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Shattered	By : TarnishedArmour Category: G through L > Labyrinth Views: 7713 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: Based upon the work of Jim Henson; specifically Labyrinth, copyright 1986 by Jim Henson & associated parties. I do not own or have legal rights to Labyrinth, etc., or make any profit from them. *Individual disclaimers for other works in

Chapter List
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Sarah stood outside Jareth's Labyrinth and thought for a long time. She took her time remembering the various challenges, who had helped her and how. She looked deeper into what Jareth called the challenges and saw darker, universal truths. Some always lie, some always tell the truth, but there is never an always or a never. The way forward often travels down paths you have seen before. There is no turning back, for time always moves forward. Asking for help does not mean you will be put upon the right path. Moving too quickly can be as dangerous as not moving at all. Even friends may betray you in order to save themselves. A friend who has betrayed you may turn out to be the one that saves you.
And nothing is ever all that it seems to be. Even when there seems to be nothing left, there is always another layer, another truth to be discovered. The sun began to rise on the far side of Jareth's Labyrinth. Sarah started to realized that she had spent the entire night preparing her memories and realizations prior to entering. The lessons learned, she had only two: Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it, and love is not just an emotion filled with romance and joy, it is a burden that can break a man down to his soul.
Sarah mentally apologized to her politically correct teachers for that last bit, but she preferred the older and more precise ways of speaking wherein man meant anyone, and there was none of this wishy-washy he/she crap. She had even written an entire set of instructions using "it" in place of the personal pronouns, just to make her point that the gender neutral pronoun was already there, and convenient. After that, her teachers gave up. Third realization: Sometimes persistence was more than just being stubborn, and sometimes being stubborn could be mistaken for persistence.
Rising, Sarah sighed to herself. "Well, if I'm ready, I'm ready. If I'm not, I hope I will be by the time I reach the Castle beyond the Goblin City." With that she skipped down the hill and to the gates, which were positioned just where she remembered them. Chastising herself for taking even that much for granted, Sarah stepped forward into her dearest dream.
Immediately inside the gate was a small strip of earth and a door. Rather, it was thousands of thousands of doors, all on one wall. Some doors were inside other doors. Some doors intersected with other doors or were upside-down or sideways. Sarah stared at the insane thing for a long time, pacing back and forth. The solution to this puzzle was just in front of her. If only she could discover it…And then it came to her. The doors were just that, doors. They would open into different sections of the labyrinth, but then she would bypass the other sections. She just needed to get the doors to let her go to the very next step, and to do that she had to find the master door. She began looking for something that didn't quite make sense, a door that wasn't a door.
An old riddle floated up into her thoughts, "When is a door not a door?" She smiled, "When it's…" she stopped the memory of the teasing her parents had done and ruthlessly squelched the automatic pun. She wasn't letting the memory play out. There was something in Jareth's words that made her think that a memory was a completed recollection of past events. If she didn't complete the thought, it didn't count. Okay, so it was welshing, but this was the labyrinth. A certain amount of welshing was to be expected.
Sarah dropped to the ground, muttering to herself. The door of doors was as irritating as the Goblin of goblins. Suddenly, the answer was in front of her. "When it's every door." She had discovered the key to this riddle: A doorknob, not attached to any of the normal doors, but just on its own. At eye level, too. As soon as her hand touched the lone knob, the puzzle dissolved and Sarah walked into the next part of Jareth's home-a huge, grassy field, filled with berry bushes with a little well some distance off in the heart of the field.
Berry bushes surrounded her. She saw various creatures speaking to the bushes, which then shivered and shook berries into their hands or mouths or beaks or baskets. Sarah observed, growing hungrier and hungrier as she did. Finally, she walked over to a bush with all different colours and sizes of berries and held out the bell of her skirt like a basket. "Please, bush, fill my basket."
Nothing happened. Sarah listened as another bush nearby wiggled and shook. Her eyes grew wide as she listened to what the speaker was saying. The way to get the bush to hand over the fruit was to…flirt with it? And flirt dirty? This was just wrong. Sarah leaned over and began to whisper, blushing even as she did. Just as the berry bush started quivering and shaking, a low chuckle sounded behind her. Sarah kept blushing and whispering as a very familiar blonde man walked up behind her and, putting his hands on her hips, whispered into her ear.
"You should see them in pear season. Or when it's time for vegetables. They have very…interesting cucumbers." With a soft nip at her ear, Jareth and his wonderful hands disappeared. Sarah's skirt was overflowing with fruit, and she was shaking almost as hard as the bush.
The thoughts the man inspired…with just a few words and a caress, of sorts, Sarah could just feel the touch of his hands on her calves. Something was touching her calves. Caressing her calves.
Caressing? Sarah looked down and leaped back with a shriek as the leaves on a vine in the heart of the bush were brushing up and down her leg suggestively, a droopy pink leaf wagging suggestively at her. She spilled half the berries in her skirt and, with legs shaking, modesty shocked, and mouth hanging open, managed to make it to a little shrubless hill before her knees gave way.
"Oh, my. My, oh, my. Oh, dear." She kept blinking for several minutes. Finally, the feeling of being flabbergasted passed and she managed to pick up one of the berries. It was a pretty golden colour, much like Golden Delicious apples. When she bit into it, that was what she tasted. The texture, the juice, the sweetness of the meat-all were there. That the berry could be the perfect apple surprised her, but pleasantly. The next berry she lifted reminded her of a radish, just that odd shade of faded pink. When she bit into it, the radish-berry bit back. Sarah grinned and determined to enjoy her breakfast. A warm gold-brown berry looked like freshly baked bread. Another reminded her of the pink of well-cured ham. Yet another had the colouring of honey-drizzled biscuits. Sarah feasted on the berries and began to get thirsty. The few times she had been reminded of a beverage, the berries had had a wicked taste, like strong licorice and cold medicine. Those had been spat out quickly.
Needing a drink, Sarah rose and let the remaining berries fall to the ground. She thought for a moment, then spoke to the last little spheres, "Thank you berry much."
The berries giggled-which Sarah found mildly disturbing, but less so than a horny orchard of bushes-and then vanished into the ground. By the time Sarah got to the well and turned to see the little hill where she had been sitting, a small group of little shrubs had grown.
"Jareth, you have one twisted little kingdom," she commented, knowing that Jareth would be listening for her comments about his home.
"You have no idea," whispered the wind, ripe with suggestion.
Sarah shook her head and looked at the bucket on the ledge. The height of the well had deceived her. Because of her previous perspective, it looked like a standard waist-high well. In reality, the stones piled around it barely raised the lip of the well off the ground. There was no sign, no indication of danger or of safety, so Sarah thought before kicking the bucket. She listened as the bucket slid down from the little ledge and splooshed into the water below. Leaning down for the rope, she hauled the bucket, which was about the size of a teacup, back to the ledge.
Carefully, Sarah sniffed the water. It didn't smell of any dangerous chemicals. She sniffed again. No, it wasn't stagnant or brackish. After feeling the water with a finger, she realized it didn't feel any different from water at home. It was silky and dripped properly from her finger back to the tiny bucket. Remembering the naughty bushes, she lifted the water to her ear. It wasn't saying anything suggestive, so it probably wasn't alive, though there was really no guarantee of that here. She studied the water, moving it from light to shade. It was as clear as, well, water.
"Four out of five tests are complete and the verdict seems to be that this little bucket holds water." Sarah stopped and groaned. "Puns. I'm trapped in the Punning Fields." She shook her head, toasted Jareth silently with her bucket, and drank deeply of the water.
Immediately, her vision darkened and she swooned onto the hillside. She was lost in sleep.
"What the hell?" she muttered in her dream, sitting up. She knew what had happened to her and she really didn't appreciate it. "First I have dirty bushes, then creepy little vines, then multiple personality berries, and now a well that makes me…sleep? And dream? I've heard of wishing wells, but this is a bit different. It's a dreaming well." Sarah considered this for a minute and nodded. "On the other hand, this is the kingdom of wishes, so it stands to reason that the wells are for dreams or realities." She giggled and remembered the last water she'd been exposed to here. "At least it wasn't Stench water."
Sarah stopped giggling and slapped her hand to her mouth. That was one memory. She took out the little book and pencil Jareth had given her, drew and labeled a three-column chart, and carefully added a tally mark under the M column. "One down, twenty-six to go. Have to be careful."
Sighing, Sarah thought for a minute. This was a dreaming well. Wishing wells didn't work in her world, not really, and especially not if you didn't have a silver coin to toss in. It stood to reason-which meant nothing here-that the dreaming well would also demand payment. Payment she didn't have. She considered what she knew of dreams.
"Dreams are important. Everyone knows that, it's hardly a surprise. And dreams can cost, especially if you want them to come true." She shook her head. "No, that's still not quite right, because I'm not paying for the item, just the possibility that it might come true-which doesn't work. Or does it?" She considered everything that had happened in the last twenty hours. "All right, I got a wish once. It had nothing to do with a well. This is a dreaming well. It has nothing to do with the dreams I already had."
Sarah stopped, frustrated with the loops she was talking around herself. She worked on the problem until she was ready to scream. The difficult thing was that she hadn't dropped in a coin, so she shouldn't be laying here asleep. And then it hit her.
"Dreaming doesn't cost anything! Chasing the dream does." Sarah smacked her forehead repeatedly. "Stupid, stupid stupid!" Then she waited. Apparently that wasn't a full realization, nor was it enough to get her out of this water-induced dream. "So if dreaming doesn't require payment, do you have to pay for it? Answer: No. Unless…" her voice trailed off and her eyes grew wide. "Unless you spend all your time dreaming, in which case you miss out on life which is where your dreams come true." Sarah grinned. "So my first realization is that dreams are free, but they can cost you everything."
Sarah woke with a start. "Dreamers often lie," she whispered. "I hope I'm not still just a dreamer, Jareth."
Mulling over what she had just realized, Sarah noted down her realization in the little book and marked a tally under the R column. She looked at the sheet where she noted her pithy little phrase and shook her head. "And it's still not complete. So dreams are free, but they can cost you everything. There has to be the inverse, or converse. Like the 'those who can't do, teach, but those who can't teach, do' statement. So dreams are free, but they can cost you everything. Conversely, without dreams…what is life without dreams? OH!" Sarah grinned and scribbled as she spoke. "Conversely, a life without dreams is worthless."
The field disappeared.
"OH!" Sarah found herself sitting on a set of flagstones, this time in a high, rock walled passage. All around her, passages opened and yawned. Nothing grew. "Odd," she wondered, staring at the familiar-yet-unfamiliar walls. "This seems like before, but it's not." She nibbled her lip, then came to a conclusion.
"Jareth?" she called into the air. To her surprise, he appeared before her.
"You called, my dear?" he gave her a wolfish smile.
"Yes. I have two questions for you. Can you answer them?"
"I'm sure I can." His expression was puckish.
"I mean, will you answer them, and will answering those questions somehow void this contest?" She clarified.
"Yes and no." He held up a hand as her expression changed to irritation. "In that order." A cheeky grin flashed back at her. "Now, what do you ask me?"
"Last time I was hear, I did a lot of walking. Beau coup walking." A grumpy expression crossed her face as she thought of how much walking she had done. "And a lot of running, too. Now, though, I just solve one little riddle or puzzle and I'm poofed to something else. What's going on?"
"Ah. You noticed that, did you?" Jareth pursed his lips. She was quicker than he'd expected. He debated how much truth to tell her now, how much she would have to figure out for herself. "Well, your purpose is different," he hedged, knowing he couldn't help her with a true answer. "You are here to see if you are fit to be my Queen. In order to become Goblin Queen, you must defeat the full Labyrinth."
"So as I defeat one portion, I'm shunted onto the next section, like at a subway track?" she looked a bit confused. Then, something clicked and she nodded. "All right. I can accept that part."
"And your other question?" Jareth was relieved that Sarah hadn't pressed him on the first part.
"What happens if I run out of, oh, Memories before I've solved the full riddle?"
The leering eyes and wicked smile gave her the answer. He looked like he could eat her for lunch, which, come to think of it, wasn't that far off. The sun was much higher in the sky than it had been when she finished her breakfast, and there were no shadows around her.
"Gotcha." Sarah squinched up her nose and thought for a minute.
"Is that all, Sarah?" Jareth asked, striding over to her and sliding his hand up her hip. "Just a few questions and off I go?"
"Ummm…maybe?" she squeaked.
Jareth gave a wicked laugh. "Oh, no, my dear. Not even close. Assistance requires recompense." Jareth backed her against the hard wall of this section and leaned down to capture her lips. Sarah moaned and lost track of time and thought as he very carefully touched her lips with his. His hands were not on her body, and even his hair didn't brush her. The only point of contact he had was with her lips.
He broke the kiss before it broke him. "Tell me," he breathed, "what did you say to those naughty bushes?"
Sarah blushed. "Do you remember Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare?" When Jareth nodded, Sarah continued. "Well, I explained Act II, scene i to it, the part where," she nearly glowed red now, "Mercutio is trying to conjure Romeo by, um, insulting him and his, um," she giggled, "fascination with his lady's, er, parts."
Jareth snickered. "By her fine foot, straight leg and quivering thigh/ And the demesnes that there adjacent lie..." He leaned close to whisper in her ear. "One of my favourite…parts." And he disappeared.
Sarah gulped. Did he mean the quote, or…
"I refuse to think about that!" she said and firmly chose a direction. She started walking and kept on walking, taking twists and turns as she went.
Finally, she came to a small cottage. In front of the cottage was a tree that had small baskets growing on it. The baskets were green or yellow or a muddy green-grey--those didn't look appetizing at all.
"Okay, this is different." She looked at the tree. No sign of sentience, but that didn't mean anything. Shrugging, she reached up and reached up and tugged on a yellow basket. It didn't come off. She tried a green one, with no success.
She studied the baskets for a minute. The basket she had reached for was all yellow. A few others were bright green. Sarah closed her eyes and recited, "'A tisket, a tasket-a green and yellow basket.' I have to find the green and yellow basket in order to get lunch. Well, at least the losing it part will be easy." As she said it, she wondered if she was talking about a letter she would write to Jareth, the basket, or her mind.
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DOCUMENTATION: Another Shakespearean quote, reiterated from ch. 2 (Act I, Scene IV, "Dreamers often lie.") AND from Act II, Scene i, the 'conjuring' of Romeo by discussing Rosaline's anatomy in such wickedly wonderful terms...look it up and make sure your mind is buried in the gutter. Yes, Shakespeare is very, very sexy! "A tisket, a tasket..." Nursery rhyme, later used as the basis for a song sung (beautifully, of course) by Ella Fitzgerald.
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Shattered