Fan Fiction ❯ Broken Wings: A Labyrinth Fic ❯ Chapter 9

Part 9

The rock shape looked more like a lap dancer than the ballet dancer Sarah had envisioned, and the stairs were a steep slope of stone blocks that might have once been steps, but all in all, the sphinx's directions were good. Still, with all the vines she had to sidestep and the rocks slipping underfoot, her sneakers felt more like wooden clogs and her legs felt like mush.

"Just another corner," she said for the fifth time. "Just one more. Just one more."

The faerie squawked and jumped up and down a few times, jostling the lantern.

"Oh, shut up." Sarah rattled the lantern once and made the faerie slip and hit her rear end. "Maybe the dragon'll wanna eat fresh faerie, you ever think about that?"

The faerie hushed and pulled the scrap of cloth over her front.

Sarah opened her mouth to say something else, but high-pitched chimes echoed from around...yes, the next corner. When she came around, she found a huge marble fountain, with lions heads carved along the sides and tall storks standing in the middle beaks upraised and wings held high. Instead of water, though, the birds sprayed stones of every color imaginable, diamonds, pearls, emeralds, sapphires, rubies, onyx, jade, gold...stones literally littered the ground around the fountain.

Her crystal bubble guide continued forward, somehow avoiding the precious rocks as they showered around it, and hovered in front of what looked like a huge gray stone at least twenty times her size. Sarah frowned and looked around the boulder, wondering if the dragon was hiding behind it. Only when one side of the rock shifted and extended out a little did she realize that was the gloom dragon, asleep right in front of her.

Afraid the bubble might somehow wake the dragon up, she motioned with one hand for it to return. Once again it passed the sprayed stones and stopped in front of her. The dragon yawned, displaying a row of teeth to make any horror movie director proud, rolled on its back, and snapped its jaws shut. Its legs paddled a little, as if chasing something.

I don't wanna do this anymore, she thought. She looked down at the bubble. "Can you show me Jareth?"

The bubble stayed blank.

"Please?"

No response.

"I'll pop you, I swear I will--"

The inside of the bubble stopped reflecting the surrounding forest and showed her a miniature three dimension picture of the goblin king still asleep against the tree. Leaves fell around and on him as the nearby trees began to visibly wither, making the bubble look like some kind of snow globe. Even at this distance, she could see him panting for breath.

"Oh, Jareth..." She looked back up at the dragon. Maybe...maybe it's shed scales on the ground. Maybe I won't have to wake it up. Maybe... "Find a loose scale," she whispered. "The farther from that dragon, the better."

The bubble floated around the area, zipping along the ground and around falling rocks. Both Sarah and the faerie watched it move, occasionally scanning the treetops for any more evil red sprites. The dragon yawned again and rolled back on its side, a wing spreading over itself like a blanket and making it look like a small plateau.

Finally the crystal stopped. Stones crunched against each other as she walked over. Her jaw dropped. "That's a scale?" she gasped. She bent and heaved up what looked like a tablet fit for half of the ten commandments. "It's solid rock."She had to slid the lantern up her arm before she could get a good grip on the flat oblong stone. "All right, let's go."

Taking its place in front, the crystal pointed her back up the stairs. She closed her eyes. "Of course." Maneuvering the stone so that she could carry it on her back, hands holding the bottom, she started up.

Halfway up the stairs, the lantern swung a little too hard and slammed into the stone. The resultant clang reverberated along the rocks, past the fountain, to the gloom dragon. A gray eye opened and spotted the scale thief fighting her way up the crags, the faerie's light like a beacon.

To her credit, Sarah did not freeze or scream or turn to look when she heard the angry roar behind her. She merely grunted, hefting the stone a little higher, and picked up the pace. Sounds, like a huge snake slithering over the ground, came to her, matching her pace. "Show me the dragon," she ordered the crystal.

Instead of a frontal shot, the bubble gave her a side view of the chase. The dragon put one paw in front of the other, laboriously dragging itself along the broken stones and crushing them further. It groaned and pushed with its hind legs to get a little higher. She'd thought the tail might swish like an angry cat's, but it only hung like a limp rag.

"Of course, it's stone," she said with a laugh. "It can't move that fast." It reminded her of a vaudeville chase scene, where the chased and chaser could only take tiny steps. Normally she could have outrun it, but the stone weighed her down so she could only keep a few feet ahead of it.

With her eyes on the bubble, however, she put her foot down on a loose rock, which shifted and tripped her, sending her to the ground. The tablet fell on a patch of soft dirt, intact. She winced and hauled her abused foot up to see if it was sprained.

The dragon's head came up over the edge at that moment and lunged one arm at her. She shrieked and scooted back on the ground, but its claws still caught her right shoe. With one tug it came off, and the dragon brought it up to its eyes. Sarah thought it might eat her shoe, but it only scraped at the sole with one of its claws, dropping a few colored rocks on the ground.

"Huh?" She looked at the bottom of her other shoe. Sure enough, a few pearls and sapphires had stuck in the rubber. Hoping that was it, she yanked them all out and hopped over, holding them out. The dragon put one paw out and caught the gems as she dropped them. With a snort of smoke and a roll of his eyes, the dragon threw her shoe back at her and turned to leave.

"Sorry," she said, stepping into her shoe.

It only flipped its tail at her.

*

After ages of walking, Sarah reached Jareth, still fast asleep against the tree. She dropped to her knees beside him and let the scale land on a thick patch of grass and leaves, leaving the lantern next to it.

"Jareth? Jareth, wake up." She pushed the blonde hair out of his face, wincing when she felt his temperature. "Jareth?"

His eyes fluttered for a moment, then closed again.

"Damn." She looked around at the darkening forest and the stars becoming visible in the sky. A chill had settled in the air and only intensified as the wind picked up. "We can't stay here." She stared at the bubble and frowned. "I'm going to need your help. First you need to make more bubbles so you can carry that tablet."

The crystal actually shuddered in mid-air.

"I know you don't want to, but it's my only choice. Please."

It shuddered again and slowly split in two, and then those two separated into four...she sighed when she saw how long it would take.

"And now I need someplace safe to take Jareth."

The bubbles suddenly started bopping each other, zooming about in a frantic effort to push the other bubbles down and come out on top. Sarah's eyes widened at what she recognized as a fight, until at last one large crystal floated in front of her, the obvious winner. Leaving the others to bring the tablet after them, Sarah pushed the lantern back down her arm and leaned over Jareth. She eased her arms under his back and legs and stood, cradling him.

"You're so light." She looked over him again to make sure there were no pieces missing. "How can you be this light?"

The bubble floated on into the trees, and she looked back a few times to see if the scale was behind her. She could barely decipher its outline through the darkness, but the multiplying bubbles gave off a faint glow that she could spot. Remembering how she'd fallen before, she looked back at the bubble guiding her, keeping an eye on the lantern's light on the ground.

They came to a halt at a rose patch that made Sarah's heart skip a beat. On twisting vines shaped into a dome, roses had folded up for the night amongst nightmarishly long thorns. She tried to look around it, but the briar patch extended far into the distance.

"I guess this is another part of the maze," she whispered. "How do we get in?"

Her crystal guide floated straight into the vines and disappeared.

She gaped for a few seconds before the thought came to her. "Maybe it's like those walls around the labyrinth." Turning her back so the thorns would poke her first and not Jareth, she backed into the section the crystal had disappeared. Instead of the stinging pain brought by walking into rose bushes, they passed harmlessly through the illusion-masked door and into a low enclosure. The bubble paused, then floated back out, presumably to join the rest of the crystals.

Sarah knelt and set Jareth on the ground, yawning while she lay down beside him, nearly tossing the lantern aside before she remembered the faerie was in there. She just placed it an arm's length away. "Finally. Feels like I've been walking all day." She closed her eyes and stretched once before putting an arm around Jareth. "Let's hope we'll be alive to walk all day tomorrow." Half an hour later, the scale floated in and dropped next to the lantern, scaring the faerie awake, and the bubbles scattered.

TBC...