The Labyrinth - Original Novel authored by A.C.H. Smith

[Opaaru]

~The Labyrinth~



Original Novel authored by A.C.H. Smith
Transcribed by Stephanie Massick
Post format by Opaaru

 

[Opaaru]

Chapter One
~The White Owl~

Nobody saw the owl, white in the moonlight, black against the stars,
nobody heard him as he glided over on silent wings of velvet. The owl
saw and heard everything.

He settled in a tree, his claws hooked on a branch, and he stared at
the girl in the glade below. The wind moaned, rocking the branch,
scudding low clouds across the evening sky. It lifted the hair of the
girl. The owl was watching her, with his round, dark eyes.

The girl moved slowly from the trees toward the middle of the glade,
where a pool glimmered. She was concentrating. Each deliberate step
took her nearer to her purpose. Her hands were open, and held
slightly in front of her. The wind sighed again in the trees. It blew
her cloak tightly against her slender figure, and rustled her hair
around her wide-eyed face. Her lips were parted.

"Give me the child," Sarah said, in a voice that was low, but firm
with the courage her quest needed. She halted, her hands still held
out. "Give me the child," she repeated. "Through dangers untold and
hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond
the Goblin City, to take back the child you have stolen." She bit her
lip and continued, "For my will is as strong as yours ... and my
kingdom as great ..."

She closed her eyes tightly. Thunder rumbled. The owl blinked, once.

"My will is as strong as yours." Sarah spoke with even more intensity
now. "And my kingdom as great ..." She frowned, and her shoulders
dropped.

"Oh, damn," she muttered.

Reaching under her cloak, she brought out a book. Its title was The
Labyrinth. Holding the book up before her, she read aloud from it. In
the fading light, it was not easy to make out the words. "You have no
power over me ..."

She got no further. Another clap of thunder, nearer this time, made
her jump. It also alarmed a big, shaggy sheepdog, who had not minded
sitting by the pool and being admonished by Sarah, but who now
decided that it was time to go home, and said so with several sharp
barks.

Sarah held her cloak around her. It did not give her much warmth,
being no more than an old curtain, cut down, and fastened at the neck
by a glass brooch. She ignored Merlin, the sheepdog, while
concentrating on learning the speech in the book. "You have no power
over me," she whispered. She closed her eyes again and repeated the
phrase several times.

A clock above the little pavilion in the park chimed seven times and
penetrated Sarah's concentration. She stared at Merlin. "Oh, no," she
said. "I don't believe it. That was seven, wasn't it?"

Merlin stood up and shook himself, sensing that some more interesting
action was due. Sarah turned and ran. Merlin followed. The
thunderclouds splattered them both with large drops of rain.

The owl had watched it all. When Sarah and Merlin left the park, he
sat still on his branch, in no hurry to follow them. This was his
time of day. He knew what he wanted. An owl is born with all his
questions answered.

All the way down the street, which was lined on both sides with
privet-hedged Victorian houses similar to her own, Sarah was
muttering to herself, "It's not fair, it's not fair." The mutter had
turned to a gasp by the time she came within sight of her home.
Merlin, having bounded along with her on his shaggy paws, was
wheezing, too. His mistress, who normally moved at a gentle, dreamy
pace, had this odd habit of liking to sprint home from the park in
the evening. Perhaps that owl had something to do with it. Merlin was
not sure. He didn't like the owl, he knew that.

"It's not fair." Sarah was close to sobbing. The world at large was
not fair, hardly ever, but in particular her stepmother was
ruthlessly not fair to her. There she stood now, in the front doorway
of the house, all dressed up in that frightful, dark blue evening
gown of hers, the fur coat left open to reveal the low cut of the
neckline, the awful necklace vulgarly winking above her freckled
breast, and -- wouldn't you know? -- she was looking at her watch.
Not just looking at it but staring at it, to make good and sure that
Sarah would feel guilty before she was accused, again.

As Sarah came to a halt on the path in the front garden, she could
hear her baby brother, Toby, bawling inside the house. He was her
half brother really, but she did not call him that, not since her
school friend Alice had asked, "What's the other half of him, then?"
and Sarah had been unable to think of an answer. "Half
nothing-to-do-with-me." That was no good. It wasn't true, either.
Sometimes she felt fiercely protective of Toby, wanted to dress him
up and carry him in her arms and take him away from all this, to a
better place, a fairer world, an island somewhere, perhaps. At other
times -- and this was one -- she hated Toby, who had twice as many
parents in attendance on him as she had. When she hated Toby, it
frightened her, because it led her into thinking about how she could
hurt him. There must be something wrong with me, she would reflect,
that I can even think of hurting someone I dote upon; or is it that
there is something wrong in doting upon someone I hate? She wished
she had a friend who would understand the dilemma, and maybe explain
it to her, but there was no one. Her friends at school would think
her a witch if she even mentioned the idea of hurting Toby, and as
for her father, it would frighten him even more than it frightened
Sarah herself. So she kept the perplexity well hidden.

Sarah stood before her stepmother and deliberately held her head
high. "I'm sorry," she said, in a bored voice, to show that she
wasn't sorry at all, and anyway, it was unnecessary to make a thing
out of it.

"Well," her stepmother told her, "don't stand out there in the rain.
Come on." She stood aside, to make room for Sarah to pass her in the
doorway, and she glanced again at her wristwatch.

Sarah made a point of never touching her stepmother, not even
brushing against her clothes. She edged inside close to the door
frame. Merlin started to follow her.

"Not the dog," her stepmother said.

"But it's pouring."

Her stepmother wagged her finger at Merlin, twice. "In the garage,
you," she commanded. "Go on."

Merlin dropped his head and loped around the side of the house. Sarah
watched him go and bit her lip. Why, she wondered for the trillionth
time, does my stepmother always have to put on this performance when
they go out in the evening. It was so hammy -- that was one of
Sarah's favorite words, since she had heard her mother's costar,
Jeremy, use it to put down another actor in the play they were doing
-- such a rag-bag of over-the-top cliches. She remembered how
Jeremy had sounded French when he said cliches, thrilling her with
his sophistication. Why couldn't her stepmother find a new way into
the part? Oh, she loved the way in which Jeremy talked about other
actors. She was determined to become an actress herself, so that she
could talk like that all the time. Her father seldom talked at all
about people at his office, and when he did it was dreary in
comparison.

Her stepmother closed the front door, looking at her watch once more,
took a deep breath, and started one of her cliched speeches.
"Sarah, you're an hour late ..."

Sarah opened her mouth, but her stepmother cut her off, with a
little, humorless smile.

"Please let me finish, Sarah. Your father and I go out very rarely
--"

"You go out every weekend," Sarah interrupted rapidly.

Her stepmother ignored that. "-- and I ask you to baby-sit only if it
won't interfere with your plans."

"How would you know?" Sarah had half turned away, so as not to
flatter her stepmother with her attention, and was busy with putting
her book on the hall stand, unclipping her brooch, and folding the
cloak over her arm. "You don't know what my plans are. You don't even
ask me." She glanced at her own face in the mirror of the hall stand,
checking that her expression was cool and poised, not over the top.
She liked the clothes she was wearing: a cream-colored shirt with
full sleeves, a brocaded waistcoat loosely over the shirt, blue
jeans, and a leather belt. She turned even further away from her
stepmother, to check on how her shirt hung from her breasts down to
her waist. She tucked it in a little at the belt, to make it tighter.

Her stepmother was watching her coldly. "I am assuming you would tell
me if you had a date. I would like it if you had a date. A
fifteen-year-old girl should have dates."

Well, Sarah was thinking, if I did have a date you are the last
person I would tell. What a hammy -- no, tacky -- view of life you do
have. She smiled grimly to herself. Perhaps I will have a date, she
thought, perhaps I will, but you will not like it, not one bit, when
you see who's dating me. I doubt you will see him. All you will know
about it is hearing the front door shut behind me, and you will sneak
to the window, as you always do, and poke your nose between those
horrid phony-lace curtains you put up there, and you will see the
taillights of a wicked dove-gray limousine vanishing around the
corner. And after that, you will keep seeing pictures in the
magazines of the two of us together in Bermuda, and St. Tropez, and
Benares. And there will be nothing at all you can possibly do about
it, for all your firm views on bedtimes and developmental psychology
and my duties and rolling up the toothpaste tube from the bottom. Oh,
stepmother, you are going to be sorry when you read in Vogue about
the cosmic cash that Hollywood producers are offering us for --

Sarah's father came down the stairs into the hall. In his arms he was
carrying Toby, clad in red-and-white striped pajamas. He patted the
baby's back. "Oh, Sarah," he said mildly, "you're here at last. We
were worried about you."

"Oh, leave me alone!" Afraid that she might be close to tears, Sarah
gave them no chance to reason with her. She ran upstairs. They were
always so reasonable, particularly her father, so long-suffering and
mild with her, so utterly convinced that they were always obviously
in the right, and that it was only a matter of time before she
consented to do as they wished. Why did her father always take that
woman's side? Her mother never wore that look of pained tolerance.
She was a woman who could shout and laugh and hug you and slap you
all within a minute or two. When she and Sarah had a quarrel, it was
an explosion. Five minutes later, it was forgotten.

In the hallway, her stepmother had sat down, still in her fur coat.
Wearily, she was saying, "I don't know what to do anymore. She treats
me like the wicked stepmother in a fairy tale, no matter what I say.
I have tried, Robert."

"Well ..." Sarah's father patted Toby thoughtfully. "It is hard to
have your mother walk out on you at that age. At any age, I suppose."

"That's what you always say. And of course you're right. But will she
never change?"

Holding Toby in one arm, Robert patted his wife on the shoulder.
"I'll go and talk to her."

Thunder rumbled again. A squall of raindrops clattered on the
windows.

Sarah was in her room. It was the only safe place in the world. She
made a point of going all around it each day, checking that
everything was just where it had been and should be. Although her
stepmother seldom came in there, except to deliver some ironed
clothes or to give Sarah a message, she was not to be trusted. It
would be typical of her to take it into her head to dust the room,
even though Sarah made sure that it was kept clean, and then she
would be bound to move things around and not put them back where they
belonged. It was essential to ward off that disturbing spirit.

All the books had to remain in the proper positions, in alphabetical
order by author and, within each author's group, in order of
acquisition. Other shelves were filled with toys and dolls, and they
were positioned according to affinities known only to Sarah. The
curtains had to hang exactly so that, when Sarah was lying on her
bed, they symmetrically framed the second poplar tree in a line that
she could see from the window. The wastepaper basket stood so that
its base just touched the edge of one particular block on the parquet
floor. It would be unsafe if these things were not so. Once let
disorder set in, and the room would never be familiar again. People
talked about how upsetting it was to be burgled, and Sarah knew just
how it must feel, as though some uncaring stranger were fooling
around with your most precious soul. The woman who came in to clean
three times a week knew that she was never to do anything to this
room. Sarah looked after everything in there herself. She had learned
how to fix electric plugs, and tighten screws, and hang pictures, so
that her father should have no need to come in except to speak to
her.

Sarah was now standing in the middle of her room. Her eyes were red.
She sniffled, and chewed her lower lip. Then she walked over to her
dressing table and gazed at a framed photograph. Her father and
mother, and herself, aged ten, gazed back at her. Her parents' smiles
were confident. Her own face in the photograph was, she thought,
slightly over the top, grinning too keenly.

All around the room, other eyes watched. Photographs and posters
displayed her mother in various costumes, for various parts.
Clippings from Variety were taped to the mirror of the dressing
table, praising her mother's performances or announcing others she
would give. On the wall beside the bed was pinned a poster
advertising her latest play; in the picture, Sarah's mother and her
costar, Jeremy, were cheek to cheek, their arms around each other,
smiling confidently. The photographer had lit the pair beautifully,
showing her to be so pretty, he so handsome, with his blond hair and
a golden chain around his neck. Beneath the picture was a quote from
one of the theater critics: "I have seldom felt such warmth
irradiating an audience." The poster was signed, with large
flourishing signatures: "For Darling Sarah, with all my love, Mom,"
and, in a different hand, "All Good Wishes, Sarah -- Jeremy." Near
the poster were more press clippings, from different newspapers,
arranged in chronological order. In them, the two stars could be seen
dining together in restaurants, drinking together at parties, and
laughing together in a little rowboat. The texts were all on the
theme of "Romancing on and off the stage."

Still sniffling from time to time, Sarah went to the small table
beside her bed and picked up the music box her mother had given her
for her fifteenth birthday. The memory of that gorgeous day was still
vivid. A taxi had been sent for her in the morning, but instead of
going to her mother's place it had taken her along the waterfront to
where Jeremy and her mother were waiting in Jeremy's old black
Mercedes. They went out into the country for lunch beside a swimming
pool at some club where Jeremy was a member and the waiters spoke
French, and later, in the pool, Jeremy had clowned around, pretending
to drown, to such an effect that an elderly man had rung the alarm
bell. They had giggled all the way back to town. At her mother's
place, Sarah was given Jeremy's present, an evening gown in pale
blue. She wore it to go with them to a new musical that evening, and
afterward to supper, in a dimly lit restaurant. Jeremy was wickedly
funny about every member of the cast they had seen in the musical.
Sarah's mother had pretended to disapprove of his scandalous gossip,
but that had only made Sarah and Jeremy laugh more uncontrollably,
and soon all three of them had tears in their eyes. Jeremy had danced
with Sarah, smiling down at her. He kidded her that a flashbulb meant
that they'd be all over the gossip columns next morning, and all the
way home he drove fast, to shake off the photographers, he claimed,
grinning. As they said good night, her mother gave Sarah a little
parcel, wrapped in silver paper and tied with a pale blue bow. Back
in her room, Sarah had unwrapped it, and found the music box.

The tune of "Greensleeves" tinkled, and a little dancer in a frilly
pink dress twirled pirouettes. Sarah watched it reverently, until it
became slow and jerky in motion. Then she put it down, and quietly
recited from a poem she had studied in her English class:

"O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the
dancer from the dance?"

It was so easy to learn poetry by heart. She never had any difficulty
in remembering those lines, whenever she opened the music box. In
fact, she reflected, it's easier to remember them than to forget
them. So why was she having such trouble in learning the speech from
The Labyrinth? It was only a game she was playing. No one was waiting
for her to rehearse it, no audience, except Merlin, would judge her
performance of it. It should have been a piece of cake. She frowned.
How could she ever hope to go on stage if she could not remember one
speech?

She tried again. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I
have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City, to take
back the child you have stolen ..." She paused, her eyes on the
poster of her mother in Jeremy's arms, and decided it would help her
performance if she prepared for it. If you're going to get into a
part, her mother had told her, you've got to have the right prop.
Costume and makeup and wigs -- they were more for the actor's benefit
than for the audience's. They helped you escape from your own life
and find your way into the part, as Jeremy said. And after each show,
you take it all off, and you've wiped the slate clean. Every day was
a fresh start. You could invent yourself again. Sarah took a lipstick
from the drawer in her dressing table, put a little on her lips, and
rolled them together, as her mother did. Her face close the mirror,
she applied a little more to the corners of her mouth.

There was a tapping on her door, and her father's voice came from
outside. "Sarah? Can I talk to you?"

Still looking in the mirror, she replied, "There's nothing to talk
about."

She waited. He would not come in unless she invited him. She imagined
him standing there, frowning, rubbing his forehead, trying to think
what he ought to say next, something firm enough to please that woman
but amicable enough to reassure his daughter.

"You'd better hurry," Sarah said, "if you want to make the show."

"Toby's had his supper," her father's voice said, "and he's in bed
now. If you could just make sure he goes to sleep all right, we'll be
back around midnight."

Again, a pause, then the sound of footsteps walking away, with a
slowness measured to express a blend of concern and resignation. He
had done all that could be expected of him.

Sarah turned from the mirror and stared accusingly at the closed
door. "You really wanted to talk to me, didn't you?" she murmured.
"Practically broke down the door." Once upon a time, he would not
have gone out without giving her a kiss. She sniffled. Things had
certainly changed in this house.

She put the lipstick in her pocket and wiped her lips with a tissue.
As she went to throw it in the wastepaper basket, something caught
her eye. More exactly, something that was not there caught her eye.
Launcelot was not there.

Rapidly, she rummaged through her shelf of toys and dolls and cuddly
things, dogs and monkeys and soldiers and clowns, though she knew it
would be fruitless. If the teddy bear were there at all, he would
have been in his appointed place. He had gone. The order of the room
had been violated. Sarah's cheeks were hot.

Someone's been in my room, she thought. I hate her.

Outside, the taxi was pulling away. Sarah heard it and ran to the
window.

"I hate you," she screamed.

No one heard her save Merlin, and he could do no more than he was
doing already, which was to bark loudly, in the garage.

She knew where she would find Launcelot. Toby already had everything
his baby heart could desire, had so much more than Sarah herself had
ever had; yet more was given to him, every day, without question. She
stormed into the nursery. The teddy bear was spread-eagled on the
carpet, just tossed away, like that. Sarah picked Launcelot up and
clutched him to her. Toby, full of warm milk, had almost been asleep
in his crib. Sarah's entrance aroused him.

She glared at the baby. "I hate her. I hate you."

Toby started to cry. Sarah shuddered, and held Launcelot still more
tightly.

"Oh," she wailed. "Oh, someone ... save me. Take me away from this
awful place."

Toby was howling now. His face was red. Sarah was wailing, Merlin was
barking outside. The storm delivered a lightning flash and clap of
thunder directly above the house. It rattled the windows in their
frames. Teacups danced in the kitchen cupboard.

"Someone save me," Sarah begged.

"Listen!" said a goblin, one eye opened.

All around him, on top of him, beneath him, the nest of goblins
stirred sleepily. Another eye opened, and another, and another, all
crazed eyes, red and staring. Some of the goblins had horns, and some
had pointed teeth, some had fingers like claws; some were dressed in
scraps of armor, a helmet, a gorget, but all of them had scaly feet,
and all had baleful eyes. Higgledy-piggledy in a heap they slept, in
their dirty chamber at the castle of the Goblin King. Their eyes went
on opening, and their ears pricked up.

"All right, hush now, shush." Sarah was trying to calm herself down
as much as her baby brother. "What do you want? Hmm? Do you want a
story? All right." With barely a moment's thought, she picked up on
the thread of The Labyrinth. "Once upon a time there was a beautiful
young woman whose stepmother always made her stay with the baby. The
baby was a spoiled child who wanted everything for himself, and the
young woman was practically a slave girl. But what no one knew was
this: the King of the Goblins had fallen in love with her, and given
her certain powers."

In the castle, the goblins' eyes opened very wide. They were all
attention.

The lightning and thunder crashed again, but both Sarah and Toby had
become quieter. "One night," Sarah continued, "when the baby had been
particularly nasty, the girl called on the goblins to help her. And
they said to her, 'Say your right words, and we'll take the baby away
to the Goblin City, and then you'll be free.' Those were their words
to her.

The goblins nodded enthusiastically.

Toby was nearly asleep again, with only a light protest remaining on
his breath. Sarah, enjoying her own invention, leaned closer to him,
over the side of the crib. She was holding her audience in her spell.
Launcelot was in her arms.

"But the girl knew," she went on, "that the King of the Goblins would
keep the baby in his castle forever and ever, and he would turn the
baby into a goblin. And so she suffered in silence, through many a
long month ... until one night, worn out by a day of slaving at
housework, and hurt beyond measure by the harsh, ungrateful words of
her stepmother, she could bear it no longer."

By now, Sarah was leaning so close to Toby that she was whispering
into his little pink ear. Suddenly he turned over in his crib and
stared into her eyes, only a couple of inches away. There was a
moment of silence. Then Toby opened his mouth, and began to howl
loudly and insistently.

"Oh!" Sarah snorted in disgust, standing up straight again.

The thunder rolled, and Merlin gave it all he had.

Sarah sighed, frowned, shrugged, and decided there was no way around
it. She picked Toby up and walked around the room, jogging him in her
arms, together with Launcelot. The small bedside light threw their
shadows on the wall, huge and flickering. "All right," she said, "all
right. Come on, now. Rock-a-bye baby, and all that stuff. Come on,
Toby, knock it off."

Toby wasn't going to knock it off just for being jogged. He felt he
had a serious grievance to express.

"Toby," his sister said sternly, "be quiet, will you? Please? Or --"
Her voice lowered. "-- I'll ... I'll say the words." She looked up
quickly at the shadows on the wall and addressed them theatrically.
"No! No! I mustn't. I mustn't. I mustn't say ... 'I wish ... I wish
...'"

"Listen," said the goblin again.

Every glowing eye in the nest, every ear, was open now.

A second goblin spoke. "She's going to say it!"

"Say what?" asked a stupid goblin.

"Shush!" The first goblin was straining to hear Sarah.

"Shut up!" other goblins said.

"You shut up!" said the stupid goblin.

In the hubbub, the first goblin thought he would go crazy with trying
to hear. "Sh! Shhh!" He put his hand over the mouth of the stupid
goblin.

The second goblin shrieked, "Quiet!" and thumped those nearest to
him.

"Listen," the first goblin admonished the rest. "She is going to say
the words."

The rest of them managed to silence themselves. They listened
intently to Sarah.

She was standing erect. Toby had reached such a crescendo of
screaming, red in the face, that he could scarcely draw breath. His
body was straining against Sarah's arms with the effort he was
making. Launcelot had fallen to the floor again. Sarah closed her
eyes and quivered. "I can bear it no longer," she exclaimed, and held
the howling baby above her head, like a sacrificial offering. She
started to intone:

"Goblin King! Goblin King! Wherever you may be, Come and take this
child of mine Far away from me!"

Lightning cracked. Thunder crashed.

The goblins dropped their heads, crestfallen.

"That's not right," the first goblin said, witheringly.

"Where did she learn that rubbish?" the second scoffed. "It doesn't
even start with 'I wish.'"

"Sh!" said a third goblin, seizing his chance to boss the others.

Sarah was still holding Toby above her head. Outraged by that, Toby
was screaming even more loudly than before, which Sarah would have
not thought possible. She brought him down and cuddled him, which had
the effect of restoring him to his standard level of screaming.

Exhausted by now, Sarah told him, "Oh, Toby, stop it. You little
monster. Why should I have to put up with this? You're not my
responsibility. I ought to be free, to enjoy myself. Stop it! Oh, I
wish ... I wish ..." Anything would be preferable to this cauldron of
noise, anger, guilt, and weariness in which she found herself. With a
tired little sob, she said, "I wish I did know what words to say to
get the goblins to take you away."

"So where's the problem?" the first goblin said with an impatient
sight. Pedantically, he spelled it out. "'I wish the goblins would
come and take you away, right now.' Hmm? That's not hard, is it?"

In the nursery, Sarah was saying, "I wish ... I wish ..."

The goblins were all alert again, biting their lips with tension.

"Did she say it?" the stupid goblin asked brightly.

As one, the rest turned on him. "Shut," they said irritably, "up."

Toby's tornado had blown itself out. He was breathing deeply, with a
whimper at the end of his breath. His eyes were closed. Sarah put him
back in his crib, not too gently, and tucked him in.

She walked quietly to the door and was shutting it behind her when he
uttered an eerie shriek and started to scream again. He was hoarse
now, and louder in consequence.

Sarah froze, with her hand on the handle of the door. "Aah," she
moaned helplessly. "I wish the goblins would come and take you away
..." She paused.

The goblins were so still, you could have heard a snail blink.

" ... right now," Sarah said.

In the goblins' nest, there was an exhalation of pleasure. "She said
it! "

In a trice, all the goblins had vanished in different directions,
save only the stupid goblin. He squatted there, a grin dawning on his
face, until he realized that the rest had left him. "Hey," he said,
"wait for me," and he tried to run in several directions at once.
Then he, too, vanished.

Lightning flashed and thunder hammered the air. Toby gave out with a
high-pitched screech, and Merlin barked as if all the burglars in the
world were closing in.  

[Opaaru]

Chapter Two
~What's Said Is Said~

The storm raged on over Sarah's house. The clouds boiled. Rain lashed
the leaves on the trees. Thunder was followed by lightning.

Sarah was listening. What she was listening to was an unnatural
silence within the room. Toby had stopped crying, so suddenly it
scared her. She looked back inside the nursery. The bedside light was
out. "Toby?" she called. He did not respond.

She flicked the light switch beside the door. Nothing happened. She
jiggled it up and down several times to no effect. A board creaked.
"Toby? Are you all right? Why aren't you crying?"

She stepped nervously into the quiet room. The light from the
landing, coming through the doorway, threw unfamiliar shadows onto
the walls and across the carpet. In the lull between two
thunderclaps, she thought she heard a humming in the air. She could
detect no movement at all in the crib.

"Toby," she whispered in anxiety, and walked toward the crib with her
breath drawn. Her hands were shaking like aspen leaves. She reached
out to pull the sheet back.

She recoiled. The sheet was convulsing. Weird shapes were thrusting
and bulging beneath it. She thought she glimpsed things poking out
from the edge of the sheet, things that were no part of Toby. She
felt her heart thumping, and she put her hand over her mouth, to stop
herself from screaming.

Then the sheet was still again. It sank slowly down over the
mattress. Nothing moved.

She could not turn and run away and leave him. She had to know.
Whatever the horror of it, she had to know. Impulsively, she reached
out her hand and pulled the sheet back.

The crib was empty.

For a moment or an hour, she would never know how long, she stared at
the empty crib. She was not even frightened. Her mind had been wiped
clean.

And then she was frightened, by a soft, rapid thumping on the
windowpane. Her hands clenched so tightly, her fingernails scored her
skin.

A white owl was flapping insistently on the glass. She could see the
light from the landing reflected in its great, round, dark eyes,
watching her. The whiteness of its plumage was illuminated by a
series of lightning flashes that seemed continuous. Behind her, a
goblin briefly raised his head, and ducked down again. Another did
likewise. She didn't seem them. Her eyes were fixed on the owl's
eyes.

Lightning crackled and flashed again, and this time it distracted her
attention from the window by shining on the clock that stood on the
mantelpiece. She saw that the hands were at thirteen o'clock. She was
staring distractedly at the clock when she felt something nudge the
back of her legs. She glanced down. The crib was moving across the
carpet on scaly legs like a lizard's, with talons for toes, one leg
at each corner of the crib. Sarah's lips parted, but she made no
sound.

Behind her, something snickered. She spun around and saw it duck down
again behind the chest of drawers. Shadows were scuttling across the
walls. Goblins were prancing and bobbing behind her. Sarah was
watching the chest of drawers. Like the crib, it had a scaly, clawed
foot at each corner, and it was dancing.

She wheeled around, mouth open, hands clenched, and saw the goblins
cavorting. They ducked away into the shadows, to evade her eyes. She
looked for something that would serve as a weapon. In the corner of
the nursery was an old broom. She took it and advanced upon the
goblins. "Go away. Go away," she whimpered, trying to sweep them up,
but the handle of the broom twisted in her hands and slithered out of
her grasp.

The storm wind rose to a pitch. Lightning made daylight in the room,
and scared faces suddenly began to vanish into cupboards, drawers, or
down the cracks between floorboards. As the thunder boomed and the
wind shook the curtains, a blast of air blew the window open. Between
the fluttering curtains the white owl entered.

Sarah wrapped her arms around her face, and screamed, and screamed
again. She was petrified that the flapping owl would brush across
her. She thought she would die if it did.

She felt the wind blowing her hair around, but the flapping had
ceased. Between her fingers she peeked out, to see where the bird was
perched. Perhaps it had flown out again.

A prolonged crackling of lightning was throwing a giant shadow on the
wall facing the window. It was the shadow of a human figure.

Sarah spun around. Silhouetted against the stormy sky was a man. He
wore a cloak, which swirled in the wind. She could see that his hair
was shoulder-length and blond. Something glinted about his neck. More
than that she could not see in the dim light.

She said, "Uh ...," and cleared her throat. "Who are you?"

"Don't you know?" The man's voice was calm, almost kindly.

Lightning traced the veins of the sky and lit up his face. He was not
smiling, as one might smile on greeting a stranger, nor was his
expression fierce. His eyes were fixed upon Sarah's with an intensity
she found compelling. When he took a step toward her, into the light
shining from the doorway, she did not retreat. If his eyes had not
hypnotized her, the golden chain around his neck might have. A
sickle-shaped ornament hung from it, upon his chest. His shirt was
cream-colored, open at the front, loose-sleeved, with silken cuffs at
the wrist. Over it he wore a tight, black waistcoat. He was shod in
black boots, over gray tights, and on his hands were black gloves. In
one of them he held the jeweled knob of a curious cane with a
fishtail shape at the end.

"I ...," Sarah answered. "I ..."

The humming that she had thought she heard in the air was now quite
distinct, and musical. The stranger smiled at her hesitancy. He was
certainly handsome. She had not expected that. When she spoke, her
voice was a whisper.

"You're ... him, aren't you?" You're the King of the Goblins."

He bowed. "Jareth."

She resisted the ridiculous impulse to return a curtsy.

"I have saved you," he said. "I have liberated you from those bonds
that distressed you and frightened you. You're free now, Sarah."

"Oh, no. I don't want to be free," she answered. "I mean, I do, but
-- I want my little brother back. Please." She gave him a tiny smile.
"If it's all the same to you."

Jareth folded his hands on the top of his cane. "What's said is
said."

"But I didn't mean it," Sarah replied quickly.

"Didn't you, now?"

"Oh, please. Where is he?"

Jareth chuckled. "You know very well where he is."

"Please bring him, back, please." She heard herself speaking in a
small voice. "Please!"

"Sarah ..." Jareth frowned, and shook his head. His expression was
all concern for her. "Go back to your room. Read your books. Put on
your costumes. That is your real life. Forget about the baby."

"No, I can't."

For a moment, they regarded each other, adversaries trying to size
each other up at the outset of a long contest. Thunder rumbled.

Then Jareth raised his left arm, and made a large gesture with his
hand. Sarah looked around, thinking that he was summoning assistance.
When she faced him again, a glowing crystal had appeared in his hand.

"I've brought you a gift, Sarah," he said, holding it out to her.

She paused. She could not trust him. "What is it?"

"A crystal, nothing more. Except that if you look into it ... it will
show you your dreams."

Sarah's lips parted involuntarily. With a teasing smile, Jareth
watched her face, while he spun the shining crystal around in his
fingers. Her hand started to reach out for it. He smiled a little
more, and withdrew the crystal from her.

Raising the cane with his other hand, he told her, "But this is not a
gift for an ordinary girl, one who takes care of a screaming baby."
His voice was quieter now, and huskier. "Do you want it, Sarah?" He
held it out toward her again.

This time her hands remained by her sides, and she made no answer.
Her eyes were fixed on the dancing, flashing glints of the crystal.
To see her own dreams -- what wouldn't she give for that?

"Then forget the child," Jareth said firmly.

While Sarah hesitated, another bolt of thunder and lightning
illuminated the sky behind the Goblin King.

She was torn. The gift was not only seductive, it was also the choice
of someone who understood her, someone who cared about the secret
places of her imagination and knew how infinitely much more they
meant to her than anything else. In return, she would have to trade
her responsibility for an offensively spoiled child, who made endless
demands on upon her and never showed the least sign of gratitude; who
was, after all, only her half brother. The crystal was spinning,
glowing.

She willed her eyes to close. From behind shut eyelids, she heard a
voice answering. It was her own voice, but it seemed to be a memory.
"I -- I can't. It isn't that I don't appreciate what you're trying to
do for me ... but I want my baby brother back. He must be so scared
..." She opened her eyes again.

Jareth snorted, and tossed his mane of blond hair. He had lost
patience with the girl. With a wave of his hand, he extinguished the
crystal. With another wave, he plucked a live snake from the air. He
held it with a straight arm in front of him, so that it writhed and
hissed near Sarah's face. Then he threw it at her. "Don't defy me,"
he warned her.

It was wrapped around her neck. She clutched desperately at the
thing, and found that it was now a silk scarf. She yelled, dropped it
and jumped away. When it hit the floor it shattered into a number of
horribly ugly little goblins, who scuttled, snickering, to the
corners of the room. Other goblins crept from the shadows, or popped
out from their hiding places, and stood, all around the room, brazen
now, watching to see what their king would do to her next.

"You are no match for me, Sarah." Jareth sounded impatient. "Let the
child alone. Take my gift. I will not offer it to you again."

Before he could produce the crystal, Sarah told him, "No." She
paused. "Thank you all the same, but I can't do what you want. Can't
you see that? I must have my brother back."

"You will never find him."

"Ah," Sarah said, and took a deep breath. "Then ... there is a place
to look."

Just for a moment, Jareth's face flinched. Sarah saw it, the merest
trace of fear fleeting across his eyes. Was it possible? His nostrils
tightened, he gripped his cane, and appeared to hesitate slightly
before answering her. She could not quite believe it, but the
suspicion that the Goblin King could be afraid of her, even if only
momentarily, was encouraging.

"Yes," he said. "There is a place."

And now, with a really hammy gesture straight out of vaudeville, he
twirled his hand and pointed through the window.

"There!"

Lightning and thunder, right on cue, she thought. She moved past him
and stared into the night. On a distant hill, brilliant in the
flashes, she saw a castle. She leaned on the windowsill, trying to
see more clearly. There were towers with turrets, massive walls,
spires and domes, a portcullis and drawbridge. The whole edifice was
built on top of a sharply rising mound. Around it the lightning
flickered and forked like snakes' tongues. Beyond was blackness.

From just behind her shoulder, Jareth murmured. "Do you still want to
look for him?"

"Yes." She swallowed. "Is that ..." She remembered the words. " ...
the castle beyond the Goblin City?"

Jareth did not answer at once, and she turned around. He was still
there, watching her intensely, but they were no longer in the house.
They stood facing each other on a windswept hilltop. Between them and
the hill on which the castle stood was a broad valley. In the
darkness she could not tell what was down there.

She turned again. The wind blew her hair over her face. Brushing it
back, she took one timid step forward.

Jareth's voice came from behind her. "Turn back, Sarah. Turn back,
before it is too late."

"I can't. Oh, I can't. Don't you understand that?" She shook her head
slowly, gazing at the distant castle, and to herself, quietly,
repeated, "I can't."

"What a pity." Jareth's voice was low, and gentle, as though he
really meant it.

She was looking at the castle. It seemed to be a long way off, but
not impossibly far to travel. It depended on what she would encounter
in the valley, how easily it could be crossed. Was the darkness down
there perpetual? "It doesn't look that far," she said, and heard in
her voice the effort she was making to sound brave.

Jareth was at her elbow now. He looked at her, with a smile that was
icy. "It's farther than you think." Pointing at a tree, he added,
"And the time is shorter."

Sarah saw that an antique wooden clock had appeared in the tree, as
though growing from a branch. On it were marked the hours to
thirteen, as on the nursery clock in the lightning.

"You have thirteen hours to unriddle the Labyrinth," Jareth told her,
"before your baby brother becomes one of us."

"Us?"

Jareth nodded. "Forever."

Magic still hummed in the air. Sarah was standing still, hair tossing
in the wind, looking out across the valley toward the castle. After a
while, she said, "Tell me where I start."

She waited for an answer, and finally she heard him say, "A pity."

"What?" She turned her head to look up at him, but he was not there.
She spun all around. He had vanished. She was alone in the night, on
a windswept hilltop.

She looked across again at the castle. The storm was passing away.
Blades of clouds sliced across the moon. She thought she glimpsed the
figure of an owl, high above, wings spread wide on the air, as he
flew steadily away from her.

She took another step forward, down the hillside. But there was no
ground beneath her feet. She began to fall.  

[Opaaru]

Chapter Three
~Pipsqueak~

Sarah felt herself toppling forward, into the darkness. Only by
swinging her arms wildly did she manage to keep her balance. The
hillside was very steep.

Her mouth had gone dry with fright. Carefully, she sat down. That
felt safer, but she could not afford to sit there long, with only
thirteen hours to get through the Labyrinth and find Toby in the
castle.

She tried slithering down the hillside on her bottom, but that was no
good either. Rocks and little shrubs impeded her, and she dared not
stand up to get past them. It was so black, she might have been
trying to find her way through a sea of ink. She felt tears rising,
but blinked them away. She would do it. There were no limits to what
she could do, given the determination (which she certainly had), and
the ingenuity (which she had never lacked yet, admittedly in more
humdrum predicaments), and maybe a little luck (which she deserved,
didn't she?). She would do it, she vowed, as she sat on the black
hillside with no idea how to move another foot.

High above her, where the owl had flown, she heard a lark sing. She
peered up at it, and by taking her eyes off the blackness below she
became aware that a hint of light was staining the rim of the dark
sky. She watched the light grow brighter, changing from red to pink,
and then pale blue, and when she saw the edge of the sun inch up over
the horizon she shut her eyes and took a deep breath. She felt the
sun warming her skin. She would do it.

When she opened her eyes again, Jareth's castle was shining before
her, its spires and turrets rimmed with the reflected sunlight.
Anxiously she scrutinized the valley, which, like a developing
photograph, took longer to reveal itself.

The first thing she could gauge was its width. The extent of the land
between herself and the castle was not so very great. I can run that
far in a couple of hours, she reckoned. It's only a few miles. Jareth
was trying to hoax me. He thought I would be so scared in the
darkness that I would give up and forget about Toby. How could I?
Anyway, in thirteen hours I can be there and back with time to spare.

She wondered if thirteen hours in Jareth's land would take the same
time to pass as at home. If so, what would her father and stepmother
think when they returned? They would probably call the police. Well,
there was nothing she could do about that. She did not expect to find
a telephone in Jareth's castle. She smiled wanly.

The sun was above the horizon, and color and shape were seeping into
the valley. There was an awful lot of stuff down there; she could
tell that much. She went on watching, and gradually she took in the
full nature of the valley.

At first she could not believe it. As the sun rose higher and
disclosed more to her, her shoulders drooped and her face lost its
smile. She shook her head slowly, dumbfounded.

From the foot of the hillside where she sat, to the castle and beyond
it, and from horizon to horizon on each side, there stretched a vast,
intricate maze of walls and hedges.

"The Labyrinth," she whispered. "So that is the Labyrinth."

She studied it, trying to decipher some pattern to it, some principle
of design that might guide her through it. She could see none.
Corridors doubled, and wound and coiled. Gateways led to gateways
leading into gateways. It reminded her of thousands of fingerprints
laid side by side, overlapping each other. Did someone work all that
out, she wondered, or had it just happened?

The impossibility of ever finding her way through the Labyrinth
started to overwhelm her. She stood up, clenched her fists, set her
jaw, and cleared her throat. "Well," she said, "here we go. Come on,
feet."

In the dawning light, she could see below her a path that zigzagged
down the hillside. She picked her way to it through the rocks and
shrubs. At the foot of the path, she came to a great wall,
strengthened with buttresses. It stretched as far as she could see to
the left and right.

Doubtfully, she approached the wall, with no idea what she might do
when she reached it. As she got closer, a movement just at the base
of it caught her eye. There was a little man. He was cackling as he
ground something underfoot.

"Excuse me," Sarah said.

The little man nearly jumped out of his skin. "Just going," he said,
before he had even looked around to see who it was.

When he did turn, he had his face down so that he regarded her from
under his thick, bushy eyebrows. "Well!" he exclaimed, looking cross
and astonished at the same time. "Well!" It seemed that he had never
before set eyes on a person like Sarah. Or perhaps it was that no
person like Sarah had ever caught him unawares. "Well!" he said
again.

We'll never get anywhere like this, Sarah thought.

He was an odd little person. His sprouting eyebrows clearly wanted to
be fierce, but his wrinkled face couldn't live up to that ferocity.
His expression was wary now, not particularly friendly, but not
hostile either. He seemed to be avoiding her eyes, and she noticed
that whenever she moved her hands his gaze would follow them. On top
of his head he wore a skullcap. From the belt that held his breeches
up, he had a chain of ornaments dangling, costume jewelry as far as
she could tell. She saw his mouth moving to say "Well!" again and
interrupted quickly.

"Excuse me, but I have to go through the Labyrinth. Can you show me
the way in?"

His mouth frozen in the formation of a W, he blinked at her once or
twice. Then his eyes darted to one side. He rushed a few steps toward
a bluebell, at the same time pulling a spray can from under his
jacket. As he aimed the spray, Sarah saw that a diaphanous little
fairy was emerging from the bluebell.

He sprayed it, with a couple of quick bursts. The fairy at once
wilted, like a shriveling petal.

"Fifty-seven," he said with some satisfaction.

Sarah was shocked. "Oh, how could you?"

He answered with a grunt.

She ran to where the fairy was lying on the ground, wings quivering
and shriveling. "Poor thing!" she exclaimed. She picked it up gently
in her fingertips and turned accusingly to the fairy-slayer. "You
monster."

She felt a sharp pain, as from broken glass. The fairy had bitten her
finger.

"Oh!" Sarah dropped the fairy and stuck her finger in her mouth. "It
bit me," she muttered around her finger.

"'Course she did," the little man chuckled. "What do you expect
fairies to do?"

"I ..." Sarah was frowning, perplexed. "I thought they did -- well,
nice things. Like granting wishes."

"Ha!" His eyebrows went up, and he chortled. "Shows what you know
then, don't it?" He raised his spray can and casually hit another
bluebell with it. A second shimmering fairy fell down, turning brown
like a leaf in autumn. "Fifty-eight," he said, and shook his head.
"They breed as fast as I spray."

Sarah was still wincing as she sucked her finger. "Ooh," she
complained. "It hurts." She took her finger from her mouth and shook
it.

He walked to a plant nearly as tall as he was, tore off one of its
broad, grayish leaves, and handed it to her. "Here," he told her.
"Rub that on it."

She gratefully did what he told her. No sooner had she started
rubbing than she dropped the leaf, clasped her finger with the other
hand and hopped around in pain. "Ow!" she shouted. "That makes it
worse. Much worse. OWWW!"

He was holding his sides with his pudgy little hands and roaring with
laughter. "'Course it do. Fancy rubbing one of them on a fairy bite.
You don't know nothing, do you?"

Her face screwed up with pain, Sarah answered indignantly, "I thought
you were giving it to me to make it better. Oh! Ooh!"

"You thought that too, did you? You've got a lot of opinions." He
chuckled. "All of them wrong. And you've got grass all over the seat
of your trousers!"

In spite of the pain in her finger, she had to glance over her
shoulder, and she saw that he was right. It was from sliding down
that hillside. Brushing off what she could, she realized that he was
paying her back for having caught him unawares. "You're horrible,"
she told him.

"No, I'm not." He sounded surprised. "I'm Hoggle. Who are you?"

"Sarah."

He nodded. "That's what I thought." Spotting another fairy, he
squirted her. To make sure, he stepped on this one and ground his
foot around. The fairy squealed. "Fifty-nine," Hoggle said.

Sarah was thinking, still sucking her finger. He seemed to know about
her. So he must have something to do with Jareth, mustn't he? Some
kind of spy, maybe. Well, maybe. Yet he was not her idea of a spy.
Spies weren't grumpy. They didn't play mean tricks on you. Did they?
If all her opinions were wrong, as he'd said, then this one might be
wrong, too. But in that case, she thought, supposing he is a spy,
then it might be his job to persuade me that all my opinions are
wrong when really they are all correct. And if they are all correct,
he is not a spy. But that would mean he had no motive for persuading
me that I'm wrong about everything, and so probably I am wrong about
this, too, and so ... "Oh!" she exclaimed in exasperation. It was
like one of those drawings she had seen in a book at home, where the
water seems to be flowing uphill, and yet you can never put your
finger on just where the drawing is telling you a lie.

Hoggle tore a leaf from a different plant and offered it to her, with
a sort of twinkling scowl on his face.

She took her finger from her mouth. The pain was easing now. She
shook her head, and had to smile a little at the funny, wizened face
of his.

His expression, in answer, went dark again. He looked at her
mistrustfully. He was not used to being smiled at.

Well, she thought, there's nothing else to do. Whether or not he is
here to spy on me, he is the only person I can ask for help. So she
tried. "Do you know where the door to the Labyrinth is?"

He screwed up his face. "Maybe."

"All right, where is it?"

Instead of replying, he dodged to one side, raising his spray can.
"Sixty."

"I said, where is it?"

"Where is what?"

"The door."

"What door?"

"The door into the Labyrinth."

"The door! Into the Labyrinth! Oh, that's a good one." He laughed,
not kindly.

Sarah wanted to punch him. "It's hopeless asking you anything."

"Not if you asks the right questions." He was giving her a sidelong
look. "You're as green as a cucumber."

"Well, what are the right questions?"

Hoggle stroked the top of his nose. "It depends on what you want to
know."

"That's easy. How do I get into the Labyrinth?"

Hoggle sniffed, and his eyes twinkled. "Ah! Now that's more like it."

She thought she heard that music in the air again, the magic music
that had hummed around the Goblin King.

"You gets in there." He nodded, indicating behind her. "You got to
ask the right questions if you want to get anywhere in the
Labyrinth."

Sarah had spun around. Now, in the great wall, she saw a huge,
grotesquely designed gate. She stared at it almost accusingly. She
could have sworn it had not been there before.

"There ain't no door, see?" Hoggle was explaining. "All you got to do
now is find the key."

She looked back at him and then all around her. She saw at once that
it was going to be no problem to find the key. Near her was a very
small mat, and from each end of it an enormous key was sticking out.
"Well," she said, "that's simple enough."

She went over to the key and tried to pick it up. She could just
manage to get one end of it off the ground, or the other, but the
whole key was too heavy for her to lift up to the keyhole in the
gate. She glared at Hoggle.

"I suppose it's too much to expect you to give me a hand?"

"Yes," Hoggle said.

She tried again, straining to lift it. It was hopeless. "Oh," she
said. "This is so stupid."

"You mean you're so stupid," Hoggle correct her.

"Shut up, you rotten little pipsqueak."

"Don't call me that!" Hoggle was agitated. "I am not a pipsqueak."

"Yes, you are," Sarah said. She was uneasily reminded of herself at a
much younger age, at school, chanting cruel jibes at some tormented
girl, but she persisted. "Yes, you a-are. Rotten little nasty ugly
pipsqueak!"

Hoggle was beside himself with rage. "Don't call me that," he said
hysterically. "You! Ha! You're so stupid you are, you take everything
for granted."

"Pipsqueak! Pipsqueak!"

"I'm not. I'm not. Stop it! Stop it!"

"Nasty, creepy little pipsqueak!"

Hoggle collected himself and with some dignity told her, "If you
weren't so brainless, you'd try the gate."

That stopped her short. She thought for a moment, then went to the
gate and gave it a little push. It swung open.

"Nobody said it was locked," Hoggle observed.

"Very clever."

"You think you're so clever," Hoggle said. "You know why? Because you
ain't learned nothing."

Sarah was peering cautiously inside the gate. She did not like what
she saw. It was dark and forbidding in there. The music humming in
the air seemed to be more intense. There was a smell of things
rotting.

She gathered her courage and took two steps into the Labyrinth. Then
she stopped short. A passageway ran across the entrance. It was so
narrow, and the wall was so high, that the sky was a mere slit over
her head. In the gloom, she heard a continual drip of water, echoing.
She approached the farther wall, touched it, and pulled her hand
away. It was dank and slimy, like mildew.

Hoggle's head was poking through the gateway behind her. "Cozy, ain't
it?"

Sarah shuddered.

Hoggle's manner had altered. He was quiet, and it was almost possible
to detect a hint of concern in his voice. "You really going to go in
there, are you?"

Sarah hesitated. "I ... yes," she said. "Yes, I am. Do you ... is
there any reason why I shouldn't?" She was clenching her fists. It
did seem such a dreadfully gloomy place, inside the gate.

"There's every reason why you shouldn't," Hoggle replied. "Is there
any reason why you should? Any really good reason?"

"Yes, there is." She paused. "So I suppose ... I must."

"All right," Hoggle said, in a tone of voice that implied, on your
own head be it. "Now," he asked, "which way will you go? Right or
left?"

She looked one way and then the other. There was no reason to choose
either one or the other. Both looked grim. The brick walls appeared
to extent to infinity. She shrugged, wanting some help, but too proud
to ask for it. "They both look the same," she said.

"Well," Hoggle told her, "you're not going to get very far, then, are
you?"

"All right," she said crossly, "which way would you go?"

"Me?" He laughed without mirth. "I wouldn't go neither way."

"Some guide you are."

"I never said I was a guide, did I? Although you could certainly use
one. You'll probably end up back where you started, given your record
for being wrong."

"Well," Sarah snapped at him, "if that's all the help you're going to
be, you might as well let me get on with it!"

"You know your problem?" Hoggle asked.

She took no notice, but tried to look determined to set out in one
direction or the other. Left, right, she was thinking, that was the
normal order. So in this abnormal place, she might as well try going
to the right, mightn't she?

"I told you, you take too many things for granted," Hoggle went on.
"This Labyrinth, for instance. Even if you get to the center, which
is extremely doubtful, you'll never get out again."

"That's your opinion." Sarah moved to her right.

"Well, it's a better opinion than any of yours."

"Thanks for nothing, Hogwart."

"Hoggle!" His voice came echoing from the gateway, where he remained.
"And don't say I didn't warn you."

Her jaw set, she strode out, between the damp and dire walls.

She had gone only a few strides when, with a mighty, reverberating
clang, the gate closed behind her. She stopped, and could not resist
returning, to see if the gate would open again. It wouldn't.

Hoggle was shut outside. The only sounds in the Labyrinth now were
the drip of water, and Sarah's quick breathing.  

[Opaaru]

Chapter Four
~Which Is Which~

Sarah took a deep breath and set off along the passageway again. A
clump of lichen on the gatepost opened its eyes and watched her go.
The eyes, on tendrils, had an anxious look, and when she had gone
some distance away the clump, swiveling its eyes toward each other,
commenced to gossip among itself. Most of it disapproved of the
direction she had taken. You could tell that from the way the eyes
looked meaningfully into each other. Lichen knows about directions.

When she had been walking for a while between the towering walls of
the apparently endless passageway and gotten nowhere that looked
different, she went on walking for a while more, and it was all the
same. Another hundred steps, she told herself, and if I'm still
getting nowhere I'll think of something else to do.

One, two ... ninety-eight, ninety-nine. The walls stretched to
eternity.

"Is this what a labyrinth is?" she said aloud, for the company of
hearing her own voice. "There's not a single turn, or corner, or --
anything. It just goes on, and on." She paused, thinking of what
Hoggle had said to her. "But maybe it doesn't," she reasoned. "Maybe
... I'm just taking it for granted that it does. Because that's all
it's done so far, go on and on. It could do that forever -- and I
haven't got forever." She wished she knew how much of the thirteen
hours remained to her. It wasn't fair, not knowing.

Taking another deep breath, she began to run. The only difference now
was that the walls revealed their endlessness more quickly. She ran
faster, skidding in mud, banging against the brick sides of the
passage, faster and faster, and the walls stretched out ahead of her
without turning or feature or end, until they began to spin above her
head and she realized that she was collapsing, exhausted, tears
running down her cheeks.

She lay in a heap, sobbing. A clump of lichen nearby stared down at
her sympathetically, its eyes boggling.

When she had recovered, she opened her eyes very slowly, hoping she
would see something different this time: a corner, a door, even her
own bedroom. All there was to see were the two walls.

With a little yelp of frustration, she beat her fists upon one of the
walls.

As though answering a doorbell, a tiny wormlike creature with large
eyes popped its head out from between the bricks where Sarah had
pounded. "'Allo?" it asked in a cheery voice.

Woebegone, Sarah looked at the worm. A talking worm, she reflected;
yes, I should never have taken it for granted that a worm can't talk.
She shrugged. If a worm could talk, perhaps it could give her some
advice. In a low voice, she asked it, "Do you know how to get through
the Labyrinth?"

"Who, me?" It grinned. "No, I'm just a worm."

Sarah nodded. She might have expected as much.

"Come inside and meet the missus," the worm invited her.

She managed a faint smile. "Thank you," she told the worm, "but I've
got to get through the Labyrinth. And there are no turnings, or
openings, or anything." She blinked away hot tears. "It just goes on
and on."

"Ooh," the worm said, "you ain't looking right, you ain't. It's full
of openings. It's just that you ain't seeing 'em, that's all."

Sarah gazed around in disbelief. The walls stretched away forever on
either side.

There was no logic to it. Or maybe there was nothing but logic, and
that was the trouble: all logic and no reason.

"There's an opening just across there," the worm went on. "It's right
in front of you."

She looked. Brick wall, damp mildew, clump of lichen, nothing else.
"No, there isn't."

The worm sniffed, and in a kind voice said, "Come in and have a nice
cup of tea."

"There isn't an opening." Sarah's voice was insistent.

"You try walking that way, over there," the worm said, with a nod of
encouragement. "You'll see. But first, why not have a nice cup of
tea?"

"Where?" Sarah looked at the blank wall again.

"I got the kettle on."

The worm's hospitality was wasted on her. "That's just wall," she
muttered. "There's no way through."

"Ooh," the worm observed, "this place, oh dear. Things aren't always
what they seem, you know, not here. Not here, no. So don't you take
anything for granted."

Sarah gave the worm a sharp glance. How was it that he had the same
script as Hoggle? And in her mind she heard Hoggle's voice again.
"Me? I wouldn't go neither way."

Neither way. Right in front of you. What else was there to do? She
would try it. Very tentatively, flinching in anticipation, she walked
into the wall, and through it, into another passageway.

Sarah was delighted. This passageway, too, stretched out infinitely
to either side, but at least it was a different one. She turned back
gratefully. "Thank you," she said to the worm. "That was incredibly
helpful."

She had begun to walk along the new passageway when she heard a
little shout from behind her. "And don't go that way!" the worm was
calling. He looked up at the lichen, whose eyes were worried as they
watched Sarah. The worm gave the lichen a cheerful grin, but the
lichen just went on boggling anxiously after the girl.

She halted, and then came back panting. "What did you say?"

"What I said," the worm told her, "was, don't go that way."

"Oh," Sarah nodded. "Thanks." She set off in the other direction.

The lichen watched her go again, and sighed with relief.

"Whew." The worm rolled his eyes. "That was close. If she'd gone the
other way, she'd have walked straight into that dreadful castle."

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

In the stone chamber of the Goblin King, Toby, still in his
red-and-white striped pajamas, had his mouth wide open and was
howling. His little fists were clenched tight, his face was scarlet,
his eyes were shut, and he was putting out a din that would have made
Sarah groan aloud.

Jareth watched him with an amused smile. In that place no one else
took much notice of Toby. Horned or hairy or helmeted goblins
racketed around the place, across the filthy floor, over the steps of
the throne, up on the ledges of the room, some chasing chickens or a
black pig in a helmet, some squabbling over a tidbit, some peering
into any vessel in the hope of finding something to eat, some just
sitting and gnawing on bones, others staring balefully at all the
rest through crazed eyes. The place was littered with half-finished
platefuls of food, and rotting bits of meat and vegetable matter,
garbage and junk. A small pterodactyl flapped around, taking its
chances. The curved crown mounted heraldically above the throne,
decorated with ram's horns, had been appropriated by a vulture for
its nest. Or perhaps Jareth had installed the vulture there for his
own amusement.

He needed something to keep him amused here. The goblins were,
frankly, a bore. They were so stupid they couldn't find their own way
through the Labyrinth. They were without wisdom or wit. In the old
days, when many babies had been offered to him, Jareth had been more
tolerant, reckoning that soon he would certainly find one who could
be trained as a worthy companion to the throne, one whose young blood
would serve to refresh Jareth's, whose high spirits would dispel the
thoughts of aging that oppressed the King of the Goblins. As calls
upon him to steal a child became rarer, so Jareth sank deeper into
dejection. He avoided mirrors and reflecting water. He could feel
that the corners of his mouth had tightened, and he needed no proof
of the wrinkles that creased his brow when he did not deliberately
narrow his eyes to tauten his skin.

Lounging in his draped throne, which was in the form of an
interrupted circle, Jareth looked at the bawling figure of Toby. With
any luck, he might grow up to be an intelligent goblin. He might make
some jokes, or anyway see the point of Jareth's. He might be of some
help in ruling this ramshackle empire. At the very least, he might
have some fresh ideas about mischief. Two-headed sheep, curdled milk,
banging pans, snatched nightclothes, barren fruit trees, shifted
tables, moldy bread -- Jareth had seen it all, much too often. But
this lot, rooting and pratfalling around all day, still found such
tired old cliches a perfect riot every time. Pitiful, they were.

Jareth yawned, and looked wearily around the room. The walls had been
decorated with skulls and bats. Dear god, he thought. Skulls and bats
yet. How jejune could you get? He looked hopefully at the clock. Half
past three, the sword-shaped hands indicated. Another nine and a half
hours to wait, until the goblin striker struck the thirteen. He would
have to do something to pass the time.

He stood up from the throne, stretched his arms and paced restlessly.
Another goblin came dashing past. Jareth reached down and picked him
up by the scruff of the neck. The goblin's eyes boggled at his.

"You're a boggling goblin," Jareth said, with a forced laugh.

The rest of the goblins howled with merriment. Jareth had been their
King for as long as they could remember, which was about four seconds
at best, and they hoped he would be King forevermore.

Jareth winced at the pain of it all.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Sarah was wandering along brick corridors. They were still high and
forbidding, but at least they didn't stretch out to the end of space
and time, and sometimes there was a flight of steps, which made a
nice change. Whenever she came to a fork or a turning and made a
choice, she had found a sensible way of ensuring that she did not
wander in circles: with the lipstick she had put in her pocket at
home, she made an arrow on a brick at each junction, to show where
she had come from. And whenever she put the lipstick away and walked
down her new corridor, a little creature would lift the marked brick,
turn it upside down, and replace it, so that the arrow was not
visible.

After she had marked eighteen arrows, a piece of the lipstick broke
off as she was doing the next one. Determined to remain calm, she
screwed another length out, and went on her chosen way, up some
steps, into a chamber. Across the end of the passage behind her a
squad of goblins rustled by, but Sarah's eyes were fixed on what lay
ahead and she did not see them.

The chamber was a dead end. She peeked in every alcove and behind the
buttresses, but there was definitely no way out. She shrugged, and
retraced her steps to the nineteenth arrow. When she reached the
corner, she looked for her arrow and could not see it. That's odd,
she thought. I 'm sure it was right here, at this corner, on that
brick there. The bricks were blank. She frowned, and looked about
her. On the floor she spotted the broken-off piece of lipstick. She
looked again, hard, and still could see no arrow. That proved it,
then. Something fishy was going on. She threw down the rest of the
lipstick. "Someone's been rubbing out my marks," she said, loudly,
certain that the culprit must be close enough to hear her. "What a
horrid place this is! It's not fair!"

"That's right," a voice behind her said. "It's not fair!"

She jumped, and whipped around.

Behind her, in the chamber that had been a dead end, she now saw two
carved doors in the wall, and a guard posted in front of each door.
At least, she thought they must be guards, since they stood
foursquare and were emblazoned with armor. But as she studied them
she was not so sure. They were quite comic, really. Their enormous
shields, which were curiously patterned with geometrical figures and
scrolls and devices, looked extremely heavy, which would account for
the straddle-legged stance each of them had. Poor things, she
thought, they have to stand like that all the time just to stay
upright. The one to her left had incredibly shifty eyes beneath his
helmet, and she said to herself that she would call him Alf, after an
uncle of hers with eyes like that; but then she reflected his
not-quite-identical twin to her right (she couldn't see his eyes at
all because his helmet was too big for him) should therefore be
called Ralph (R for Right, you see), and so mentally she corrected
the spelling of the first one's name to Alph (not that it mattered to
anyone, because she wouldn't be writing their names down).

Having settled, in her mind, the business of names, she noticed the
most remarkable thing of all, which was that underneath each shield
peered another face, upside down, a little like a jack of spades gone
wrong. The upside-down characters, whom she named Jim and Tim (the
first rhymed pair that came to her mind), seemed to be hanging on to
their uncomfortable positions by the great gnarled and horny hands
she could see gripping the bottom of the shields. They must have
added yet more to the burdens under which Alph and Ralph staggered.

It was Jim Upside Down who made her jump by addressing her. He added,
"And that's only half of it."

"Half of what?" asked Sarah, twisting and ducking her head to get a
good look at Jim's face. It would, she felt, have been faintly rude
to remain upright. You had to adjust to people you met, even here.

"Half of twice as much," Jim replied.

"Twice as much of what?" Sarah was exasperated.

"Twice as much as half of it."

"Look." Sarah raised a finger and pointed to the back wall of the
chamber. "This was a dead end a moment ago," she said.

"No." It was Tim Upside Down speaking now. "That's the dead end,
behind you."

She stood upright again and turned around. He was right. The way by
which she had come in here was indeed now barred by a solid wall.
"Oh!" she exclaimed indignantly. "It's not fair. This place keeps
changing. What am I supposed to do?"

"It depends on who's doing the supposing," Jim said.

"Not half," Tim agreed.

"Try one of the doors," suggested Jim.

"One of them leads to the castle," Tim told her in a cheerful voice,
"and the other one leads to certain death."

Sarah gasped. "Which is which?"

Jim shook his upside-down head. "We can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"We don't know!" Jim crowed triumphantly.

"But they do." Tim nodded confidentially at Alph and Ralph. That took
some doing, upside down, Sarah thought.

"Then I'll ask them," she said.

Before she could say anything more, Ralph was speaking in a very
slow, pedantic voice. "Ah! No, you can't ask us. You can ask only one
of us." He appeared to have difficulty in getting the words out at
all, especially the C's and K's.

"It's in the rules." Alph's voice came fast and sneering, and at the
same time his eyes shifted uneasily. He was tapping a finger on some
ciphers on his shield, which were presumably the rules. "And I think
I should warn you that one of us always tells the truth, and one of
us always lies. That's a rule, too." His glance flickered at Ralph.
"He always lies."

"Don't listen to him," Ralph said, sententiously. "He's lying. I'm
the one who tells the truth."

"That's a lie!" Alph retorted.

Jim and Tim were snickering behind their shields, rather insolently,
she thought. "You see," Tim told Sarah, "even if you ask one of them,
you won't know if the answer you get is true or false."

"Now wait a minute," she said. "I know this riddle. I've heard it
before, but I've never figured it out."

She heard Ralph muttering to himself, "He's lying."

"He's lying," Alph replied.

Sarah was scratching her brow. "There's one question I can ask and it
doesn't matter which one of them I ask it." She clicked her tongue,
impatient with herself. "Oh, what could it be?"

"Come on, come on," Tim said tetchily. "We can't stand around here
all day."

"What do you mean, we can't?" Jim snapped. "That's our job. We're
gatekeepers."

"Oh, yes. I forgot."

"Be quiet," Sarah ordered. "I can't think."

"I tell the truth," Ralph declared pedantically, from under his
helmet.

"Ooh!" Alph answered mechanically. "What a lie!"

Sarah was trying to work it out logically for herself. With a finger
thoughtfully in the air, she reasoned, "The first thing to do is find
out which one's the liar ... but, no, there's no way of doing that.
So ... the next thing to do is to find a question you can put to
either one ... and get the same answer."

"Oh, that's a good one," Tim was guffawing. "One of us always tells
the truth and the other one always lies, and you want to find a
question we'll both give the same answer to? Oh, that'll be the day.
That's a good one, that is. Oh."

Sarah narrowed her eyes. She thought she might have gotten it. "Now,"
she said, "whom shall I ask?"

Alph and Ralph pointed at each other.

With a little smile, Sarah said to Ralph, "Answer yes or no. Would
he," and she pointed at Alph, "tell me that this door," she pointed
at the door behind Ralph, "leads to the castle?"

Alph and Ralph looked at her, then at each other. They conferred in
whispers.

Ralph looked up at her. "Uh ... yes."

"Then the other door leads to the castle," Sarah concluded. "And this
door leads to certain death."

"How do you know?" Ralph asked slowly. His voice was aggrieved. "He
could be telling you the truth."

"Then you wouldn't be," Sarah replied. "So if you tell me he said
yes, I know the answer was no." She was very pleased with herself.

Ralph and Alph looked dejected, feeling that they had obscurely been
cheated. "But I could be telling the truth," Ralph objected.

"Then he would be lying," Sarah said, allowing herself a broad smile
of pleasure. "So if you tell me that he said yes, the answer would
still be no."

"Wait a minute," Ralph said. He frowned. "Is that right?"

"I don't know," replied Alph airily. "I wasn't listening."

"It's right," Sarah told them. "I figured it out. I never could until
now." She beamed. "I may be getting smarter."

She walked to the door behind Alph.

"Very clever, I'm sure," Jim remarked disappointedly, and stuck his
tongue out at her.

She stuck hers out back at him as she pushed open the door. Over her
shoulder, as she left them, she said, "This is a piece of cake."

She stepped through the doorway, and fell straight down a shaft.

Sarah screamed. The top of the shaft was a fast-dwindling disk of
light.  

[Opaaru]

Chapter Five
~Bad Memories~

As she screamed, dropping backward down the shaft, Sarah realized
that her fall was being slightly impeded by things brushing against
her. Large, thick leaves they might be, or some sort of tough fungus
sprouting from the walls of the pit. Whatever they were, she tried to
grab hold of one, to save herself from the terrible smash she
expected every instant. She was falling too fast.

Then, by blind chance, her wrist landed smack in one of the things,
which at once closed firmly. With a jolt that almost disjointed her,
she found herself dangling by one arm. "Oh!" she gasped in relief,
and felt herself heaving for breath.

She looked down the shaft, to see how close she had been to breaking
every bone. All she could see was a long tunnel, lined with the
things that had broken her fall. She looked up. The doorway through
which she had entered the shaft was very high above her.

As her eyes adjusted to the gloomy light, she saw what it was that
had caught hold of her: a hand. All around her, protruding from the
sides of the shaft, hands were groping in the air, like reeds under
water.

Her relief gave way to a sick feeling: she was in the grip of a hand
with no arm or body attached to it, and she had no apparent means of
ever releasing herself. Perhaps they were carnivorous hands, or like
those spiders that simply dissolved you away over a long period of
time. She looked nervously up and down the shaft again, this time to
see if there were any skeletons dangling there, as in a jungle trap.
She saw none.

And now she felt other hands reaching for her and finding her, taking
hold of her by the legs and the body. There were hands on her thighs,
her ankles, her neck. She shuddered, and shouted, "Stop that!"
Knowing it was futile, she called, "Help! Help!" She writhed, trying
to shake them all off, and with her free hand reached out for a hold,
in a despairing attempt to climb away. All she could see to grasp
hold of was yet another hand. Hesitantly she put hers in it, and it
responded immediately, grasping her hand firmly. With the idea of
perhaps climbing up the hands as though on a ladder, she tried to
free her wrist from the first hand. It was no good. Now she was more
tightly held than ever, stuck in a web of hands.

"Help!" she whimpered.

She felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned her head to see what it
was. To her bewilderment, she saw that hands to one side of her
contrived to form themselves into a face of sorts, with
finger-and-thumb circles for eyes and two hands working together to
fashion a mouth. And the mouth spoke to her.

"What do you mean, 'Help'?" it said. "We are helping. We're the
Helping Hands."

"You're hurting," Sarah told them. It was not quite true. Fear,
rather than pain, was what afflicted her.

Now there were several more faces of hands around her.

"Would you like us to let go?" one of them asked.

Sarah glanced down the shaft. "Uh ... no."

"Well, then," one of the mouths said. "Come on. Which way?"

"Which way?" she asked, nonplussed.

"Up or down?"

"Oh ..." She was more confused. "Er ..." She looked back up the shaft
toward the light, but that would be a kind of retreat. She looked
down, into the unknown, unfathomable abyss.

"Come on! Come on!" an impatient voice urged her. "We haven't got all
day."

Haven't you? Sarah thought to herself.

"It's a big decision for her," said a sympathetic voice.

"Which way do you want to go?" asked an insistent one.

Everyone in the Labyrinth was so peremptory. I've got good reason to
be in a hurry, Sarah felt. I've only got thirteen hours to find my
baby brother, and heaven knows how much time has already gone by. But
why are all these people -- if you can call them people -- so bossy?

"Come on! Come on!"

"Well, er ..." Sarah still hesitated. Up was chicken, and down was
dreadful.

Many faces were watching her indecisiveness. Several of them were
snickering, covering their mouths with another hand.

She took a deep breath. "Well, since that's the way I'm pointed ...
I'll go down."

"She chose down?" She heard the snickerers behind their hands. "She
chose -- down!"

"Was that wrong?" Sarah inquired timidly.

"Too late now," said one of the hand faces, and with that they
started to hand her down the shaft, not roughly. She heard them
singing something like a shanty.

"Down, down, down, down, Down, hand her down, boys. We'll all go to
town, boys. Down, down, down, down, Down, hand her down, boys, Never
a frown, boys, Down, down, down, down."

And down she went, far down, until she found herself held momentarily
above a manhole, while Helping Hands removed the cover of it. Then
the lowest hands let go of her, dropping her neatly down the manhole,
and the last she saw of the hands was their waving goodbye helpfully.

As she landed on the stone floor of a dark, small cell, the cover was
replaced on the manhole, with a clunk.

In pitch darkness, Sarah sat down. Her face was blank.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The picture of her silent face was clearly beamed to a crystal in the
chamber of the Goblin King.

"She's in the oubliette," Jareth observed.

The goblins cackled wickedly, dancing and prancing around. Their jaws
gaped with merriment, and they slapped their thighs.

"Shut up," Jareth told them.

They froze. Their heads twitched around to look at their King. A sly
goblin inquired, "Wrong laugh?"

"She shouldn't have gotten as far as the oubliette." Jareth was still
staring at the picture of Sarah's face in the crystal. He shook his
head. "She should have given up by now."

"She'll never give up," said a keen goblin.

"Ha." Jareth laughed mirthlessly. "Won't she? She'll give up soon
enough when she has to start all over."

It pleased him to think of his Labyrinth as a board game; if you got
too close to the winning square, you might find a snake taking you
back to the start. No one had, and very few had gotten as far as this
disturbing girl, who was too old to be turned into a goblin. Jareth
examined her face in his crystal. Too old to be a goblin, but too
young to be kept by him, damn her innocent eyes. She had to be sent
back to square one immediately, before she became a serious threat to
Toby, and he knew the snake for the job. "Hoggle!" he called,
spinning the crystal.

Hoggle's face appeared in it.

"She's in the oubliette," Jareth said. "Get her back to the outer
walls."

Hoggle cocked his head, grimacing. "She's quite determined, your
Majesty. It won't be an easy --"

"Do it." Jareth flipped the crystal into the air, where it vanished
like a bubble.

He chuckled, imagining Sarah's face when she found herself beside
Hoggle's pond again. Then he threw back his head and roared.

The goblins watched him uncertainly. Was it all right to laugh now?

"Well, go ahead," Jareth told them.

With the simple glee that is natural to evil-hearted folk, the
goblins launched themselves into their full routine of cackles and
snickers. The keen goblin directed them, like a conductor, bringing
them up to a crescendo of malign mirth.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Sarah sat on the floor of the black cell wishing she had asked the
Helping Hands to take her up the shaft, toward the light. What could
she hope for in this place?

Four of her senses sharpened in the darkness; she detected a little
scratching sound. "Who's there? Who's there with me?" Her body was
tense with alarm.

"Me," a gruff voice replied.

There was another noise of scratching, followed by a glare of light
as a match ignited, and in turn set a torch aflame. Hoggle was
sitting there, on a rough bench, holding the torch up so that he and
Sarah could see each other.

"Oh," she said, "I am glad to see you, Hoggle." She was so relieved
she could have hugged him.

"Yes, well," Hoggle said brusquely, as though he were slightly
embarrassed by the situation. "Well, nice to see you, too."

Sarah went to stand beside him, in the torchlight. "What are you
doing here? How did you get here?"

Hoggle shrugged, and half turned away. "I knows you were going to get
into trouble soon as I sees you. So I -- I've come to give you a
hand."

A helping hand, Sarah thought, and shivered. She had had enough of
them. "You mean," she asked, "you're going to help me unriddle the
Labyrinth?"

"Unriddle the Labyrinth?" Hoggle answered scornfully. "Don't you know
where you are?"

She looked about her. In the circle of torchlight she saw stone
walls, stone floor, stone ceiling. One rough wooden bench was the
only luxury.

"Oh, she's looking around now, is she?" Hoggle's scorn had turned to
sarcasm. "I suppose the little miss has noticed there ain't no doors
-- just the hole up there?"

Sarah peered as hard as she could into the shadows, and realized that
he was right.

"This," Hoggle was saying, "is an oubliette. The Labyrinth's full of
them."

She was stung by his knowing, mocking tone of voice. "Really?" she
replied, matching his sarcasm. "Now, fancy that."

"Don't try to sound smart," he told her. "You don't know what an
oubliette is."

"Do you?"

"Yes," Hoggle said, with a touch of pride. "It's a place you put
people to forget about them."

She remembered her verbs in French class, and, pleased with herself,
said, "Of course. It comes from the French verb oublier, to forget.
But you already know that, naturally."

Hoggle raised his chin to scratch it, at the same time letting his
eyes roll portentously around the cell.

What he had said began to sink in, and Sarah looked at the flickering
stone walls and shuddered. To forget about them ... Was that what
Jareth was doing with her? Just forgetting about her? She began to
feel indignant. It wasn't fair. He had challenged her to his contest.
All the odds were stacked against her, but she had made a brave
enough start -- he couldn't, now, just dump her in here to rot. Could
he?

Hoggle had taken the torch and waddled into one corner of the
oubliette. He beckoned her to follow. She did, casting a great shadow
across the walls. Lying in the corner was a skeleton, on its back,
knees bent, head propped against the wall.

She put her hand to her mouth and was about to scream, then thought
better of it. She would force herself to remain cool.

"You see?" Hoggle was squinting up at her. "This Labyrinth is a
dangerous place. No place for a little girl."

She looked at him. Who was he calling little?

He nodded at the skeleton. "That's how you'll end up if you keep
going. In an oubliette, like him. Lot of bad memories in the
Labyrinth, I can tell you. What you got to do, little missy, is get
out of here."

"But I must find my baby brother."

"Forget all that. Now it so happens," Hoggle said, scratching his
cheek with a forefinger, "that I knows a shortcut out of the whole
Labyrinth from here."

"No," she said at once. "I'm not giving up now. I've come too far.
I've done too well."

He nodded, and in a smooth voice assured her, "You've been
wonderful." He shook his head, and made a sucking noise on his teeth.
"But this is only the edge of the Labyrinth. You've hardly started.
From here on in, it gets worse."

There was something in his confidential tone that made Sarah
suspicious. "Why are you so concerned about me?" she asked him.

"What?" Hoggle sounded aggrieved. "I am. That's all. Nice young girl
... terrible black oubliette ..."

"Listen," Sarah interrupted him, "you like jewelry, don't you?"

He pursed his face. "Why?" he asked slowly.

"You've got some very nice pieces." She pointed to the chain of
ornaments dangling from his belt. In the torchlight she could not be
sure, but she fancied that a smirking little blush was on his
whiskery cheek.

"Thank you," he said.

"If you'll help me through the Labyrinth ..." She took a break. "...
I'll give you ..." she slipped her bracelet off. It was only a cheap
plastic thing, not one of the special ones that her mother had given
her, and which she wore only when she was going out. "... this," she
concluded, holding it out to him.

"Hm." Hoggle licked his lips and eyed the bracelet appraisingly.

"You like it, don't you?" She could see that he did. He also had an
eye for the ring on her finger. That had no intrinsic value either,
though Sarah was fond of it because her mother had worn it when
playing Hermione in The Winter's Tale.

"So-so," Hoggle said. "Tell you what. You give me the bracelet and
here's what I'll do. I'll show you the way out of the whole
Labyrinth. How's that?"

"You were going to do that in any case," she pointed out.

"Yes," he replied. "That's what would make it a particularly nice
gesture on your part." He held his hand out.

"Oh, no!" Sarah withdrew the bracelet abruptly. "For this you must
show me the way in. The whole way."

Hoggle snorted. "What makes the little miss so certain I knows my way
through it?"

"Well," she answered, "you got here, didn't you?"

"What?" Hoggle clucked, shaking his head. "Yes, yes, but ... I told
you, this is just the fringe of it all. You've got nowhere yet. Come
on, where's your common sense? You don't want to go farther than
this. Really. You've done all you can, and more. You have proved
you're a smart, brave girl, and you don't deserve what would become
of you in here." He glanced pointedly at the skeleton, which seemed
to be jiggling in the flicker of the torchlight. "No, no, you deserve
to be saved from that. I'll say that much for you. So -- how about
it?" He gazed up at her with eyes of piggy shrewdness from beneath
his sprouting eyebrows.

She looked back at him candidly. Whatever his game was, he played it
badly. She had to bite her lip to stop herself from giggling at him.
"I'll tell you what," she said, narrowing her eyes. "If you won't
take me all the way through the Labyrinth, just take me as far as you
can. And then I'll try to do the rest of it myself."

He looked disgusted with her. "Tcha! Of all the headstrong numbskulls
I ever came across ..."

Sarah dangled the bracelet before his eyes. "Fair deal," she offered.
"No strings. One bracelet. Hmm? How about it?"

The bracelet danced in her hand, and his eyes were dancing with it.
Grudgingly he asked, "What is this, anyway?"

"Plastic."

His eyes shone. Then he raised his stumpy arm for Sarah to put the
bracelet onto his wrist. He looked at it there and could not conceal
his pride. "I don't promise nothing," he said. "But" -- he grunted
resignedly -- "I'll take you as far as I can. Then you're on your
own. Right?"

"Right," Sarah agreed.

He nodded. His eyes were still shining as he looked at the bracelet
on his wrist. "Plastic!" he murmured, thrilled.

"Come on, then," Sarah urged him.

Hoggle sprang into action. He seized the heavy wooden bench and, with
a strength Sarah wouldn't have suspected in his small and
round-shouldered body, he upended it so that the seat was flat
against the wall. Sarah was surprised to see two doorknobs on the
underside of the seat, one on the left and one on the right, and she
was disconcerted when Hoggle turned one knob and the seat became a
door into the stone wall. That's not fair, she thought. With a
mischievous grin -- because he was enjoying himself, showing off to
the young miss -- Hoggle walked through the doorway.

She was about to follow him when she heard a crashing and clattering.
Broomsticks and buckets fell out of the doorway into the oubliette.
She grinned, recognizing the old broom-closet joke.

"Oh, damn!" she heard Hoggle say, within the cupboard. He came out
backward, and avoided her eye as he thrust the brooms and buckets
back inside and closed the door.

Still sheepish, he grasped the other doorknob. "Can't be right all
the time, can we?" he muttered. This time, he opened the door rather
less boldly. He peered through. "This is it," he told her. "Come on,
then."

She followed him into a dimly lit corridor with walls of grotesquely
carved rock.

They were working their way along the corridor when a voice boomed,
"DON'T GO ON!"

Sarah jumped violently, and looked all around her. She saw no one,
except Hoggle. And then she realized: carved in the stone wall was a
mouth. Standing back from it, she saw that the mouth was part of a
huge face. Similar faces lined both sides of the corridor. As she and
Hoggle passed them, each intoned a deeply resonant message.

"Go back while you still can!"

"This is not the way!"

"Take heed and go no farther!"

"Beware! Beware!"

"It will soon be too late!"

Sarah put her hands over her ears. The warnings seemed to be echoing
inside her head.

Hoggle, bustling onward, looked around to see where she had gone to,
and saw her standing. "Pah." He waved his hand. "Don't take no notice
of them. They're just Phony-Warnings. You get a lot like them in the
Labyrinth. It means you're on the right track."

"Oh, no, you're not," a face boomed.

"Do shut up," Hoggle snapped back at it.

"Sorry, sorry," the face said. "Only doing me job."

"Well, you don't need to do it to us," Hoggle answered, and led the
way on down the passage.

The face watched them go. "Shrewd cookies," it murmured
appreciatively.

The passageway twisted and turned, but on the whole Sarah had the
impression that they were moving forward, if such a direction existed
in the Labyrinth, and she felt encouraged. They passed another carved
face.

"Oh, beware!" the face declaimed. "For --"

"Don't bother." Hoggle flapped his hand dismissively.

"Oh, please," the face begged. "I haven't said it for such a long
time. You've no idea what it's like, stuck here in this wall, and
with --"

"All right," Hoggle told it. "But don't expect us to take any
notice."

The face brightened up. "Oh, no, of course not!" It cleared its
throat. "For the path you take will lead you to certain destruction!"
It paused. "Thanks," it added politely.

While the face was droning on, a small crystal ball had been rolling
and skipping down the passage from behind Sarah and Hoggle. It
overtook them as they turned a corner, and they saw it bounce on
ahead of them. A blind beggar squatted with his back to the wall, his
hat upturned on the ground in front of his feet. The crystal ball
hopped smartly into the hat.

Sarah heard Hoggle groan. She looked at him. His mouth was open, and
his eyes were staring at the hat on the ground.

The beggar turned his face toward them. "So what have we here?" he
asked.

"Uh, nothing," Hoggle spluttered.

"Nothing? Nothing?!" The beggar rose up.

Hoggle froze. Sarah gasped. It was Jareth.

"Your Majesty ..." Hoggle bowed so obsequiously that he was at risk
of performing a forward roll. "What ...," he swallowed, and smiled
haggardly, "what ... what a nice surprise."

"Hello, Hedgewart," said the King of the Goblins.

"Hogwart," Sarah corrected him.

"Hoggle," Hoggle said, gritting his teeth.

"Hoggle," Jareth said, in a kindly conversational voice, "can it be
that you're helping the girl?"

"Helping?" Hoggle prevaricated. "In what sense? Uh ..."

"In the sense that you're taking her farther into the Labyrinth,"
Jareth said.

"Oh," Hoggle replied. "In that sense."

"Yes."

"Oh, no, no, your Majesty. I was leading her back to the beginning."

"What!" Sarah exclaimed.

Hoggle forced his lips into an ingratiating smile for Jareth. "I told
her I was going to help her unriddle the Labyrinth -- a little
trickery on my part ..." He guffawed and gulped. "But actually ..."

Jareth, smiling pleasantly, interrupted him. "And what's this plastic
trinket around your wrist?"

"This? I ..." Hoggle looked wide-eyed at the bracelet, which someone
must have slipped onto his wrist when he was snoozing and which he
had unaccountably not even noticed there until this moment. "Why," he
stuttered, "er, my goodness, well, I never, where did this come
from?"

"Hoggle," Jareth spoke levelly. "If I thought you were betraying me,
I would be forced to suspend you headfirst in the Bog of Eternal
Stench."

"Oh, no, your Majesty." Hoggle's knees were wobbling. "Not that. Not
the Eternal Stench."

"Oh, yes, Hoggle." Jareth turned and smiled at Sarah. "And you, Sarah
-- how are you enjoying the Labyrinth?"

Sarah swallowed. Beside her, she heard Hoggle's feet shuffling.
Determined not to allow Jareth to intimidate her, she affected a
nonchalance she was far from feeling.

"It's ..." she hesitated. "It's a piece of cake."

Jareth raised one elegant eyebrow.

Hoggle's eyes closed in dismay.

"Really?" Jareth sounded intrigued. "Then how about making it a more
entertaining challenge?"

He looked up, and in the space of air before his eyes the
thirteen-hour clock appeared. He gestured gracefully, and the hands
visibly began to turn faster.

"That's not fair," Sarah said.

"You say that so often. I wonder what your basis for comparison is."

Jareth took the crystal ball from his hat and tossed it back down the
tunnel again. At once, from the darkness, came a noise: a crashing,
whirring, trundling noise, distant as yet, but getting closer all the
time, and louder.

Hoggle's face was a mask of panic. Sarah found herself instinctively
shrinking away from the approaching din.

"The Labyrinth is a piece of cake, is it?" Jareth laughed. "Well, now
we can see how you deal with this little slice." While his mocking
laugh still rang, he vanished.

Sarah and Hoggle stared along the passageway. When they saw what was
coming at them, their jaws dropped and they trembled.

A solid wall of furiously spinning knives and chopping cleavers was
bearing inexorably down upon them. Dozens of keen blades glittered in
the light, every one of them pointing forward and whirring wickedly.
The wall of blades completely filled the tunnel, like a subway train,
and it would chop them into little pieces in the blink of an eye.
And, Sarah noticed with horror, along the bottom of the slashing
machine was a busy row of brushes, for tidying up after itself.

"The Cleaners!" Hoggle shrieked, and took off.

"What?" Sarah was so terrified she was mesmerically rooted where she
stood.

"Run!" Hoggle's shout came echoing from some distance away and
brought her back to her senses. She dashed after him.

The slashing machine came clanking and trundling remorselessly on
behind them.

All it needed for the story to finish now was that they should come
to a dead end. Around a corner, they found one. A heavily barred door
closed the tunnel in front of them.  

[Opaaru]

Chapter Six
~Up and Up~

Sarah gasped. The whizzing blades were rapidly drawing nearer.

Hoggle was pawing pathetically at the great door and mumbling to
himself.

But Sarah wasn't listening to him. She was looking around for an
escape -- above, below. She dashed along the side walls, looking for
a handle or button. There had to be some way out. That was how the
Labyrinth worked. There was always some trick, if only she could find
it.

The clanking, whirring, seething, brushing noise was louder. She
glanced momentarily at what Hoggle was doing. He was still just
scrabbling at the door. It was no use trusting to him. What could she
do? What?

Her eye fell on part of the wall, to one side of the door, that
looked distinct from the rest, a panel of metal plates. She pushed at
it and felt it give a little.

"Hoggle!" she shouted above the echoing din.

"Sarah!" he answered, hammering his pudgy fists against the door and
kicking at it, as though it could be expected to relent in the face
of such frustration. "Don't leave me!"

"Get over here and help me," she yelled back at him.

Hoggle joined her. Together they shoved with all their weight at the
metal plates.

"Come on," Sarah told him, "push, you little double-crosser. Push!"

Hoggle was pushing. "I can explain," he panted.

"PUSH!"

The panel caved in suddenly. They fell through the space it left and
sprawled flat on it.

Behind them, the machine slashed through the air just beside their
feet. When it reached the great barred door, there was a terrible
crunching sound as the knives and cleavers bit through the wood,
spitting it out as splinters, which the whirling brushes swept up
neatly. The machine was cranked along by four goblins, standing on a
platform behind the wall of knives. They were grunting and sweating
with the effort of turning handles and working levers to keep the
contraption whirring. The racket clattered onward, through the
demolished doorway, and off into the distance.

Sarah lay on her back, recovering her breath. Hoggle looked down at
her. "He's throwing everything at us," he said, and shook his head
with a trace of admiration. "The Cleaners, the Eternal Stench -- the
whole works. He must think a lot of you."

Sarah answered with a faint, forced smile. "He's got some funny
ideas."

Hoggle was busy again. Eyes darting left and right beneath his bushy
eyebrows, he clumped around in the shadows until he found what he was
looking for. "This is what we need," he called. "Follow me."

She sat up and looked. There, on the floor of the tunnel they had
entered, she saw the base of a ladder. It led up into darkness.

"Come on," Hoggle was calling. The first rung was too high for him to
reach, and he was hopping around trying to jump up to it.

Sarah went over to him. The ladder looked unsafe to her. It was
constructed of an odd assortment of bits of wood, planks, and
branches, patched together with ends of rope and half-driven nails.

"Come on, give me a hand," Hoggle urged.

She stood with one hand holding the ladder. "How can I trust you,"
she asked, "now that I know you were taking me back to the start of
the Labyrinth?"

"I wasn't," Hoggle protested, and stared fiercely at her with those
piggy eyes of his. As a liar, he was so bad it was quite touching. "I
told him I was taking you to the start of the Labyrinth, to throw him
off the scent, d'ya see? Heh-heh. But actually --"

"Hoggle." Sarah smiled reproachfully at him. "How can I believe
anything you say?"

"Well," he replied, screwing up one eye, "let me put it this way.
What choice do you have?"

Sarah thought about it. "There is that."

"And now," Hoggle said, "the main thing is to get back up." And he
started again to try and hop up to the first rung of the rickety
ladder.

Sarah gave him a leg up, watched him start, and followed. At any
moment she thought the thing might collapse; but then, as Hoggle had
said, what choice did she have?

Without turning his head, Hoggle called out, "The other main thing is
not to look down."

"Right," she called back, and, as though it were a playground dare,
she had to snatch a little look past her feet. "Ooooh!" she cried.
They had climbed much higher than she would have thought possible in
the time. The wobbly ladder seemed to stretch down below her forever.
She could not see the bottom of it, nor could she see the top. She
felt unable to climb another rung. Clutching the sides of the ladder,
she started to shake. The whole ladder shook with her.

Above, Hoggle clung desperately to the shaking ladder. "I said don't
look down," he moaned. "Or perhaps don't means do where you come
from?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize ..."

"Well, when you've done all the shaking you want, perhaps we could
continue."

"I can't help it," Sarah wailed.

Jumping around like a monkey on a stick, Hoggle managed to answer,
"Well, we'll just have to stay here until one of us falls off, or we
turns into worm food."

"I am sorry," Sarah told him, still shaking.

"Oh, good. She's sorry. In that case, I don't mind being shaken off
to my certain death."

Breathing deeply, and looking resolutely upward, Sarah forced herself
to think of happy, secure things: Merlin, her room, lovely evenings
out with her mother, multiplication tables. It worked. She gained
control of her body and started to climb again.

Hoggle felt her coming, and he went on, too. "See," he called to her,
"you've got to understand my position. I'm a coward, and Jareth
scares me."

"What kind of position is that?"

"A very humble one. That's my point. And you wouldn't be so brave,
either, if you'd ever smelled the Bog of Eternal Stench. It's ...
it's ..." It was his turn to pause on the ladder, and control his
shakes.

"What is it?"

"It makes me feel dizzy just to think of it."

"Is that all it does?" Sarah asked. "Smell?"

"Believe me, that's enough. Oh, dear me. You wait, you just wait, if
you get that far."

"Can't you hold your nose?"

"No." Hoggle shuddered again, but started to climb. "Not with this
smell. It gets into your ears. Up your mouth. Anywhere it can get
in."

Sarah thought she could see the top at last. There were chinks of
daylight above her head.

"But the worst thing," Hoggle continued, "is if you so much as get a
splash of the mire on your skin you will never, never be able to wash
the stench off."

He was on the top rung now. He reached up, fiddling with a sliding
bolt and pushed open a wooden hatchway.

Outside was a clear blue sky. Sarah had never seen anything so
beautiful.  

[Opaaru]

Chapter Seven
~The Meaning of Life~

Sarah joined Hoggle on the top rung of the ladder, gratefully
clutching the side of the open hatchway. It felt like firm land after
a voyage at sea.

They were looking at a garden, where birds were singing. It was
surrounded by well-trimmed hedges -- box hedges, she thought, and
indeed they ran so straight, with neatly cut openings in them, and
turned such precise right angles, and the lawn was so flat and tidy,
that the garden was like a green box, with the blue sky for a lid.
But that was not why they were called box hedges, was it? It was a
rather formal garden, with carefully positioned stone monuments. On
the stones were runic carvings, and a few faces -- more of those
Phony-Warnings, Sarah decided, preparing herself for gloomy
predictions.

The hatchway through which they had emerged was itself the top of a
large ornamental urn, set upon a marble table. What a ridiculous
arrangement, Sarah reflected, as they clambered out of the urn and
stepped down to the lawn. Nothing was what it seemed to be. It was
like a language in which all the words were the same as your own, but
where they meant something quite different from what you were used
to. From now on, she would take nothing at its face value. She looked
with suspicion at the urn, and then down at the grass. She stepped
carefully. It could turn out to be the top of someone's head.

Hoggle spread his hands. "Here we are then. You're on your own from
here."

"What?"

"This is as far as I goes."

"You ..."

"Said I didn't promise nothing." He shrugged, callously.

"But you ..."

"And you said you didn't need anyone to save you."

"You little cheat!" Sarah was outraged. "You nasty little cheat!"

"I'm not a cheat. I said I'd take you as far as I could go. Well,
this is it."

"You're lying. You're a coward and a liar and -- and --"

He sniffed. "Don't try to embarrass me. I have no pride."

"Pipsqueak!"

"Don't say that." Hoggle tightened his fists.

"Nasty double-crossing little runty cheating no-good pipsqueak!"

"I said, don't say that!" His eyebrows beetled.

She leaned toward him, and whispered, "Pipsqueak."

"Arrgh." Hoggle's body clenched. He bared his teeth, then opened them
to scream. With his feet together, he jumped in the air, thumping the
ground as he landed. Then he lost his balance, and rolled on the
grass, beating his fists in the air, kicking his stumpy legs. His
voice alternated between a growl and a scream. "It was you insisted
on going on. I said I'd get you out, but oh, no, you're so clever.
You knew better, didn't you? Arrgh. Well, now you're on your own, and
good luck to you, and good riddance." He closed his eyes, and rolled
on the grass again.

Sarah watched him, her mouth open in amazement. She had never seen
anyone so angry, not even Toby.

Eventually Hoggle subsided, and lay for a while, his eyes still
closed, his body twitching occasionally. Sarah wondered if he needed
some sort of help. She felt guilty. She had provoked all that with
just her one word, which was clearly more hurtful than sticks or
stones.

Hoggle opened his eyes. He did not look at her as he stood up,
brushed himself down, and pretended he had enough dignity left to
turn away with his head held high. "Hoggle won't be coming back to
save you this time," he informed her.

"Oh, yes, he will," Sarah muttered under her breath. And before he
could get away, she darted forward and snatched the chain of brooches
and badges from his belt. She had to tug quite hard to get it off,
and he staggered forward.

"Hey!" he protested.

"Ha-ha!" She held his precious jewelry too high for him to reach.

He danced around beneath the dangling chain, trying to jump up and
grab it. It was no good. "Give that back!" he shrieked.

"No. You can have it back when I get to the center of the Labyrinth."

"But you heard Jareth," Hoggle whined. "The center is farther than I
can go. No! No!" His whine had risen to a shrill whimper. "Upside
down in the Bog of Eternal Stench," he said. His eyes closed, and he
shuddered.

"Now there's the castle," Sarah said, in a deliberately
matter-of-fact voice, one a parent might use to a child after its
tantrum. Over the hedges, she could see the castle's spires and
turrets and towers gleaming in the sunlight, and she pointed to them.
"Which way should we try?"

"I don't know." Hoggle had turned sullen.

"Liar."

"Give it back!" Hoggle was trying to leap up and grab the chain
again. "Give it back!"

She ignored him. "Let's try this way," she proposed, and walked
smartly through one of the gaps in the hedges, into a hedged alley.

Hoggle followed her reluctantly, his chin on his chest.

She led the way down the straight alley, and soon came out into
another garden, very like the one they had just left. Indeed, it was
so like the first garden that ... it was the same one, she realized.
She went to the urn, and lifted the lid, to check. Yes, there was the
ladder leading downward. She frowned. "Isn't this the place we just
came from?"

Hoggle was paying no attention to anything but his string of baubles.
"You -- you ..." He leaped, but could get no more than half an inch
off the ground. "Give it back!" he bellowed.

"I'm sure it's the same place." Sarah stared at the hedges and
decided to try another gap. "Come on," she told Hoggle, "let's try
down here."

He trotted miserably after her.

Again the alleyway ran geometrically straight, at a right angle to
the hedge bordering the garden, and again, within a few strides, they
emerged into a garden so very like ...

Sarah groaned. "Oh, no." They had come out through a gap directly
facing the one they had entered.

"Give me my things." Hoggle was trying on a tone of menace. It was
easy to ignore.

"Come on," Sarah said, undaunted, and tried a different gap.

The result was the same as before. They were facing the gap they had
entered, and Hoggle was watching nothing but his jewelry. Sarah
scratched her head. "I don't believe it," she muttered, and looked
around the garden. "Which one haven't we tried?"

Hoggle pointed at a gap.

"Well, let's try that one, then." She plunged into the gap.

This time, Hoggle didn't follow her, but waited, arms folded, on the
lawn. It was only a moment before she reappeared.

"Oh," she groaned, "it's impossible."

"She's so clever, is she?" Hoggle sneered. "Thinks she can do it all.
And she's lost before she's even started."

Sarah turned on him. "There's no point in sounding so smug. If you
don't help me, you won't get your stuff back."

"But ..." Hoggle's face fell. "I don't know which way to go," he
admitted.

"Then you'll have to help in some other way, won't you?"

"Them is my rightful property," Hoggle complained. "It's -- it's not
fair."

"No, it isn't," Sarah conceded. She found herself smiling, and it
took her a moment to realize why. Then she saw it, like a conundrum
that would never fool her again. Nothing was fair. If you expected
fairness, you would be forever disappointed. She turned a broad grin
upon Hoggle. "That's the way it is."

At that moment, she spotted a curious robed figure strolling across
the lawn, apparently deep in thought. Where had he come from? He was
an old man, with a long white mustache and white eyebrows, but the
most striking thing about him was his hat, which was topped with the
head of a bird, with a sharp beak and eyes that were darting glances
everywhere.

"Excuse me," Sarah called, running across the lawn after the old man.
With his slow stride, furrowed brow, bent head, and hands clasped
behind his back, he appeared very wise. Surely he could be of more
help to her than the runty pipsqueak she had had to rely upon till
now. He was sitting gravely down on a garden bench as she approached.
"Please," she said, "can you help me?"

The Wise Man didn't really register Sarah's presence. It was true
that he raised his face toward her, but only as one might gaze at a
tree, a fly, or a cloud while lost in thought. Rather than her, he
seemed to be seeing a far horizon beyond her, so far beyond that few
mortals had ever scanned it.

The depth and range of his thinking was clearly vast, whatever the
subject of his thoughts might be. He was probably pondering deeply
upon some problem that Sarah had never even imagined. Was it
mathematical, she wondered, like the square root of negative two? Or
philosophical, like the meaning of meaning, perhaps? But no, those
were things she'd at least tried to imagine, when she had read about
them. Those great eyes gazing right through her were more likely
preoccupied with some question of physics, or biochemistry, or
linguistics, or all of that at once and more.

"Please?" she repeated timidly.

The bird's head on the Wise Man's hat suddenly spoke. "Go away! Can't
you see he's thinking?"

The Wise Man slowly raised a finger, and rolled his eyes up toward
the bird, and spoke. "Sh," he said.

Sarah closed her mouth apologetically. She stood aside, and waited.

"And don't stare," the hat reprimanded her. "You'll put him off."

"I'm sorry."

The Wise Man's lips opened slowly, and his eyes turned upward again,
to address the hat. "Silence," he commanded.

The hat looked wryly at Sarah. "This is the thanks I get," it said
disgustedly.

"Where was I?" the Wise Man was asking.

"How should I know?" the hat chirped. "You're the Big Thinker."

The Wise Man noticed Sarah. "Ah, a young girl."

Sarah returned a polite little smile.

The Wise Man's gaze traveled downward, and settled on Hoggle. "And is
this your brother?"

"Oh, no," Sarah answered. "He's just a friend."

Hoggle had been about to expostulate at being taken for Sarah's
brother, but now he stopped, and looked sideways at Sarah. It was the
first time anyone had ever called him a friend. He frowned.

The Wise Man took a long breath. "And what can I do for you?" he
asked Sarah.

"Please," she said, feeling shy and a little confused to be
conversing with an ancient sage about what must seem to him so
trivial a matter, "can you tell me ... we -- er, that is, I must get
to the castle ... But I can't even get out of this garden. Every time
I try to leave I find myself right back here again. I can see the
castle over there, but ... can you tell me, please, how I can get to
it?"

"Ah." The Wise Man nodded slowly, closing his eyes. After a while he
said, "So you want to get to the castle."

"How's that for brain power?" demanded the bright-eyed hat.

"Quiet," the Wise Man commanded.

"Nuts," the hat replied.

Sarah put a hand over her mouth to conceal a giggle.

The Wise Man composed his hands together on his lap. "So, young
woman," he told her, pursing his lips in thought. Nodding, he
explained, "The way forward is sometimes the way back."

His hat pulled a face. "Will you listen to this crap?"

The Wise Man was glaring upward and clenching his fingers. He cleared
his throat. "And sometimes," he continued, gazing earnestly at Sarah
again, "the way backward --"

"Is the way forward," the hat interrupted. "Can you believe it? I ask
you."

"Will you be quiet!" the Wise Man ordered his hat, profoundly. He
looked again at Sarah. "Quite often, young lady, it seems we're not
getting anywhere, when in fact we are."

Sarah looked despairingly around the garden. "Well, I'm certainly not
getting anywhere at the moment."

"Join the club," said the hat.

"Perhaps," the Wise Man said, "perhaps it only seems like that. All
... is not always ... what ..." It appeared that he was drifting off
into a reverie, on the nature of good and evil, possibly, or
four-dimensional calculus, and he only just made it to the end of his
sentence, "... it seems."

The hat peered down over the Wise Man's forehead, then looked perkily
up at Sarah and Hoggle. "I think that's your lot," the hat said. "The
sum total of earthly wisdom strewn at your feet for the asking.
Please leave a contribution in the box."

Sarah noticed for the first time that the Wise Man had absentmindedly
drawn a collection box, with a slot, from the folds of his robe, and
now was sitting, quite abstracted in contemplation, with the box on
his knee. As she looked at it, he gave it a discreet little shake.

What was she to do? She hesitated, then had the idea of donating one
of the badges from Hoggle's string, which she was still holding.

He read her mind. "Don't you dare!" Hoggle barked. "Them's mine."

Sarah paused, and finally slid her mother's costume ring off her
finger. Hoggle watched her drop it in the collecting box and looked
green. He'd thought he was going to get that too.

"Thank you so kindly," the hat said, sounding like a fairground
barker. "Move along, please."

As they walked away, across the garden, Hoggle said, "You didn't have
to give that away. He didn't tell you nothing."

"Well," Sarah said reflectively, "he said something about the way
forward being sometimes the way backward. We haven't gotten anywhere
so far trying to go out forward, so why don't we try walking out
backward? It might work."

Hoggle's expression was skeptical, but he humored her by doing as she
suggested. They walked backward through the gap in the hedge from
which Sarah had last emerged, and the garden remained in peaceful
silence, decorated with birdsong.

The hat was watching where they had gone. When they did not return,
it chirped, "Well, what do you know! They took your advice."

"Zzzzzz," the Wise Man said, having dozed off after so much mental
travail.

His hat cocked an eye down at him. "It's so stimulating being your
hat."

"Zzzzzz," the Wise Man concurred.  

[Opaaru]

Chapter Eight
~A Very Loud Voice~

Once they had left the Wise Man, Sarah and Hoggle found that by
walking forward they could move ahead. It made a nice change. Not,
however, any more than a nice change, because the maze of hedges
turned them left and right and back again so often that it was
impossible to make any progress toward the castle. Frequently it
could be seen, its spires and turrets looming in the distance above
the hedges, but no matter how far and fast they walked, it remained
in the distance.

Sarah was still thinking about the Wise Man. "Hoggle," she asked,
"how do you tell when someone's talking sense and when he's talking
rubbish?"

Hoggle shrugged impatiently. "How should I know? All I knows is we're
going to get ourselves well and truly lost in this place. Let me go
back."

"Not on your life. You're sticking with me now until we get there,"
Sarah said, wondering how much time she had left.

Hoggle said, "Huh," rather noncommittally, she thought.

Well, she still had his precious string of baubles. He wouldn't get
that back until she had found Toby, and she judged that nothing would
induce him to abandon her while she still had his treasure.

Alley, turning, alley, dead end, stone pillar, alley, ornamental
shrub, turning, on it went, leading nowhere. Sarah wondered whether
it wasn't a closed system, no exit but its entrance, that urn. It was
just the kind of puzzle that Jareth would set, to waste what time she
had left. But if that were so ... She shuddered. Would she have the
courage to go back into the urn, and down that ladder, and start over
in that awful subterranean passageway?

Down, down, down, down ...

She remembered the hands, and the oubliette, and that terrifying
slashing machine, and Jareth in the beggar costume. She recalled a
sentence that her mother had once read aloud to her from a book, as
she liked to when something caught her fancy: Mind what you say to a
beggar, it might be God in disguise. When she saw her mother again,
she would tell her: Or it might just be the King of the Goblins.

She shrugged. How could she be expected to have any respect for
Jareth? He was dangerous and powerful, obviously, but he was too
aware of it -- a show-off, really -- and mean, a cheat. He had a
certain style about him, she could concede that much. He was not
unattractive. But how could you respect, still less admire, someone
like him? The best word she could think of to describe him was cad.

Alley, turning, alley ... on they trudged. Hedged in as they were,
they couldn't see that they were not completely alone in the maze.
The head and coils of a sea serpent rode along above a hedge quite
close to them, though had they actually encountered the beast they
might have spotted three little pairs of goblin feet running along
beneath it, and heard the grunts of goblins supporting the parts of
the serpent. Several times they narrowly missed meeting a mounted
goblin, with lance and flag, who had been sent out by Jareth to look
for them and spent an hour galloping at random.

Hoggle was quiet for some time. Then he asked, "Why did you say that
about me being your friend?"

"Because you are," she told him candidly. "You may not be much of a
friend, but you're the only one I've got in this place."

Hoggle thought about it for a while. Then he said, "I ain't never
been no one's friend before."

An enormous blood-curdling roar from somewhere nearby froze the two
of them in their tracks.

Hoggle spun around. Pausing only to say, "Keep the stuff!" he started
to run back, away from the roar.

Sarah ran after him and seized hold of his sleeve. "Wait a minute,"
she said angrily. "Are you my friend or not?"

While Hoggle hesitated, another air-trembling roar made up his mind
for him. "No! No, I'm not. Hoggle ain't no one's friend. He looks
after hisself. Like everyone does." He wriggled his sleeve free.
"Hoggle is Hoggle's friend," she heard him yell, as he dashed in the
opposite direction from the roaring and vanished into the maze.

"Hoggle!" Sarah called. "You coward!"

She heard another frightful roar, but stayed where she was. The
monster, whatever it was, did not seem to be getting any closer to
her. "Well," she said, speaking out loud to reassure herself, "I'm
not going to be afraid. Things are not always what they seem in this
place -- that's what the Wise Man said." The sound came again, like a
pride of starving lions roaring in unison. "It could be some tiny
creature," Sarah told herself, "perfectly harmless ... that just
happens to have a very loud voice ..." After all, by far the loudest
person at home was Toby, and he couldn't do you any harm. Was there
some law she had never grasped, something to do with the smallest
creatures making the loudest noise? Did dinosaurs roar? She decided
not. They would have made a low growling noise. But what about ants,
then? Probably they made a terrible noise, somewhere beyond the range
of human hearing.

As she was not going to run away, the only alternative was to proceed
in the direction they had been going, with some shred of faith that
forward meant onward. And so, crossing her fingers for luck, she
moved tentatively along the hedge alley.

When she reached a gap in the hedge and peered cautiously through it,
she saw that things were, indeed not always what they seemed. The
roar was coming from a terrifyingly huge beast, but the animal was
upside down, suspended by one leg lashed to a tree. It was roaring
with pain, because four goblins were tormenting it with nipper
sticks, long poles with small, fierce creatures on the end of them
that bit like piranhas whenever they were given the chance.

The great beast, who was covered with shaggy, ginger hair, flailed
out haplessly at the goblins, but the only result was that its body
swung to and fro. That improved the game for the goblins, giving each
of them the opportunity to dart in ahead of the others and get in a
cruel thrust with the nipper stick before the bellowing, frantically
swatting beast had completed its swing back. They were clearly having
the time of their lives. They vied with each other in how soft a part
of the beast's body they could reach, and how long they could hold
the nipping teeth in there before they had to jump out of the way of
its desperate arms. So absorbed were they that Sarah was able to
leave the hedge and come closer without any risk of their noticing
her.

She was appalled by the scene. "The little beasts!" she muttered to
herself.

She looked around for a weapon and found some small rocks. She picked
one up, took careful aim and threw it at the nearest goblin. It hit
him on the head, knocking the visor of his helmet down over his eyes.

"Hey," the goblin exclaimed. "Who turned out the lights?"

He lurched around sightlessly, still swinging and thrusting out his
nipper stick. The vicious creature on the end of the stick was glad
to bite anything within its reach. When it made contact with another
goblin, its teeth sank in.

"Ouch! Ouch!" the bitten goblin shrieked. "Hey, stop that, you."

"Stop what?" asked the first goblin, still prodding out unseeingly.

The second goblin was now under furious assault. "Aargh. Dog weed!
Rat's meal!" Spitefully he retaliated by deliberately using his
nipper stick.

It was the blinded goblin's turn to wail. "Help! Who's attacking me?
Where are the lights?"

The other two goblins had paused in their tormenting of the beast.
This was even better fun. They nudged each other and snickered as
they watched the fight.

"Go to it!" one of them shouted.

"Get him!" yelled the other, hopping up and down in his excitement.

Sarah had armed herself with another little rock, and now she threw
it. She was astonished at how accurate her aim was today. The rock
hit one of the other goblins on the helmet, knocking down his visor.
He staggered into his companion, and that one's visor slammed down,
too, with the impact.

"Help," cried one.

"It's gone dark," squealed the other.

"What's happened?"

"Lights! Where are the lights?"

Meanwhile the first goblin, still visored and unable to see who was
nipping him, decided that his only recourse was to take to his heels.
Running blind, he crunched straight into the two others, who were
both staggering now. His nipper stick seized its opportunity.

Sarah watched with tears of laughter in her eyes as three goblins
dueled with each other, helmets over their faces, while the fourth
went on cursing his wounds.

"Ouch! I'm being nipped."

"Help! Lights!"

"Ow. Stop it!"

"Worm rot! Teazel rash!"

The uproar faded as the pack of them pursued each other, yelling and
yelping, crashing into hedges, falling over roots.

Sarah wiped her eyes, and her face became serious as she gazed at the
great dangling beast. Having delivered it from its tormentors, she
had half a mind to leave well enough alone and steal away. But the
pity she had felt for the monster was still working in her. She
approached it cautiously.

What the shaggy brute saw was another tormentor coming. It let out a
terrible roar and aimed a great blow at her.

She was careful to remain just out of reach. All the same, even to
stand there and face the gigantic, inverted creature took more
courage than she thought she had. She remembered having read
somewhere that you have to speak firmly and with confidence to wild
animals. So, in her most perfect schoolteacher voice, she told it,
"Now, stop that."

Another great roar was on its way from the depths of the monster's
body, but the beast stopped in mid-roar when it heard itself thus
addressed. "Murh?" it said.

Sarah clicked her tongue. "Is that any way to treat someone who's
trying to help you?"

The monster still had its doubts. It tried delivering another bellow
and aimed a swipe, but there was not much conviction in it.

"Stop it, do you hear?" Sarah was beginning to enjoy herself. It was
a role she played well, having had plenty of time to study those who
played it every day in the classroom. It was one of the parts she had
liked to perform for her mother's amusement.

The monster answered, "Huh?"

"Now do you or do you not want me to get you down from that tree?"

The monster hung in there for a bit, reflecting on what its options
were. It craned its neck to look up at its tethered ankle, reflected
again, then turned its face to Sarah.

"Ludo -- down," it said.

Its voice had become almost deferential. Its face was still fearsome,
though -- oxlike horns on its head, sunken eyes, an enormous jaw with
a fang protruding at each end, and a broad gaping mouth that looked
grim.

Sarah steeled herself to approach closely. She felt its warm breath
on her face as she stood beside the beast and twisted herself down
from the waist to get a look at it the right way up. What she saw
surprised her. The great mouth that had looked so grim, with its
turned-down corners, had actually been, of course, smiling sweetly at
her. Gosh, she reflected, it must often be like that for poor Toby,
when people lean over him from the pillow of his crib.

Not only was the monster grinning at her, it now blinked in a goofy
sort of way, which just could mean, I-am-in-a-pickle-aren't-I-but-
all-the-same-how-d'you-do-and-thanks-for-being-nice-to-me. Sarah
returned a cautious smile. She was not going to credit this monster
with being, uniquely in this place, what it seemed to be.

"Ludo -- down," it repeated.

"Ludo," Sarah asked, "is that your name?"

"Ludo -- friend."

"Uh-uh. I've had people say that to me before. So I'm not taking
anything for granted. But ..." She shook her head and, more to
herself than to Ludo, concluded, "Your eyes are just like Merlin's."

Feeling safer now, she ruffled Ludo's ginger head, between his horns.
He smiled, and sighed.

She straightened up and looked at the knot tethering Ludo's leg to
the branch. It was a simple bowline, which she could release with one
tug. With her hand raised, she paused, and looked down at Ludo. "I do
hope you're not going to turn back into a raging monster the moment I
let you down from here."

Ludo's response was another roar that made the rocks tremble.

Sarah leaped back. "I knew it! I can't trust anyone in this place."

But then she saw that Ludo, far from aiming a blow at her, was using
his paws to rub one or two of the most tender places where the
goblins had bitten him with their nipper sticks. "Ludo -- hurt," he
moaned.

Sarah looked more closely at him. He was covered with little bleeding
wounds, under his fur. "Oh," she cried, "you poor thing!" Quickly she
reached up, tugged at the rope, and released him. He hit the ground
with a mighty thump.

With deep little groans, he sat himself up, and began to rub his
wounded head and the sores inflicted upon him. She watched him, even
now uncertain whether she should expect him to thank her or eat her.

"Goblins -- mean to Ludo," he grimaced.

"Oh, I know that." She nodded, with more assurance than she felt.
"They were terribly mean to you," she told Ludo. She moved closer to
him and patted his arm. "But it's all right now."

He sniffled, still rubbing. Then his face broke into the most
endearing big dumb smile she had ever seen, bigger and dumber even
than in any cartoon. "Friend!" Ludo declared.

"That's right, Ludo. I'm Sarah."

"Sarah -- friend."

"Yes, I am." She couldn't smile big and dumb like that, but she gave
him the best she could do. "And," she added, "I want to ask a favor
of you, Ludo."

"Huh?"

"I have to get to the castle at the center of the Labyrinth. Do you
know the way there?"

Ludo shook his great head, still beaming at her.

Sarah sighed, and her shoulders sagged. "You don't know the way
either?"

Again, he shook his head, with a small frown of apology.

"I wonder if anyone knows how to get through the Labyrinth."

Sarah rested her chin in her hand, philosophically He was a dear
monster, and likely to prove much more trustworthy than that runty,
cowardly pipsqueak, but she could have done with a guide. Well, if no
one was going to help her, she would find out what she could do on
her own.

She stood up. Ludo stood with her, massively towering over her. He
may be no guide, she thought, but it's nice to have him on my side.  

[Opaaru]

Chapter Nine
~Another Door Opens~

Sarah walked past the hanging tree. Ludo, wincing with the soreness
of his nipped body, followed.

Behind the tree, two high doorways had appeared, set into a stone
wall that seemed to be part of a rough forest hedge. On each door was
an iron knocker.

"Well, look at these," she remarked, glad to have a companion again.
It was more fun than talking to herself.

They approached the doorways and looked more closely at the knockers.
Each had the form of a repulsive face, with a ring set in it. The
knocker to her left had the ring coming out of its ears. The one on
the right held the ring in its mouth.

She looked from one to the other. Which to choose? She always found
choices hard to make; if there were two kinds of cake at a birthday
party, she would contrive to have a bit of each, at a decent
interval, naturally, and hoping that no one noticed. Now she looked
around the glade, to see if there was some other way past this wall.
There wasn't, so she examined the knockers. "Well, Ludo," she asked,
"which one of these two ugly characters shall we choose?"

"It's very rude to stare," said the first knocker, the one with the
ring set in its ears.

Sarah jumped, still not accustomed to the habit that normally
inarticulate things had, in the Labyrinth, of speaking their minds.

"I'm sorry," she said, though she felt that she was scarcely to blame
for assuming that a door knocker would have no mind to speak, let
alone blunt opinions on acceptable social behavior. "I was just
wondering which door to choose, that's all."

"What?" the first knocker asked.

Sarah was about to reply that, where she came from, to say "What?"
was thought just as rude as staring. But before she could open her
mouth, she heard a mumbling noise from behind her.

It was the second knocker, with the ring in its mouth. It said
something like "Mmm gli m g any."

"Don't talk with your mouth full," the first knocker said primly.

"Ker glimpfwrt mble mble mble ..."

Sarah addressed the second knocker: "I don't understand what you're
saying." Then she realized what the problem was. "Ah," she said,
"wait a moment.

"What was that?" the first knocker inquired.

Sarah took hold of the ring in the second knocker's mouth and pulled.
It came away easily. The face looked tremendously relieved. It
exercised the muscles around its jaw and chin with evident pleasure.

"It's so good to get that thing out," it sighed.

"What were you saying?" Sarah asked.

The first knocker, behind her, said, "Huh?"

The second knocker nodded at the first. "I said it's no good talking
to him. Oh, dear me, no. He's deaf as a post, that one, I can tell
you."

The first knocker said, "Mumble, mumble, mumble, that's you. You're a
wonderful conversational companion, I must say."

"YOU SHOULD TALK!" the second knocker yelled back. "ALL YOU CAN DO IS
MOAN!"

"It's no good," the first knocker said, in a matter-of-fact voice. "I
can't hear you."

Sarah looked at the second knocker. "Where do these doors lead?" she
asked it.

"What?" asked the first knocker.

"Search me," the second one answered her. "We're just the knockers."

"Oh," Sarah said, reflecting that she ought to have known better than
to expect a simple answer.

Well, she had to try either one door or the other. She chose the
second one. Having engaged in discourse with it, however slightly,
she felt it would somehow have been discourteous to turn her back and
choose its neighbor. On the other hand, it could be that the knockers
would prefer their doors not to be opened. She shouldn't take it for
granted that the knockers would like people to make use of them.
Every either had its or. If she weighed the implications of every
alternative, would she ever get to make a choice at all? When one
door opens, so does another.

She had committed herself to the second door by now, with her hands
against it, so she went ahead and pushed. It didn't budge. She pushed
harder. She leaned her shoulder against the door. It was as solid as
the wall it was set in. She thought of asking Ludo to help her. His
gigantic bulk would surely open the door.

But she wasn't sure it was the right door to choose, and so, instead,
she asked another question. "How do we get through?"

"Huh?" asked the first knocker.

The second one, with an arch smile, replied, "Knock and the door will
open."

"Ah." She looked at the ring she held, and went to put it back in the
second knocker's mouth.

He made a face. "Uh-uh, I don't want that thing back in my mouth."
And he clamped his lips tightly shut, and refused to open them even
when she put the ring against his mouth.

"Oh, come on," Sarah said encouragingly. "I want to knock."

He shook his head stubbornly.

"Hmmm," commented the first knocker, morosely as usual. "Doesn't want
the ring back in his mouth. Can't say as I blame him."

"Then," Sarah said, putting down the ring, "I'm afraid I'll have to
bother you instead." She walked over to the first knocker and took
hold of its ring.

"Ow! Ooh," the first knocker protested.

Sarah took no notice. She knocked twice upon the heavy door. It swung
open.

Cautiously, she put her head through the doorway, to see what was
beyond. She heard giggles, splutters of suppressed laughter, honks
and hoots. Instinctively she started to grin herself, and went
farther through the doorway. She turned, waiting for Ludo to follow
her. He remained in the doorway, shaking his head.

"Come on, Ludo."

He shook his head again.

"Well," she thought, "it can't do any harm to see where this might
lead." She would come back for Ludo if she spotted the castle.

She was in a sunlit forest, with clumps and banks of flowers,
daisy-decked hillocks, dingles and dells, shady trees all around. The
laughter was infectious. Giggling, she looked hard for the creatures
who were enjoying all this merriment. All she could see were the
forest plants. "Who is it?" she called out, chuckling.

From right behind her came a laughing snort. She spun around and saw
a tree's branch moving to cover a hollow in its trunk that just might
have been its mouth. "It was the tree," she declared. "Tree, wasn't
it you?"

That sparked off a tinkle of giggles at her feet. She looked down and
saw a cluster of bluebells shivering and shaking together with
amusement.

"Oh, look!" she exclaimed, falling to her knees and giggling with
them. They were beside themselves with hilarity now.

The tree above her could hold it in no longer. It exploded in a
bellow of mirth. Sarah threw her head back and joined in.

It was the signal for a general outburst. A tree stump nearby was
laughing in a deep, cracked voice. Birds on a branch were hopping and
cackling. Another tree was rocking. Ferns waved about, squirrels and
mice peeped from their holes with tears in their eyes.

Sarah was helpless with laughing. Catching a breath, she panted,
"What are we laughing at?"

"I don't know!" the tree above her roared. "Ha-ha-ha-ha!"

The whole forest shook. Even the grass on the ground was trembling.

Sarah was feeling faint. She sat down. "Oh ... please ... please, I
must stop." She clutched her sides.

In response, the laughter around her redoubled. It reached a pitch of
hysterical shrillness.

"I've never laughed so much in my life," Sarah gasped, flat on her
back.

Birds convulsed with mirth fell out of the trees and hit the ground
headfirst. She saw their eyes were mad, with pinprick pupils. Other
creatures came screaming from under the roots of trees, and as they
approached her she managed to sit up, alarmed by their sinister
gaping mouths and crazy eyes.

Still laughing, she moaned, "Oh, please, please! I must stop."

"She can't stop," the tree howled, and the whole forest screeched in
reply.

She got to her feet. Her body and mouth were shaking uncontrollably,
but her eyes were haggard. "Stop!" she whispered. "Stop!" She
staggered back toward the open doorway and collapsed.

Shrieking hysteria applauded that.

She raised her head. She could see Ludo just outside the door, and
held up her hand for help. He looked very uneasy and wouldn't come
inside the door, but he held his arm out toward her, and nodded his
great head in encouragement. Her eyes fixed on him, she dragged
herself across the last few yards, until he could bend down, pick her
up, take her outside, and shut the door.

The laughter stopped dead. The breeze in the leaves of the maze
outside was the sweetest sound she'd ever heard.

It took her some time to recover. Ludo watched over her anxiously.
When she stood up, sniffed, and gave him a small smile, he said,
"Ludo -- glad."

"Sarah -- glad," she answered, and ruffled his head.

There was nothing for it but to try the other door. She walked across
to it, picking up the ring.

"I'm sorry," she said, and pushed the ring against the knocker's
lips. He pursed his mouth and resisted her.

"Oh, come on," she said, and tried again. The knocker frowned and
squeezed his lips together even more tightly.

Then she had an idea. With her finger and her thumb, she squeezed the
knocker's nose. He held out a while, scowling more and more fiercely,
but in the end he had to open his mouth for breath. "Damn!" he
gasped.

In a flash, she had the ring back in his mouth, and knocked on the
door.

He was protesting. "Kgrmpf. Mble. Mble. Mble. Grmfff."

"Sorry," Sarah said. "I had to do it."

"That's all right," the first knocker told her. "He's used to it."

This door swung open to reveal a forbidding forest. On this side of
the wall they were in sunshine, but through the doorway was a dismal
and brooding prospect.

Ludo was growling and trying to draw back, but Sarah was not going in
without him this time. "Come on," she said, and braced herself.
"There's no other way we can go. Except back where we came from, and
I'm not doing that."

She stepped through the doorway and waited for Ludo to join her. He
followed her, reluctantly. The door swung shut of its own accord,
with a resounding thud. The echo lasted a long time.

Sarah shivered. The sky was the color of cast iron, and the forest
plants looked shriveled, as though the sun had never shone on them
since their first day on earth. She felt terribly dispirited after
just a minute in this place, and she looked for Ludo to hearten her.
His expression was unhappier than her own.

"Oh, come on, Ludo," she said, trying to sound cheerful. "Fancy a
great thing like you being so scared."

Ludo shook his head. "Not -- good."

She shrugged, with a heavy heart, turned around again, and wondered
which way to go. A path ran in front of her into the forest, but how
could anyone take it for granted that a path was the way you wanted
to go? "I don't even know which way the castle is," she said. Again
she looked at Ludo, hoping that from his height he would be able to
see it, but he had his head sunk resolutely on his chest and took no
notice. She tried standing on tiptoe. That was no good.

Nothing was any good. She felt a tear of despair rim her eye and
brushed it irritably away. "There's nothing to be scared of," she
said, and felt she had to take some initiative, if only to persuade
Ludo to buck up.

She peered up into the branches of a tree. What she did not see,
behind her, was that the earth opened up beneath Ludo and swallowed
him into a great hole. He had no time to utter more than the first
tremor of a roar before the earth closed up again above his head.

"Maybe I could climb up there," Sarah was saying. "Then I must be
able to see the way to the castle."

She took hold of the lowest branch and put her weight on it. It
snapped off in her hand, with a dry crack like china, and before she
could register that it was dead the whole tree collapsed. Lying
before her she saw a pile not of dead wood but of bones. The thing
she was holding was a bone. With a shudder she threw it away. There
was a dry, rustling noise going on all around, and in dismay she saw
the whole forest was collapsing, like a series of dinosaur skeletons.

One bone tree after the other clattered to the ground, each bringing
down the next, like dominoes, until the entire landscape had been
reduced to heaps of bones, all jumbled together. And Sarah knew it
was all her fault, the destruction of this delicate balance. She had
snapped off the branch. It was too much to bear. She burst out
weeping and sank to the ground. She couldn't do anything right. It
was all hopeless. Quite hopeless.

She cried and cried, with her hands over her face. Eventually she
looked to see if Ludo was crying, too. "Ludo?" She looked all around
her. He wasn't there. Distractedly, she inspected the bones on the
ground to see if any had ginger fur on them.

"Ludo!" She rushed around the spot where the two of them had been,
looking in a panic for any sign of him. She saw none. Above, the sky
had grown even darker and more miserable. "Ludo!" she screamed,
feeling utterly alone in this desolate bonescape. "Where are you?
What's going on?"

She ran, to get away, anywhere. If she stayed there she would be
bones herself. She ran through the heaps of bones and into another
part of the forest, also grim. Huge gnarled roots stretched across
the path. The trees had trunks like tight fists. Fallen branches and
dead leaves covered the earth. Here and there a brief vista between
the trees offered a way on, but along each one that she took cobwebs
clothed her face. From clumps of ferns, clouds of dark moths flitted
up at her. "What's going on?" she whimpered as she ran.

The forest got darker as she ran deeper into it. She stumbled into a
glade above which the trees were so close that she could not see her
feet in the darkness. Still she ran, until a terrifying, bright,
savage figure leaped out in front of her.

"Yeah!" it screeched. "What's going on?"

Sarah's mouth and eyes formed circles. She screamed.  

[Opaaru]

Chapter Ten
~No Problem~

Hoggle was hoggling around the hedge maze still, minding his own
business, and most of all minding that that girl had gotten his
jewels. He'd tried to please both her and Jareth, and that's what you
got for trying to please everyone. No baubles.

When Sarah screamed, he heard her. It stopped him in his tracks,
which were heading for the start of the Labyrinth. He listened, heard
a second scream, wrestled with his rudimentary conscience, came to a
decision, and began to run in her direction. He knew his way around
this place better than the stupid goblins in the castle. "I'm coming,
missy," he shouted.

He galloped around the corner straight into a pair of knees.

Jareth was wearing his cloak and looking quite handsomely fiendish.
"Well," he said pleasantly, "if it isn't you."

"It isn't me," Hoggle told him, trembling.

"And where are you going, hmm?"

"Ah ..." Hoggle was staring at Jareth's boots. "Ah ...," he said in a
different tone of voice, to hold his audience's attention. Then he
spent a little while scratching his backside, suggesting that a
person can't be expected to answer a question while he's plagued with
an itch.

Jareth was content to wait, with a smile on his lips.

"Er ..." At last Hoggle came up with it. "The little missy, she give
me the slip ... er ... but I just hears her now ..."

Jareth's eyes narrowed.

"So I'm ... er ... er, I'm going to fetch her and then lead her
straight back to the beginning. Just like you told me." He wished the
King of the Goblins would kick him, or pelt him with slugs, or do
anything, anything but smile that nerve-racking, pleasant smile.

"I see." Jareth nodded. "I thought for a moment you were running to
help her. But no, you wouldn't. Not after my warnings. That would be
stupid."

"Ha-ha," Hoggle agreed, with a trembling heart. "Oh, ha-ha-ha.
Stupid? You bet it would be stupid. Me? Help her? After your
warnings?"

Jareth elegantly inclined his head to examine Hoggle's belt. "Oh,
dear," he said, seeming concerned, "poor Hoghead!"

"Hoggle," Hoggle growled.

"I just noticed that your lovely jewels are missing."

"Uh ..." Hoggle looked down at his sadly unadorned belt. "Oh, yes. So
they are. My lovely jewels. Missing. There now. Better find 'em, eh?
But first," he promised in a profoundly reliable voice, "I'm off to
fetch the little missy back to the beginning of the Labyrinth." He
thought of trying to wink, but decided not to. "Just like we
planned," he said, and started to march obediently away.

"Wait," Jareth told him.

Hoggle froze. His eyes closed.

"I have a better plan, Hoggle. Give her this."

With a wave of his left hand, Jareth produced a bubble from the air.
In his hand it became a crystal ball. He waited for Hoggle to turn
around and tossed it to him. Hoggle caught it. It had become a peach.
Hoggle looked at it, dumbfounded. "Wha -- what is it?"

"A present."

Hoggle's eyebrows beetled. "It ... it ain't going to harm the little
missy, is it?" he asked slowly.

"Oh." Jareth placed a hand over his heart. "Now, why the concern?"

Hoggle pursed his lips. "Just ... curious."

"Give it to her, Hoggle. That's all you have to do. And all you have
to know."

Hoggle was torn between fearful obedience, which was familiar to him,
and affection, to which he could not have put a name. "I ..." He
stood more erect. "I won't do nothing to harm her." He reckoned that
such a moment of defiance might have earned him a pint of earwigs
down his breeches, at least.

Instead, Jareth replied with that pleasant smile that by now was like
broken glass on Hoggle's nerves. "Come, come, come, Hogbrain," the
Goblin King laughed teasingly, "I'm surprised at you. Losing your
ugly head over a girl."

"I ain't lost my head," Hoggle scowled.

"You don't imagine that a young girl could ever like a repulsive
little scab like you, do you?"

Hoggle was stung. "She said we was ..." He stopped himself in
mid-blurt, but it was too late.

Jareth gave him a coy, sideways grin. "What? Bosom companions? Was
that it, Piggle? Piggly-Wiggly? Friends, are you?"

Hoggle, red-faced, was blinking at his boots again. "Don't matter,"
he muttered.

Jareth's voice came back crisply. "You give her that, Hoggle, or I'll
have you tipped straight into the Bog of Eternal Stench before you
can blink."

In miserable obedience, Hoggle nodded. "Yes."

He had started to hurry on his way, assuming the interview was over,
when he heard Jareth's voice again. He stopped, rigid, not daring to
turn around

"I'll tell you what." Jareth had his head back and was looking down
his nose at Hoggle. "If she ever kisses you -- I'll turn you into a
prince."

Hoggle knew there was going to be a catch. "You will?"

There was a catch. "Prince of the Land of Stench."

Jareth thought that was a capital joke. He was still laughing as he
disappeared.

Hoggle remained standing still, staring at the peach in his hand. His
face registered several emotions at once. Amusement was not among
them.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The bright, savage figure that had leaped out in front of Sarah was a
Firey, and the Fireys are wild. Are they ever. They are wild about
how wild they are.

She screamed a second time and shrank away from the creature, hands
folded across herself. It was a bit like a scrawny fox, with a long
snout that opened very wide, and a bushy tail. Its fur was
red-pink-purplish. It walked, or rather bounded, on two chickenlike
legs. Its staring eyes were blue, with red pupils. It had very long
fingers, which seemed to be perpetually drumming.

"What's happening?" it demanded.

Sarah shook her head and opened her mouth to frame some sort of
answer, but all that came out was a sob.

"Now cut that out right now, you hear?" the Firey told her.

"Yeah," agreed another one from behind her, making her start around
in fright. "That ain't gonna do no good."

"No, sir!" hollered a third one, prancing from the trees and leering
wildly at her.

"No, sir." A fourth one appeared.

And a fifth. "Hey!" it said to her, rousingly. "Come on, now."

She looked around at them all in great alarm. "What do you want?"

"Wa-hoo!" one replied, rapping out a fast rhythm with his fingers on
a rock.

"Hoot!" another said, setting up a cross-rhythm.

"What, us?" asked a third.

Sarah nodded.

"Why, we're just after havin' ourselves a good time."

"Oh," Sarah said, confused. "I see."

They all slapped their sides at her demure reply and laughed
maniacally. One let out a whoop and hit his hand on a log.

"She sees!" it howled.

"Yeeeahhh!"

"Hey-ey!"

"You can't stick around like that," one told her.

"No," said another. 'You gotta shake it loose a bit."

"Yeahhh. Quit crying. Let it all hang out."

They leaped around, hooting and clapping. One struck his finger on
the ground and it ignited, like a match. He used it to light a
bonfire, then blew his finger out nonchalantly.

Sarah was still timidly backing away.

"Oh, yeah. What you need is a little mess-around."

"Yes, sir!"

A Firey jumped over a pair of tree stumps and started using them as
drums. The rest broke into an up-tempo dance number, clicking and
drumming their fingers as they circled around her.

Sarah watched in astonishment, standing near the bonfire. She
couldn't have fled if she'd wanted to, with them capering all around
her, but in any case she was rooted to the spot by their antics.

She was horrified to see one of the Fireys pluck out his eyes, shake
them like dice, and throw them. "Yeah," the others all cheered,
crowding around to look at them. "Snake eyes!" Then the owner of the
eyes snatched them up, tossed them in the air like peanuts, and
caught them in his eye sockets. The rest were hooting and dancing and
clapping.

As though to outdo the first, another Firey took his head off his
shoulders and threw it in the air. It was kicked and headed around
like a soccer ball. Another took his leg off, and with a delicate
chip shot hit the head back onto its body. They all cackled and
slapped their thighs. The drummer went wild.

Meanwhile, the rest crowded around Sarah and tried to persuade her to
join in the dance. After seeing their wild pastimes, she was shy and
nervous of them. But she thought she had their number now -- just
crazy good-timers, out of their skulls -- and she was no longer
frightened, not even when one tried to lift her head from her
shoulders.

"Hey!" she protested. "Ouch!"

"It don't come off!" the Firey exclaimed.

"What?" The rest were astonished, and they all gathered around in the
attempt to decapitate her.

"Ow!" she said, more sternly. "Stop it!"

"You're right! It's fixed on!"

"Of course it's fixed on," she told them.

"Where you goin' with a head like that, lady?"

"Well, I'm ... oh!" The hopelessness of her predicament flooded back,
and she started to sob again. She was missing Ludo terribly, and
Hoggle, too.

"Hey! Now what's up, little lady?"

Sarah hiccuped. "Oh! I'm trying to get to Jareth's castle at the
center of this Labyrinth ..."

"Holy Mo!"

"You sure you know what you're doin', lady?"

"Yes," Sarah said firmly.

"Well, hot dog! How about that!"

The drummer shouted, "She knows what she's doin'," and he gave her a
drumroll on the tree stumps.

"Yeah," the others said, grinning and bopping.

"But I've only got a few hours left," Sarah told them. She wondered
how few.

The Fireys whistled and grinned at each other.

"Well, that ain't no problem."

Sarah looked up at them through her tears, with a glint of hope in
her eyes. "Isn't it?"

"Why, shoot! No!"

"We'll take you there."

"Yeah," another squawked wildly, waving his fingers above his head.
"How about us comin' along a little, hey?"

The rest cavorted in a frenzy of excitement, hooting and screeching.

"A castle, oh, wow!"

"Well," Sarah said doubtfully, "it's kind of you, but ..."

"You think we're just too wild?" The Firey's head rose up from his
shoulders as he spoke, and he had to grab it in his hands and press
it back into place.

The drummer did a big roll. "Why, shoot. We ain't that wild."

"Oh, yes, we are," another called. "Hey!" He formed himself into the
shape of an ostrich, ran two steps, and exploded. As he put his
pieces together again, the rest howled and clapped.

"Cool, man!"

"Now look, little lady, you can't just go walkin' through this place
on your ownsome."

Sarah sniffed sadly. "Well, I did have a friend just --"

"Hey! Fellow with clothes on, right?"

"Hoggle?"

"That Hoggle, yeah! Oh, wow! Everyone around these parts knows
Hoggle."

"Really?" Sarah asked.

"Sure. Hog and me, we're like that." The Firey crossed his fingers.

"Oh. Well ..."

Before she could say any more, Sarah felt herself being propelled
along by the Fireys. All she could see ahead of them was rocky
wilderness.

"Now the castle's just down along this way," one assured her.

"Are you sure you know how to get to the center of the Labyrinth?"
she asked nervously. She had precious little time to waste, and she
thought she would have preferred to be left to find her own way. But
there was no escaping the Fireys, who had hold of her clothes in
their long fingers and were hopping enthusiastically along with her
in tow.

"Do we know how to get to the center of the Labyrinth!"

They all burst out laughing. Their heads flew up in the air, and
their arms had to detach themselves to catch the heads.

"Why, lady!" one screeched. "We may be wild but we sure know where
we're goin'."

"Yeahhh!" the rest concurred.

"You wanna go to the castle? We're takin' you to the castle. Ain't we
just doin' that thing?"

"Yeeeahhh!"

"So you come on along with us, little lady, and you ain't gonna have
no problem."

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Jareth was watching Sarah from the castle. In his crystal he saw her
distraught face looking around for a way to escape.

He held Toby up in front of his sister's picture. "Look, Sarah," he
murmured. "Is this what you're trying to find?"

Toby gaped at Sarah's face in the crystal. He held a hand out to
touch it.

Jareth chuckled to himself and put his arms around Toby. "So much
trouble for such a little thing," Jareth said, shaking his head. He
looked at Toby's puzzled face. "But not for long. Soon she'll forget
all about you, my fine fellow. Just as soon as Hoggle gives her my
present. She'll forget -- everything."  

[Opaaru]

Chapter Eleven
~Windows in the Wilderness~

The Fireys were hauling Sarah along as though she were a reluctant
donkey. She was certainly reluctant. She could not see the castle
anywhere, and when she asked them how far away it was they answered
with whoops and cackles. The clock was ticking toward thirteen all
the time. So perhaps she was indeed a donkey for having got herself
into this mess.

She tried to figure out where she should have made a different
choice. It was impossible. Suppose she had not approached Hoggle,
right at the start, but walked the other way around that great wall?
Might she not, by now, be back home, with Toby safe in his crib?
Perhaps. How would she know? What evidence had she been given that
any of her choices were the right ones? If there were right ones; if
it wasn't all a cruel hoax by which Jareth tormented her with the
illusion that Toby could be rescued.

She blinked back rising tears. She would not start that again. If she
hadn't been a crybaby, perhaps these creatures she was with now would
have left her alone.

She concentrated on what could be evidence, however flimsy, that she
had gotten some things right. Her brief friendship with Ludo, poor
Ludo -- that couldn't be meaningless, could it? The happy, goofy
smile he'd given her when she had rescued him -- was that a
gratuitous event in a story with no ending? Even Hoggle, flawed
character though he was, had unwittingly helped her to find out that
she was capable of doing more than she had known. To have gotten this
far at all, in spite of the hideous traps Jareth had set for her --
surely that was some kind of evidence in her favor?

Perhaps. But it would mean nothing at all unless she could get to
Toby in time, and save him from being turned into a goblin. She had
to get away from this bunch, who were just passing the time -- her
time.

"Hey! Ain't that it over there?" one yelled.

"Noo-h," another said. "That's just a rock."

"How 'bout that? That a castle?"

"Noo-oh, that's just the stump of an ol' tree."

"Well," shrieked another of them, "how 'bout that? That got to be a
castle." He was pointing at a pond.

"Nohow," the wiser one said. "A castle's got windows and all that."

An eel popped its head above the surface of the pond and looked at
them. The effect was as though they'd struck oil.

"It is a castle."

"Doggone," conceded the wiser one. "Well, whadddya know? We must be
there."

"Ye-eaahh!"

"Hey!"

"Wow-ee!"

Sarah looked coolly at their whoopings and leapings. "That's not the
castle," she told them.

"It got windows. That ol' eel must've looked outa somethin'."

"Well," Sarah answered, "it's not the castle I have to find. Please
let me go now."

"Now, you," the eel piped. "What're you doing?"

"We're just havin' ourselves a good old time."

They were capering about, slapping their thighs.

"Hey, eel. You a castle?"

"No, I ain't," the eel trilled tartly. "Now get along."

"Hey, eel. So why you got windows?"

"So's I can tell you to scat," the eel replied, and vanished with
aplomb and a plop.

"Hot dog!" They were unaccountably delighted with everything that
happened. Setback or success, it made no difference.

"Please," Sarah said, "I want to go."

"Ain't you havin' a good time?"

"Yes," she lied politely. "But I must get to the castle."

"We nearly found it for you."

"It did have windows. Well, one, anyway."

"We want to help you."

"Yeah! 'Cause we like you."

Sarah sighed. "But you've got no more idea of where the castle is
than I have."

"We have too!"

"No you haven't."

"It's just over this here hill."

"Yeah, you tell her."

"Come on! What we waiting for?"

Bopping and raving, they dragged Sarah on through the wilderness, and
on, until even they began to look exhausted and a little downcast. As
for Sarah, her body was wilting and her spirit was exasperated.

"These castles are sure hard to find."

"Maybe it's a small one," another suggested.

"Uh-huh-. Good thinkin'."

Whereupon they all started to pick up little stones and peer beneath
them.

"No," Sarah told them wearily. "Castles are big things."

"Maybe it's over the hill," one said to another. "Just have a
look-see if you can spot the castle from up there." He pointed to a
fir tree.

"Sure thing!" said the other.

He took his head off and ran, bouncing it. When he arrived at the
tree, he tossed his head neatly onto the topmost branches.

"Can you see the castle?"

"Yeah," the elevated head answered. "I can see the castle!"

"What does it look like?" Sarah asked suspiciously.

"Well, it looks kinda like ... er ... like a ... like a
hippopotamus!"

"Wow!"

"That's some castle."

"We're as good as there. Come on!"

"Wait for me!" called out the head, while his body scrambled to reach
him.

"I'm going back," Sarah announced.

"Lady! You heard him say he sees the castle."

"A big one!"

"Like a hippopopotamus ... mus."

They were whooping and jiggling around so frenetically that she
thought she might be able to slip away from them without being
noticed. She walked slowly, letting them all get on ahead of her.
Then she turned and quietly walked back in the direction from which
they had come. Of course, they were at her side again in an instant,
and they all toiled on together through the wilderness together.

Sarah was aiming to get back to where they had started, but then she
realized the futility of that, since she would have no idea where to
go next. She wondered what was the point of doing anything. She might
as well go this way, or that, or stand still, or cry. Maybe just
havin' yourself a good time was the best anyone could hope for.

She shook her head and halted. Whatever the point was, all this was
beside it. She could do nothing until she had rid herself of the
Fireys. As they jigged happily about her, she looked around the
wilderness for an idea. Any idea.

She noticed, in the distance and to one side of them, a wooded bluff.
She knew what she had to do.

She turned and addressed the Fireys. "Wait a minute. None of you
knows where the castle is. You don't even know what a castle looks
like."

"Just 'cause we're wild don't mean we don't know what a castle is."

"We ain't stupid, we're just wild."

"Yeah, wild," they all agreed enthusiastically.

She waited.

As she anticipated, one of them showed how wild he was by picking up
his head and tossing it in the air. As it came down, Sarah grabbed
it, and threw it as far away as she could.

"Hey. That's his head, lady."

Two more heads had leaped up to see where the first one had gone.
Sarah grabbed them too, and hurled them in different directions.

"That's my head!" one of the heads protested as it flew through the
air.

Pandemonium broke out.

"Hey, wait a minute."

"Lady, what are you doing?"

"You threw their heads!"

"Yeah, you're only allowed to throw your own head, right?"

While trunks were pursuing heads, getting the wrong ones and chucking
them around, Sarah bolted. She made for the bluff.

"Stop her, someone!"

"We gotta take your head off now."

"Yeah, we get to throw your head around."

"You can't quit now."

"I'll take her head off."

"Hey, little lady!"

"Hey there, come back."

"We gotta help you."

"Come on, everybody!"

They gave chase and gained on her, but her initial advantage got her
to the bluff before they had caught up. Slipping between trees, ahead
of her she saw a crevice in a high rockface, and sprinted into it.
She found herself in an alleyway running mazily through the rock. As
she ran on, she heard the Fireys' voices behind her, echoing. She had
hoped she'd shaken them off.

"Hey, lady, you want to take your head off, don't you?"

"Sure she does!"

"It's lots of fun."

She ran on, oblivious, until the alleyway reached a dead end. Her eye
ran up the rockface wall patterned with mosses and lichens, and saw
no holds for climbing. At the top, the wall had been crenellated,
like the battlements of an old fortress.

She heard them come around the last bend, behind her. There was no
escaping them.

"There she is!"

"Hey, lady, we found another castle!"

"Like a lunchbox!"

"No, like a wheelbarrow!"

"Wow-eee!"

"Wait, lady!"

Sarah closed her eyes.

Something tickled her nose. She opened her eyes and saw a rope. She
threw her head back. Leaning over the parapet, high above, was a
face. Hoggle's face.

"Grab it!" he called down to her.

She grabbed it. Hoggle hauled. The Fireys dove at her. They were too
late by inches. They leaped up, snatching at her feet. She felt
fingers brush her shoes.

"Hey, don't you want to look like us?"

"Come on, take off your head!"

"Off with her head!"

"It won't hurt."

Hoggle hauled on. Heads began to fly up beside her.

"Now come on down, lady."

"Come on -- we'll let you play if you take off your arm."

"How about a leg?"

"An ear? Just take off your ear, lady. You don't need two."

One after another the heads rose beside her, yammered, and fell.

"We want to help you."

"Ain't we a-showin' you a good time?"

"Yeah! You come down and strut your stuff."

"Let it all hang out, little lady."

"Aw, c'mon, it's fun. Let's look for somethin' else."

Hoggle had hauled her to the top. He helped her clamber over the
battlements and brushed his hand at the flying heads as if they were
pestering flies. "Shoo!" he bade them. "Go away."

Sarah was looking around, laughing in her relief. They were standing
on the top of a turret. To either side of them the stone platform of
the Great Goblin Wall ran as far as she could see, rising and
falling, turning, crenellated all the way, turreted at regular
intervals.

She turned to face him. "Hoggle!" she said warmly.

He ignored her, continuing to beat his hands at the last few
despondent heads that rose up beyond the battlements. "Down!" he
barked at them. "Go on, get away with you."

When there were no more heads, he had to turn back to face Sarah, who
was still beaming at him. The look he returned was as grumpy as ever,
but it could not puncture the deep, affectionate gratitude she felt.
He kept his eyes lowered, maybe checking his baubles, which she had
strung from her belt. On his own belt hung a pouch in which he
carried the peach Jareth had given him.

She held out her arms. "You've come back to help me. Thank you,
Hoggle." She caught hold of him and leaned over toward his face.

"No!" he wailed, and tried to brush her off like one of the flying
heads. "No! Don't kiss me!"

But she had done it, and the earth moved beneath them.