Intermezzo:  Moon In Darkness

Part 1

    Jareth leaned on one arm and gazed across the throne room, not hearing the buzz and chatter from the sea of graceless goblins surrounding him.  His mind was absorbed by a puzzle, a puzzle by the name of Cassandra, the woman he had tricked into coming here.
    The woman who did not know the way out of the Labyrinth.
    She was still, after several weeks in his company, still intolerably stubborn, still uncooperative even after his most generous efforts.  This very day--in his very throne room, before all his goblins!--she had become so hysterical, she had flown at him in a rage, reaching out with clenched fists to strike at him.  He had coolly waved a hand, exasperated at her antics, and trapped her in a crystal until she calmed down.  It had become, he reflected with some despair, a frequent occurrence.  The crystal floated nearby, and he could still, faintly, hear her diatribe over the dull roar of his subjects.
    "Cassandra," he said into the crystal, without turning to look at it, "you know that all this wailing and thrashing about is quite pointless. I have complete power over everything that happens to you. The sooner you realize this, and accept my gifts gratefully, the happier you will be." He smiled faintly. "You might even learn to like it here."
    She grew quiet, and he knew without looking the expression on her face: dark eyes gazing sharply from under lowered brows, chin drawn downward, as contained and volatile as a thunderstorm in a bottle. He knew that she had regained control of her anger once more, and he waved the bubble away, through the window, to deposit her somewhere out of his sight.  He did not want a repeat of the earlier scene--the goblins had all been laughing at the spectacle of her advancing on their king, intent on ripping out his throat with her bare hands, or so she had said.  It was best to let her calm down in someplace beautiful--the rock gardens, perhaps, and then to come to her at twilight, to try once more to win her trust, to convince her to take the gift he offered.
    He simply had no alternative.  She was the one, he was sure of it. He had mistakenly thought it was her great-grandmother once before, but that had come to nothing.  No, it was Cassandra, indeed.
    And he had to stop her before--
    He had to stop her, that's all there was to it.
    The handsome Goblin King stroked the end of his sceptre thoughtfully, gazing off into nothing, considering how it could be done.

*  * * * * *

    Cassandra looked around her.  He had dropped her in the rock gardens again, next to the forest. The place where, everywhere she turned, the shape of Jareth's face appeared from first one rock and then the next, or a whole clump of them together.  She hated it here; there was no escaping him.
    She ran a hand through her close-cropped dark hair and sighed.  If she waited around too long, he'd show up, all smoothness and charm, and say all the wrong things in all the right ways.  "It will show you your dreams," he always said, twirling that crystal, a play of liquid and light, across his fingertips.  It was getting harder and harder not to listen to him, not to believe him.  Cassandra had never trusted people, as a rule, but Jareth had much experience in making others believe in him, it seemed. And since she had, if only for a moment, believed him once, it gave him an edge, an advantage that he pressed at every opportunity.
    It was a kind of madness, she had decided--living in this insane place had brought on a kind of madness that was eating away at her logic, her reason, all the things she had most valued in herself.  This place--this Labyrinth--that denied logic, denied the solidity of fact, and could not in any case be reasoned away.  She had at first hoped it was all an illusion, but as the weeks passed and nothing changed, she realized that, somehow, maddeningly, it was all real.
    And she was utterly trapped here.
    Of course, after the first two weeks of being locked up in crystals or in the castle, she had finally convinced Jareth to let her have time to herself, to roam the Labyrinth. "After all," she had told him, "you can watch me all you want, and make sure I don't accidentally find my way out. You do control everything here, don't you?"  Even a Goblin King can't argue with logic when it's laced with flattery.  So he had consented.
    But then, without warning, she would find herself falling through the ground, into an oubliette, or, once, the Bog of Eternal Stench; or walking through walls and finding herself in his throne room.  It was just that careless control he had over her that made her so furious.  And he delighted in it.
    But once in a while, like today, he would go so far that she would utterly lose control of herself.  It made her heart race again just thinking about it--how could he?  How could he just destroy that bridge so carelessly, so heartlessly, when she and Ludo and Sir Didymus had been working on for nearly three weeks?  She had shown them how a bridge could be built without mortar, if the arc was angled properly and the keystone placed in just the right spot.  They had been skeptical at first, but Ludo had conversed with some rocks who had allowed that yes, it sounded reasonable, and yes, they would help build it.
    They had all been so proud, standing there, gazing at it--and Ludo standing right in the center--when Jareth had sent a massive earthquake that had shifted the earth on either side of the Bog and caused the stones to drop, crumbling, into the belching Bog.  It had only been the rocks' love of Ludo that had prevented him from being dunked in its foulness. Cassandra had known, immediately, that this was no freak of nature, that anything that happened in this place happened for a reason.
    For Jareth's reason.  She had run back to the castle faster than she ever thought possible, had burst into the throne room, sent goblins flying as she flung open the doors, and there he had sat, implacable, smiling--actually smiling!--and balancing his sceptre on one finger.  She had been unable to stop herself from flying at him, screaming incoherent threats which she had planned to make good on, had she reached him before he tossed her into a crystal.  Oh, how she hated him!
    She looked up at the darkening sky, full of the strange Labyrinth bats that ate no insects and drank not blood but hot mulled cider on the warmest nights.  "How?" she implored the translucent, spider-veined moons that were just beginning to rise. "How can I defeat him?"
    But there was no answer.
 

Part 2

    Cassandra turned, intent upon walking down the path that led, most of the time, to Hoggle's squalid cabin on the lakeshore.  She would just be able to make it before it was too dark to see.  But suddenly Jareth stood in her way, dark cloak swirling menacingly about his boots.  She didn't have to look up at him to know he was wearing that self-satisfied smile, the one he thought was so disarming.
    "Leaving so soon?" he said, as she turned away from him.  "Come, it's a lovely evening.  Won't you have a walk with me?"
    "I'd just as soon take a flying leap into the Bog of Stench, *dear* king," she said deliberately, turning her face toward him but her eyelids lowered contemptuously.
    "My, how you do strive to vex me," he said, bemused.  "Always striving to present me with a challenge.  My dear Cassandra, it is most kind of you to be so thoughtful, for I do love a challenge."
    She snorted.  "Is that why you're keeping me here?"
    He went on, not answering.  "But I believe you have misinterpreted my intentions."
    -Uh-oh,- she thought, -Here it comes.-
    "My only thoughts are of pleasing you."
    She smirked at the largest of the three moons just appearing in the sky. "Right."
    "What can I do to convince you?" he said, appearing suddenly in front of her, filling her field of vision, compelling her to look at him.
    She focused her eyes on his right eyebrow, taking care to avoid looking into his eyes.  "Send me home.  That's all I want.  You know that."
    He dropped his gaze.  "I can't do that."
    She clenched her teeth.  "Of course you can.  Don't act helpless, Jareth; I won't fall for that one again.  You brought me here, you can for damn sure send me back."
    He strode to the nearby succession of rocks that, even in the dim light, formed sections of Jareth's face from where Cassandra stood.  He leaned on his sceptre, which he was carrying as a walking stick, and turned his face upward.
    "You don't...really want to know why I brought you here," he said in a voice much less smug than usual.
    Cassandra let out a sharp laugh before she could stop herself. "You can't be serious!  I lost  my voice my first week here, as I recall, locked in that cell in the castle--do you remember?  I stayed up all night and all day screaming, 'Why? Why? Why?'  Short memory, Jareth?"
    He put a hand to his temple.  "Gods, yes, I remember.  I had no sleep for three entire days."  He paused, then smiled and said quietly, "You are a woman of...strong convictions."
    She shifted her weight and crossed her arms.  "That's the smartest thing I've ever heard you say."
    There was a long pause as Jareth looked at her strangely, and she glanced at him, and then away, ashamed of herself for not being able to stare him down, but knowing that those eyes of his were not safe, not for one moment.
    "So tell me," she said into the twilight.  "And don't, don't even think about giving me any of that bullshit about you needing me to believe in you, that without my belief the whole Labyrinth will decay and die.  I know that's a lie.  But are you capable of telling me anything but a lie?" she asked, sneering.
    He looked away again, and stared into the dark forest, from which strange night-sounds were beginning to emerge.  Cassandra thought about the Fireys, and the hair on her arms began to prickle.  For once she was glad--if only a little--that Jareth was around.
    When he spoke, his voice sounded--tired?  Cassandra was surprised enough to listen.  "Long ago--I know not how long, now.  I have lived such a long time in this place...I was young, and had only recently acceded the throne of my kingdom--"  Acceded, Cassandra thought, hmm.  Wonder who was king before him?  "--and I met a...most bewitching young woman."
    "Stole her baby, did you?" Cassandra said.
    Jareth half-smiled.  "You know me too well, Cassandra."  The way he said her name--the way he drew it out--Cassaaaahdra--in that smooth voice of his raised the hair on the back of her neck.  She shifted uncomfortably and walked to the opposite side of the rock garden.
    "Yes, I had stolen her brother, actually--I was the Goblin King even then, after all.  And she, like so many others, chose to brave my Labyrinth rather than--well, she was, like yourself, an extraordinary woman.  Undaunted, strong, and beautiful."  He paused. "I offered her something I had never offered before."
    Cassandra paused, interested in spite of herself.
    "I offered her--"  He stopped and turned, cloak swirling, to face Cassandra.  "I asked her to stay with me.  To be my queen."
    She bit her lip.  "How very generous of you."
    But his expression did not change.  "It is unfair of you to assume I was anything but sincere.  And I was...sincere."  He looked away again, gripping his sceptre tightly in his black-gloved hand.  "And she refused me."
    There was an empty silence then, and Cassandra looked uncomfortably away from the Goblin King.  She noticed, unexpectedly, that the back of the rock she was leaning on--the side that faced a huge, ancient tree, had a face on it as well.  Another Jareth?  she wondered. No, he'd never make it so hard to see.  As casually as possible, she tried to make her way around the tree trunk, to see what it was.  "I can't say I'm surprised, Jareth.  If you were anything like you are now."
    He struck his sceptre suddenly on the rock floor with a resounding crack, making Cassandra jump, her heart racing.  "No!  It was not as you assume!"  He pointed an accusing finger at her.  "You still believe me incapable of love!  You think me an unfeeling monster!"  His gaze was smoldering, and his teeth seemed sharper than usual.  "I pursued the woman as much as I dared, I watched her, and her daughter, and her daughter's daughter, and each one, each generation, year after year after year, has refused me the same offer."  Cassandra stared at his blazing eyes, unable to look away.  "And who--who, my stubborn, mistrusting lady, who do you think that woman was that stole my heart so long ago?"
    Cassandra swallowed and carefully ventured, "My great-grandmother Sarah, I assu--"
    "No!"  He struck the sceptre on the floor again, and the rocks seemed to tremble.  "No.  Nothing so...recent."  He strode quickly up to her looming before her, and her heart fluttered with shameful fear, and she lifted her chin in defiance even as his blazing eyes engulfed her. "Longer ago even than that.  It was Sarah's own great-great grandmother. And each generation has produced a woman of equal beauty and cunning and strength.  And I have pursued each one relentlessly until they were gone or had defeated me--but you, Cassandra, you--you can have no children." Her eyes widened, and he nodded.  "Yes, don't look so surprised, you have no secrets from me.  You will produce no offspring, and so it must be you."  He leaned away from her, still holding her locked in his gaze. "You are...the last hope."
    He turned, the hem of his cloak brushing against her ankles and feet, and strode away.  But just at the edge of the garden he paused, and looked back at her.  "And you will be mine."  And then he was gone.
    Cassandra stood, trembling, listening to the sound of her own heartbeat.  It was now completely dark, too dark to see the almost hidden face on the rock, too late to make it to Hoggle's cabin.
    She sank to her knees and leaned her forehead against the cool rock, knowing it was part of Jareth's face but not caring.
    The night was quiet about her as she slept, fitfully, and dreamed of a king without a heart, a heart of stone, a heart of ice, a heart like a crystal.  And she dreamed it slipped from her hands and shattered into a million glittering shards at her feet.
 

Part 3

    Cassandra awoke, cold and damp, with her face pressed to the rock that bore Jareth's likeness.  She stood, stiff, and stretched painfully--not a good position in which to sleep, she decided.
    Then the events of the previous evening came back to her--Jareth's tale of pursuing Cassandra's own female ancestors, driven to attain their love, to entice one of them to become his bride.  He had never succeeded, he had told her, and now she was his last hope.
    A chill stole over her as she remembered his words: "...but you, Cassandra, you--you can have no children."  How had he known that?  She pressed her hands to her forehead to ease the aching.  She had told no one that--she had only known herself for three months, and had had no one to tell.  Her family was dead, and even her cat Baliel had turned out to be not a cat at all, but a Labyrinthian dwarf in a magical disguise.
    She rolled her head back, rubbing the back of her neck, wondering. How could Jareth have known that?  Could he read minds?  It seemed absurd--but then, this whole damned Labyrinth is absurd, she thought, looking around her at the landscape, dimly lit in the early morning light, but producing that strange sparkle upon the underlying dullness that it always had--everything glimmered faintly, the ground, the trees, the rocks...
    She suddenly remembered that she had been looking, the evening before, for a face on the backside of the rock she had slept by, a face turned toward the trunk of the tree, and very difficult to see.  She squeezed herself as far as she could between the tree and the rock and peered closely, but now it only looked like a normal, uneven rock facing.
    "Must have been the lighting," she muttered, and set off through the woods.  She would have to confront Jareth, to find out, if she could, whether this new story was a lie like all the others he had told her.
    It hadn't been like her other confrontations with Jareth, she reflected as she strode purposefully down the path toward the Goblin City. He had seemed--hesitant, almost.  He certainly had displayed open anger, which he never had before.  And, she realized, this time he had walked away from her.  Another first.  Usually she had fled him or been carried away in a crystal and unceremoniously dumped someplace far from his castle.  This time, he had walked away--had left quite quickly, almost angrily.  Perhaps, she reflected, that is significant.
    As she approached the city gates, the two impossibly inept guards stumbled to their feet and crossed their pikes before her.
    "Who goes there?" demanded one.
    Cassandra crossed her arms.  "You know who I am, you twit.  You see me every day!"
    "Well, I'm still supposed to *ask*," he said, shuffling uncomfortably and huffing.  The other guard banged his pike against the first one's pike and said, "Ahem!"
    Then he turned to Cassandra and said, "What's yer business in the Goblin City?"
    "My business," said Cassandra, walking up to him and glowering into his visored helmet, "is none of your business."
    He shrank down, and his armor began clanking somewhere in the vicinity of his knees. "I--I--I need to see some identifica...tion..."
    Cassandra drew her face up to his until her nose was nearly pressed against the visor.  "No, you *don't*."
    His pike clattered to the ground next to the first guard's, who was already hiding behind a bush and whimpering.  "O--okay."
    "Thank you," Cassandra said before drawing erect and striding through the city gates.  Then she stopped and turned.  "And remember me next time."
    "Oh, we will, miss, we will!" simpered the second guard, scooping up his pike with clattering armored gloves.  Cassandra strode on, leaving them still simpering.  "Yes, miss, thank you, miss, absolutely, miss..."
    She rolled her eyes and muttered, "Miss!"  Then she leaped quickly to one side as a goblin on a scooter-like contraption whizzed by, nearing mowing her down.  "Watch it!" she shouted after him, but her voice was lost in the roar and confusion of the Goblin City on Market Day.
    It reminded her of malls during Christmas shopping season, with rivers of goblins flowing every which way, to her right and to her left, washing past her in a never-ending stream of babble and confusion and unique, goblinesque scents.  She had always hated the city, with its narrow streets and ramshackle architecture--but she had to admit it certainly fit the goblins' lifestyles, also ramshackle.
    She had never seen the city quite so busy, and though she didn't see any booths or stands or tables, she knew it was Market Day.  She hadn't seen anyone actually selling anything, but they called it Market Day nonetheless, and used it as an excuse to run amok through the streets, or so it appeared.  To the goblins, it was quite a festival--made all the more peculiar by the fact that they seemed to have one once a week, sometimes more often.  The workings of the goblin mind are, she reflected, best left unexamined.  Let them have their Market Day--and let me get to the palace.
    She saw the goblin on a scooter go by again, across the street ahead of her.  A chicken fluttered in front of him, and he wobbled and crashed into a small family of goblins, sending one of them flying into the fountain.  A general hubbub ensued then, beginning with the crowd's intention of flogging the goblin on the scooter, and ending with several more leaping into the fountain and flogging the one who'd fallen in.  Such confusion was sure to result wherever goblins were gathered together, Cassandra noted, shaking her head and grinning in spite of herself.  Then she noticed a curious thing.
    In the center of the fountain--oh, why hadn't she noticed it before?--was a statue--a bizzare statue, grotesque like all goblin art. It was the same figure repeated several times, differing slightly in each incarnation--it appeared to be...Could it be? She squirumed through the crowd and managed to fight her way around the statue in a full circle, examining each figure--and yes, it was true.  Each one was a likeness of Hoggle.  She frowned.  Why would the goblins put a statue of Hoggle in their city?  Certainly, their actions generally  made no sense except themselves, and that was even debatable.  But this?  Hoggle was little more than a lackey for the king.  Why such a blatant tribute?
    Granted, the statue was more than a little worn, with pieces here and there having crumbled entirely.  And he was, well, doing what she had seen Hoggle do on more than one occasion--peeing in the fountain.  She bit her lip, as the goblins around her lost interest in the sodden creature crawling and sputtering his way out of the fountain, and they all dissipated to their inscrutable pursuits.  Cassandra looked at the castle, standing so near, and thought.
    Then she turned, and left the Goblin City.  "We'll see," she muttered to herself, "what Hoggle has to say on the subject."
 

Part 4

    Cassandra found Hoggle not far from his musty cabin.  He was putting out what looked to be one of the Fireys' party leftovers.  There were burned spots all over the forest floor around him.  Cassandra shivered; she hated the Fireys.
    "Heya, Hoghead," she said, stopping at the edge of the clearing. He whirled.
    "Oh, it's you!" he exclaimed.  "Usually only Jareth calls me that."
    "Well, usually I'm not betrayed by my talking cat," she replied, crossing her arms.
    He turned, scuffing at the smoking ground with his toe.  "Jareth made me do that.  He fooled me, too, ya know."
    "Did he," mused Cassandra, squatting down.  Much as she distrusted Hoggle, she couldn't stand being so far above the eye level of someone she was talking to.
    "You don't know what it's like, living here with him," the dwarf insisted, walking a few strides toward her.  "I ain't got no choice!"
    "You could choose to stand up to him, now and then," she said thoughtfully.
    "Don't make it sound so easy," he grunted, moving to the next smoldering ash-heap and kicking dirt onto it.  "Besides, I did think the Labyrinth was dying.  I couldn't keep nothin' alive in the hedge maze! Even the fairies were disappearin'."  He paused, shoulders drooping suddenly.  "I didn't even really believe it until I saw Jareth, all shrunken and frail...what was I supposed to think?" he added, looking at her with wide eyes.
    She pursed her lips and sat down on the ground, making sure there were no burnt spots beneath her.  "Okay.  Maybe you're right.  But you didn't have to lie to me all those weeks you were posing as my cat!"
    Hoggle rolled his eyes imploringly.  "If your cat had suddenly started talking to you, what would you have done?"
    She considered.  "Probably had myself committed."
    "Exactly!"  He threw up his hands.  "Cor..."
    She fought down a grin.  "Okay.  Point for you."  She hesitated for a moment, then said, "Will you be honest with me now?"
    He looked at her sidelong, suspicious, and said, "Why?"
    "Why?" she exclaimed.  "Because I need some answers, that's why! Why is honesty such a hard concept for you?"
    He didn't answer for a long time.  Then, "Whaddya want to know?"
    She paused.  Her planned question changed itself at the last moment.  "Did Jareth...well, I know he brought Sarah, my great-grandmother here..."
    "Yeah."
    "Did he bring all the women in my line here?  From Sarah's great-great grandmother on down?"
    Hoggle paused, looking around the trees for a moment, then said, "Yeah."  He waited for a moment, as if expecting something to happen, then relaxed.
    Cassandra looked up at the gray sky, at a bent-looking bird wheeling above them, then said, "Do you know what he said to them?"
    "No," came the reply.
    She licked her lips, thinking.  Then she said, "Were you here when Jareth came to the Labyrinth?"
    There was an expectant silence, and the air seemed to crackle for a moment.  Hoggle kicked the ground once more, furiously.
    "I got work to do," he grunted, starting to walk away.
    "Hoggle!" Cassandra stood up, following him.  "Tell me!"
    "I said too much already," he said, eyes rolling, constantly scanning the forest around them.  "I can't tell you nothin'!"
    He started to walk away again, but Cassandra stopped in front of him, hands on her hips.  "Then don't tell me about Jareth.  Tell me about you.  Why is there a statue of you in the fou--"
    And the ground dropped from underneath her feet, and she was plummeting down a shaft as slick as ice, impervious to her wild clawing and kicking.
    She landed with a thud and knew at once she was in the oubliette.
    Her lips curled in rage as she stood up and screamed at the ceiling.  "Damn you, Jareth!  Damn you!!!"
 

Part 5
 
        Cassandra took Ludo's huge, leathery hand in her own two hands and squeezed.  "Thanks, Ludo.  I knew I could count on you."
        Ludo grinned his impossibly goofy grin.  "You welcome, Cassandwa."  She couldn't help grinning back.
        The hairy beast was taking an awful risk for her--he'd already narrowly escaped a dunking in the Bog of Eternal Stench when Jareth had sent his little earthquake.  But here he was, ready to undertake Cassandra's plan without question or doubt.  She couldn't help it--she'd grown to love the big lug, and Didymus, too, during her weeks in the Labyrinth, whether or not they were, as she suspected, products of her delusional mind.
        She just hadn't been able to think of any other way.  She had tried every possible method over the past few days of getting close enough to Hoggle to ask him about his likenesses in the goblins' fountain.  But every time she drew near to his cottage, or (when she ran into him 'by chance' in the hedge maze) tried to bring up her question, the ground had dropped from beneath her, or from beneath Hoggle, and left one of them in the oubliette without even a candle for company.  At least, she sighed, Jareth hadn't resorted to the Bog quite yet.
        And yet, this told her that it was something she had to find out. If Jareth was fighting this hard to keep her from finding out, it had to be important.
        She had managed to get back to the rock garden at twilight to see the face on the back side of the rock, and, as she had expected, it was Hoggle's face that appeared in the rock, as the last rays of light filtered through the trees from just the right angle--Hoggle, in the fountain, in the rock garden...This secret they were both hiding was big, whatever it was.  She thought it must have something to do with Jareth's tale of obsession with her matrilineal ancestry, which still puzzled her, and might also give her a clue as to how to get home.  She simply had to find out what it was.
        And with Ludo's help, she hoped, she would be able to accomplish her goal.

* * * * * * *

        Ludo stood outside Jareth's castle, near the east window of the throne room.  Cassandra had been inside, had a fight with Jareth, and Ludo waited until he saw the crystal containing her float by, and then--
        He raised his shaggy, red head, opened his mouth, and bellowed.
        He raised his ears to listen.  Yes, they were coming, quickly.  He called again, telling them what to do.
        The boulders poured in rivers down the streets of the Goblin City, dashing crazed goblins this way and that, unceasingly heading toward the castle beyond the Goblin City.
        They reached the castle and rolled through the gates, through the front doors, down the corridor and into Jareth's throne room, never slowing, never stopping.
        And they flew straight at Jareth's head.
        He deflected them easily, sending them flying into his goblin minions, who went flying and howling out the doors and windows to escape the rocks, whom they still hated from at least one previous encounter. The deflected rocks rolled back into the fray, back toward Jareth, joining their brothers in the attack on the increasingly panicked Goblin King.
        Jareth deflected boulders from the right, from the left, from every compass point with his magic, barely able to keep up with their relentless pounding.  He lost track of his crystal-ized prisoner, whose crystal promptly popped, delivering her on the outside of the easternmost city wall.
        She hit the ground running toward Hoggle's, knowing that Ludo and the rocks couldn't keep up their barrage forever.  She felt giddy as she ran, nearly laughing as she imagined the poor, frantic Goblin King so bombarded, his throne room filled to bursting with rocks of every shape, size, and variety.

*       *       *       *       *

        Hoggle lived in a tiny shack, barely large enough to be called a cabin, cobbled together of materials he had gathered himself--rocks and branches and dried grasses.  He had scavenged the door, his pots and pans and most of his furniture from the Wide Tract of Rottenness, where Gurdy the Burnisher and the junk people lived among piles of trash.  It made Cassandra furious to know how Jareth used him, and then made him live in such a junk heap.
        He was home--Didymus had been employed to let him know that Cassandra was coming--and he'd made tea.  Cassandra squatted and squeezed through the doorway, then sat lotus-style on the floor, shivering in the coolness of the unheated house.  She looked at him as he forced a smile and offered her tea in lopsided brown cup with the handle broken off.  She paused for a moment, planning to refuse, but then she reached out and took the tea.  Neither said a word.
        They continued in silence for a moment as Cassandra sipped the tea and Hoggle waited expectantly.  She nodded slightly, and he seemed to relax a little.  It was actually, she thought, not bad.  He wasn't having any; she glanced around the tiny room and decided  she was probably holding the only cup he owned.
        Cassandra, not knowing how to start now that the moment had come, finally said, "If you want, I could build you a fireplace."
        His eyes widened.  "You--you'd do that for me?"
        She looked at her cup.  "I don't have a lot else to do here." Then she looked at him.  "But I want something in return."
        Hoggle came closer, looking eager.  "Anything."
        Cassandra put down her cup.  "Tell me how you came to this Labyrinth.  And tell me how Jareth came to be its king."
        Hoggle looked around, nervous.
        "It's alright," she assured him.  "Jareth's busy for a while.  But we don't have forever."
        The dwarf hesitated, then pulled up a rickety chair with one short leg and sat down.  "It was a warm day, and I was traveling alone..."

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