Labyrinth (11 page)

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

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

“Sarah — glad,” she answered, and ruffled his head.

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

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

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

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

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

He was protesting. “Kgrmpf. Mble. Mble. Mble. Grmfff.”

“Sorry,” Sarah said. “I had to do it.”

“That’s all right,” the first knocker told her. “He’s used to it.”

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

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

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

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

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

Ludo shook his head. “Not — good.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah!” it screeched. “What’s going on?”

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

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

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

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

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

“It isn’t me,” Hoggle told him, trembling.

“And where are you going, hmm?”

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

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

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

Jareth’s eyes narrowed.

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

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

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

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

“Hoggle,” Hoggle growled.

“I just noticed that your lovely jewels are missing.”

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

“Wait,” Jareth told him.

Hoggle froze. His eyes closed.

“I have a better plan, Hoggle. Give her this.”

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

“A present.”

Hoggle’s eyebrows beetled. “It … it ain’t going to harm the little missy, is it?” he asked slowly.

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

Hoggle pursed his lips. “Just … curious.”

“Give it to her, Hoggle. That’s all you have to do. And all you have to know.”

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

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

“I ain’t lost my head,” Hoggle scowled.

“You don’t imagine that a young girl could ever like a repulsive little scab like you, do you?”

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

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

Hoggle, red-faced, was blinking at his boots again. “Don’t matter,” he muttered.

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

In miserable obedience, Hoggle nodded. “Yes.”

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

“I’ll tell you what.” Jareth had his head back and was looking down his nose at Hoggle. “If she ever kisses you — I’ll turn you into a prince.”

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

There was a catch. “Prince of the Land of Stench.”

Jareth thought that was a capital joke. He was still laughing as he disappeared.

Hoggle remained standing still, staring at the peach in his hand. His face registered several emotions at once. Amusement was not among them.

———

——

—

The bright, savage figure that had leaped out in front of Sarah was a Firey, and the Fireys are wild. Are they ever. They are wild about how wild they are.

She screamed a second time and shrank away from the creature, hands folded across herself. It was a bit like a scrawny fox, with a long snout that opened very wide, and a bushy tail. Its fur was red-pink-purplish. It walked, or rather bounded, on two chicken-like legs. Its staring eyes were blue, with red pupils. It had very long fingers, which seemed to be perpetually drumming.

“What’s happening?” it demanded.

Sarah shook her head and opened her mouth to frame some sort of answer, but all that came out was a sob.

“Now cut that out right now, you hear?” the Firey told her.

“Yeah,” agreed another one from behind her, making her start around in fright. “That ain’t gonna do no good.”

“No, sir!” hollered a third one, prancing from the trees and leering wildly at her.

“No, sir.” A fourth one appeared.

And a fifth. “Hey!” it said to her, rousingly. “Come on, now.”

She looked around at them all in great alarm. “What do you want?”

“Wa-hoo!” one replied, rapping out a fast rhythm with his fingers on a rock.

“Hoot!” another said, setting up a cross-rhythm.

“What, us?” asked a third.

Sarah nodded.

“Why, we’re just after havin’ ourselves a good time.”

“Oh,” Sarah said, confused. “I see.”

They all slapped their sides at her demure reply and laughed maniacally. One let out a whoop and hit his hand on a log.

“She sees!” it howled.

“Yeeeahhh!”

“Hey-ey!”

“You can’t stick around like that,” one told her.

“No,” said another. ‘You gotta shake it loose a bit.”

“Yeahhh. Quit crying. Let it all hang out.”

They leaped around, hooting and clapping. One struck his finger on the ground and it ignited, like a match. He used it to light a bonfire, then blew his finger out nonchalantly.

Sarah was still timidly backing away.

“Oh, yeah. What you need is a little mess-around.”

“Yes, sir!”

A Firey jumped over a pair of tree stumps and started using them as drums. The rest broke into an up-tempo dance number, clicking and drumming their fingers as they circled around her.

Sarah watched in astonishment, standing near the bonfire. She couldn’t have fled if she’d wanted to, with them capering all around her, but in any case she was rooted to the spot by their antics.

She was horrified to see one of the Fireys pluck out his eyes, shake them like dice, and throw them. “Yeah,” the others all cheered, crowding around to look at them. “Snake eyes!” Then the owner of the eyes snatched them up, tossed them in the air like peanuts, and caught them in his eye sockets. The rest were hooting and dancing and clapping.

As though to outdo the first, another Firey took his head off his shoulders and threw it in the air. It was kicked and headed around like a soccer ball. Another took his leg off, and with a delicate chip shot hit the head back onto its body. They all cackled and slapped their thighs. The drummer went wild.

Meanwhile, the rest crowded around Sarah and tried to persuade her to join in the dance. After seeing their wild pastimes, she was shy and nervous of them. But she thought she had their number now — just crazy good-timers, out of their skulls — and she was no longer frightened, not even when one tried to lift her head from her shoulders.

“Hey!” she protested. “Ouch!”

“It don’t come off!” the Firey exclaimed.

“What?” The rest were astonished, and they all gathered around in the attempt to decapitate her.