Fan Fiction ❯ Broken Wings: A Labyrinth Fic ❯ Chapter 3

Part 3

Sarah spotted the door-gnomes before Jareth did. At first they looked like smaller versions of Hoggle, but on closer inspection, she noticed that they also had a dull, blank look in their eyes. All of them were either running around in circles or hitting each other with huge wooden sticks, and then running around in circles.

"Are they dangerous?" she whispered.

Jareth chuckled. "No, just immensely stupid." He walked boldly up to them, with Sarah right behind him. "Which one of you is Wodkif?"

The gnomes, all of which looked the same to Sarah, grinned, pointed at themselves and yelled "I am! I am!" Then they started running around again, screaming "I am!"

"Then maybe you can open the door, since you're Wodkif," Jareth said. "The faeries said you can't, but--"

"Wodkif can open the door!" the gnomes yelled in unison. They ran in strange loops, heading for the wall around the labyrinth. Then they stopped there and started to jump again. "Open, open!"

"They are silly," Sarah nodded.

After the tenth or twelfth jump, the wall suddenly cracked and a huge wooden door appeared from beneath the stone surface. The gnomes continued jumping up and down, and the door opened up with a harsh grating sound, as if it didn't want to allow anyone inside. It started to close as soon as they could see beyond it.

"Hurry Sarah, it won't stay open forever!" Jareth said in a low voice. They both ran forward, and Sarah had to slide sideways to get through the narrow space. As it was, she nearly lost the faerie when it closed on the lantern. It stuck there a moment, and the door shuddered violently, trying to crush it in its rush to close. She put her foot on the wall and pulled back, dislodging the lantern and falling on the dirt amidst the deafening crash of the door locking in place once more.

"Are you all right?" Jareth called.

Sarah nodded and scooped the lantern back up. Inside, the faerie was hopping about and shaking her fists, obviously using words in her own language that Sarah would have blushed to hear, if she'd understood.

When Sarah looked around, she found Jareth leaning against a tall statue, cradling his arm. "How's it feel?" she asked.

"I'll survive," he replied. "I shouldn't have jarred it when I ran." He looked up, and in the distance they could both spot the castle, its walls dark and a strange black cloud hanging over it. "Well, let's get going. It'll be a long walk there."

"Can't you just...teleport to the castle or something?" she asked, walking beside him.

He shook his head. "We can't go to the castle first. I need to get something from the Gloom Dragon, and that means we have to pass the sphinx, and to get to her..." he sighed wearily. "To get to her, we have to go a very long way."

"Do you know how to get there?" she asked. "The maze'll shift before we get very far."

Jareth nodded. "Just a moment." He held his hand out, whispered something that sounded like what the faerie was screaming, and one of his familiar crystal bubbles appeared in his palm. Gently tossing it into the air, Jareth stood back as it floated before them for a few seconds, and then it languidly started off in the proper direction.

"We'll find a place to rest until the sun goes down," he whispered to her. "We can start off when it's dusk."

"Jareth?" she started to ask while they walked, "what happened here? It looks like all the hedges were burned up." She reached out towards one of the large bushes, and several of the leafs crumbled as her fingertips touched them.

"My sister despises plants," Jareth explained. "She prefers statues and stone walls and..." he shuddered at the thought, "...iron."

"Iron?" she wondered. "What's wrong with iron?"

"It's death to magick," he answered, as if she should know that. "An iron sword can cut through spells and magick forests as if they didn't exist. A tiny flake of it would kill that faerie, and it could poison me."

"What's the lantern made out of?" she asked. "And come to think of it, what is anything metal made of here?"

"What do you mean?"

"Iron is poison, I get that," she said. They both turned a few corners, watching their step as they crossed over pieces of dead branches. "But your goblins wear armor, they have cannons, they even had a robot until we destroyed it. And what about the cleaner? If it's not iron, what is it?"

Jareth sighed in exasperation. "Sarah, if you weren't helping me, I swear...I'm not supposed to reveal any of this to anyone. The labyrinth has so many secrets, but some of them are more important than others."

"But I am helping you," she smiled too sweetly. "Look, you know I'm not going to hurt you, and I want to save my friends from this witch."

They came to another turn, and instead of just more blackened hedges, the entire path had been destroyed. Stones were flung here and there, ashes lay on the ground, still smoldering, and strange unnatural insects ran through the mess. Each of them looked around and saw that the desolation spread for hundreds of feet in every direction. Absolutely nothing had been left standing.

Jareth gasped and dropped to one knee, as if he'd been struck. He lay his hand on the ground, ignoring the heat, and seemed to listen for something. Sarah watched him for five minutes, then knelt beside him.

"What is it?" she asked softly.

"It's dead," he whispered. "It's really dead. The magick's gone out of it." He lifted the charred remains up in his hand. "Salt...that monster sowed salt into the ground...it could take centuries to repair this..."

"Come on," Sarah nudged him, helping him stand. "We can't fix this now. We have to find a place to rest and then we'll start off again at night."

Still obviously shaken, and ashen from the sight, he allowed himself to be pulled through the scorched field up until they reached the far edge, where the burnt hedge started up again. Jareth paused and looked back, unwilling to leave.

"Jareth, don't stop," she insisted, giving him another tug.

"I can't leave it like this," he mumbled. "I have to fix it. I have to take care of my labyrinth."

"And you can do that by getting rid of Arin," she said. "Now come on, before we're spotted by whatever's running around out here."

"Wait," he said, creating a second crystal bubble and releasing it over the charred soil. It floated aimlessly, then slowly started creating another bubble. When there were two, both of those started to create more. "There. At least that will start to mend all this."

Finally, with his conscience assuaged, he followed her back into the standing maze.

By the time the sun was high up in the cloudy sky, they had stumbled across a large fountain in the center of several collapsed trees. Water had ceased to flow through the fountain, and what was left had coalesced into muddy pools full of cinders and dead leaves, but Jareth still smiled.

"She may kill the surface, but she can't get to the underground." He stepped up to the fountain and pushed against one of the ornate flowers on the side. Instantly the entire fountain slid to the left, revealing a deep hole with a ladder on the edge. "Keep the lantern ready. It's going to get very dark."

"Are you sure you can climb down with that arm?" she asked, readjusting her grip on the lantern.

"I'll be all right," he assured her. "I'm used to working under harsh conditions." He dropped down the ladder before she could ask what he meant by that. Looking around one more time to make sure they weren't being watched, Sarah followed him down.

"What's down this ladder?" she asked. The fountain abruptly closed over them, sealing them in and plunging them into darkness. She pulled out the lantern and was delighted to see that the faerie was glowing brighter than a neon sign.

"Hopefully we'll hook up with the ones who made it down here," he answered. "If we're lucky, we may find a few of your friends as well. And after a few hours, we'll head straight for the sphinx."

Sarah nodded and they both fell silent, the only sound their shoes tapping on the rungs of the ladder.