Disclaimer: I do not own any of
the characters that I have borrowed from Labyrinth, they all belong to the
fabulous Jim Henson and we are forever indebted to him for making such
marvelous characters for us to play with.
“Just fear me, love
me, do as I say, and I will be your slave.”
He held the crystal
out to her. It was balanced perfectly on his long gloved fingers. Sarah didn’t
know what to do. She couldn’t remember the line, that all-important line, the
line that would end this, returning her and her brother to their home. Life
would get better, she would come to care about Toby more, she would be less
self-centred and as a result of this, her relationship with Karen would
improve. She would get older, finish high-school, go to college, meet someone,
get married, have children of her own. It all hung in
the balance, as did Toby’s future, which hadn’t even been written yet. All she had to do was
remember six tiny words.
But she couldn’t, try
as she may they wouldn’t come to her. They were just out of reach. She could
practically feel them brushing underneath her fingertips, if she could just
reach out and grab them, this whole adventure, this nightmare would be over. But, no matter how hard she tried
they wouldn’t come to her, they just slipped through her fingers like water.
She was running out of options, Toby was nowhere to be seen. The Goblin King
was standing before her, smiling as he offered her the world, and at that
moment she didn’t know what to do.
They say life is like
a journey and the destination isn’t important, it’s how you get there that
counts. In some ways the labyrinth is a metaphor for this, the endless twists
and turns. And it’s not the castle that counts, but what you learn on the way
to the castle. In the last thirteen hours Sarah had learnt many things, things
aren’t always seen, you can’t change things around you, and you’re nothing
without your friends. But back to the point, if life is a journey, destiny is
the path you walk on, the road you tread. It’s a one way street and you have to
choose which pathways to take. Sarah made her choice. It was simple really; she
had tried her best, given everything that she had got.
She took the crystal.
She reached out and
took the shimmering orb from where it lay, offered in his gloved hand. She
gazed at it, transfixed. Inside she could see movement, swirls of bright
colours which moved round and round and round. On closer inspection, they were
revealed to be dancers. Couples moving in an elegant waltz, women dressed up in
fantastic gowns, their partners, straight-backed and obviously handsome under
their masks. They were dancing, happily, to music that Sarah, on the outside
looking in couldn’t hear. In the centre
she could see herself dancing, her dark hair caught up in an elaborate web of
silver flowers. Her dress, a beautiful silver confection with puffed sleeves
and a full skirt spreading out around her. She was dancing elegantly, flirting
confidently, glancing down demurely and laughing provocatively. Her partner,
handsome, regal and grinning wickedly, the Goblin King.
Sarah looked up to
where he stood before her; he was watching the scene in the crystal with keen
interest. She met his eyes and a triumphant grin spread across his face. She
considered hurling the crystal back at him with all her might, anything to wipe
that smug look off his face. But it was too late. He had won.
Somewhere in the
distance a clock started to strike the hour, it’s ringing haunted Sarah for the
rest of her days. Thirteen chimes. She could hear the Goblin King’s earlier
words sounding out in her head “You have
thirteen hours in which to solve the labyrinth before your baby brother becomes
one of us forever.”
“Such a pity” a voice
jolted her out of her thoughts. The Goblin King was smirking as he spoke. The
sheer amusement in his eyes scared Sarah more than her entire situation did.
“Well come along then” he held his hand out to her “I wont bite” he grinned,
seeing the apprehensive look on her face. Sarah didn’t trust him for a second,
but seeing no feasible alternative, there was no way off the platform, and she
didn’t fancy jumping into the abyss surrounding it, though the thought did pass
through her mind in a fleeting moment of madness. Not knowing what else to do,
she slipped her small hand into his larger leather-clad one.
The world just faded
away, and darkness swirled before her, if the Goblin King hadn’t been holding
her so tightly she surely would have stumbled and fallen. Then as fast as the
world had faded away it came back. But they were no longer standing on the
platform that Sarah had jumped to in a desperate attempt to reach her baby brother;
they were now standing in the throne room of the Castle beyond the
“Toby!” called Sarah
anxiously, much to the amusement of all who surrounded her. She tried to get to
her brother, but was roughly stopped by a dozen sturdily built goblin guards
who held her back roughly.
“Toby!” she called
again, shaking her shoulders violently as she tried to brake free, but it was
no use, she couldn’t get to her little brother, who scared by all the commotion
had begun to wail. Sarah forced herself to relax as she realised that all her
panic and struggles were getting her nowhere, and her wrists were hurting from
the goblins’ tight grip. She looked around the room, her eyes searching
desperately, hunting for something, anything, she could use to make her escape
and rescue Toby. There were two swords crossed over a shield, hung as some form
of decoration on the other side of the room, the steel glistening in the
moonlight that was coming in from the open windows, they looked sharp, and even
if they weren’t Sarah was willing to bet she could still do a fair amount of
damage with them. If she could only make her way to the opposite wall, she
could probably fight her way through the goblins, as most of them seemed to be
unarmed, and from what she had seen of them in the city they seemed fairly
incompetent. And Hoggle, Ludo and Sir Didymus couldn’t be that far away, they
would surely come if she called. As she formed her exit strategy only one
obstacle stood between her and her goal of freedom. The
Goblin King. There was no way he was just going to let her and Toby go,
the thought of having to fight her way past the terrifying Goblin King made Sarah
shiver involuntarily, causing one of the goblins to cackle nastily.
Sarah looked at the
goblins in the room; they had all settled down now and were staring at their
King. The expressions on their faces turned Sarah’s blood to ice, they were
waiting for something, they were silently willing their King to start, and they
kept glancing at Toby excitedly, almost baying for blood.
Sarah turned to look
at the Goblin King; he was engaged in conversation with the woman sitting on
his throne. Sarah couldn’t hear their entire conversation, but she kept picking
up snippets.
“You won! Now claim
your prize.” The woman stared at Jareth expectantly before glancing at Sarah.
When Sarah met the mis-matched eyes of the woman’s gaze the hairs on the back
of her neck stood up uncomfortably. Then
the woman returned her attention to Toby and Sarah let out a sigh of relief
that she didn’t even know she was holding.
She looked at the King
now, he was lounging regally, still wearing his cloak that was the colour of
feathers, he was heart-breakingly beautiful with his
pale skin and features that were simply inhuman, he looked too perfect, almost
as if he wasn’t real. The only part of him Sarah could find fault with was his
eyes, his haunting mis-matched eyes, one brown, one a deep blue. It is often said that the eyes
are the windows to the soul, and if you want to see a person’s innermost nature
to look into their eyes, the Goblin King had cruel eyes. He was casually
tossing a crystal in the air before catching it again,
he looked relaxed, almost cheerful. He caught the crystal one final time in his
gloved hand before hurling it with all his might at the wailing infant.
“Toby!” she shrieked
trying as hard as she could to break free again.
The crystal smashed
into a thousand pieces at the infant’s feet. From the shards a bright white
light came, faint at first then brighter and brighter until it became so strong
that Sarah, and all the other inhabitants of the room had to shield their eyes.
Then it went dark, it took a few moments for Sarah’s eyes to adjust to the
absence of the searing, skull-splitting light. Toby’s scared wails had now turned
into painful screams which cut Sarah to the soul. For years to come when she
was alone in the dark she would hear her baby brother’s agonizing screams.
Before her eyes Toby
was changing, his squat, round babyish fingers were becoming longer, knarled
and fatter, his thin arms were also becoming chunkier, she could see the skin
and the flesh under it stretching unnaturally. Sarah watched, transfixed as his
face began to change. It was like something out of a nightmare, deformed and
very very wrong. Dark frizzy hair grew where he had
once been almost bald, his brow was becoming furrowed and creased, it was
shortening as well, so his new hair now reached his
fat, squat nose. His skin, all over was now a blotchy-grey colour, not the
natural peach tones that had been there before, gone were his rosy lips and
cheeks, his beautiful blue eyes. All that remained now were his new grotesque
goblin features. There was a loud crack as his posture began to alter, he began
to hunch as his shoulders rounded and his spine curled.
As the transformation
finished the wind started, coming from the pit where Toby was still screaming,
and it was blowing violently around the room. Sarah’s hair was now whipping
round her face ferociously, stinging her cheeks and her eyes were streaming.
She brought one hand up to protect her face, like she had thirteen hours ago
when the Goblin King had first entered her parent’s bedroom. She closed her
eyes, praying that it would all be over soon. Then as suddenly as the wind had
started it stopped. There was silence. Sarah opened her eyes slowly, not quite
knowing what to expect. There was no longer a baby standing in the centre of the
room, there was a small goblin, who was gibbering inanely to himself.
Toby.
“Oh
my God!” Sarah whispered to
herself, a stricken expression on her face. She looked over at the monstrosity
that had formerly been her brother.
This was all her
fault.
Her stomach started to
heave and there was the taste of bile in her mouth. Sarah only just had time to
turn away before she was sick on the castle’s stone floor. She felt slightly
better now and she straightened herself up, wiping away the sweaty hair that
was plastered to her face and looked over at the King of the Goblins.
“Could somebody please
clear that up?” he instructed, his voice ringing out across the room, as he
looked at Sarah distastefully. A small female goblin hurried off, then
reappeared a few moments later with a mop and bucket, soon the mess had
disappeared.
Sarah looked over to
the pit in the centre of the room where the goblin, formerly her little brother
Toby had been sitting, but, to Sarah’s dismay he was gone, leaving only a pile
of rags, and his red and white striped romper suit, which had been left in
tatters after the transformation. Sarah scanned the room urgently, though she
couldn’t see him. The goblins, who were all starting to slowly filter out the
rooms in all directions, all looked the same to the untrained eye, rather like
penguins, her mind added with an insane little giggle.
Focus Sarah! She told
herself, now was not the time to fall to pieces. She could do that later, in
the meantime she had to find her little brother and there was only one person,
if indeed he was a person, that could help her with
that task.
“Where did he go?” she
asked the Goblin King, her voice sounding braver than she felt.
“Where did who go?” he
replied absently with an evil grin.
“My brother” she
replied evenly, she wasn’t going to rise to his taunts.
“The baby?” he seemed
to be having fun.
“Yes.”
“The
one that was in the centre of the room?”
“Yes.”
“The one that I just
turned into the Goblin” he was rubbing salt into it now.
“Yes” she replied
exasperatedly.
“Well let me see” he
tapped his long gloved fingers against his chin in a show of looking
thoughtful. “Oh yes. I remember now… hmmm… or was that Crick?...No,
it was definitely your little brother. I named him Jareth you know?” he
remarked casually, “has my eyes. One of the others gave him some new clothes,
couldn’t walk around all day in those rags you see.” He paused watching Sarah’s discomfort “Then
they went out into the city.”
Sarah groaned
inwardly, there were literally hundreds upon hundreds of residents in the
“Well,” said the
Goblin King “much as I was enjoying your company and really Sarah you have been
quite entertaining. I have other, more pressing matters to attend to. I will
decide what I am going to do with you in the morning. In the meantime I have
found you some more than suitable accommodation.” He blew her a kiss with a
smirk as Sarah realised where she was going.
The
oubliette.
“Guards” he beckoned
with a gloved hand and half a dozen goblin guards, all dressed in comically
small uniforms started trying to drag her off. She thrashed, she kicked, she
screamed, she even tried biting, but learnt that with the average goblin’s
hygiene habits this was not to be recommended. Being taken to the oubliette
scared Sarah, it filled her with a sense of dread that she hadn’t felt all day.
The oubliette, a little place to put somebody when you wanted
to forget about them. And with the fickleness of the Goblin King’s mind
Sarah had no doubt that it would be easy for him to do.
A blunt force hit
Sarah’s legs, making her fall to her knees with a cry of pain. Immediately she
was inundated with goblins, they grabbed her arms and forced her backwards
until she was lying on her back, arms pinned to her sides. Four goblins on
either side of her picked her up roughly and started carrying her towards the
door as she thrashed wildly, trying to break loose.
“Get off me!” she
yelled angrily as her foot connected with a goblin’s helmet with a satisfying
crunch. But it was no use, she felt more hands
grabbing her until she was completely pinned, unable to get free. She could
feel them moving now, carrying her off. Within moments they had left the throne
room, bumping Sarah’s head, on the way out, hard enough that she saw stars.
They went down a flight of steps and then through a maze of twists and turns
leading deeper and deeper into the heart of the castle. Sarah soon lost all
sense of direction, not that it matters though, she
thought to herself, she couldn’t get out of an oubliette on her own anyway.
Until they reached the opening five minutes later Sarah amused herself, trying
desperately not to think of Toby so she wouldn’t break down in tears, by
looking at the patterns on the ornate ceilings of the Goblin King’s castle.
Suddenly she felt
herself stop, there was a yammering coming from the goblins but she couldn’t
work out what they were saying. She started to be tilted slightly, she looked
over in that direction and they were moving her towards a hole in the castle
floor which was covered by a rusty iron grate, behind it was so dark that it
looked like black velvet, she could see nothing down there and there was no way
she could tell how deep the hole went. An image of a bottomless-pit came into
her mind with a swell of panic. She could be falling forever. She put every
scarp of energy that she had in her reserves into trying to break free, but it
was no use, there was too many of them and they were holding her too tightly.
She heard a scraping
noise as the grate was pulled aside. Without further ado and without ceremony
she was tossed into the darkness.
She landed on her
front, knocking the wind out of her lungs, rattling her teeth, grazing her chin
and elbows and bruising her ribs. In retrospect Sarah considered herself very
lucky that she hadn’t sustained any further injuries from the fall, however in
the meantime she closed her eyes and groaned. Her entire body ached all over
from where she had hit the stone floor, she had only dropped just over eight
feet, but it still hurt like hell. She heard another scraping, signifying that
the grate had been put back into place. Sarah ruled out any attempts to climb
back up, that way out was for now blocked. She sat up gingerly and looked at
her injuries, there was nothing that was going to kill her so she got up and
looked around. She needn’t have bothered, there was no point as it was so dark
she couldn’t see a thing. Using her hands to grope around she came to the conclusion
that, like the last oubliette she had been in it was round, and that, like the
last oubliette she had been in the only way she could get herself in or out was
through the hole in the top.
She wasn’t worried
though, by now word of what had happened would have reached her friends. They
would soon figure out where she had been put and that she needed their help.
Hoggle would appear, like last time and light a candle, show her the door that
leads out and they would be on their way.
Off to rescue Toby, they would find a way to turn him back, then a way to get home, everything would be fine. So she
waited.
And
waited.
And
waited.
Sarah had been sitting
in the oubliette for nearly four hours when is dawned on her, she realised that
nobody was coming for her. The realisation stabbed her like a knife, and tears
started rolling down her cheeks and once she had started she couldn’t get them
to stop, her head sank down onto her knees and she wept.
She cried for Toby and
what she had done to him, she cried for her friends, who weren’t coming to
rescue her, she cried for her parents who had now lost both their children and
she cried for herself, for making one stupid tiny little wish that she would
regret forever.
Eventually she ran out
of tears, she wiped her eyes and began to feel a bit better. She decided that
she wasn’t going to wait to be rescued; she was going to get herself out of
this hole. She started exploring; using her hands to find her way around,
praying that there weren’t any spiders or rats or anything worse lurking in the
darkness. She shuddered at the thought but continued searching.
Against the far wall
she found something of interest, her foot connected with it first, knocking a
pile of things over with a clatter. She knelt down slowly and groped along the
floor, carefully hunting for what she had heard fall. Eventually she put her
hands on it. It was about two feet in length and about an inch thick and it was
quite rounded. She ran her fingers along it curiously, it was very smooth, like
a sanded off piece of wood, but it was too cool to be made out of stone. She
ran her fingers to each end, there were funny sorts of knobbles. Maybe it was a
weapon of some sort she thought to herself.
She ran her hands over
it once more, then suddenly dropped it with a scream and stepped back quickly.
It was a human bone.
She had just found the
remains of the former inhabitant of the oubliette. He had been thrown in by the
Goblin King seventy five years previously, as a temporary measure, until he was
forgotten about. He had survived for a while by drinking water that trickled in
through one of the walls, however since then the leak
had been plugged, so Sarah would not have that opportunity. He died forty-nine
days later, raving mad having been driven to lunacy through hunger and from the
oppressive darkness.
Panic welled up in
Sarah uncontrollably, she didn’t want to die like this, she
didn’t want to share this poor corpse’s fate.
“Let me out of here!”
She screamed beating her fists against the stone wall. “Can anybody hear me?
Hello?” She continued like this for some time, but all it achieved was a pair
of bloody knuckles and a sore throat.
There was no answer
from the world above. She decided to be practical, she’d been up all day, then she’d been running around in the god-forsaken
hell-hole, that was more commonly known as the labyrinth for over thirteen
hours. She needed to rest, conserve her energy, and there was nothing she could
do in this place. She chose a spot, as far away from the bones as she possibly
could in this small space, the oubliette was only about six or seven feet wide,
and checked it for any other dead bodies or anything as equally unpleasant
before she lay down. She curled up in a ball, her head resting on her arm, she closed her eyes and waited for sleep to claim her.
It never came.