1. ###########Eyes On the Ground##########

The mind is an enchanted thing / Like the glaze on a katydid-wing / subdivided by sun / till the nettings are legion

....Denunciations do not affect / the culprit; nor blows, but it / is torture for him not to be spoken to. --------------Marianne Moore

The bubble of more-than-glass tore the rays of setting sun into eye-splitting fractal light. Jareth played with the crystal until his wrists ached. From the very top of the castle, the Goblin City, the Labyrinth, and all Underground, it still all looked...

Dull.

The dullness burnt into his brain.

The crystal bounded up and vanished with a spark as he flung it away. His wrists did ache; he massaged them while the familiar desolate look settled onto his face to stay. None of his subjects were near to see it. He knew if they were they would flee him for the relative safety of...anywhere else.

He felt like a cold wind on the turret, not anything corporeal. Desolation within and without.

Jareth gave himself a mental shake. How long had it been since the last human being had come to amuse him? ...him and itself, more accurately. The Goblin King could not get hold of *how long* it had been and it disturbed him. Even though he was familiar with the way this world operated, which was completely unlike the linear world of humans, it was bitter to think of losing what control he had over it. Knowledge is power, Jareth said, staring at the blood-red sun. He couldn't even sort out the whens and whos of his visitors. A loss of knowledge equaled a loss of power.

But then how linear was *that* logic?

He grinned, a panther's grin, but not for long. It was true, if anything was true in this place: of late, the Labyrinth's visitors blurred into a wheel when he tried to bring them to mind. They spun out of his grasp in a way even the crystals dared not do.

Of course, the crystals belonged to *this* world. He flicked another into his palm and stared into it, distracting himself with the dreams of others for a little while.

The dreams of others...

>>>>SARAH<<<<

He snatched at that with a desperation that shook him. Swooping down into the depths of the crystal, Jareth spun with his own memories, stunned by the vividness of that name, that face. Had she been the last?

This point eluded him. He could have screamed. Why did it seem as if there had been so many? He seemed to remember throngs of lost, lonely summoners, one after the other drifting into, and almost never out of, his Labyrinth.

[Yes, *my Labyrinth*, Jareth said in his mind, within the crystal. He flicked a glance up at whatever had dared dispute that. Whatever it was subsided and sent no more thought-arrows.]

Back to the memories swirling round him. So many summoners? There had *not* been many; there weren't enough memories here to account for throngs. Well, it could be his age. Eons spent reigning over (mostly) the same Underground and the sameness of the visitors began to multiply in his mind. What else could he expect? The same ritual, played with hardly any variation from, well, before he could remember... Remembering, that was his problem. He shook his head: wingtips fluttered as well. Difficult to think clearly inside these things, with yourself and the world both shifting.

Jareth exhaled with a sigh and drew himself out of the crystal's vortex. Sunset turned his pallid face orange; a scowl deepened on it. The crystals had never made him dizzy before. They were not meant to. *NOT MEANT TO*

"Sire?"

The black cape swirled and cracked like a whip, echoing its wearer's mood. Jareth stared unblinkingly at a hapless goblin.

"Sire..." It gulped, unable to face what was churning behind that electric gaze. "We've had another false alarm, and Aelst said to tell you - because..." It wound down, then blurted out in agony: "They lost another goblin to that Place, Sire!"

"Indeed" said the Goblin King with freezing calm. "That place. If you idiots used any discrimination in your kidnapping, this would not happen."

"Yes Your Majes..." whispered the goblin inaudibly.

"But you don't, and it does. Repeatedly. Get off the floor and tell Aelst to take his troubles to the other world: he seems to enjoy it. And say that at the next plea bargain I receive, I'll banish him there myself." Supreme irritation gave way to intense sorrow on the King's human face, even as his terrified minion watched. "Go," said Jareth coldly, and left in a blinding flurry of white wings.

__---__----__---__---__----__---__---__----__---__--

The wings beat, beat, pushing cool air under his graceful, predator's body, letting him ride the wind. Beat. Control the wind. He did not have to think of control or power in this shape. The owl's flight was effortless.

After landing reluctantly on a fir-top bathed in moonlight, Jareth felt the sheer hedonistic pleasure of flying seep from him too quickly. Too well he knew why. It was that name.

**Panic* that name, what was it

it was

was a girl

stray thought: what ever happened to hogwart?*

The answer jarred him back to his senses. It was Sarah. He remembered that name.

An hour ago, he'd thought of it and its memory had nearly made him succumb to the dragging vortex of one of his own crystals. It upset him, clearly, but the name, and what it meant, certainly had power too.

From the hilltop where he stood (what was it with him and high viewpoints?) the Labyrinth gates seemed to lie directly at his feet; the castle loomed miles beyond the maze. Time had been mocking him for a while now... he could not even tell how long. Days seemed circular, months more so. Perpetual deja-vu crept into the Labyrinth like some alien disease, unwittingly received and now deadly. Yet enough of Jareth's insight remained for him to know that this name--this *person*--was at the root of his world's warped time and the rest of his current misery.

--by all the gods of all the worlds--this grip of desolation had had him so long he'd forgotten why it came! ...maybe not so long. Jareth felt a deep pang over his weakened sense of time. But at least now, the cause of it had a name.

He dropped to the ground in man's shape and began to pace. He could fight this if it even had so tangible a form as a name. He could hate a name. Hate a person, drowned in the miasma of his untrustworthy memory, who'd dared to destabilize him like this.

Another thought-arrow brushed his mind and he stopped pacing.

*not hate*

This time its source was obvious; Jareth looked up.

He alone in the Underground could meet its gaze without being stared down by its brilliant glamour. Damn you, he said to the crystal moon. Stop shooting those idiot darts. It won't work. You know I was not made for self-doubt.

*but you were made...*

I told you to shut up.

Silence fell. Then Jareth surprised himself with a real laugh, a laugh with nostalgia lurking in it. Sarah would think he was schizo.

Sarah? His brow knit furiously, but the flash of vision had left. Yet he *did* remember. How much? When had she come? Why in the worlds had *her* visit traumatized the fabric of the Underground--which was stable enough--and of his own hellishly unstable mind?

Or had her influence touched only him?

Finding out the answer to that was all that could satisfy him now. And it might even keep the goblins from throwing themselves away Aboveground in their despair. They only despaired because he did. And he did owe them something, did the Goblin King.

Jareth presented the flat of his hand to the moon. It pulsed at him, but remained silent. His marble features twisted into a wry smile for one instant, and he was gone.

A ghostly owl sped faster than light into the dusting of stars over the Labyrinth.

----------------------------------------------------

>>>>>>>>>>>BEEEEP<<<<<<<<<<<

Her hand clawed for the alarm switch with a mind of its own. As a BEEP cut off midway, the hand and the arm it was attached to flopped down to the floor. They knew the morning routine.

With a gasp the girl suddenly broke it. She twisted upright in the bed, staring glassy-eyed around her small ivory room.

She'd been dreaming.

Nothing awful about that, except she just didn't dream these days. What really made her bolt up upon waking wasn't just *a* dream but the total vividness of this one--and it was only of the moon! With her eyes closed she could still see it floating before her, through the wisps of cloud that caressed it...a quicksilver bubble so pure, her throat tightened with tears to see it. In the dream, of course--she was awake now.

She opened her eyes. Sarah shook her head vigorously and her midnight-brown hair flew in all directions. The savage howls of her stomach distracted her more, so she didn't think of her dream until long after breakfast. She was in fact stopped behind a truck, whose bed overflowed with post-garage-sale junk, at a red light.

Sarah felt the purr of her solid '79 Volvo under her and smiled--it was as happy as she was this morning. And she laughed aloud at herself: she'd never kicked the habit of personifying her things. Big *fat* imagination, she thought cheerfully, and then the truck burned rubber in front of her, and the dream shot into her mind as if shoved by another's hand.

She forgot to follow the truck. Horns blared.

Dream, *schmeam* she shouted inwardly and jabbed at the radio and accelerator simultaneously, blasted her eardrums with rock. A moon floated before her in the ether. The rock music definitely didn't help.

Help with what? Why so upset over a lunar dream, Miss Williams? Because, of course, as she had known since waking up, it was not her moon. It was too beautiful, too heartbreaking to watch. It was also, she said firmly to herself, a product of that big fat imagination that had been working overtime her whole life, so get over it and get to work. You can't afford to lose a summer job.

*you can afford less to lose this*

Sarah's knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. Her eyes stared into traffic with the same frightened/determined look they'd had when she stared into the Labyrinth six years ago. Standing beside Hoggle the... dwarf, who worked for...

Somehow she got to work through the mad jungle of traffic and went through the motions of living as usual. Somehow, she managed, but she felt like a hollow shell with a wind echoing inside. It had finally happened. She'd broken her own promise to forget.

------------------------>>


Chapter Two: The Culprit

It wasn't the best promise to have made, but it was all she could think of, for Pete's sake.

After the first euphoria of having her Labyrinth friends follow her into the real world...or at least her real world, something began to happen. Something most unwelcome. No matter how much she loved them, Hoggle and Ludo, Didymus and Ambrosius, and even the Fireys and goblins, they didn't fit in this place. She had trouble at first when her parents saw the mess in her room from that first party. She'd laughed so hard, they thought she was mentally ill...then Hoggle and Didymus showed up to help her clean, once her stepmother had shut the door.

It went on like that. Once a week at least, she called them, and they gave her what news she wanted-not all that much; they were the only reason she still cared about the Labyrinth, and they were right there with her! It was too good to be true. After another year of school, Sarah began to see her love for them was bound up in her triumph at having at least once fantasy prove to be true... but still, she loved them for themselves, and everything they'd done for her. And then...she began to enter the real world within her "real world" and it went downhill from there.

"My lady," she could still hear Didymus saying, "Are you all right? Have we done anything amiss?"

"No, no. Sir Didymus, you're fine. I'm fine." She spoke through white lips into her old mirror. It was the same mirror as the first, though in a different room. "I miss you... but now isn't a good time; it's just that, um, I'm living on my own, now, and..."

"If you are alone, milady, we will always be glad to keep you company. Surely thou knowest that."

That's what I'm afraid of, she thought frantically. Without the grounding influence of her family or even a roommate, she'd eventually become peculiar, obsessed with her friends from another world. She wouldn't be fit to live in this one. And she *had* to live in this one! Oh, Didymus, Hoggle, Ludo-

"I'm sorry, Sir Didymus. Tell-tell Hoggle and Ludo I said...hello."

"For thee, anything," said the knight with his mixture of tenderness and chivalry. Sarah gulped. "Okay. I'll call you later. Good-bye..."

Of course she never called them again.

------------------------------------

Back from work, Sarah went into the house wearily. It was her mind that reeled, not her body, though her body went along for the ride anyway. Her mind had been wracked with the same thought all day, and now it felt like Merlin Chow.

"Merlin? Here sweetie..."

The shaggy English sheepdog galloped out from the kitchen to meet her. Well, sort of galloped. Merlin moved more slowly and didn't hear her unless she called loudly these days, but he was still her faithful dog. Faithful steed. *ouch*

I didn't mean to think that, she told herself steadily. They don't really exist. I've known that for some time now. Didymus never fed Ambrosius dog food anyway, did he? I wonder...

It had gotten to the point where she would babble to herself about her old companions-whom she wanted badly to forget!--rather than remember anything else about the Underground. She fed Merlin and fussed over him more than usual, playing with his floppy ears, ignoring his feebleness to comfort herself. No, surely Ambrosius fed on sterner stuff than Kibbles &co. Unless, since Dydimus seemed never to hunt for mere sport, the dog ate only fruit. Apples and peaches: yuck, what a diet.

She had almost distracted herself now. Sarah smiled, thinking of her past friends in the way one thinks of characters in a favorite story from childhood, or old beloved toys once believed to be 'alive.' She had been living a grown-up's life long enough to almost really and truly forget the great adventure that had let her live it. Not quite, but almost. After all, reality and fantasy were separate worlds; only lunatics and children mixed them with impunity. Sarah was neither a child nor crazy. And to prove this, she had left the Underground behind.

Ambrosius-Merlin finished lapping up his water and panted. He looked up at his mistress, who still sat by him on her heels, and whined a question: *whatsup?* She looked at him and abruptly stood up, breathing hard. She would not burst into tears. "No. This is not going to happen. I'm fine, I'll stay that way-" She was running to her room now, slamming the door while Merlin whined in earnest.

Lying on her bed, Sarah sobbed into her pillows at last. No matter how the tears blinded her, the crystal moon rode serenely on a backdrop of stars in her mind's eye. It said nothing, did nothing; it just sat there, and its presence told her all she had been lying to herself about. The Underground did matter. Her friends were real. They were as real as she was, anyway, because wasn't the Labyrinth part of *her*? She knew it was. She'd known it since returning from conquering the Goblin King. Her room, with all its precious junk, had told her as much.

*but if the Labyrinth's just in my head...then why were Hoggle and Ludo and Didymus and all of them so REAL?*

Sarah rolled over to face the canopy above her bed, a simple white drape unlike her frills of long ago. One thing was certain, if she could trust the thought that had been bouncing around her head all day waiting for acceptance. One thing she was clear about. She had conquered a Goblin King. If anyone was real, he had to be.

Suddenly some words floated back to her from six years past: *...for no reason at all...I need you, ALL of you.*

"Oh, forgive me," she whispered, not knowing she even spoke. "Jareth."

------------------------->>
Chapter Three: Knocking

--We are not competent / to make our vows. ...fighting, fighting - some we love whom we know, / some we love but know not - that / hearts may feel and not be numb...

There never was a war that was / not inward...
-------------marianne moore

A streak of white light with feathers traveled upward, far beyond earthly laws. It was alone, seeking for a solution at the source.

But Jareth swung away from his goal for a moment. The white owl veered and lost balance, but made no sound as its wings flapped wildly.

The next moment he was fine. The vast silver globe ahead of him remained steady as well. So what had shaken him? Uneasily, the owl rode a high current of wind with rigid wings. If _flying_ was now going to be a problem, what in space else would happen to him?

Not without effort, he shrugged off the stumble and concentrated on the crystal moon. So near. So immense. Any closer and he might just land on its liquid surface. Instead, he halted, hovering on a stable current to stare his antagonist right in the, um, face.

*You.* The owl's wide black pupils never wavered.

The moon turned slightly, as if rotating.

*Answer me* Jareth screeched soundlessly. His reward was a current of emotion not unlike a sigh.

]I am not your enemy[

*Oh? 'beg your pardon; I'll just wing on home then.* Jareth felt the weapon of sarcasm blunt in his hand, and shrugged inwardly. *You know the source of my malady. _I_ know her name. Tell me something more, something definite.*

To his mild surprise, the moon said nothing to the effect of "or what?", but instead seemed to ring - a deep chime of struck crystal resonating above and below the hearing threshold of any living thing. Jareth held steady, though his bones ached with it.

]your disease[

*yes?*

]defeat without resolution[

_Defeat?_ *Your communication skills,* said the owl calmly, *need some work.*

If he had any way of being certain, he would have said the silver in front of him rippled in agitation. ]truly the girl is not...[

He beat the air fiercely, piercing the silver with the owl's stare. *WHAT?*

]may well fear it[

The white owl plunged out of the sky. He tumbled in free fall for roughly half an hour before catching the wind under his wingtips again. As if in exhaustion or diffidence--or fear, for the thoughts of the moon were always tinged with an alien caution--the crystal moon had shut him out. It happened so quickly that the air about him had frozen still, thus dropping him to earth.

Oddly, in the middle of it he knew he had fallen like this before. And the moon knew it.

Panting, he landed at last in the hour before light upon his own castle's turret. The owl preened, not nervously or sheepishly, but in deep thought, for once. Perhaps it was just as well. He had flown almost to the gateway between the worlds, and the gatekeeper...had never been fully approached. If the crystal moon had shifted its power enough to send him between worlds--

He may not have survived the trip. At any rate, the goblins couldn't take it, not for long, not anymore. But he, Jareth--he stood up in mans' shape and leaned on the parapet with the wind in his eyes--he had once traveled between what he called worlds at his sweet will. Always as the owl, of course; but some shapes simply travelled better. Yet even that was failing. It wasn't just his memory fragmenting now.

So in fact, he had failed. The Underground, lovely, beauteous if the torture of his long life, was his and he'd failed with it.

-----------------------------
Chapter Four
The door Opens (part 1)

The solid and safe lamplight lit Sarah's room. Merlin was whining and scratching at the door. In a few minutes he'd start barking; he still knew the smell of danger.

Sarah sat on her bed turning her dog-eared copy of the _Labyrinth_ over and over. She didn't need to read the words anymore to hear them in her head. "I said the words," she said aloud. "I said them, and he was defeated. I came home. I grew up. But my Underground friends came with me because I needed them to be real."

She stopped her soliloquy then, and stared at the mirror opposite her bed. Same mirror; what a coincidence. She must never have given up hope on getting her friends back, and subconsciously felt that her old mirror would help. I said I needed all of you, she thought. And I meant it; it was true. She was trying hard not to give way to her feelings at this point; so many memories were flooding back to her--a wicked smile, the confusing whirl of a dance and his blue coat and bluer drowning eyes, the shock at his unexpected humour...

I meant it: I need all of you. Even *you*, my enemy - she took a deep breath - my reflection, my shadow, or whoever you are. I just didn't know it then. Is that why you didn't come?

She looked down quickly at the faded _Labyrinth_ book. Tears were stinging her eyes again, hot ones this time. She thought, what if they were all back; I call them, and they all come back. It won't be enough, will it? That's why I banished them. *He* wasn't here, so I had to make myself forget he ever existed. Forget anything happened at all.

These thoughts came to her as facts. She didn't yet know where they came from; she didn't know the true nature of the Underground or even her own feelings. It was a strange sensation, knowing this stuff without knowing how, but it was sure as heck better than lying to herself. She hadn't felt so much freedom of soul in months. The face looking back at her out of the mirror was flushed, but strangely peaceful in spite of the glitter in her dark grey eyes.

Then, as long as she was being truthful... why still call the Goblin King her enemy? She was old enough to admit it now. Was an enemy someone your soul was knit with? Perhaps, in the Underground, but she wasn't there anymore.

Once she had thought it, even for an instant, desolation swept over her--crippling, searing loneliness. If only she hadn't said all the right words already. If only it wasn't just too late, and if only it wasn't her own fault.

Meanwhile, Merlin hurled himself at the door with pitiable howls. *My lady,* he barked, hoping she would hear and understand and let him in to protect her. *My ladyyyyyy!*

"Merlin, okay, all right!" Sarah pulled one sleeve across her wet eyes and yanked open the door.

-------------------------

The Door Opens (part 2)

It had been a few days since his reckless journey to the upper realm, and the Goblin King felt distinctly better. Who needed to travel between worlds? His foggy grip on time ceased to worry him overmuch, since he was keeping busy just getting the goblins under control. Besides, the crystals were behaving well again. Therefore acting the proper King was not as hard as he'd dreaded, when he and the goblins were still shunning each other.

Almost the moment after he materialized in his throne on the morning after his night flight, Aelst ran in. The goblin's wizened face was pitiful even to Jareth as he gasped, then groveled on the other side of the goblin pit. No one else was present - not counting a depressed chicken.

Which may have been why Jareth said very gently: "Aelst, get up and tell me what the matter is."

"Your majesty, I--" The creature's trembling didn't lessen noticeably. "I don't know how to say this, really, I--"

"Just say it. I am _listening_, not kicking you about the room. Take that as encouragement."

"Ummm." Aelst thought long enough to irritate him before nodding. "Okay. Three more goblins gone, Your Majesty." And again he cowered. Most particularly he avoided meeting the King's eyes at all.

Jareth sighed. Well, there it was. He had to get to the bottom of this sooner or later, and there was nothing else to do sooner. Besides, deep within him, a profound pity moved him for these miserable creatures whose fate was tied to his. Odd; he _wanted_ to help. He frowned.

Aelst saw the frown and shook harder, which meant he shook audibly.

"Oh, STOP it," the King growled, waving irritably: Aelst froze in mid-gasp. "I understand you're having trouble with kidnapping. Your only real job, I might add. Let's see if we can't uncover what the trouble is."

Aelst un-froze at Jareth's next gesture, and lost no time in babbling self-defense. "Sire, we don't know, I promise you we don't know at ALL--!"

"Shut up." Jareth rose abruptly and tugged at his jacket, cupping a crystal in one gloved hand. "I know it isn't you; after all these years, you do these jobs in your sleep without trouble. *I* will find the source of the trouble. *You* will provide the information I need." Aelst's bloated red eyes blinked at the purpose evident in the blue ones. "Now come with me."

The Goblin King's quick stride didn't make it easy for Aelst to follow, but then, when was His Majesty ever easy? The head goblin kept up as best he could, and a new hope dawned in his meagre consciousness as they sped down the castle's winding halls.

----------------------------
Ch. 5: Conversation

When Sarah finally pulled open the door to her room, the dog that had been pitifully howling for entrance cannonballed inside, almost knocking her over.

"Merlin!" Sarah yelled at him, still overwrought. "Hush! I mean it, buster.... Merlin?"

She trailed off in sheer stupefaction. His scruffy dogness was caroming off the furniture in her room at a speed that would have done credit to a caffeinated greyhound - and barking his head off the while. And Merlin was HOW old?

She chewed her bottom lip for a moment, wondering about the new dog food, her own sanity, and Merlin's over-protectiveness simultaneously. There was no doubt he was being protective. But from what?

Was that a warning bark? It had been a while since he did that. Sarah took hold of herself here and grabbed her dog's collar as he brushed by for the tenth time, compensating for his momentum as best she could.

"Look here, you flop-eared humbug magician," she said to him as they lay tumbled on the floor, "There's nothing to be scared of."

"MUFF," Merlin insisted, struggling to move.

"I said there's nothing. What do you smell, huh? I haven't even lit any smelly candles in here for a week. Calm down, I'll let you up." She didn't want to, as he seemed too eager to repeat the whole performance, but it wasn't practical to hang onto him forever. Sarah got up, saying "SIT" like a broken record player.

Merlin sat. He eyed her very reproachfully, but he stayed put. However, he was by no means reassured; his fur bushed out like quills. At the sight of this her sense of danger started to act up at last, too; and what with the weirdness of her moon-dream and the thoughts it had led her to thinking, she did not ignore it as she might have a day ago.

Merlin had been shut in the garage by her "evil stepmother" the last time that other world had intruded upon her. If he'd been here then, would he have tried to stop the Goblin King?

An incongruous knife of bitterness cut into her vague fear. "Don't worry, Merlin," she muttered. "He's got no reason to come after me now." Toby was in no danger of being wished away; and if she had once been Jareth's incentive, she was no longer. A leftover hot tear splashed onto Merlin's fur, which was still bushy. Still afraid. Of what?

Sarah's eyes, very recently blinded with tears, lifted now to her beat-up dresser. On that dresser was her ancient mirror, no longer fringed with the relics of a dreamy childhood of Hollywood-longing, but the same mirror still. It reflected a simple, grown-up, very pretty room. Mostly white, with her personal touches limited to a few posters, pictures and accent pillows. It was truly alien to anything in the faerie Underground.… She thrust one hand into Merlin's thick fur for comfort, and opened her eyes wide to stare at the mirror. Daring it.

It showed her her own pale, big-eyed face with hair falling all around it anyhow.

Then it flickered.

It shone softly into Sarah's room, brightly, serenely, as if there were no lamplight already there. Moonlight.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jareth was interviewing goblins. Say that again, very slowly: JARETH was interviewing GOBLINS. As in asking them questions, methodically, and waiting for their replies, coherent or not, and behaving rather well for a Goblin King who didn't have to, and hadn't had to all his charmed life.

No wonder Aelst was still struck pretty dumb.

"Sire," he ventured, observing the thoughtfulness behind the King's eyes as Jareth leaned against the wall and another ape-armed goblin waddled away. Jareth frowned, not at him but in his own thoughts. Aelst decided to wait.

The Goblin King was reclining in a window that opened onto the sheerest face of the castle; there were no shutters. It made the goblins nervous to see him perched somewhere they didn't dare each other to stand, but Jareth had not yet realized this. He gravitated towards perches as well as viewpoints; sitting with his back to a fall of a thousand feet or more was second nature.

But it did hamper the concentration of the goblins. Aelst wanted to mention this, respectfully--since he thought there was a chance of getting away with it--but Jareth was obviously preoccupied...

"Out with it, Aelst."

Aelst jumped a foot. The Goblin King was staring at him with his eyes nearly closed, his expression unchanged. He gulped. The King's very slight smile was all the more unnerving. After all...

"No, my First Goblin. I'm not in a capricious mood, or not very; nor is this mood a sign of my going insane. Trust me. I say you can, and you are bound to believe me."

"S-s-s-s" Aelst choked. "Sire, is it that you read my thoughts? Has it always been this way?"

"Not so much as you think-" Aelst winced, and Jareth snorted. "I do not often try the limits of mind-reading, and..." No need to discuss all his limits. It was coming back to him now, the power to read the goblins' curious minds, but not as it had been once. *Then,* he'd had to come up with ways to stop those beastly minds from crowding in on him. Now...well, he had begun to recover his power. That was enough.

"And, the goblin mind is the easiest to read. For me." He spoke the last very distantly.

"Sire."

"What is it now? Oh yes. What was it...it was the *window?* What *about* the window?"

"Your seat is, uh, un, um, not secure, your Highness."

"You insolen-" His anger stifled as Aelst's gist reached his mind. "I suppose if it bothers the rabble..." Irritably he jumped to the stone floor. "Well if their concentration is unsettled by just watching me sit, I'll test yours. Sum it up, Aelst. What have I found so far?"

The small, wiry creature in front of him bowed its head. "I do not know what you have found, Sire, but I know what you've been told."

"Fine; go on."

"We go into the other realm" (here he shuddered; he could not help it, and hoped the King knew this) "only when we are called. The call brings us. There is no other way to get in."

"Or out," Jareth murmured.

"So when the human thing we've taken, we get back. Your Majesty came once or twice to assist us, but not more."

Really. Jareth delved back into his mind, tentatively...wondering if the memories he'd been fumbling with for so long were coming back too. But it was still a blur. Unprintable that Aelst could remember what he could not. The other goblins had not mentioned this.

"Go on," he said evenly.

Aelst obeyed. "Since the last time you came with us, the taking away has been much worse."

He could see the rest clearly in the goblin's mind, but it paid to make him be lucid. "How, worse? What happened?"

"Your Majesty, you know. As a child was being taken, a goblin would not come back with the rest of us. One goblin, or even three. Until those who were called to snatch the humans feared for their lives to go. Then - only a few go, and almost none get back. Every call now."

"Your resistance," said the Goblin King, "is probably what's hurting your transfer more than anything. All that I've heard doesn't give a reason for the disappearances in the first place." He scowled. Somewhere in the back of his head a pale thought said ]defeat without resolution[.

"It was after you helped us, Sire, that this began..."

Jareth turned on him, his eyes blazing, and the goblin cowered. But the blaze was not exactly anger. "Tell me," said Jareth, "Does the name Sarah mean anything to you?"

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Chapter 6: The Crossing

Slowly, Sarah Williams stood up.

In front of her, her vanity mirror had blinked out the reflection of herself and the white room, replacing it with not another reflection, but a window. The glass seemed to be gone. Only the clear and brilliant moonlight shone through its frame, along with light from a few faint stars. Behind her, against her calves, a bristly dog coiled himself tightly to spring at whatever threatened his mistress.

Sarah's heartbeat thudded at ever increasing speed. *This is it--this is my second chance,* she thought, and stepped forward to the silver globe beckoning from her mirror. Which was now the Underground...home...

It was clearly Merlin's job to bring her back to her senses. A quick snap and he had one pant cuff firmly in his teeth. His lady gasped and staggered but at least the menace on top of the dresser hadn't got her yet.

"Merlin, _let me go._" Sarah shot a furious look at her dog, then a panicked one back at the dresser lest the window had vanished. It was still there, floodlighting her room--but there was no saying for how long. Meanwhile the dog planted his feet firmly and comfortably into the carpet. She couldn't just drag him into the Underground with her. Could she? Would the window let her? Or, disquieting thought, was that Underground behind it after all?

Why was Merlin protecting her so fiercely from the portal?

Sarah stood irresolutely between dog and mirror, one hand stretched out as if to hold the moon there. *Wait! Wait for me... If you are Underground, trying to reach me, I'm reaching back, this time, I promise!* And her tears fell again, disgusting her. She couldn't help them. What held her back was not Merlin, but her own pitiful pride.

What if the Underground didn't _want_ her anymore? She had, after all, denied it. And if it denied her, then what was left? A distant family, engaging but still joyless work... life as a grownup. The desert of the "real," without the one thing that could make it worthwhile.

At last Merlin gave a muffled grunt behind Sarah. His jaws must be tiring. And with that thought, a part of her subconscious seized the chance to act: she took a flying leap straight into the mirror's frame. One foot caught on the edge of the dresser and banged painfully; she caught the frame, yelped as her hand went through - swung into the absolute nothingness where the moon hung, cold and black and white -

*I cannot become an owl* was Sarah's last conscious thought before the darkness surrounded her completely.

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Chapter 7: Help?

"does the name Sarah mean anything to you?"

Whatever response the Goblin King had hoped for from his chief goblin, he wasn't getting it. Aelst screwed up his face so that it looked thoughtful, wicked and pitiful at once, and finally replied: "We don't often get to know the names of the ones we snatch, Sire. I'm sorry."

"You'll be sorrier than you can think if I find you're lying," Jareth spat. He was really trying to maintain his patience, the patience that had oddly sprung from his odd new sympathy with his demoralized goblins, but he was losing fast. *Every* time he tried to unravel that part of his memory he was thwarted. A labyrinth in his own mind, growing ever more dense, mocking him, the lord of Underground...

All at once the anguish he'd stifled by playing nurse to these pathetic creatures surged up. Jareth screamed as wordlessly as a bird of prey. While the goblin cowered away from him, he called a crystal to one hand and flung it with all his strength at the wall he faced, opposite the window.

The shattering of the crystal reverberated throughout his entire castle; the shards of it flew back at him, out of the window, singing evilly of destruction and fear. Within a heartbeat all was still again. Jareth gazed stonily at the wall. There were a few faint traces of blood on it where the ball had struck.

He opened his hand then, stared at the thin gashes on his palm, closed it, looked down at Aelst.

By this time, even the goblin had begun to whiff a vaster disturbance in the balance of things.

"Speak, then," said the King a trifle wearily, as the other looked around for a place to vanish into. Seeing there was no help for it, Aelst gave up.

"Your Majesty. Uh. I don't understand...what's going on. In the castle. You are helping us, but you need *our* help...?"

A succinct way of saying it, said that part of Jareth which was not insanely distraught. And it sounded like an offer. But he was still King. Absolute rulers, he had always known, needed to uphold the absoluteness of their rule by firmly upholding personal superiority. He could not let a loaf-brained goblin help him. A part of him that did not even acknowledge its own existence backed this up out of fear.... For with his mental powers waning, what were his odds if the Underground decided to rise against him?

Silly thought; the Underground knew its ruler. And yet...

Hells. He was at least calmer now, though immortals only knew what the crystals would do now. "The Underground," he said slowly at last, "is in danger, my chief goblin. Or so it seems."

Aelst bowed his head. "I will do my best to help save the Underground, Sire."

Jareth looked at the bowed gray-green head bemusedly. Surely he'd underestimated both Aelst's spark of native intelligence and his patriotism. Neither quite seemed to belong in the Underground as he knew it... at least not in goblins. ]Lost and lonely[, sang part of his estranged memory; he ignored it, out of habit. Aelst left, dismissed, and Jareth sprang back to his perch in the window precipice.

His ice-blue eyes flickered and shone. Perhaps it was time to test the limits of the owl.

If they didn't break, he'd at least know one thing. Whether the Otherworld was attacking his kingdom, or whether he had simply, unwittingly gone mad.

----------------------

Chapter Eight:
Something Wrong?

It was a perfect white night in the Underground. In Sarah's city, the air had been smoggy and lashed with turbid rain; here it was crystalline, cold, and pure. And it surrounded her from head to toe. It was very odd, she decided; she knew she was falling from a height of fatal dimension, but there was no wind rushing past her - only the sickening drop in her gut.

*Very odd.* This was easier to think than thinking about being very dead once the experience was over. Then Sarah grinned involuntarily, because she remembered another, stupider move of hers that had ended in a terrifying fall long ago. Yet the Shaft of Hands was hardly worthy of comparison to this Nothing. Whatever she'd fallen into, it was so handsomely big it was giving her hours of leisure to think before she finally crashed to earth... Her stomach turned, and she thought hurriedly of the odds of landing in an ocean--nope, wasn't any better, not at this speed...

She felt it would be nice to see a Hand or two, waving, maybe, as she fell by. Just for companionship...there was still no wind around her, and the plummeting-elevator feeling was beginning to make her physically sick totally apart from the nausea of fear.

She tried turning around in the crisply cool air. It was not easy but she managed it at last, and once she'd brushed her hair was out of her eyes again she saw the source of the white light. It was bigger than it'd looked from her bedroom. Frightening, even to a girl falling to her doom. She blinked stupidly at the silver bubble.

]I will not let you die now[

*Yeah right,* she replied involuntarily, and blinked again. *What?*

]Your Merlin is safe as well[

A short silence ensued. Thought silence is more profound than other silences. Sarah shook herself.

*You talk?* She had never felt quite so idiotic in her life...or quite so calm. Perhaps the ether she fell through was an anaesthetic. Ummm. Perhaps she was dreaming again. No, that excuse was worn thin.

*Underground has changed, hasn't it?* she asked suddenly, not thinking whether a coherent answer was likely. But the moon just said gently:

]you have changed[

She grimaced. *Tell me about it.*

It was easier to look at its face now, though maybe more dangerous, because she felt the brilliance of it drowning her senses. The beauty from her dream struck her dumb for a few moments. Finally, through all her awe, she could not help saying:

*Who are you?*

]no enemy[ After a few seconds the moon (which she now thought of as her protector) added, ]be quiet until you are safe[

That was when the wind began to blow, but she was almost too busy falling asleep to notice.

The Goblin King stood with his head bowed, looking down at his hands. He seemed to be waiting for something.

Aelst, watching him, knew he was waiting for something. He was waiting for his old King to resurrect in this limp, swiftly aging body. Maybe now, when Jareth seemed to be willing his power back, it would return - the ethereal, lightning-quick courage and inspiring cruelty of his old flamboyant master. It was not in the goblin to wonder why he preferred that to the present mild character of his King. He knew what was usual, that was all; and he longed for it almost as much as the King could.

But the minutes passed, and finally Aelst scurried away from his place at the window, afraid to be found spying there by anyone. The habits of fear were still strong.

Jareth glanced at the recently vacated slit of a window and thought, That's their advantage. With small minds habit is everything. They don't even recognize their world's disintegrating around them; as long as they can see me, they'll think all is well with the Underground. As long as they can see me sane.

He sighed, looking up at the clouded sky. And it's not their fault their minds are that small. Lucky beggars. How in hells did I get into this? I didn't ask for it. Did I?

Anger flicked at him again for having forgotten so much of what he once knew. But he was so *tired* now; he'd never been this tired. The same shiver of unbalance he'd felt while flying towards the moon last time had struck at him a few moments ago, and he'd grasped at it as he would at any other clue. He'd tried to shapechange then and there, and found out with another shiver that he couldn't.

He could see the ghostly shape of the owl in his palms, fluttering, but mocking him. He could no more put on that shape than he could remember what had happened to weaken him. No; every time he asked a question another answer seemed to vanish from his memory.

Well, fine. Jareth straightened, his blond hair fluttering in the chilly wind. But he was smiling, sort of. He wasn't Lord of Underground anymore obviously; someone had seen fit to take those powers away. So be it. He'd find that person, and question, and if necessary kill them, as he was. As this wispy, milksop, *human* mortal he'd become.

Jareth assembled the facts he was sure he had: Sarah, one of the summoned, might have been the last human here - and the last one, according to his goblins, had somehow upset the traffic between the two worlds he knew. According to the moon...wait...what had it said? That he'd been defeated? Take it with a grain of dust. The girl was from a mortal world. He had too much practice with humans to lose to a mere girl. She had tricked him perhaps, and returned to her own world… good riddance. Then why was his sorcery rebelling? (And why did his soul ache like a rotten tooth?) The cause had to be another Power; perhaps one that had sent him here…

So, where would he start looking? Not in his own castle. A) He was sick of it, and B) its magic was as sickly as his own. So where? The Labyrinth itself? Or beyond?

Why not start beyond, and work his way home?

Jareth's feline smile was startling in his pallid face. "They still call me King. I might as well oversee my kingdom firsthand."

-----------------------------------
9. "bad luck"

The sun was rippling over her skin with prickly heat. Underneath, it felt grassy--under her face, stomach and arms; her legs were disembodied or asleep. She felt like a stone statue of herself. But she had to open her eyes.

Sarah opened them with a groan. Simultaneously she rolled over and found the grass was just that: grass, a little dry for May, but real enough. She wasn't anywhere near her own bed. Merlin was not barking at her to fill his bowl.

Damn. What happened?

She sat up and stared around at the hillside. It looked innocent enough, with bees buzzing over the clover, a few bushes rustling in the breeze, and a horizon far away over the plains with not a sign of civilization to mar it. She plucked some clover absently as she tried to think.

Well, she could be dreaming now, but she obviously wasn't; this setting was too tactile. But she had been dreaming, and of the moon, again. Again? Was it last night or the night before that... Sarah looked down at the clover in her fingers; she'd plucked about six of them. They were all four-leaved, and faintly dusted over with golden--glittering--pollen.

"The things they don't teach you in botany class," she muttered, and threw the luckless clover downhill. "All right" -she raised her voice- "I remember now! Thanks for letting me land softly! I assume I did. Now what?"

As soon as she'd said it she knew it was wrong to ask. This was *her* quest. She'd practically called up the moon's portal to the Underground, and jumped through of her own free will. And in pursuit of what? More adventures in her own private Looking-Glass world? Nope. She was looking for Jareth the Goblin King, as embarrassing as it sounded in daylight, in the Underground. She'd better get busy and look.

But then the doubts crowded back on her: was it the Underground? Where was the Labyrinth? Where was *anything*? Apart from the brassiness of the sky and those ridiculous cloverleaves, where was the proof?

"Don't take anything for granted," Sarah sighed. She got all the way up, brushing leaves from her silky mane and clothes. She looked down sharply then-yes, she was wearing her sleek Corner blazer with the chunky-heeled boots and dark jeans. Interesting stuff to wear here, wherever here was.

I don't believe this is happening, she thought, but as her feet took her downhill her face bore a grin.

------------------------

The first thing to do was follow the sun; she vaguely remembered it rising over the Labyrinth as she arrived. But when, after less than half an hour of walking, it had set again, and then rose slightly to her right, Sarah stopped and just sat down on the meadow she was in.

She was beginning to think he had made it easy for her last time.

"Jareth?"

There was not even an echo on the wind.

"Look...maybe I'm not supposed to be here, but the door opened and I came. I need...to talk to you. Are you listening?"

Silence and dusk; the sun was setting behind her. That's the first time I ever called him by name, she thought vacantly. Oh, help. This is the middle of nowhere in the middle of nowhere, and no one even cares that I'm here. What am I going to do? This isn't fa-

"I say," said a very pleasant voice behind her, "if you want me to stand still, just ask, you know. I can do it."

I don't even want to know, she thought. But she turned around completely and there was the sun, bobbing on the horizon, twinkling its white-hot eyes at her.

"Isn't that what you wanted, missy?"

"You don't look anything like the moon," she said idiotically. It snorted at her. "I should say not. I don't even go that high. Not usually. Too cold up there even for me. But you looked a bit lost, so I stopped to see if you needed directions. If you don't, then-"

"Oh wait!" She yelped. "I need to find the Labyrinth! Please, show me where it is." Not bad, she said to herself; that was phrased nicely! The sun bobbed at her some more. It was more than a little nauseating.

"You may have problems," it said finally. "But you know that; you've been here before."

She stared, and blinked her eyes a lot; he hurt. "How did you know?"

"Mistress Sarah, most of us know. Now just keep walking forward, and don't stop. Don't take my word for it; I've got a different perspective, but it looks like that will work." He moved again, as if turning away.

"Wait! How can you-"

Her voice died as he sank below the horizon, leaving her in a luminous starlit dusk. She looked up in a tumult of despair, confusion and loneliness, and found herself facing a star that beat with her own pulse.

]hurry[

She jumped, but fortunately did not lose the star, and hurried after it as it beckoned her onward.

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10. Walk, Don't Run

If you've followed this far in my tale, you're probably wondering why any of this is happening, and when things are really going to START happening. Yes? =) Fear not, the plot thickens.
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Blackness wheeled over the Underground like a merry-go-round with constellations as the giddy, gaudy horses. It wheeled too fast. Sooner or later, the vortex would drown all Underground, and with it the Labyrinth. And with it...

It was noon by the time Jareth had got all things ready for his strange quest. He could not, even now, simply leave the castle and goblins to themselves. He put some of his waning strength into a spell that would keep events fairly peaceful in the Labyrinth for a while. Only a while. His sense of time was still muddled, so he didn't think about this too much.

On the top of the steps leading up to his castle, the first goblin, Aelst, watched the King go with a sense of heartbreaking loss. Even Jareth felt it through the back of his head as he turned to leave.

So he turned back. "Aelst. I will return. And when I do, I want to see this place healed of whatever ails it. If you can sense my spell working, help it. All right?" The goblin nodded its wizened flat head eagerly, and the King smiled a little; all they needed was a task to do... Well he had his own. There was no more he could do for his subjects, weak as he was now. Time to go.

The gates of the Goblin City clanged rustily shut behind him. He was alone in the Labyrinth, armed with his crystals and a pack full of food, and the knife in his tall boots. Jareth looked around, wonderingly, while a breeze riffled his hair: what was this new feeling? It came with his new weakness, his almost mortal weariness...it must be what humans called fear.

"Come on, feet," he muttered. They obeyed him - he headed north, down to the ravine by the gates, and followed it north-east until it ended in an iron gate. This took him most of two panting and sweating hours. Opening the gate was not a problem once the incredibly senile knocker could be got to recognize him, and he passed through into a sheltered glade of apple and peach trees; his secret garden just outside the Labyrinth proper. Here he rested. Or anyway, paused to think.

If Sarah had come this way, he thought, chewing slowly on a cherry-red apple, she'd have been lost forever even if she revived from the peaches and found the way through to the castle. Clever of that dratted worm to have told her so, right at the beginning....

Jareth stopped chewing and dropped the apple core with some violence. *Damn it!* He'd just remembered again. And as soon as he knew he was remembering, it was *gone.* As if he were in one of his own blasted peach crystals. Someone was teasing him and all his fury came back - even if it were his own memory playing tricks, he wasn't going to take it. If he were really schizo and his other personalities were ganging up on him, he wouldn't take that either. Damn them all, and damn the moon in particular to a very special hell. He would find out what was going wrong. Soon. His breathing began to calm, and he picked a peach, absently. Soon, and afterwards, the Underground would be his again...

------------------------------------

"Keep walking forward," Sarah muttered in the pitch dark. Her star was the only one left of all the others, and if that was supposed to be comforting, well, it wasn't. "That's what they told Dorothy, right? And then the Yellow Brick Road forked. I'm so *sick* of being the heroine of some freaky Baum fairy tale, and no, I will not walk forward into a freakin' Grand Canyon!"

The star kept pulsing at her at the speed of her own heartbeats; she stuck her tongue out at it and looked down gloomily. In front of her feet the grassy plain sheered off into blackness. You always overdo things, she thought at Jareth, vaguely. You could have made it a ravine or something. But no, it has to be a bottomless Abyss. Okay. Walk forward. Come on, girl. Do you want to find him or don't you?

She screwed up her eyes and stepped forward; she had to. It felt like the sun was watching from somewhere to see if she kept her part of the bargain. And of course, she fell.