branches. It seemed odd, and she stared at it, realising finally that it carried an extra hour.

"You have thirteen hours in which to solve the labyrinth," he announced, his voice growing tinny, echoing, as he stepped back away from her, "Before your baby brother becomes one of us forever." As he finished speaking, he, and the clock, faded into nothingness, leaving her alone on the little hill. She stared, dumbly, at the branch where the clock had hung, and then looked all around. Barren desert all around, and in front of her a narrow strip of dunes, and then the garden clinging to the protection of the walls. He was definitely gone. "Such a pity," his voice whispered around her, seemingly carried on the wind.

Sarah dismissed his disappearance, and stared out at the tangled path before her. "The Labyrinth," she sighed once more, "It doesn't look that hard," she murmured to herself, wishing it was true. She scanned the outer wall, high, smothered in vines, and with obelisks spaced along it at regular intervals. The wind picked up again, lifting and twisting locks of hair. Sarah, in that internal, cynical, part of her brain, wished that she had a hair band, instead of just a silly clip as she attempted to tame her hair, looking for a path down off the hilltop. As she swept her loose hair back out of her face she felt ribbons, and exploring with her fingers, she remembered the little prop floral coronet, which sat on her head. She took it off, and stared at it, as if she had never seen it before. The colours, blue and yellow and red, seemed so vibrant, especially against the ubiquitous sand around her. She held it in her hands for a moment, identifying the fabric flowers, and then realised, all of a sudden how short time was. Remembering that she had nowhere to put it, she smiled wryly and placed it securely back on her head as she began to trot briskly down the hill, murmuring "Come on feet!" to herself, with a half smile.

She jogged down the slope of the hill, her shadow forming and sharpening on the sand as behind her, where the hill met the sky, the golden rose light of the sun stained the sky. Her feet sank into the sand and dust swirled around making her cough. Between the hill and the walls the stretch of desert had seemed like only a few hundred metres across, but walking though it seemed to take an age. She pressed her loose sleeve to her face, covering her nose and mouth, and slogged onwards, hoping that her sense of direction was not letting her down as she half closed her eyes against the weather. After what seemed like forever, she passed a sad looking clump of long grass, dull brown in colour, and then another, and another. The ground beneath her feet grew more stable, and more and bigger plants appeared in her path.

Birds began to chirp, and the loose sand gave way to more fertile earth as she finally approached the walls. More signs of life emerged, little creatures scampering in among the thicker undergrowth, and bigger, noisier birds flitted between twisted trees, like those on the hilltop. Jagged, irregular rocks gave way to carved obelisks and broken statues, until, quite suddenly, she arrived at the thin strip of what seemed to be a garden, clinging to the outer wall of the labyrinth.

Sarah was so struck by the way in which the stone forming the statues and pillars glittered, and the way that glimmering threads of light clung to the branches and dark green leaves of the plants like spider silk that she did not notice that she was not alone.

The trickling of water made her turn around. She blushed and dropped her hand from her face, upon which she immediately began coughing violently. Turning away from the little figure she attempted to get her breathing under control, and then, once she could breathe comfortably once again she started muttering about the dust, brushed herself off as vigorously as she could, her shirt and dark jeans already beginning to take on the colours of the desert.

Looking around her she realised that this little strip of life was in fact a garden. The rose bushes along the wall stood in neatly dug flower beds, each individual bed ringed with small dark stones, fragments from the rocks and obelisks, sharing the strange glittering substance that seemed to be in everything here. She saw, in the lee of a large stone a neat little store of garden tools, trowels and forks and knives, and watering cans.

The watering cans reminded her of the little figure, and steeling herself, she glanced back over her shoulder. The little figure behind her had obviously not noticed her presence and, sighing, Sarah forced herself to speak to him directly. "Excuse me!" she called.

The little figure ceased peeing into the square, stagnant pond, probably much to the relief of the toad like creatures sitting on the flagstones edging it, and with a flurry of activity turned around, "Oh, no, excuse _me_!" he babbled, in a gruff deep voice. He did a double take when he saw her, his eyes at about stomach height; it took him a couple of tries to find her face. She was obviously taller than most of his visitors. He looked her up and down, pointedly, so Sarah felt no shame in doing the same to him.

He was wearing well worn medieval style boots, with stockings that might, once upon a time, have been white, but were now the same colour as the sand, under bulbous breeches, whose stripes may, or may not, have been the original design. Then there was a shirt, which seemed several sizes to big, again the colour of sand, under a leather waistcoat, which had the image of a large, grotesque face sticking its tongue out worked into the back. To the front of the waistcoat were a series of tiny pockets, and hooks and clasps, to which there was attached a pipe, a small ball of string and various other, unidentifiable bits and bobs. On his head sat a little leather cap, and at his belt there hung a rich, red cloth bag, to which were attached jewels and trinkets, rings and bracelets were sewn roughly to it, and bangles and necklaces hung around the cord holding it to his belt. A treasure trove, fit for any magpie, Sarah thought.

His face and hands were dark brown and weathered, much like the leather of his waistcoat and cap, and his features were surprisingly large, given his small frame. His hands were large, and square, busy hands, she saw, as he bent down to pick up his little spray can. His nose and ears were large, and his eyebrows and hair were wispy and white.

Eventually his eyes met her own. He stared at her, searchingly for a while. At length he spoke: "Oh," he said, in a voice rich with scorn, "It's_ you_." He turned away from her and walked over to the nearest of the rose bushes.

Sarah frowned, "It's _me_?" she echoed. She shook her head and hurried after him. "Excuse me, but I have to get through this labyrinth, can you help me?"

The little man was ignoring her completely as he stalked up to the rosebush, spray can held out like a weapon. Sarah looked on, wide eyed, as with a noise like the chiming of little bells one of the little insects flitting around the bush revealed itself as a fairy. She could see it more clearly now, the sand gone from her eyes, it was like an impossibly tiny, impossibly thin child with short, wild hair, clad in layers of silvery leaves which reflected the light and with translucent, frantically working butterfly wings which made a soft thrumming, swishing noise. What made the sound of bells she could not tell; perhaps it was the way the little things communicated. Or perhaps it was just another mystery of this strange place.

"Oh, how sweet!" Sarah exclaimed softly, not wanting to startle the little creature. She followed the little man closer to the wall as he fell still, and then, after announcing "Fifty seven!" to the world at large, leapt forward and covered it in spay.

It plummeted to the ground, seemingly paralysed or dead. He chuckled to himself, and kicked sand over its prone form. "How could you?" Sarah demanded, picking the little creature up from the floor. He snorted as she spoke softly to the little fairy, "You poor thing." She realised as she inspected it that its wings were not like a butterfly's after all, since there were six of them, all of them finishing in little curling tendrils or antennae. "You monster!" Sarah accused the dwarf, before turning back to the little creature in her hands. It looked up at her with a frown on its tiny face, and then, suddenly, opened its mouth impossibly wide, revealing row upon row of sharp little pointed teeth, and sinking them into her thumb. "Ouch!" Sarah squealed, dropping it, and jumping back. "It bit me!" She complained.

The dwarf looked back over his shoulder at her, with a puzzled expression on his face. "'Ave you gone mad, Lady? You lost your mind?" She stared at him, and slightly softer, he continued, "What did you expect fairies to do?"

"I thought they did nice things, like, like granting wishes," she murmured, putting her thumb to her mouth, and sucking on it.

"Don't do that!" yelled the little man. Sarah removed her thumb from her mouth with a start, a question half formed on her lips, as she saw green droplets coming out of the tiny punctures of her thumb. "'T won't do no harm in the skin," he explained, "but fairy venom in the mouth'll do you serious bad." He sighed. "You've done some changing Lady. Where've you been, anyway?" he asked.

Sarah stared at him, mouth slightly open. "What do you mean?" she asked. "I've never seen a fairy before, how was I expected to know?"

"Shows what you know, don't it?" He muttered. Sarah frowned down at her hand, and shook the green droplets off.

"You're horrible!" she exclaimed, as he sprayed down another fairy, adding it to his spoken tally.

He turned around again, and fixed her with a wide-eyed stare. "No I 'aint, I'm Hoggle!" He jabbed himself smartly on the chest. "And who are you?"

Sarah looked at him confused. "I thought you said you knew who I was?" She paused, "I'm Sarah."

Hoggle broke eye contact, and turned away. "That's what I thought!" he said, spraying two more fairies in quick succession, and pausing to inspect the remains of number sixty.

"Do you know where the door to the Labyrinth is?" Sarah asked him, walking up to where he stood. There was obviously something exceptional about number sixty, as Hoggle jumped into the air gleefully, chuckling.

"Maybe." He said, scanning the bushes for his next victim.

"Well, where is it?" Sarah demanded, following close behind him as he patrolled the wall.

"Where is what?" He asked absently, focusing on the bushes, and flitting fairies.

"The door!" Sarah exclaimed, exasperated, batting away a fairy that got rather too interested in her coronet, straight into the path of Hoggle's spray can. They both watched the little creature plummet down in silence, and, absently, Sarah kicked the sand over it, as Hoggle looked on.

"What door?" Hoggle asked, turning his attention back to the vines creeping up the walls of the Labyrinth.

"It's hopeless asking you anything, isn't it?" she stated, twisting the rings on her fingers, as she looked up at the high walls. They towered over her, so they looked immense when compared with little Hoggle, only just over half her size. The tops of the walls were crowned with carved spikes, and there was old, crumbling, decorative carving climbing up the angular pillars which divided the different sections of wall.

"Not if you ask the right questions," he answered blandly. She looked down from the wall to see that he had moved some way down the wall, busily downing two more fairies in a single jet of spray.

Sarah sighed, irritated, and wishing she had a watch that could tell the time in this strange place. Thirteen hours, strange indeed. "How do you get into the Labyrinth?" she snapped.

Hoggle looked briefly over his shoulder at her, raising a bushy eyebrow. "Well, what I do aint gonna help you, now is it?" Sarah rolled her eyes, but decided to play along.

"Ok then, how do _I_ get into the labyrinth?" she asked, her voice sickly sweet.

"Now that's more like it!" Hoggle smiled, turning to look at her properly. "But as I recall, you always just used to… but I guess since … Never mind…" he muttered, before leaning forward and pointing at the expanse of wall behind her. "You gets in there."

"That wasn't there a minute ago!" She looked, shocked, at the ornately carved wooden gates which had appeared behind her. She went up to the closed gate, and saw how the vines and flowers climbing up it were not living things, but delicately carved ornaments, disguising the hinges and giant handles under clumps of foliage. The flowers of these strange artificial plants even seemed to fool the flower fairies. She traced her fingers lightly over the carved stone, and could have sworn that the stone shuddered, but then she realised it was the effect of the irregular surface, the tiny crystalline fragments which glittered in the pink sunlight tickling her fingertips.

Just as she was about to try to open the door, she heard a great clattering, and suddenly she was jerked back from in front of the door. She fell back and down, landing on her bottom, and looking behind her saw that Hoggle had a handful of her shirt. "What…" she started, but before she could finish her sentence, the great gates had swung open, seemingly of their own accord, and a terrified goblin ran out, as fast as his short little legs would carry him, screaming for his life.

Right behind him come two armoured goblins, armed to the teeth, riding on strange beasts like lizards or wingless dragons, which ran on two or four legs. The pair wheeled about in formation, as more goblins, all armed, about half of them mounted, streamed out of the gate and blocked the way left and right along the wall. The goblin, dressed in robes which were too long for him, fell to his knees at the edge of the desert, and did not look up as the first two riders flanked him. They dismounted, and dragged him by the arms back into the middle of the garden. The entire company watched, as one of the captors held out a crystal ball to him.

Sarah turned to Hoggle. "That's one of the Goblin King's crystals!" she whispered. "What will it do?" She asked as the captive reluctantly took the crystal, which vanished.

"Aye, lass," agreed Hoggle. "Yon fool works in the court, and annoyed our good king somehow." The little goblin's eyes were glazed, and he stopped struggling, instead staggering a little, as if the ground had moved under his feet. The two captors remounted their strange green beasts, which dropped to all fours for this purpose, before standing up and heading back into the Labyrinth. The rest of the company followed suit, and, as suddenly as they had arrived, the garden was still again. The wide eyed goblin sat there, in front of the gate, unmoving. "He's been hit with one o' Jareth's forgets. That's a powerful magic, forget is. Most can't ever escape it, can't ever get back what he takes.

Sarah stood up, and approached the little goblin. His face was completely blank, and his eyes were open, but he was not looking at anything, just staring vacantly into the middle distance. "What do you think he did?" she whispered to Hoggle.

Hoggle lumbered over, and dragged the goblin, which was about his size, but much spindlier, out of the way and over to rest against one of the big sloping black rocks, out of the dust and wind. "Who can say?" he wheezed, as he laboured, and Sarah bent down to give him a hand. "The King's painful cruel, these days. Loneliness will do that, they say."

Sarah wandered back to the gate, which stood ajar, and opened one of the gates fully. It moved lightly under her touch. Inside, she thought she saw, or perhaps she imagined, a broad boulevard, lined with trees, and green man fountains, stretching straight ahead, leading directly to the castle in the distance. Once upon a time, perhaps, it had been hung with banners, and cheering crowds, throwing petals. Once it had been beautiful, and there had been silvery plumes of water bouncing into the pools of the fountains, and the trees had been blossoming, clouds of pink and blue and lilac in among fresh sweet green leaves. Now it was dead and dry. Everything crumbling away before her eyes into nothingness. She blinked, and was surprised to see a blank wall before her.

She poked her head around the corner, and looking to left and right saw the walled passageway seemed to go on forever. In one direction the path was smooth, and even, in the other there were fallen branches and piles of bricks, but in both, the corridor of stone seemed to go straight and true to the horizon, only the odd clump of moss breaking the monotonous pattern of walls and pillars.

"Dozy, isn't it!" laughed Hoggle, startling Sarah almost out of her wits. He made his way around to stand with her in the corridor. "Now, would you go left or right?"

"They both look the same…" she whispered. "This isn't right. I thought there was a different path here a moment ago, straight forward, dead trees and dry fountains."

Hoggle looked up at her surprised. "The Triumphal Way!" His voice was reverent and quiet. "It's been lost since the drought began," he whispered.

Sarah was not looking at him, she was studying the paths. "Which way would you go?" She asked, her eyes searching the horizon for clues.

"Me? I wouldn't go either way," Hoggle snorted, pointedly.

"If that's all the help you're going to be you can just leave!" snapped Sarah.

Hoggle looked up at her, hurt, as he stalked back through the gate. "You know your problem, you take too many things for granted!" he countered, cruelly. "Take this labyrinth, Even if you do get to the centre, you'll never get out again!"

"Thanks for nothing, Hogwart!" she shouted, before suddenly feeling stupid. "I'm sorry, Hoggle. I didn't mean it."

He looked her up and down, and nodded slowly. "Don't say I didn't warn you!" he said slowly. He followed her with his eyes as she walked away from the gateway along the path. "You really going in there are you?"

"Yes, I'm afraid I have to." She replied quietly. "And there's something about this place," she said, running a hand through her hair, catching the ribbons of her coronet.

Hoggle shook his head. "Don't take it for granted."

* * *

Chaos erupted as he materialised in the throne room. After venting his anger on the diminutive chamberlain, who ran had run away, by setting an entire battalion of his army after him, he stalked around the room. The tension was palpable as the metal chased heels of his high boots clicked on the polished stone floor. The fullness of the chamber stifles him and, with a flick of his wrist, three crystals materialised and were cast across the room, emptying it of animals, filth and unnecessary ornamentation. All that was left for the goblins to cower behind, other than the pillars bearing vases full of fading blossoms along the wall, was the throne and the ornate stand of a large, permanent crystal.

"Who," he snarled, enunciating his words very carefully, staring at all of his cowering minions, "took this human child?" he waved a gloved hand at the baby, clad in red and white stripes, held by a furry goblin. "And by whom were you commanded to do so?"

A goblin was pushed forward into the empty space by his fellows, and, not looking up, he babbled nervously. "Your Highness, it was the girl! She wished the boy away."

The Goblin King frowned. "How?" he snapped, leaning down, and grabbing the poor creature by the throat. "And who took him?" He forced the little creature to look at him.

A cough distracted him, and, dropping the nervous member of his court he turned towards the origin of the offending sound. A group of three figures stood by the door. The contrast between them and the other goblins was striking. Their clothes seemed cleaner than those of the other occupants of the room, despite the crystal which had only just scoured the room of dirt. Their green liveries were matched, and well fitting. The trio were tall, by goblin tandards, as tall as men and they stood as tall as a man, only a head or so smaller than the king, though they had a sort of with a slenderness to them and their features were so pointed that it was would be impossible to mistake them for men. Their noses were hooked, and their hair was wild, held back by twisted vines, but their skin was smooth and clean.

"That was us, your highness." The foremost of the intruders bowed low, and did not rise until after the King spoke.

"YOU!" he bellowed, his voice full of pain. "You were ordered not to venture beyond her country!" Darkness gathered around him, and electricity crackled in the air. His eyes were dark, and full of emotion.

"But she called us, your highness," his voice was scratchy, and thin, after the beautiful depth of the king's.

The king turned to the crystal held high in its wrought iron stand, and, with a gloved hand, stroked its surface. Images flickered in the crystal, almost too fast to see. "She is lost to the underground," he growled, turning back to the intruders.

"Not so, your highness, not so," the three tall goblins looked up, and he followed their gaze back to the crystal, and the image of a dark eyed girl with flowers in her hair.


	4. Cracks in the Walls

Another chapter for your delectation, dear readers. I hope that it meets with your approval.

As always, I own nothing save my own express creations.

Thanks once more to "mi­guida" for her unremunerated efforts and priceless support.

Xxx

PaintR.

**Cracks in the walls**

Sarah looked up, her eyes wide with surprise at the huge obstacle blocking her way, and skidded to a stop, nearly tripping over a slab of the uneven floor. She slumped over with her hands on her knees as she concentrated on slowing down her pulse and easing the cramp in her right calf, trying desperately not to give into despair. "Don't take it for granted," Hoggle had said, as she headed off down the long straight passageway at a brisk jog, choosing the direction which appeared to have more obstacles, trying to prove that she wasn't taking it for granted that going along the clear and straight road would be easier than the one with all the fallen branches. She pursed her lips; apparently the Labyrinth was rather above reverse psychology. Or maybe it was a given that you were not meant to take the warning for granted… She shook her head in frustration and then groaned as the world span. Dizziness and fatigue knocked her to her knees. One hand went to her head, knocking the circlet askew; the other went to the wall to support her.

The ground beneath her knees was paved with irregular slabs, all varying shades of brown, and despite there only being meagre signs of life, the earth creeping out from beneath the paving and the few bare patches of ground were cool and moist. It was a strange contrast, the damp dark earth seemed rich and fertile, but it was oppressed by the stony structures, and hemmed in by the desert only a wall's width away: that is, if the appearance of the Labyrinth had anything to do with its reality.

The walls were old, crumbling brick on both sides; the façade of the outer wall of the labyrinth, with its glittering golden stone was not repeated within. Whenever the way had been clear enough she had run, aware of the passing seconds ticking away, and also painfully conscious of the fact that she had no way of measuring time in this strange place. Her watch had broken what felt like miles before, when the straggling vine of an ivy plant, the main body of which had been clambering up the inner wall, had sent her crashing to the ground. The knees of her jeans were muddy now, as well as sandy, and one of them had ripped. There were grazes on her palms, her rings and fingers were caked with mud and her hair must have been a tangled mess, the floral circlet knotted into place by the wind as it twisted and teased locks of her hair.

She looked back the way she had come, nervously, the prickling feeling at the back of her neck had been following her almost from the moment that Hoggle had left her on her own in this strange place. The shadows were twisted, dark and menacing. What little plant life there was seemed honour bound to prevent her passage. It would have sounded crazy, but she was convinced that the ivy had somehow arranged to trip her up. The cynical half smile popped back onto her lips, as she realised that it was no stranger than everything else that had happened in the short space of time since Toby had disappeared. As she thought about the ivy, her eyes scanning the distance she had already covered, the sinking, writhing feeling in the pit of her stomach grew, and she turned round, determined to move on as quickly as she could manage.

Every so often her way so far had been blocked by fallen logs and branches, although there were no growing plants that she had passed bigger than a few scrubby bushes no higher than her shoulder. She had certainly seen no sign of any trees big enough to bear the huge log which now barred her path. She had not noticed it until the last moment, it was a dark dusty brown in colour, perhaps, she thought, she had seen it and passed it off as another strange shadow. It seemed impossible for it to be there, the roughly broken edges of the log tallied up relatively neatly with the brick walls on either side, as close to a perfect fit as two completely disparate objects can be. It was almost as though the log had fallen and then the bricks of the walls laid down after; it was wedged so tightly in the passageway that it would be impossible to move, either by spinning it round or lifting it up. Not that either of those would be an option for Sarah on her own as the log's width, or rather its height, now that the log lay on its side, was far too high for her to climb with ease, let alone move.

Lichens and moss were growing across from the walls onto the log, fusing them together. Some of the plant life was plain densely matted dark russet coloured moss, no particular surprise. Others of these plants, a sort of dull green that was more like a grey, rough textured and lumpy, had long fronds with bulbous pods at their ends which twisted and waved gently even when the wind, which rose up intermittently, whistling and echoing down the long straight passageway, had dropped. The prickling feeling made her shudder again. It was as if she was being watched.

She narrowed her eyes and stared at the log, trying to work out how to clamber over it. She paced the width of the passage, a good three strides, and then back, before dropping to the ground and staring up at the log. Perhaps not the best idea, she thought, as it grew a whole lot more intimidating from beneath, filling up her field of vision. She sighed, and brushed her long tangled hair back out of her face, ramming the floral circlet back onto her head in more or less its correct position in an attempt to keep her hair back from her face. She had just decided to tackle the leftmost point of the log, so that she could use the irregular brickwork to help her climb over when she felt the prickling sensation all over her scalp and down her spine, a feeling of invasion, like a stranger close enough behind her that their breath could be felt on her skin.

She glanced wildly around as she leapt to her feet with more alacrity than she really felt, but saw no one, no movement, nothing at all. "Come out! I know you're there!" she called, half hoping that there was something or someone there so that she would not feel like a fool, even with no one there to witness it, and half hoping that there was someone, anyone there. She was desperate for company, even someone who didn't want her there, someone or something that might attack her, just to prove that the aching loneliness of this place was just an illusion.

She thought she had been running for the best part of an hour, and depressingly, she was pretty convinced that she had been running in a straight line, given that this passageway seemed to be a textbook example of linear perspective, in both directions the passageway shrank as it approached its vanishing points on the horizon. What was worse was that for all this time, ever since Hoggle closed the door to the Labyrinth behind him as he went back out on his hunt for flower fairies, she had seen nothing moving of its own accord, except, she realised, the bulbous giant lichen. There had been no birds, no animals, no sign of anyone else travelling up this road, and every step along this narrow road had reinforced the feeling that this road was not the right way; it felt disused, old, decaying. The walls crumbling, the way blocked, lichen and moss seeming the most energetic part of the Labyrinth as they crept slowly along the lines of mortar and then bloomed outwards over the brickwork in irregular patches.

But now, she was almost certain, there was someone else here, someone watching her. She could feel it, that electric static feeling that makes you shudder involuntarily, that tense feeling from close proximity with someone you loathe. "Stop spying on me!" she screamed as the feeling got worse, flinging her hand up in front of her face. Before she lost her nerve she turned around, and, the fear of knowing that this person or thing which might or might not be there could now attack her from behind gave her a burst of energy, and she scrambled over the log, which was a task massively easier to accomplish than she had thought, and sprinted away as fast as she could.

When she next stopped for breath the air felt clearer, the road ahead seemed free of major obstacles and the prickling sensation had dissipated. Seeing the cup half full for a moment she smiled and stretched, taking long, deep breaths. On the other hand, she realised, the enormity of her task settling its immense weight back around her shoulders, the road still stretched out before her towards infinity, she had lost all sense of time and her clothing was rapidly falling to pieces. There had been a great many twiggy branches, which had torn the sleeves of her shirt to ribbons, and the hole at the knee of her jeans was getting larger. And of course, she had no idea where to go even if she could find a way out of this single straight passageway, a possibility which seemed less and less likely with every passing second and every step away from the gates and Hoggle's carefully patrolled garden. But she had seen goblins, and Hoggle had said that they had come from the castle, that they had worked for the King, pouring out of that gate, and then disappearing back inside the labyrinth, so there had to be a way.

She slumped to the floor, next to another of the strange giant lichens, this one with the largest pods that she had seen, shrieking with a hoarse voice, dulled by fatigue and frustration. As she sat one of her necklaces snapped, the broken string spilling blue-green beads over the floor. She watched them roll into the cracks between flagstones, and settle on the uneven ground, but the chains of fatigue controlled her limbs, and she left them where they fell. Her eyes drifted from the incongruously bright beads on the floor to the whippy stems of the shrub on the other side of the passageway, and then the brickwork. She stared blankly at the wall in front of her, the inner wall to the passageway, behind which there lay the vast and twisting realm of the labyrinth, if only she could break through it some way.

A high, piping voice broke into her thoughts, and she was so surprised by the sound, and the fact that there was another living thing in the Labyrinth, and that it wanted to talk, that she had to clarify what it said, turning round to look at the little creature sitting on a protruding brick just below her eye level.

"Did you just say 'Hello'?" She asked in as polite a tone as she could manage, with her eyes wide in surprise.

"Nah, I said ''Allo!' but that's close enough!" said the little creature, a smile evident in its voice, even if not on its face, its blue haired topknot waving gently as it shook its head. Its voice was friendly, and, looking down she could recognise a cheery tilt to its head, and a little crinkling around its eyes.

Sarah smiled down at the little blue thing, wrapped up in a snug warm scarf, which, from her scale translated to little more than a ribbon, and spoke automatically, "You're a worm, aren't you?" despite the fact that it clearly, to her eyes, seemed much more akin to a caterpillar than a worm. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a frond of the bulbous lichen blink its bulb open to reveal, rather disconcertingly, an eyeball, whose iris was a dull blue grey, which looked up at her and then back down to her blue companion. She wondered if she had said something rather mindless and stupid, and looked away for a moment.

However, he affirmed her unthinking supposition with a cheery nod, which involved at least the first two inches of his length, over half his body. "That's right!" He giggled slightly. "Come inside, and meet the missus!"

"I don't think I have time… I've only got thirteen hours…I had thirteen hours…" She tried desperately to ignore the eye lichen, which had blinked open several more eyes, all of which were showing increased interest in the conversation she turned back to the worm. "I wonder if… Could you can help me?" He nodded encouragingly, and she continued "I have to get through this labyrinth, but there aren't any turns or openings or anything, it just goes on and on forever!"

He chuckled warmly. "Of course there are, it's full of openings, you just ain't seeing 'em. There's one right across from here." He inclined his head towards the opposite wall."

"No there isn't, that's just wall," Sarah said, but even so she looked up at it to ensure that what she had just said was still true.

He shook his head. "Come inside and have a cuppa tea,"

"No thank you, I really do think I'd better get on… but there's no opening."

"Sure there is, you try walking through it, you'll see what I mean!" he giggled again.

Sarah frowned quizzically down at him, and stood up gingerly. She walked the three paces to the other side of the passageway, holding her arms out before her to touch the bricks of the wall. Just as she thought that she must surely feel the rough brickwork on her fingertips she realised, in a dizzying shift of perspective, that there had been a concealed opening, the larger bricks at the back of this new, parallel passage had impossibly aligned neatly with where the bricks in the outer passageway should have been. This new passageway only extended for a few feet in either direction beyond the opening, before turning away, turning inwards at sharp right angles away from the worm and his hole.

"Hey!" She exclaimed, grinning ear to ear as she glanced quickly round one of the corners, "This is great!"

The worm called out to her, she couldn't recognise what he had said, it might have been "hey", or "oi", but it was, nevertheless, a clear summons.

She poked her head back through the opening to look at the worm, whose missus, a slightly more purple shade of blue, had joined him on the brick which obviously served as their front porch.

"Don't go that way!" the worm urged, his eyes wide. "Never go that way!"

"Oh, ok." She looked around, and then turned to head in the other direction. "Thanks!" She waved at both of the worms, who were both doing a slow figure of eight motion with their heads, obviously the worm equivalent of a wave.

"Good luck dear!" called the worm's wife, looking over at Sarah one last time as she headed out of sight, before turning and heading inside through a hole in the brickwork.

"She'll need it!" said the worm to his missus, following her back inside shaking his head, "If she'd gone that way, she'd have gone straight to that castle!"

The large crystal on its wrought iron stand sat there, defiantly, misted up on the inside, as if it was showing the image of the interior of a cloud. Nothing the King had done would convince it to display the image of the latest person to run through the Labyrinth since she had screamed out to stop spying on her. Finally the Goblin King staggered back from it, pushing the stand away from him with such force that the trio of slender goblins started forward, as if afraid that it would fall. He whirled around, staring into space, and dropped, slumped, into the ornately carved throne.

He sank his head into his gloved hands, a screen of blond hair blocking the crystal from his sight. "Get out," his voice was low and gritty. He did not need to look up to know that the mass of goblins obeyed. There was a rushed shuffling and scraping across the floor as the mass of his court fled for the great doors. "Not you three!" he snapped, looking up suddenly, and catching the foremost of the trio mid step, his hair swinging back from his pale face.

He leant his elbows heavily on his knees, and looked up at the only other living presences in the room where they stood before him, their eyes level with his, thanks to the dais. He stared forwards, not really making eye contact; he seemed to look straight into the middle distance, his eyes unfocused, his form stiff and inexpressive.

The sounds of breathing filled the cavernous chamber, echoing of the stone walls with no hangings, no cloth to soak up the sound, for the King had rid the throne room of everything that was not fixed to the floor. Not even the royal crest, which normally adorned the wall behind the throne, remained. There was only dry stone; floors, walls, throne and pillars, and the large crystal, still dull and cloudy on its metal stand.

"So that was her, returned to my realm, was it not? She returned to mortal form and forsook me so thoroughly that she forgot me. And yet I find myself still her slave, willing or not. She tells me not to spy, and my crystals cannot see her. She wishes her troubles away, and you took the child away from her as she asked, and I went to her, but failed to recognise her. She has forgotten me so fully that I start to forget her." He spoke softly, fragments of sentences falling from his lips to settle softly into the hushed chamber. It was clear to his audience that he neither desired nor expected a response. He was thinking aloud, his eyes now fixed on the crystal that had held her image.

A thought struck him, and his gaze flicked sharply back to the three tall goblins, his voice regaining its usual, blade-keen edge "Where is the babe?"

One of the goblins answered softly, preceding his speech with a slight bow. "He is in the nursery, your highness, with the hairy ones. He seems to like them, but the mortals are on their way to him. He will be kept out of your way, Sire."

The Goblin King snorted, levering himself to his feet. "Hmph, I suppose at least I can be glad that he is not of her get. That would be a cruel torture, even for her." He spoke softly, airing his thoughts aloud, and then pacing in silence. "He reminds me of her in a way that she did not. I can feel her in him. I can sense the vestiges of her dreams, her magic on him, coating him, making him accept what he sees in that trusting way she used to…" He growled softly in his throat as his hands clenched and unclenched. "It is mine, my magic and my squandered gift that I sense. I cannot be whole without her, my captor, my torturer and she walks into my realm a mortal."

Boldly one of the goblins intruded on the King's musings, "Your highness, could this not be because the child is now within the boundaries of the Labyrinth. Perhaps, therefore, if you were to be near to her within your kingdom, or hers, you would recognise each other, even if you did not in the aboveground or the wasteland…" His voice died out as the Goblin King's eyes flashed, the sensible, and probable explanation for his failing senses compounded his ire at being interrupted.

The King bared his white, predator's teeth, his narrow face with its high cheekbones flushed as rage warred with an emotion which the trio would not have recognised on his face, even had they been regularly admitted to his presence, it had not been seen on his face for so many long years. When he spoke it was with a clear, controlled tempo, matching his footsteps as he patrolled the chamber, stopping at the window to look down over his realm, one gloved hand laid idly on the windowsill.

"There has been no new green within the walls of the Labyrinth since she left, whether cloth or growth, and the old growth, and the hedges are failing. Yet here you stand, against my orders and in defiance of your banishment. Explain yourselves, what have you to say?"

With a quick exchange of glances, spoke the goblin whose green tunic, edged in a black which was, unlike those of the others, touched with a glimpse of gold thread, proclaimed him the senior of the three. "We can explain neither her actions nor her mind, your highness. All we can do is affirm that it is her. The lady dreamer called us several days ago, wishing for us to make it better. Tonight she told us how to do that, by taking the child. It is possible that she was mistaken as to that, but her orders were clear, and we cannot disobey her." His reedy voice fell flat.

"No more can I," the tall figure at the window murmured as he stared out at the dry and dusty land stretching out beneath him.

The second goblin took up the tale, "Our mistress had returned to the underground and now walks in your realm. She has returned." "You cannot deny it. She saw your crystal watching her, and she prevented it from seeing her. When has there ever been another who could do that? No mere mortal could, and those among the fae would not dare to do so in your realm, your highness…"

"No, I suppose not, petty despot that I am. I may be trapped in the world of walls and chaos, infinite within its boundaries, but here at least it is true, I am absolute master here." He sighed, as he named himself with the second, least common, of his titles. "It is true, neither mortal of the aboveground nor fae of the underground could oppose the Lord of Chaos in his own dominion."

He stared out across that very dominion, seeking with his eyes the sights his magic could not bring him. "Only she would defy me, only she would raise my ire and laugh as I raged, and I loved her for it, I love her for the memory of it." His eyes strained out towards the distant horizon and the edge of the labyrinth where she ran through archways and passages of stone, her echoing footsteps and her presence stirring the slumbering denizens of chaos.


	5. Of brickwork and blossoms

Once again, this is not for profit, and that which you recognise does not belong to me.

Thanks go to "mi­guida" for her prompt and helpful advice, courage ma cherie.

PaintR studios are proud to present Chapter 5: Of brickwork and blossoms. I'm afraid Nanowrimo is keeping me a bit busy at the moment, but fear not, I fully intend to complete this story!

Xxx

PaintR.

Sarah and the chicken stared at each other for the barest of instants, and then they both simultaneously expressed their surprise at the presence of the other. She yelped whilst the bird, squawking noisily, turned tail and fled in a flurry of feathers, up and over the walls of the maze.

The tops of the stone walls were just out of her reach; with decorative urns and spires sticking up here and there breaking up the monotony of brickwork. The stones were larger, and paler than those on the long straight corridor, and with clearer pathways and a more brightly shining sun, Sarah felt much more optimistic.

Striding boldly out she walked a little way before arriving at a crossroads, marked in the centre with a tall obelisk. The stone needle obviously served as some form of signpost; however, instead of signs, it bore oversized, gnarled hands with bulbous knuckles pointing off in various directions. She inspected the hands, some of which had moss growing over them like old, worn gloves, and turned slowly on the spot, looking down the corridors and alleyways they indicated.

Looking up she thought she saw a glimmer of golden light, not from the sun, which was behind her, but from something just out of sight in the distance, blocked from view by the walls. Sarah started along the path which seemed to lead, at least at first, more or less in the direction of the mysterious something, before wondering whether she should mark her direction.

Rooting through the pockets of her jeans she found a bead bracelet, which she had probably forgotten to put back on after washing her hands at some point, and a pencil eraser. She sighed heavily. "If this was any sort of decent delusion or dream or whatever the hell this is, I'd have a compass, a pen knife and a marker pen in my pocket, or at the very least a lipstick," she muttered, somewhere between irritation and amusement as she picked up a pebble from the rubble where small flowers and plants, all rather dull and sandy in colour, but nonetheless alive, had worked some fragments of brick and paving slab free, and attempted to scratch an arrow into the pavement with it.

The pebble crumbled to dust in her fingers, so she tried again, with a larger, sharper, more robust seeming shard of paving stone. She sat, cross legged in the centre of the pathway and drew the sharpest corner of the shard over the slabs, but was again met with failure as she withdrew the rock from the unmarked floor. She groaned, although the sound echoing down the walled maze seemed more of a growl, as the wind picked up and swirled, rushing through the maze. Her hair, now a tangled mess of knots and twisted curls, fell about her face. She ran her fingers through her hair, roughly forcing it back from her face, wrenching the coronet free as she did so. The coronet fell to the ground with a soft thud, not at all the plastic tinny sound she had expected. She picked it up, rolling it over in her hands, as the wind tore free some of its petals, the bold, primary colours unnatural in this dun and dusty world. It seemed more real here, somehow, like she had imagined it in her mind as a child, playing a part. There were buds, and curled new leaves, but the flowers looked crude and inelegant and artificially fussy in this softer coloured world with its harsh, elegant reality. She wondered when she had started to fall in love with this terrifying land, and why she was here.

"Toby!" the name fell from her lips, startling her into action. She rammed the increasingly ugly wreath of flowers onto her head and prepared to set off blind through the maze, with no ball of string or line of breadcrumbs to follow.

Line of breadcrumbs… a line of… what? What about a line of beads? Not enough in the bracelet, but surely one of her necklaces… She took off a long black necklace, made of chunky painted wood beads, which was looped twice round her throat but still hung to well below her collar bone. She snapped the plaited cord which ran through the centre of the beads, allowing a few from each end to spill into her lap, so that she could tie off one end and carry the rest easily. She arranged a few beads in a line and then set off, letting the beads slip slowly from her grasp as she walked. She turned a corner, again dropping a few beads, and did not look back, although, if she had, she might have been in for a shock.

One of the smaller, squarer slabs of stone on the floor, quite close to the first few beads of her trail, trembled slightly. A tiny head popped up from the emerging darkness along one side of the slab. Cautiously a little goblin figure, smartly dressed in a red suit, standing no higher than her ankle, emerged from beneath the paving slab, and then slid it along to reveal a deep hole, with a perfect set of miniature steps leading down into the darkness. He stood, looking down at the beads, each one the size of his head, and then down the corridor to the corner around which Sarah had disappeared.

Reverently he stroked the first of the beads, and then, very carefully, he rolled them one by one to the top step, before looking up in surprise, seeing a brightly coloured petal caught in a wind eddy. He scurried back to collect it, longer than his outstretched arms. He called down into the depths, his high pitched voice frantic with excitement but his hands were gentle as he held his treasure, and shortly three other tiny figures appeared. Each one looked from the beads, to the tiny brickkeeper who had called them and back. There was a wave of almost inaudible, fast-paced chattering, and then each of the three carefully lifted up a bead, and carried it down into the darkness.

The first of the little figures was left holding the petal, which was a startling deep blue, very strange against the dusty pale stone and the red of the brickkeeper's uniform. He rolled it up, and then unrolled it again, being very careful not to tear the edges, and with a delighted grin on his tiny face, realised that there was a seed clinging to the bottom edge of the petal. Cautiously he removed the seed, and re-rolled the petal, tucking it securely into the crook of his arm.

He walked a little way from the stairway down to his home, and, making a little dell in the grouting between several paving stones, he gently laid the seed in the ground, and covered it over again. Then, after surveying his handiwork with appreciation, he made his way back out of sight, closing the paving stone roof to his home with care behind him.

* * *

High above the labyrinth a snowy owl plummeted out of a narrow lancet window at the top of a high golden tower. Wings swept open as it approached the treetops and it seemed to float over the ocean of dull olive green foliage and out over the gold and brown of the labyrinth, where it caught an updraft and, circling in lazy spirals, gained height and disappeared into clouds. It emerged from the cloud cover into clear blue sky scanning the Gordian knot-work of narrow streets and wide boulevards below. 

It circled steadily; it would have been almost invisible from the ground against the shifting clouds. A casual glance, had someone happened to catch sight of it, would have thought that it circled the same single spot. However the owl actually followed the progress of a figure on the ground, following her progress forward and back, as she crossed her own path time and time again, and ran into dead end after dead end. Suddenly it went into a steep dive, landing in the shadows a mere few walls away from the girl.

A tall blond figure stepped out from the shadows. His heeled boots made no noise on the stone covering the ground as he stalked, predatorily and unerringly towards the girl. Strange eyes looked around, piercingly, as if to look into the heart of the stone and earth which made up the maze. The Labyrinth reacted to his presence; the clumps of the ubiquitous, curious lichen, scrunched closed their many eyes, and pressed back against the wall, passive and submissive. The wind picked up, swirling down the corridors, bearing a full load of bright blossoms dancing intricate patterns, like confetti.

He closed his eyes as the cloud of petals whirled around him, inhaling the scent of the blooms with ragged breaths. A scuffling noise near his feet drew the piercing gaze to the ground, strewn with tiny flowers. A brickkeeper stood, his arms wrapped tightly around a dark bead, his head bowed. Reluctantly the little figure offered up the bead. The master of the Labyrinth drew off his gloves and crouched to receive the tiny burden. He rolled it slowly between his fingers, the movements jerky, like a child forced to grasp a stinging nettle. With aggressive speed and a firm set to his jaw he rose to his feet, crushing the bead in his hand. The brickkeeper turned and fled, the brick doorway to his home swinging firmly shut behind him.

The Goblin King held his clenched fist to his face, inhaling slowly, his face pensive, before putting the dusty fragments in a pocket hidden within his cloak. He threw his empty palm down, and a crystal landed at the top of the steps, seeming to melt slowly into a translucent sprig of flowers, which gradually took on a rich blue tone, but he did not stop to watch the crystal's transformation. With a casual gesture he sent a line of crystals rolling down the passageways of the labyrinth, the breeze they made as they passed swept up the confetti like leaves and petals, dragging them along in their wake like a million tiny coloured kites and disappearing into the ether. Turning on his heel he vanished.

Sarah stepped out onto the top of the little flight of steps after seeing that the path ahead ended in a little dead-end courtyard. She turned back to retrace her steps and stood, stunned as she looked down. Her aggrieved sigh was harsh with unshed tears of fatigue and frustration. "Someone's been changing my marks! What a horrible place this is!" The remaining beads spilled from her hands, and unthinking she bent down to pick them up. As she knelt down she noticed a sprig of forget-me-not, its bright colours incongruous against the dusty world of the maze, which had stained everything sandy brown.

She picked up the flowers and looked around for anyone who might have dropped them.

"That's quite some admirer you've got!" giggled a voice.

She whirled around to face the source of the voice and saw two strange figures guarding two doors out of the courtyard. The figures stood behind shields which blocked the doorways, with arms and legs pointing out in different directions, and each one had a head peeking out over the top and underneath the bottom of their shield. The one on the left wore predominantly red, the other mostly blue. They bristled with weaponry.

"But it's not the whole story!" the voice continued, and Sarah saw that it was the bottom left-hand head who had spoken. All four of the heads tittered, hiding their long, rat-like noses back behind the shields when they fell silent.

"That was a dead-end a minute ago!" she cried, striding across the little courtyard towards the strange little soldiers.

"No, that's the dead-end, behind you!" The right hand bottom head announced pointing with one of the hands at the side of the shield as the other three characters sniggered.

She whirled around, and was once again struck by the sheer strangeness of the Labyrinth as she found herself barely a finger's width from a high stone wall. She slumped against it, looking over her shoulder at the two bizarre figures. "How can I get through the Labyrinth if it keeps changing?" Her voice was quiet, and slow as she began to accept that defeat seemed inevitable. "How can I win against a maze that can trap me and trick me?" The question was soft, and rhetorical, as she looked up at the top of this new wall against which she leant, but one of the figures answered her.

"Well, the only way out is to try one of these doors," the first head announced, before inspecting his stripy red and orange stocking which was slipping down towards his ankle. Or was it even his leg?

Sarah shook her head and pushed herself up from against the wall to walk over to the blue figure, which spoke again. "One leads to the castle…" it looked sagely at its companions, pausing for dramatic effect, "the other one leads to…" it paused again, as the head which poked out from over the top of its shield added an improvised drum roll "Da da doom…" and then all four heads proclaimed "CERTAIN DEATH!"

There was a moment of silence, before all four spoke up, waggling their free hands and feet. "Ooh!"

Sarah stared ahead blankly, before gazing at each of the heads in turn, stooping to make proper eye contact with the two beneath the shields. "Well, which is which?" she asked softly.

"We can't tell you!" the lower blue head replied, gesturing frantically with one arm and a foot.

"Oh," Sarah's confusion was evident on her face.

The bottom blue head took pity on her. "We don't know! But they do," it explained, pointing towards the heads which poked over the top of the shields.

"Oh, ok, so I'll ask them then." She straightened up and looked at the left hand head.

"No, you can't ask us." It announced, looking over to its opposite colour, which nodded in agreement, his spiked helmet wobbling precariously. "You can only ask one of us!" he continued.

"It's the rules!" The blue head confirmed. 'Though I should warn you that one of us always tells the truth, and one of us always lies." All three of the other heads nodded their agreement.

The blue head seemed quite pleased with this reception to his pronouncement. "That's a rule too!" it clarified. Then, sensing an opportunity in the hush that followed he stage whispered, in a conspiratorial tone of voice "He always lies!"

"I do not! I tell the truth!" The read head interjected, jutting its jaw proudly.

"Oh! Such a liar!" countered the blue head over the sniggers of the bottom heads.

Sarah giggled as all four heads argued, slinging accusations back and forth between them. "This has to be a dream," she said, as all of the faces stopped bickering and looked at her. "If this was real, the riddle would be one that I had no chance of solving, not one I already know the answer to!" She smiled.

She turned to the head of the left hand figure. "Answer yes or no. Would he," she indicated the other figure "tell me that this door leads to the castle?"

The head conferred with its counterpart beneath the shield in a low voice giving Sarah a chance to look at the beautifully carved doors which the pair, or perhaps quad, of figures guarded. Eventually it cleared its throat "Umm, yes…" it answered querulously.

"So then this door leads to certain death and the other to the castle." She proclaimed to the general astonishment of her audience.

"How do you know?" it asked. "He could be telling the truth!" it punctuated its speech with a little nod of its head.

"But then you wouldn't be, so the other door would lead to the castle," Sarah explained, pleased with her logic.

"But I could be telling the truth!" The figure seemed almost angry now.

"But then he wouldn't be, so I know the answer will still be no!" Sarah crossed her arms and stared at the figures.

"Is that right?" the red top head inquired.

"I don't know, I've never understood it!" giggled the topmost blue head.

She walked to the other door and, dodging around its guardian, who had another shield strapped to his back, so that Sarah could not tell how all the various limbs and appendages were attached together, walked to the doorway, which swung open at her touch.

"This is too easy," she murmured as she walked though. And, suddenly, the ground gave way beneath her feet, plunging her into darkness.

* * *

"…my Lord?" The voice of one of the three green goblins echoing around the bare chamber broke through his reverie as he sat on his bare carved throne, staring into nothingness, rolling a bead between his bare fingertips. 

"What?" he snapped, the harsh consonants cutting through the air, his canine teeth visible as he turned his gaze on the goblin.

"Some of the courtiers were inquiring as to the traditional penultimate hour…" his voice trailed off as thoughts warred in the goblin kings mind, and expressions on his face, resignation and distaste settling there.

"The way how it is always done is the way that it must be done." He snapped. "Even for her there can be no exceptions… unless she makes one for herself" his voice dropped to a whisper "Unless she commands it, and she cannot… she would not know how unless she remembers. And I do not think she will remember."

The trio of goblins standing to the side of the dais looked away, seeming embarrassed to be overhearing the master of the Labyrinth's thoughts. He however, seemed unaware of this, rising slowly to his feet and pacing the great chamber, walking around the giant crystal, still cloudy and unhelpful on its stand.

"My Lord?" The giant doors to the throne room swung open, noiselessly and a woman, seemingly human, walked into the chamber, the brightly clad Toby held at her hip, above her voluminous skirts. She ducked into a half-curtsey, and did not rise until after the Goblin King had nodded a greeting.

"My Lord, forgive me for bringing the child, but I could not leave him, and I had to see you." She tossed her magnificent head, chestnut curls swinging lightly with the motion. "It is her, isn't it? She is running the Labyrinth." Her voice gave away little of her emotions, the softness of its deep tones as rigidly controlled as the Goblin King's expressions.

The Goblin King reached out and took the child from her, looking down into Toby's eyes. The boy gurgled contentedly, seeing nothing to cause him alarm in the strange mismatched eyes of the man who held him, and reached out to touch the jewelled detailing on the epaulettes of the short jacket that he wore.

"I believe so," the King spoke at length.

"But you do not know? It could be someone else? Sire, have you not seen her?" The tall dark beauty's eyes never left her king, but he was transfixed by the crystal, its cloudy depths growing clearer.

* * *

Sarah screamed as she plummeted down and down into the dark. Suddenly she came to a stop, the force of her deceleration and fear knocking the air out of her lungs. She clutched wildly at her supports, her voice dying in her throat as she saw what held her. 

The pit into which she had fallen, wider than a well, but still narrow and very deep, was lined with arms and hands, of all different shapes and sizes, like a plant, like some strange relative of the lichen which had eyeballs for buds. She was held, suspended in the pit, by at least twenty hands, clutching her wrists and ankles, supporting her head, and grabbing onto fistfuls of her clothes.

Eventually a pair of weathered brown hands, with thick popped knuckles came together to form a mouth, as three others, in loose fists, formed eyes and a nose. "Int ya gonna say thankee?" The hands asked, though how they managed to produce sound was beyond her.

Sarah gaped at the bizarre face for a moment longer. The fists forming the eyes shifted, creating the illusion of a puzzled expression on the strange face. "Thank you," she whispered eventually.

"That's quite alright dear, that's what we're here for!" A cheery, feminine voice came from behind her. Sarah turned her head, to see graceful, long fingered hands, so dark that they seemed to shine blue, with neat nails forming a streamlined visage, with the illusion of high cheekbones.

"Oh… I… I'm afraid I don't understand." Sarah said, watching as another face slightly higher up seemed to shake its head, or itself, "What are you here for?"

"We're here to help, of course!" said a set of plump, short fingered hands.

"We're 'elpin' 'ands!" pronounced the first strange grouping.

Sarah felt her mind shudder to a halt. Confusion was evident on her face in the gloom, but the hands were either unaware of her feelings or ignored them, as more and more of them formed faces, and suddenly there was a huge group debate swirling around her.

"So what's this in your hair then?" murmured an old woman's voice from by her neck.

Another voice from higher yelled down, scornfully "Look's like a right bird's nest!"

"Ooh, see here, a garland!" repeated the voice from by her neck.

"What's she got there?" a male sounding voice issued from somewhere deep in the pit below.

"In her hair? Buttercup, hyacinth and primrose..." the face of elegant fingers replied.

Several of the hand faces made hissing noises.

"What's wrong?" Sarah asked.

"Well, your hair isn't really sending out a good message, dear." The matriarchal voice by her neck announced.

"I'm sorry?" it was half a question, half an apology, for the distress was evident in the voices.

"Oh child, have you forgotten?" A face with large eyebrows looked down at her, sadness somehow evident in the lines of the fingers forming its eyes.

"Forgotten what?"

"Oh, no, 'tis worse than all 'ad feared!" the first voice she had heard spoke up again.

"Well, roughly speaking, this garland translates to "I'm a fickle child, cheerily playing with your heart to make you jealous!" Elegant fingers replied, her voice sad.

"She canna remember," the weathered male hands muttered.

"Well, dear, there's buttercup, that's cheerfulness, then hyacinth, which is playing and rashness, and evening primrose, which means you're fickle…" Elegant fingers replied smoothly

"Not good, really as a message now, is it?" spoke the old lady's voice by her neck. "Rather upsetting for the poor fool who gave you forget-me-nots, I should imagine!"

Sarah looked down, realising that she still held the little sprig of flowers. "No one gave them to me, I found them. Why, do they mean something too?"

"Aside from the obvious, you mean?" A voice from high above sniggered.

"It's "I remember true love", dear."

"I think we need to change your message a bit dear. Give the poor man some hope."

Sarah mentally labelled the voice by her neck as grandmother as she replied, "But I just picked them up, no one gave them to me!"

"Pah, give her a new head, not new flowers!" the voice from high up jeered once more.

"Ouch! What are you doing?" Something by Grandmother was tugging her hair.

"Mmmmph mph mmmph."

"She said she's taming your hair dear. Getting it back out of the way," elegant fingers replied, before Sarah even had to ask.

"It's so long since she had a real challenge." the sad hands beside her said.

Sarah, who had been looking for the group of hands high above which she could hear arguing softly, attempted to turn her head to look at the speaker. Grandmother tugged on a lock of hair making Sarah yelp.

"Well, we're more 'ands than ye can shake a stick at, useful we are, 'elpful."

"We're helping hands!" All of the voices chorused, except for Grandmother.

"We used to get lots of things to do, sewing, watchmaking, hairdressing, doing up buttons…anything that's a little bit fiddly, or you wished that you had an extra hand for while you were doing it. That's where we come in." Elegant fingers took over the narration.

The group of hands that had been arguing fell silent, and an officious thin voice called out. "All hands! I'd like to see if we can get a consensus on this. So," it made a throat clearing noise, probably an unnecessary one as it didn't have a throat, "one option is rosemary and white rose buds, held together with ivy."

"Oh, no," came an instant response, followed immediately by soft agreements.

"When was that relationship ever defined by mere affection?" The heckler sneered.

"We can't have that, there's not enough truth in it!" proclaimed a new voice.

There was another cough and the chair-voice spoke again, trying desperately to control its audience. "How about fir and oak, laced with acorns and poppies?" it called.

Calls of assent sprung up all around "Oh, I like that one!" and "That's a nicer option"

"What's it mean?" Sarah asked

"Oh, no. Long ways left for ye to go afore ye get back to the beginnin'. You've 'ardly even started."

"Yes, a long way to go, and time's running out for her, poor dear." Grandmother had finished pulling Sarah's hair, and chimed into the discussion, "So, on that note, which way do you want to go dear?"

"Yes, up or down?" Elegant fingers asked.

"I guess down, since I'm pointed that way." Sarah shrugged, or attempted to, held fast as she was.

The hands released her, and passed her swiftly down into the depths, hand to hand, almost fast enough to be falling she travelled down and down and down into the blackness.

"What does it mean?" she yelled

"Too late now!" the call came back, as she was released and dropped down trough a narrowing in the pit, and landed with a thump on the floor. A grille slammed shut overhead, blocking out what little light there was.

* * *

The Goblin King stared at the crystal, the slight figure kneeling on the ground, wrapping her arms around herself. "It is her." The woman spoke at last, "And now it is too late, is it not?" 

They both looked on, transfixed by her image in the crystal as she sobbed, "Please let me out, help me, please," he heard her desperate, pleading voice. Her sobs grew softer and softer, but the Oubliettes were a part of the Labyrinth that the Goblin King could not control. They were outside the Labyrinth proper, created before it, inflexible and unfeeling. They peppered the Labyrinth, turning those who risk the challenge and fail, turning all runners eventually, into creatures like the beauty who stood beside him, his powerless subjects, lost in the haze of forgetfulness deeper than any he could induce, condemning themselves and their descendants to the underground.

Darkness began to seep into the crystal, a black darker than night, and the depths of the pit, the darkness of time beyond memory. The autumn haired woman turned to the king, emotion at last colouring her voice, "You cannot leave her in there, Sire, please!"

His jaw was set, and despair lay in his eyes as hope fled, minute by minute. "You know the laws. One must escape the oubliette by oneself." His voice was sharp and cruel, and the woman recoiled, clutching Toby to her breast, and fled from the room.

He dropped to his knees, before the crystal. "Call me," he whispered, staring into the crystal. "Command me," he whispered.

Darkness obscuring the crystal more completely than the clouds ever did, he watched, long after he had given up his last hope, as the glistening tear tracks slowly evaporated off his skin.


	6. Sunlight

Author's note: So, it's been a while. I have no real justification, but lots of excuses. I won't bore you with them, but pray except my apologies and gift. I claim no ownership of character or concept, but all criticism and praise pertaining to the ordering of the words herein belongs to me.

Thanks again to the fabulous "mi­guida" for her continued efforts.

Submitted for your entertainment

Xxx

PaintR.

**Sunlight**

The girl sat alone in the gloom, not daring to move from the single shaft of light streaming in through the grille set into the ceiling. The light was weak, illuminating only a few square feet of floor and doing nothing to dispel the darkness. She could not tell if she now sat in some great huge cavern or a cell whose walls were so close that she would feel them, if only she could bring herself to stretch out her hands.

Her mind seemed to be working slowly in the strange dark place, but of course, time was meaningless in here. The shaft of light was unmoving, and the chill in her bones and hunger in her stomach were steady, background aches. The sounds of her sobbing had faded into silence. They had not echoed, but there was a strange whispering noise, right on the edge of hearing which swelled intermittently, sending shivers slivering up and down her spine, and once, she had thought that she could hear shrieking, a soulless, wordless noise, harsh and high and pained. When it subsided, the whispers no longer disturbed her, but the thought of that eerie shriek filled her mind.

The cold in her limbs was a fixed presence now, neither increasing nor decreasing, and, when she turned her mind to it, she realised that the discomfort of it was not so disturbing, she found herself quite used to it; being cold might always have been how she felt, she could not remember anything different. She looked down at the puddle of light in which she sat. There was something lying in the thin strip of gloom between light and the oppressive blackness that seemed to be all that there ever was. She plucked at the twig which lay there, bringing it into the light. Flowers. Recognition came on her slowly, or perhaps it came fast, she could not discern the passage of time; there was only the slim blade of light and the vast darkness, and she sat trapped, but whether it was the dark holding her prisoner, or the light she could not have guessed. But now she had a small sprig of flowers. She turned them over in her hands. They seemed odd, somehow. Were flowers always so cold and unyielding? Did they always have such sheen to their petals? Did they always look like that? There were two colours, one a colour hinting of dark, although it was a pale imitation of darkness,_ "blue" _whispered a voice in her head,with a tiny heart of brightness, "_yellow"_. She played with the little glass ornament, a small bunch of flowers each with five petals and a heart of gold, stroking the backs of her muddy fingernails up the long, slender stem. She felt sure that things had names, names beyond mere "flower". What was this strange representation of a flower, and which was the flower it represented?

Questions fought against the darkness pressing down upon her. Had she always been down here? Hadn't she once been on the other side of that grille? She forced her mind back. Light streamed down through a grille into this deep, dark hole in the ground, to illuminate the floor where she knelt. Light, had there been light before she came here? Had she forgotten?

Forgotten? Forgetfulness… forget. Forget me not! She had been given flowers… no, she had found them, up there, before the darkness. There had been people, things, hands that had soothed, figures that had hindered her progress, blocking doors. There had been a little man, who had opened them… hobbling gamely around his garden… hobble… Hoggle!

"Hoggle!" the noise of her own voice startled her, sharp against the soft haze of the darkness and the low background murmurs, but only temporarily. Her mind was spinning apace, wheeling backwards into time, a dry, dusty land, and before that a land which was tiny in its vastness, where things were safe, and colourless, and life was small, where people were petty and names were important. And before that smallness was a tiny immensity. Once there had been a realm, and she had been known by a title, declaring publicly her place in it, and she had known all of the lands of this realm better than her very skin, but could not have traversed it all in a decade. She had lived a life and every day had been pleasure and laughter, always coloured with pain. She had lived a life of extremes, opposites. There had been someone pitch where she was incandescent, and blinding where she was the most obscure darkness. Someone who had used her in the same way she had used him, and together they had rescued each other, and before that, before that there was now. Then, first of all there had been blackness and bars of light forming a prison, her limbs held immobile by the cold, and her heart and head trapped by forgetfulness.

And he had saved her, even as her plight saved him, and they had grown like ivy climbing, wrapping and twisting until an observer could not tell at any point which had begun as which. They had hated each other like bitterest foes, and loved each other more than Narcissus loves his own reflected image. They fought and hated and loved and burned each other out, soothing themselves with exhaustion. And from that crucible there came, in time, mutual concern, then tenderness and finally declarations. Never promises, though. Immortal races will not swear, for fear that they should be bound for eternity.

Once she had served an eternity in prison, payment for a crime she could not stop committing. And here she sat now, imprisoned. She smiled, this time her saviour had imprisoned her, by rules which seemed to have been wrought in part to taunt her and in part to taunt him, rules which neither of them possessed the power to change. She twisted the glass blooms in her fingers. "I remember," she sighed, "all I have to do to save myself, is command that I be saved."

"That's why I'm here!" A gruff voice echoed in the darkness.

"Who's there?" she called as the hurricane in the air and ocean of her mind dropped suddenly to a flat calm, and refused to resume motion.

"Me," the voice replied, as a lantern flickered into life.

"Hoggle!" Sarah cried, recognising the diminutive bearer of the lantern. "What are you doing here?"

"Rescuing you," he replied curtly. "What did you expect?"

"But I… I was…I wasn't expecting you!" She finished weakly. "I thought to call… oh... he'll be so angry…" She cradled her head in her hands, massaging her temples as her eyes adjusted to the new source of light.

The lantern lit the oubliette better than the shafts of light ever would, its magical hold over her broken as she saw the vast darkness lit by beams of light, most of which held a captive. Goblins and men and elves and dwarves and creatures with names she could not guess and others with no names at all, all fallen prey to an old magic. The oubliette claimed the unwary, its spell was insidious. "Oh, you're looking around now, I suppose you've noticed there ain't no doors, only the holes," the dwarf lectured. "You fell down an oubliette, the labyrinth's full of them."

"Leading to this place," Sarah mused, "where people forget and are forgotten." She looked at the sad captive souls. "What will happen to them all?"

"When the magic has done its worst, and more powerful than one of the King's forgets, it is, they'll be set loose. The King'll find them, and he'll find use for them. They get new lives, once they've been emptied of their old ones, as cooks and cleaners and tailors, courtiers and politicians. There's never enough people for the businesses of court in this place."

"So the Goblin King is filling his court with empty people?"

"He's lonely, they say, and empty people are better than no people at all. And, I'd guess, no people at all would be an improvement on most of the goblins." Hoggle grunted, working low magics to create a wall, and then a door in it where previously there had been nothing.

Sarah followed him out into a network of tunnels, a Gordian knot of passages hewn from ancient stone. Light glimmered without a source, a strange dry brown light that, wanting sparkle, failed to bring any true illumination. Here and there, like tricks of the light, there were faces in the stone, whose eyes were roving.

"But he cannot remove the goblins, for, without goblins, what is a goblin king?"

"The job's no sinecure, that's for sure. But goblins are as goblins do, and once upon a time he could bring order to chaos."

"Don't go on!" The voice boomed down the long tunnel and echoed its way back, picking up a chorus of baleful warnings, "Go back while you still can!" "Take heed, and go no further!" "Beware, Beware!"

They faded as the odd couple moved on. "Ignore them," Hoggle's voice was thin and creaking after the effortless booming of the faces in the rock. "They're just false alarms; you get them in the Labyrinth."

Another voice whispered, ominous by its softness, "Soon it will be too late."

"Especially when you're on the right track," Hoggle added as an afterthought.

"Oh no you're not!" A face situated at a fork in the passageway interrupted. Of the options that confronted them, one was dark, the other lighter. Sarah immediately set off down the darker one, but Hoggle snatched her wrist, pulling her towards the lighter one, past the face. "But you're not!" it continued in more conversational tones.

"Oh, shut up!" Hoggle snapped.

Sarah and the rock face shared a moment's potent glance. "Sorry, just doing my job," it muttered, grumpily.

"You don't have to do it to us!" Hoggle clearly was having none of it.

The faces in the rock grew quieter, as a breeze struck up, barrelling down the confined passageway, dragged after a crystal which rolled past Hoggle and Sarah and came gently to a stop in the gloom down the other path.

"Well, what have we here?" a new voice entered the conversation. There was the power and threat of the false alarms, but with barely any of their noise. A gloved hand emerged from the darkness and picked up the crystal.

"N…n…nothing," the dwarf stammered, but he was ignored as the goblin king emerged from the shadows. He prowled, catlike, towards the girl.

"And you, Sarah," he toyed with her name, and suddenly she recalled how titles had power, but names even more so, "how are you enjoying my labyrinth?"

He lounged, a strange mix of arrogance, ease and genuine interest in his ageless face and form. His expression was principally one of polite inquiry, but there was an intensity to his asymmetrical gaze.

"It really matters what I think?"

"Of course. You are the challenger, I must give you a worthy challenge." He paced a little up and down, soft leather boots noiseless on the stone floor, cape whispering around his shoulders.

"It's no piece of cake, but it's hardly the greatest challenge, Lord of Chaos." A title was not so good as a name, but it would serve. "There's too much logic here, too many rules."

His eyes clouded and she took a risk, laying a hand lightly on his wrist. Skin must have touched skin through the lace of his cuffs, for he jumped. "Chaos isn't a bad thing. It is freedom, creativity, challenge," she whispered.

He looked at her with eyes full of loathing, and snatched his arm free, the force of his gesture sending her reeling back against the wall of the tunnel.

"It's also a struggle, a constant erosion of anything you have built," he growled. "So, it's not the challenge it could be?" his voice was cold. "How about upping the stakes?"

A clock, ornate and golden, with thirteen figures on its clear enamelled dial appeared in the air opposite her. With a flick of black leather fingers the hands of the clock spun forward, robbing two hours from the challenge.

"That's not fair!" Sarah exclaimed.

"You say that so often." His voice had lost none of its anger, but it had gained a little of sadness. "I wonder what your basis for comparison is." He plucked a new crystal from the nothingness, rolling it and its partner over his fingers and around each other idly, the light flying off in rainbows against the dun stone.

He did not turn back to look at her, just walked away down the dark tunnel. The implied rejection left her feeling slightly sick. His voice floated back, "No piece of cake? Let's see you deal with this slice."

One of his crystals hung in the air, spinning. No, not a crystal…

"Oh no, the cleaners!" The dwarf stood stock still for the barest instant, and then took to his heels, sprinting down the tunnel as fast as his short legs would carry him.

The silvery orb in the distance resolved itself into concentric circles filling the entire corridor, each ring spinning in the opposite direction to the one next to it, and each and every one of them mounted with blades. "What!?" Sarah's voice was shrill; fear, anger and rage combining. How dare he?

"Run!" Hoggle called back over his shoulder, and Sarah was quick to obey. Her longer legs took her past the dwarf. She rounded a gentle bend only to find that the way was barred with a heavy wooden portcullis. She looked around frantically for a way out, and her eyes caught on an irregularity in the smooth surface of the tunnel. She placed her hands against it, pushing with all her might, unconsciously imitating the dwarf when he released her from the oubliette.

Hoggle caught up, the spinning flashing threat close behind him. Quick as a flash he leant his strength to her efforts, and the concealed door snapped open, hinging at the bottom, rather than the sides as she expected. The spinning knives flashed past the entrance to their hiding place and swept onwards, breaking down the portcullis like a paper screen.

"Oh look," Hoggle said brightly, standing up and brushing himself down. "A ladder." He started up it with alacrity.

"How convenient," Sarah murmured, following him up, and emerging from a great urn in a pleasant hedged courtyard into the bright sunlight.


End file.
