~Chapter 13~
"Finale"

The stairs seemed never-ending, winding up and up in a spiral and then suddenly veering off straight up to the left, and even sometimes going back down. But ahead of us we could see goblins, and we knew those little monsters had our email addresses--and our way home.

We shouted at them, screeched epithets, and swore revenge, but in the end there was nothing to do but shut up and run, even though catching them was quickly turning into an impossibility. The stairway was long and dark, there were a lot of us all tripping over each other, and the light of our crystals grew steadily dimmer as we chased them.

Afton had been in the lead, but suddenly, she slowed down, coming to a full stop.

"What?" I asked her, but she didn’t have to tell me. Around the corner, light bloomed, and in a moment, we were standing at the threshold of a world immune to even the most fundamental rules. No laws of motion, no gravity, no time existed within its space. Once again, the movie did the actual scene scant justice. The stairways bent and curved at the most impossible angles, and goblins were running over them, upside-down and sideways, reinforcing the reality of the image. The vertigo caused by simply glancing around the famed Escher Room was astounding.

The goblins caught sight of us and started to laugh. Let me take a moment to really explain goblin laughter here. Imagine the sound a squeaking kitchen drawer full of silverware makes when you pull it open. Add the sound of a nest of angry, hissing snakes on top of it. That’s the most annoying sound in the world when said goblins are carrying your email addresses away.

Just then, Jareth came into view. He walked with slow, seductive purpose in through a doorway at the other side of the room. The goblins jumped off of stairs and scurried up and down them to deliver the basket of crystals into his gloved hands, then dashed out the way he had entered.

"Jareth!" thundered Anakerie. "Give those back! We won fair and square!"

He gave her a look of mock surprise and hurt. "Do you accuse me of cheating, Anakerie? I assure you, I would never--"

"That was grand scale cheating!" Finnonula snapped. "So give up the addys, you rat!"

Jareth’s sarcasm turned into an angry frown. "You want them? You say you won them ‘fair and square?’" He repeated Anakerie’s phrase with wicked distaste. "Fine." We watched in horror as he overturned the basket, the dozens of crystals bouncing madly away through the crazily constructed room. "Go get them."

With shrieks and shouts, we took off in different directions, racing up the staircases on our left and right. It was maddening. It was exhilarating. I could almost feel time ticking out on us, but there was so much hope between us. I took off, chasing down a pale green crystal.

"Heddy!" cried Angel. "It’s yours!" We looked. Angel had rescued a blue orb and tossed it to the girl across space and stairways. Heddy caught it easily, smiling, and she vanished before our startled eyes. We knew Heddy, at least, had made it home.

It wasn’t long before the air was filled with names ringing back and forth in the room. That green crystal kept dodging skillfully away from me, eluding my every attempt to catch it.

I passed Cerridwenn on the stairs. She had a red crystal in her hand. "The secret," she told me with a wink. "Is not to try." She shouted April’s name, and tossed the crystal across the room to the other Listian, then raced off to catch another.

"So what am I supposed to do, just stand here and wait until some crystal decides to come bouncing up to me?"

"Cerry!" called Maedeline gleefully. "Catch!"

And she caught it. I never did get an answer.

Jareth, strangely enough, didn’t seem to be interfering. He paced slowly around the room as we ran, his mis-matched eyes close on all our activities. It was as if he was keeping count. Or, I thought, as the blasted crystal bounced out of my reach again, directing this splendid, frustrating little game.

The names called out were coming slower, but I was so focused on my game I couldn’t tell. That crystal...it was bouncing down steps...then up a set...and then it actually rolled around the edge and *under* the platform I was standing on. I dropped to my knees, reaching for it. And then I heard it. Silence.

I was alone. Everyone else had found their way. A cool, leather touch came down on my grasping fingers under the platform. I pulled myself over, looking, feeling queasy at what I saw.

Boots. Perfectly shined black boots. Kneeling legs in gray tights. Strings of blond hair. I pulled myself a little further over the edge, trying to get a better look at what I already knew with sick certainty was Jareth. Then gravity completely flip-flopped over on me, and I was hanging off the platform. I glanced up, horrified at my new position. I got one, single look at the Goblin King, but it was one of those moments that sticks to you forever. He was grinning at me. And he moved his hand off of mine. And I slipped away, down into that empty, lawless space of the Escher Room.

I fell slowly, dream-like, just the way Sarah had, and just the way I had unconsciously expected to--I knew that now. My feet touched solid ground. I looked back up, around me. The Escher Room was in the familiar, floating pieces.

I looked down at myself too, taking stock at the end of my journey. My flute case was a little battered. There were fraying edges in the strap, the work of the over-enthusiastic fireys. My clothes were a little torn, my jeans the victim of a frantic dive for safety against Humongous, my shirt part of the rough treatment we got on the way to the dungeon. My blue sunhat was long gone, and anyway, there was a piece torn out of it, another victim of the Fireys. My white sneakers were worn from simple walking. Of course, Jareth came through the curved entranceway, resplendent in the white costume. I sneered at him.

"Just how many costume changes do you have to make for one lousy game?"

He smiled his infuriating smile at me. "I don’t know. It looks as if you could use one."

I lifted my chin. "If I’m a mess, it’s because I was molested by Fireys, a gigantic metal monster, a goblin army, and a bratty," I advanced on him as I spoke, "spoiled-rotten, over-dressed, pompous, irritating, heavily made-up Goblin ‘King’ with a severe God complex."

He held up his hand. "Stop, Alexa. I have something you’re looking for." The crystal I’d been chasing, the green one. It was mine. I could see my email addy floating within.

"Give me that." I reached for it.

"Wait."

"Not on your--"

"Alexa!" he hissed at me. "Listen. Think. Think of all you’ve been through. How you’ve all made friends. How you survived each test together. You loved it, Alexa. You hated it, but you loved it too. And I’m willing to wager," he said softly, "that you loved it just a little bit more than you hated it."

He was right. He knew it, I couldn’t hide it.

"It was wonderful, wasn’t it? The way the puzzles frightened you? It was like a roller coaster--"

"No," I corrected. "There’s a measure of safety on a thrill ride, Jareth. You could have killed us. You very nearly did."

He only smiled at me. "Do you believe that I would have?"

I couldn’t answer that.

"It doesn’t have to end, Alexa," he went on. "Just take your hand, put it down at your side. Quit here and now. There are enough adventures in my Labyrinth for a lifetime, for ten lifetimes. I could change it over and over for all of you and your friends. Imagine it. Back and forth, and all the time still new and exciting. A challenge for both of us."

I wanted to frown at him or laugh at him or tell him to go to hell and grab my crystal. But he was so right. He knew I did love it. He knew part of me wanted to do it again.

But I thought some more. I thought of the sentinel that nearly chopped us up, and the spikes on the walls that closed in on us, and the Fireys that almost tore us to bits, and the fish that nearly ate us, and the run from the Cleaners... And I had an answer for him.

"No, Jareth."

"Alexa!"

"No." I reached up and took my green crystal out of his hand easily. The last thing I saw before the scene shifted was Jareth’s disappointed face. And I heard the bell begin to gong out thirteen o’clock.

My computer...my room. I was at the beginning again, sitting in my chair at the desk. The storm that had been brewing broke outside, almost quietly. I sighed. Everything had righted itself. Then I had a sudden, awful thought. What if they all forgot? What if we all did??

I clicked over to my word processor program and opened it. And I started to write.

It was a while before the story was all out of me. I copied the text and opened my browser, heading for my email. I pasted the text of the story onto the page, and typed the address of the Labyrinth List carefully at the top under TO:, with the title "Listians in the Labyrinth" just under it in the SUBJECT: box. I took a deep breath. Had we really beaten Jareth? Here was the test. I clicked SEND.

I listened to the noises my computer made as the magic of the Internet took over. I waited. I started biting my thumbnail. Come on, come on...

My computer screen changed. I smiled, leaning back in my chair.

It read: MESSAGE SENT

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