Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be

                                                                        Your Slave

 

 

Sarah had gone to bed shortly after her arrival at, what the various people Sarah spoke to referred to as, the encampment. Having been shown the basic layout by David, Beth had disappeared up a tree somewhere, and then reappeared sometime later. The highest houses held the sleeping quarters, a string of bunk-beds, with about four to each hut, compromising of a rickety wooden frame and an uncomfortable, lumpy straw filled mattress. “There’s a curfew at sundown” David explained to her “you need to be on the upper levels by this time, so that the rope-ladders can be raised. It’s a safety thing. Unless you’re on patrol” he added “in which case you have to stay on the lower levels for the night. It’s perfectly safe though. It’s just a precaution.” Sarah didn’t really believe this part. He had then pointed Sarah to an empty bed, which belonged to someone called Matt, who was apparently on the patrol for that night, and had volunteered its use for the newcomer. Beth had later told her that until they had the time to build her a bed of her own she would have to keep switching to wherever was spare. During her first night there she slept incredibly soundly, better than she would ever sleep again on those uncomfortable mattresses. She passed into deep slumber, unconscious to the world outside.

 

 

When she finally woke up and ventured outside the sun was high in the sky, and according to a young girl called Melissa, who Sarah had asked shyly, it was about half past eleven, though with the strange way that time moved in this place it was difficult to tell. Sometimes days passed so quickly they were practically a blur, and even the youngest there could remember times when it had taken almost the span of three weeks between sunrise and sunset. She had been walking along past a small wooden hut on the sleeping level when she heard her name mentioned by a familiar voice.

 

 

“What about Sarah? He seems to have shown an interest in her.”  

 

It was Beth’s voice that calmly replied “she’s far too young.”

 

“She’s nearly as old as you were when you first started.”

 

There was a pause before her outburst, as she considered what he had just said “I was too young, David! But there was no choice! And I did what I had to. And I will keep doing it until there is a suitable alternative.”

 

 

Sarah couldn’t make out David’s muffled reply, but he didn’t sound particularly happy. Deciding that she really didn’t want to eavesdrop any more, she screwed up her courage, knocked on the shaky door and entered the room.

 

 

Beth immediately greeted her brightly with an uncomfortable look in her eyes and a forced grin on her face, obviously trying to pretend that she hadn’t been discussing Sarah moments earlier. David, on the other hand merely muttered “Good Morning” before practically storming out of the room with a black look on his face.

 

 

“Is everything alright?” Sarah asked watching his retreating back.

 

 

Beth looked even more uncomfortable as she answered “We’ve just had a disagreement” but she kept tight lipped on the subject. However she changed topics rapidly “We sent a group out this morning and they managed to find your brother.”

 

Sarah immediately interrupted with a barrage of questions “Oh my god, were is he? Is he ok? Are they looking after him? Who is he with?”

 

“Sarah” Beth reassured her, running her hands down Sarah’s arms soothingly, “he’s fine. He’s living in the Goblin City with the rest of the Goblins and seems perfectly fine. I’ll wait for you to have something to eat, then we can go and see him, ok?”

 

Sarah nodded, overwhelmed by everyone’s kindness.

 

“Sarah?” Beth asked awkwardly “There’s something you should know.” She encouraged Sarah to sit down on the bed opposite her. “The thing is,” she continued gently “your brother…”

 

“Toby” Sarah supplied for her.

 

“Toby” Beth repeated “he wont be the same” she paused, waiting for a sign that Sarah understood but none ever came. “Turning into Goblins, it alters them. He won’t really be Toby any more. When they change, it’s a painful process, and mostly. It drives them insane. Most of the Goblins in the city have run completely mad.”

 

“Oh my god” whispered Sarah, her eyes wide with shock “what did I do?” Beth reached over and hugged her tightly, “I didn’t mean it” Sarah whispered into the other girl’s shoulder.

 

“Yes you did.” Beth corrected her calmly.

 

“What?”

 

“You had to have meant it, even if you regret it now, at the moment you uttered the words you meant it. He can’t take what isn’t truly given.” Sarah just stared at Beth, almost unable to take in what was being said. “You screwed up for a moment, Sarah. Only for a moment, and if you had truly and forever wanted your brother gone you would have never entered the labyrinth. You did everything you could to get him back, that’s why you’re here.”

 

“I took the crystal.” Sarah confessed trying to deal with the guilt that had been building up over the last two days. “I just didn’t know what else to do and I couldn’t remember what to say, so I took the crystal. Then the time ran out. And he…” she paused, struggling to find the words to describe what had happened next. For the rest of her life Sarah would be haunted by the memory of what had happened that day, “Oh god… he turned him into a goblin. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was so awful.”

 

“Hush now” said Beth soothingly, closing her eyes to banish the memory of watching a child being turned.

 

As if reading her thoughts Sarah suddenly asked “Who was it? That you wished away, I mean.”

 

Beth’s forehead creased and she frowned as she stared at Sarah, who began to apologise, thinking that she had said the wrong thing, but Beth cut her off with an answer “My daughter. I wished away my daughter” she said sadly.

 

“Oh” replied Sarah softly.

 

I was barely older than you when I had Megan” she started to explain “I got into a rough crowd when I was at school. First it was smoking you know, then by the time I was fourteen it was drinking, which eventually led to sex I suppose. I was nearly sixteen when I found out I was pregnant. My mum was so disappointed” she sighed. “I was too young for a baby; I could barely look after myself, let alone be responsible for another life. But I was, and there was nothing I could do to change it. Until I wished her away.”

 

“How long ago was that?”

 

“Five years or so. I think, it’s hard to keep track of time here.”

 

“How far did you get in the labyrinth?”

 

“I barely made it into the Goblin City, let alone the castle.” She shook her head slowly “I kept getting so lost.” She sighed deeply, her mind drifting back to the pain of loosing her daughter, before evicting the memories from her head quickly. It wasn’t a subject that she liked to dwell on. “Come on Sarah” she said finally “Let’s go find your brother”.

 

 

The journey to the Goblin City took less time than it had taken them to leave it the other day. When she questioned David about this he pointed out to her that the entire labyrinth was like this. Time didn’t move constantly, indeed, he explained, time didn’t really exist at all in the labyrinth. It was subject to King Jareth’s whims. He could speed it up, slow it down or even reverse it, simply because he wished it to be so. As Jareth preferred people to come to the centre of the labyrinth, as opposed to escaping it, it meant that time slowed as you moved towards the castle, making the journey faster.

 

 

“He makes it like that” David said with a shudder, looking over his shoulder as if he thought the Goblin King could be standing behind him.

 

 

It took them three quarters of an hour to walk into the hustling, bustling centre of the city. And it had changed into an almost completely different place to the hazardous streets that Sarah had traversed yesterday. The structural damage from Ludo’s rocks still remained, however under the watchful eye of the Goblin King most of the debris had been cleared away. The streets that had previously been full of the pathetic excuse for the Goblin Army were now full of goblin tradesmen and craftsmen, of a sort. Female goblins were shopping, or standing on street corners gossiping. They were all making a horrific din, arguing about prices, or who had been standing in the queue longest or over other insignificant matters. They were hurtling insults at each other left right and centre. Chickens were squawking as their feathers were plucked out by particularly spiteful individuals. Such were Jareth’s goblins, a disorganised rabble, with no loyalty to each other, only to the King that they served. They idolised their ruler, looking up to him in all things, crudely imitating him, as a young child does to their parents. Like him they were distorted from their original humanity and now they had become cold and cruel, thinking about themselves only at all times.

 

 

Through the winding goblin-filled streets Beth and David led her, the streets all looked the same and as if she were in another labyrinth soon Sarah began to feel completely lost. Eventually they ended up in a quiet lane a few blocks from the noisy city centre. It was practically deserted apart from a young group of goblins who were playing happily, kicking a stone around the streets, their laughter echoing above the rooftops. Unlike the older inhabitants of the city they were quite cooperative, although it wasn’t unusual for a small scuffle to break out every now and then. In the midst of these goblins was Toby, he was laughing along with the others as if he had been here his entire life. This in his mind was true, as he could not remember a time before he had played in these streets. However he somehow recognised Sarah, he ran to her excitedly as she sank to the floor embracing him tightly. Eventually she pulled him onto her lap and he sat there gurgling happily to himself as a few stray tears ran down Sarah’s face.

 

 

She didn’t get to stay long with her brother, though seeing him cheered her up immensely. Beth was worried about getting back in time for dinner, as she couldn’t guarantee that anyone would save them any food. Sarah agreed as she didn’t fancy going to bed on an empty stomach. Beth needn’t have worried though, there was plenty of food and there was always some waiting for people who are absent from meal-times. As predicted the walk back seemed to take much longer than the walk there. When they returned a pretty girl called Alice had only just begun to ladle stew into bowls, so they hadn’t missed the meal. Sarah sat with Alice while they ate as Beth and David were now making an effort to help Sarah get to know the rest of the group.

 

 

Time in the labyrinth ran in no particular order, this mean that it never ran parallel to time aboveground. When the two realities touched a day could have passed aboveground since the last time they had touched, or a year could have passed or a hundred years, or it could be two hundred years previously. Not even Jareth knew the age he was visiting until he got up there. This meant that the inhabitants of the encampment were from a startling variety of times and places. Beth was from England in 2003, and teased Sarah to no end from being from the eighties, while David and Alice were both from America in the 1950s. There was a sweet girl called Marguerite who hailed from revolutionary France, who spoke little-to-no English, and was almost constantly seen in the company of Georgiana, a seventeenth-century gentle woman who was the only one who understood what she was saying. Though there was a vast spectrum of backgrounds the majority came from medieval Britain. Beth told her later that this was because during this time the Goblin King and his labyrinth was a much more common myth, and in modern society the legend was fading out of human knowledge, in fact, herself and Sarah were the only two that had run the labyrinth coming from the last fifty years “from my perspective of course” she had added thoughtfully.

 

 

“In fact, with the exception of us” she told Sarah quietly “no babies have been wished away at all in recent years.”

 

“How do you know this?” Sarah asked, it was a strict policy of the Goblin King’s that nobody could interfere when a child was wished away; indeed it was dangerous even to be in the same section of the labyrinth as a runner, lest Jareth suspect you of treachery and Sarah had been warned about this fact by several members of the group.

 

“King Jareth told me.”

 

“Oh” Sarah couldn’t really imagine the Goblin King just imparting this information to anybody, but she held her tongue and took Beth’s word on the subject.

 

 

Or at least she tried to.

 

 

“How well do you know the Goblin King?” she blurted out suddenly, mentally kicking herself in the process.

 

A brief look of shock passed over Beth’s face so fast that Sarah almost missed it. “Oh not well” she replied with a false breeziness. “I really should go and supervise who’s on patrol for the night, otherwise it’ll never get sorted, and you should be getting up the rope ladders, it’s nearly sundown.”

 

 

Sarah watched her walk away. She had a deeply uncomfortable and unpleasant feeling that Beth wasn’t telling her something, and that something fairly important was going on, but she was refusing to tell. Sarah shrugged away the feeling; after all she had only known Beth for just over twenty-four hours, or was it twenty-six down here? And she could hardly expect the girl to tell her all her deepest darkest secrets. However Sarah was a naturally curious person, and she was determined to find out more about the labyrinth and what was going on.

 

 

After the ladders had been raised for the night Sarah approached a young girl called Mary, who had, like many, come from the English dark ages, who seemed happy enough to sate some of Sarah’s thirst for knowledge about the King. This curiosity was generally considered by the group as being fairly commonplace and completely natural, and therefore almost their duty to pass on any knowledge that they had acquired. “Cold, that’d be best word to describe him, cruel, calculating, devious, and oh-so clever. He’m ain't human though, not by a long shot. He’m closer relation to them goblins ‘o his, not human though.”

 

“He described himself as generous to me” Sarah recalled, almost half to herself.

 

“Generous? Ha” She let out a dry humourless bark of a laugh “he’m wouldn’t know generosity if it walked up to him and slapped him round the face.” 

 

“He said he was generous because he had re-ordered time for me.”

 

You asked that the child be taken, and I took him. I have reordered time, I have turned the world upside down and I have done it all for you.

 

“Pish-posh, that’s hardly a difficult task considering he orders time in the first place.” Realisation suddenly hit Sarah like a brick. He hadn’t been generous. He had taken Toby because he wanted another goblin; he had reordered time and turned the world upside down simply because he had felt like it. She hadn’t even been considered in his decision making process.

 

“Then he offered to be my slave, he claimed that he was in love with me.”

 

“A dirty, cheap trick.” Mary informed her “it is King Jareth’s right to make the labyrinth as hard or as difficult as he wishes, however he is always challenged by the Queen in this respect. It’s a game to them, like chess, one of them helps you, one of them hinders you. They make bets over who will complete the labyrinth. In your case Jareth bet that you would lose, while the Queen tried to help you win.”

 

“But she didn’t help me, I never saw her the entire time I was travelling through the labyrinth. I never saw her, not until…” she trailed off; talking about Toby’s change was a sore subject.

 

“They help indirectly, send their servants instead.” Sarah nodded sadly, it made a lot of sense, none of her friends had anything to gain from helping her, and they hadn’t come to her aid in the oubliette. However part of Sarah didn’t entirely believe Mary as Ludo, Hoggle and Sir Didymus had all claimed to be her friends an she wasn’t ready to abandon them just yet.

 

“A word of advice” Mary said quietly, interrupting Sarah from her thoughts “forget everything that he offered you Sarah. You won’t get it. King Jareth offered us all the world in order to distract us from our quest and all of us have yet to receive anything from him. He very rarely remembers his promises and the times that he keeps them are even rarer.” She touched Sarah on the shoulder gently before getting up and walking over a rickety bridge then out of sight behind a tree.  

 

 

Sarah sat alone in the darkness for a while lost in her thoughts, occasionally interrupted by the greetings of people walking past where she sat, her legs dangling off the edge of the walkway. Having slept a lot last night she wasn’t really that tired and all sorts of questions were running through her mind. What exactly was the Goblin King? Where did he come from? And his wife? Could Toby be turned back? This she doubted. Mostly, however she was worrying about her parents, did they know she and Toby were missing? Were they worried sick? Or had they simply forgotten that they had ever had any children? This wasn’t the unlikeliest of theories, as she had never heard of other children being snatched by goblins before, and she wouldn’t put it past the Goblin King to wipe the memories of people.

 

Shaking her head she got up and decided to go to bed. But her sleep that night was restless, for her dreams were plagued by a pair of mis-matched eyes.

 

 

In another part of the labyrinth, deep within the bowls of the Castle Beyond the Goblin City, a booted foot was tapping the floor impatiently “Well?” he demanded to a group of goblins who were dangling a rope into a dark hole.

 

 

“She ain’t climbing up the rope, your majesty” a goblin bravely informed him.

 

He sighed “Well I can see that for myself. Is there a particular reason she isn’t climbing up?”

 

“Perhaps she’s dead” squeaked a goblin from the corner who was wearing a black eye-patch, emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, in the middle of his forehead.

 

“Well I suggest you find out.” The impatience in his voice was growing to dangerous levels, however not all of the goblins standing in the room above the oubliette seemed to have noticed.

 

“How do we find out?” piped up one especially stupid goblin. The Goblin King answered its question with a short, sharp kick which sent it tumbling, headfirst and screaming into the black hole.

 

 

About two minutes later the little creature came scampering back up the rope, apparently none the worse for wear, and reported to the King “She ain’t in there Sire.”

 

“What do you mean she isn’t in there? Where is she then?”

 

 

A figure, adorned in the finest silk, with silver bangles decorating her wrist, which made no sound as she moved, stepped from the shadows silently. As her mis-matched eyes met her husbands she spoke.

 

“I should imagine, Jareth that you know very well where she is.”

 

 

 

 

 

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