Kirakah opened her eyes as the
area around her was changing. Disorientation was not common to
the protector but she knew she wasn't in the arena anymore. With
a sigh she began to focus and she noticed the walls around her
were familiar.
She had been here before when she brought an innocent one back
home. But from what she knew Estella had no way of summoning her
and she didn't think Jerin had the power either. One thing was
for sure there must be some reason why she came back. In the
distance she saw a familiar door. As she walked closer she
realized this was Estella's favorite study. Without warning she
quickly opened the door to see The Storyteller, one who looked
just like her and Jerin.
She shifted her head as the three looked at her in surprise,
"Would anyone of you mind telling me exactly why I am
here?"
Estella quickly stood up, "Beauty!" she exclaimed,
"We were just thinking about you."
Kirakah couldn't help but roll her eyes at that one, "Why am
I not surprised." she then looked at the others and nodded,
"Jerin." she said in greeting. Her gaze then turned to
look at the doppelganger, "And you must be Charlatan. I have
heard of you."
Charlatan smirked, "All good I'm afraid."
Beauty huffed then walked farther into the room, "Don't
flatter yourself."
Jerin stood up to greet her, "This is a surprise for you as
much as it is for us."
"So you are not responsible for bringing me here?"
"No and I doubt my father was either. Estella and Charlatan
believe that Livia has gone to another world."
"I can tell you it's not my world but I have heard she is
dangerous."
Kirakah sat down, obviously becoming more interested as they were
about to reach the heart of the matter, "But please,
continue."
"I have seen the world in dreams." Charlatan began,
" And Estella says you can use your sword to create
dimensional rifts."
"Yes I can though it might not work everytime. Sometimes I
can end up in the wrong dimension where it's almost impossible to
return."
"But it can work."
"Yes it /can/ but will it? The best chance it has of working
is if I have a clear image of the world in my head."
"What if I describe the world to you, can it still
work."
Beauty repeated herself, "Yes it can but will it?"
Estella raised her voice to interrupt the conversation,
"Well we're going to give it a try."
Beauty shrugged, "Sure, I'm Immortal so if I get stuck I
will probably be able to get back home eventually. And why
wouldn't you go Estella? You live in the center of a Labyrinth
for Akon's sake."
"I'm going as well." Jerin said, "Jareth and Sarah
can take care of Oren. After the many times we've been separated
Estella I'm not going to let it happen again."
Charlatan sighed as she approached Beauty. She didn't need Jerin
coming with them. Her visions were hard enough to handle let
alone remembering how badly she was in love with the king. But
she didn't look at him as he spoke.
Beauty clapped her hands together and slowly began to separate
them. A bright ray of light shined from her hands and as it
dimmed her sword of crystal was revealed to the three.
"Ok Charltan." she said as she grabbed the hilt,
"Tell me more about this 'world.'"
Charlatan was quiet, thinking
for a moment. Then she began to speak, her voice soft and her
eyes distant, seeing beyond reality and into her dream.
"Woods," she said. "That's the first thing I see.
Like the forests of the Labyrinth. Mysterious. Dark. But not
threatening. Then the woods open up in one place. There's a
clearing, and I can see the sky. There's a cottage. I mean, a
house. Well, somewhere in between the two. It looks too cozy just
to be a house, but it's really a little big to be a
cottage." Charlatan smiled. "There are flowers. A
beautiful garden full of roses, in all different colors. They
belong to the girl that lives in the cottage. I don't know how I
know a girl lives there. I've never seen her in the dream...but
it feels right that this place belongs to her and only her."
Beauty focused, trying to envision the place Charlatan described.
It was surprisingly easy. She saw the woods, dense and strange,
but, as Charlatan had said, not threatening. Then the clearing
came to her. The sky above was brilliantly blue, bordered by
branches that gently swayed in the lightest of breezes. She saw
the cottage. It was a fairy-tale setting, the sort of place that
promised warmth, and friendship, and other good, sweet things.
The roses grew everywhere around it. A trellis of red ones
climbed up one wall, while others in white and pink claimed
another. A few bushes of purple and yellow bloomed beneath the
lower window. As Beauty focused just a little harder, she could
smell the light fragrance of rose that surrounded the clearing.
"Stand back," Beauty ordered.
The people grouped in the room did so, and Beauty began to see
the waves in the air that were invisible to all others. This was
the fabric that covered dimensions and worlds. She drew her
sword, raised it, and pulled it across the waves.
There was a sudden, brilliant white light from the rift. Estella
blinked in the glow and Charlatan raised a hand to shield her
eyes. And then they felt the pull of the light.
The portal drew them closer, into itself. Jerin reached out and
took Estella's hand as Charlatan looked away, into the light,
trying to ignore the dull throb of pain in her heart. The light
closed around the four of them, Beauty, Charlatan, Jerin, and
Estella. The portal collapsed on itself, and the rift was healed.
And they stood on the other side.
*****
Aeris stood in the
early morning light in the throne room of the Goblin King. She
was nervous, gnawing her thumbnail, nibbling her lower lip,
pacing. Jareth, leaning almost casually against the wall as he
listened to her, didn’t like it one bit. He and Aeris had,
for the most part, put their differences behind them since
he’d discovered the truth about Sarah, that the girl who had
defeated his Labyrinth would someday return to him. While she was
more inclined to come to him with whatever worry she had now, he
had the feeling that she might have run to the castle beyond the
goblin city even if their animosity still stood.
"Tell me again," he said tiredly. She had awoken him
less than an hour ago, rushing up to the castle and demanding to
speak to him, but it hadn’t been a very sound sleep. He was
troubled by dark dreams, dreams where he was an incarnation of
ideas trying to exist as a man, dreams where he did terrible
things under the power of a curse he’d borne from the time
he’d taken his first breath. He was beginning to think her
strange story and edgy behavior were connected to these dreams,
and that they were more than just careless stories spun from his
sleeping mind.
"I told you already," she answered impatiently. "I
saw the Fae Gatekeeper. She gave me this…" Aeris held
out the fabulous thread for a moment, and then clutched her hand
around it again, holding it tightly. He realized with a start
that this shining, multi-hued thread was a talisman to her, and
she was gripping it for dear life. What was she afraid of?
"She told me that something was wrong," Aeris
continued. "She told me that there were other worlds, and
that I was a part of a story, and that somehow the threads had
gotten…I don’t know, mixed up on the loom. Someone from
another world has crossed into ours. Someone who steals emotion.
And Necrodemos is with them."
Jareth took a deep breath. "Necrodemos is imprisoned with
the Hobgoblin."
"The creature set him free," she said, with wide,
fearful eyes. "Euphoria told me to find the innocent
one…and that when I saw her double, I would know she did not
lie."
"The innocent one and her double…" Jareth pondered
aloud. "I can find anything in my Labyrinth," he said,
without pride; it was a statement of fact. He produced a crystal
in his hand. "The innocent one…"
Aeris watched a
picture form in the crystal. "That's my house," she
said, her voice just a little proprietary.
But Jareth said nothing. He was staring into the crystal, mouth
open, eyes registering nothing but shocked surprise.
"What?" Aeris demanded, leaning over his shoulder and
peering into the clear ball. The crystal was focusing on a group
of four people: two women, identical to one another in their
striking beauty, a third woman who seemed to posses great
strength and confidence, and then... Aeris knew what had shocked
Jareth so. The third man was himself.
Aeris gasped and focused more closely on the face. No, it wasn't
Jareth. The man was not exactly a carbon copy of the Goblin King.
Actually, Aeris thought she could see the delicate features of
Sarah Williams emerging through the harder lines of Jareth's
face. This man could be none other than the son of Jareth and
Sarah, and from the blank look of surprise on the Goblin King's
face, she knew he recognized it as well.
But what about the two women? Aeris straightened up, Euphoria's
words coming back to her. "When you see her double..."
she said softly.
"The innocent one," Jareth confirmed, coming back to
himself. "We'll have to bring them here."
*****
Beauty turned and
faced the others. "We are here."
Charlatan nodded excitedly. "Yes, this is what I saw."
Jerin glanced at her once, coldly, then looked back at Beauty.
"What
now?"
"We leave."
"Why?" asked Estella.
"Don't you sense it?" she asked the Storyteller.
"The danger here?"
Estella sighed. "Yes. Livia."
"Has she been here?" asked Jerin.
"No," said Beauty. "But she is coming. And we are
not ready to meet her."
"But where do we go?" Charlatan demanded. "We know
nothing of this world."
"Then you must come with me."
They turned at the sound of the voice. Jareth stood there, his
eyes fixed on Jerin, but the Goblin King looked somehow more
human than he'd ever appeared to any of them. They knew without
being told that he was the Jareth of this world. If it wasn't in
his appearance, it was in his lingering gaze at the man who bore
so much resemblance to him that gave him away.
Beauty nodded once. "We accept your invitation."
He produced a crystal, threw it into the air, and a bright light
flashed. They were gone from the clearing.