Finale:  Shattered

Part 1

    Hoggle hesitated, then looked straight into Cassandra's eyes. "She...was you."
    There was a long silence as Cassandra tried to absorb this. "Me...but..."  She frowned.  "Hoggle--"
    Suddenly the door of Hoggle's tiny shack flew open.  In strode the Goblin King, looking angrier than she'd ever seen him before.  She stood up and tried to get between Jareth and Hoggle, but it was too late.  The pale king was upon her.
    "And what have we here?" he demanded.  "A tea party?"  The king's alabaster face was even whiter than usual, and his hair was actually dissheveled.  Ludo's rocks must have kept him very busy, indeed.
    Cassandra turned away from him, partly to choke down a hysterical laugh at his wild eyes and unruly hair, and partly to give herself time to think.  She put her hands to her face, which had flushed at the Goblin King's approach.  The bastard!  she thought to herself.  The whole story about wanting me because I was the last of my line!  How could I have even--
    "And you, Hogwart!" shouted Jareth at a stammering and quaking Hoggle.  "What was your part in all this?  What *have* you been discussing with our *dear* friend Cassandra?"
    "Ah...I...uh...well, y'see...um..."
    "You *will* tell me, Hedgehog!" Jareth snarled and lunged for Hoggle with one black-gloved hand outstretched.
    Cassandra turned.  "Hoggle was just telling me about you, your majesty!" she said quickly, and Jareth froze, his face turning partly toward her, his eyes still blazing with fury.
    "Was he?" the Goblin King said softly, menacingly.  The hair on the nape of Cassandra's neck stood up in horror at his tone.
    "Yes," she managed, fighting to control the trembling, then deciding it might actually work in her favor.  "Yes, he was telling me about..."  She turned away and bowed her head, hoping she was a better liar than she suspected.  "...about how you brought all my maternal ancestors here, like you said.  How you...loved them."
    She heard Jareth's boots move slightly on the hard dirt floor of Hoggle's tiny shack.  "You doubted me," he said in a flat tone.
    She straightened but did not turn.  "How could I not?  You brought me here through trickery, remember?  You trapped me here.  Of course I didn't believe you...at first."
    She turned her head slightly and could see the two figures in the corner of her eye.  Jareth turned, slowly, toward Hoggle, frozen still as stone, his mouth gaping.
    "So, Woggle, how is it that you...realized I loved Cassandra's mother, and grandmother, and all the others?  Do tell me, Higgle, for I'm quite at a loss.  I'm certain I never confided in you, you scabby little..."  He paused, took a deep breath. "Yes, do tell me, *dear* Hogface, how it is you were so...*perceptive*."
    Cassandra turned, began to say something, but Jareth held up a gloved hand, stopping her in mid-syllable, as he stared intently at the wide-eyed dwarf at his feet.  There was a long pause--interminably long--and Cassandra desperately began to glance about the hut, looking for something she might be able to hit the Goblin King over the head with if they had to make a quick escape.  But then Hoggle began to speak.
    "Forgive me, yer majesty, but...I always seen how int'rested you was in all of 'em.  I mean, every few years, a new one'd come here, and you'd always do the same thing--make it harder and harder for them to get through the Labyrinth, so I thought...y'wouldn't've made it so hard if ye hadn't wanted them t'stay, right?...and...well, and you was jealous, too, if any of 'em tried to make friends with me, so I...well, maybe I shouldn't'a assumed nothin', but ya know, they was all so beautiful, who wouldn't'a loved them?  Ya know?"  He spread his hands out in a gesture of helplessness.  "I didn't think nothin' of it, I just...well, I'm sorry." He shrugged and stared at the ground.
    Cassandra stared at the little man, amazed.  Either he was telling the truth, or there was more to Hoggle than she had suspected--she'd had no idea he could think so well on his feet.  He had rendered Jareth, for the moment, quite speechless.
    The Goblin King didn't move for a full thirty seconds, then took one step back and pivoted away from both of them, leaning on his sceptre. "Well, it just so happens that, this time, your suspicions were correct." His voice sounded heavy--Cassandra was thoroughly impressed with his acting ability, and she fought down the urge to smack his cold, perfect face for his deception.  Cool, she said to herself, must play it cool.  Jareth looked up at Cassandra.  "And was there anything...else that he's told you?"
    She paused for a moment, then said, "That you must be desperate to have kept me here this long.  That I've stayed here longer than any other of your...captives."  She was taking a guess, but it seemed like a safe bet.  From what she knew of her ancestors' experiences in the Labyrinth, they had mostly come to save a child Jareth had abducted and then went home after solving the maze.  She had no children--would never have any--so Jareth had had to use other means to trap her.
    Jareth didn't contradict her.  He only looked at her out of those mismatched, impossibly haunted and mesmerizing eyes.  "And I told you why I am so desperate.  Do you believe me now?"
    Cassandra's one semester of acting class from years ago was all she had to rely on now, as she let her face crumple into a mask of pain, as her lips silently trembled for only a moment, as her eyes became glassy with tears.  As she turned away from the Goblin King and whispered, "Yes."  If he only knew, she pondered, that the tears *are* real, but tears of rage.
    Before she realized he'd moved, the Goblin King was standing near enough to her that she felt his breath move through her short, dark hair. "I'm glad to hear it," he murmured in a voice of silk, and her spine tingled in spite of itself.  He held out his hand and said, "Come."
    She didn't move.
    "If you believe that I love you, you must trust me, Cassandra.  Come."
    There was a moment of silence, a moment in Cassandra's heart when she fought for control of herself, when her heart simply refused to go with this man who was capable of such outrageous wrong.  But she fought the refusal down, knowing that she had no choice.  There was no other way she could think of to escape this man, to defeat him.
    She did not look up at him--she did not dare look into those eyes at this close range--but she unfolded her arms slowly, achingly slowly, and reached out, and took the hand of the Goblin King.
    Hoggle watched in amazement as they turned and, stooping to fit through the tiny crooked doorway, left him alone in his cottage with cold tea and a fire that was rapidly guttering.
    "Cor," he muttered as he turned to poke the fire with a long, burnt stick.  "What's she gettin' herself into?"
 

Part 2

    A crystal.  Again.
    He had put her into a crystal, still, after her Oscar-winning performance.  He had escorted her (unnaturally quick--could the man go five minutes without using his magic?) back to the castle, had walked her magnanimously into his throne room, and then--
    Locked her in another crystal before she could protest.
    The bastard.
    But she had to admit a grudging admiration--Jareth wasn't one to be taken in lightly, not one to trust easily, to swallow her act whole. Especially, she reflected, since he's been holding me captive for so many weeks now.
    Besides which, he simply couldn't give up his power over her.  It wasn't in his nature.  Maybe the task before her was to change that nature...oh, yeah, that'd be easy...
    She stood up and looked around.  For once, there was something in the crystal besides only herself.  The spherical room with walls that reflected fun-house images of herself, ten feet tall on either side of her, actually had a floor.  And, in the middle, a bed.
    A chill ran up her spine at the sight of it, at the thought of what his intentions might be.
    I won't, she thought resolutely, I won't go that far to get what I want.  She felt her heart constrict at the thought:  *I might have to.*
    "The bastard," she whispered aloud, then realized he was probably watching her.
    Besides the bed and floor, the room also held a huge wardrobe, with elaborately carved doors holding mirrors--undistorted mirrors--on either side.  She peered at herself, at the face that everyone always told her looked so much like her great-grandmother, the much-celebrated Sarah Williams.  She ran a hand consciously over her close-cropped dark hair, and paused to touch the dangling earrings--her favorites, the ones she'd made in metalworking class her senior year of college.  She was shocked at how ragged she looked--her clothes were an utter mess.  Hardly surprising, she thought, since they're all I've worn since I came here.
    It seemed so long ago since Jareth had lured her here under false pretenses--she'd lost track of how long it had actually been.  She had tried, the first few nights, to leave marks on a specific wall in the hedge maze for each night that passed, but the marks kept disappearing--or the wall kept moving, whichever was most likely in this place.  Maybe it had been a month--or two.  She didn't know.  Maybe no time at all, she realized, since she hadn't been hungry or needed a bath.  Her bodily functions seemed to have been put on hold, somehow, some magic way.  She had slept, yes, but mainly as a way to escape this chaotic world for a little while, rather than a physiological need.
    Maybe it is just an illusion, after all, she thought wryly.  Maybe I am insane.  It wasn't the first time the thought had crossed her mind.
    Her gaze shifted to the grotesquely carved goblin's face that peered out from the wood right above the mirror.  Similarly carved faces adorned the headboard and posts of the bed--in fact, she noticed, the entire bedframe was comprised of carved goblin bodies contorted into the proper shapes and sizes.  She rolled her eyes--her sense of the absurd might have appreciated it any other time, but not here.  Not now.
    She opened the wardrobe with some trepidation, but found only innocuous clothes of various colors and fabrics--all dresses, she noted with contempt, a few quite elaborate.  "How well Jareth knows me!" she murmured sarcastically.  "I haven't worn a dress since I was 3 years old!"
    "Well maybe you should try it sometime!"
    Cassandra gave a yelp of surprise and slammed the door shut.  She whirled, looking wildly about the room, but saw nothing.  She dropped to her knees and peered intently under the bed, but still saw nothing.  That voice...it hadn't been Jareth's...
    She turned back to the wardrobe pensively.
    "Why should I try it?" she asked, darting glances about the room.
    "Because!" exclaimed the face above the right-hand mirror on the wardrobe door.  "Then you might start to look like a girl!"
    All the faces in the room burst out laughing uproariously.
    Cassandra put her hands to her temples and grimaced.  "Swell. Just...swell."
 

Part 3

    Cassandra lay on the huge feather bed, floating inside the Goblin King's crystal, thinking.
    She had finally gotten all the carved goblin faces on the bed and wardrobe to shut up and give her some peace and quiet--which had taken some effort. They apparently didn't get many captive audiences, these furniture-goblins, and had delighted in making terrible jokes at her expense.  She decided if she lay quietly enough on the bed, they might think she was asleep and leave her alone. So far, it had worked.
    She was pondering Jareth...what he was planning to do with her, now that he had her trapped once again.  Ever since she arrived here, he had been urging her to accept him as some sort of suitor, or at least that's how it seemed.  Not only did he want to have her, but he also appeared to want her to *choose* to be had by him.  Fat chance, she thought with a mental smirk.
    Besides which, now she knew, from what Hoggle had told her, that Jareth's intentions were not what they seemed after all, that his only intention was to keep her from doing what Hoggle had told her she would do--or had done--to Jareth.  Which she had *no* idea how she was going to accomlish.
    How could she have appeared out of nowhere in the middle of Jareth's throne room, uncounted years before she, or any of her ancestors, had even come to the Labyrinth?  And how could she have forced the Goblin King to comply to her demands?  Hoggle hadn't mentioned any sort of bribe. He had hinted that it had to do with magic, that Jareth was somehow spelled by the woman--by her. By Cassandra J. Wise.
    And what was that Hoggle had said about her having a crystal of her own when she appeared?  That would explain how she was able to wield power over Jareth, and how she was able to travel through time, but not how she got the crystal in the first place.  She'd never seen one except in Jareth's hand--they seemed to be an inherent part of his magic, not something he could lay down and leave behind for someone else to use.  So stealing one was out of the question.
    She sighed and sat up, waiting with bated breath for one of the furniture-goblins to say something snide.  There was silence, so she slid off the bed and walked up to curving, crystal wall in front of her.  She slid a hand along the cool, smooth surface, looking at her elongated reflection and wondering.
    Why?  Why did she have to become even more of a prisoner just to get herself free?  *He tricked me,* she thought.  *I have to trick him back.  It's the only way.*
    She tried to peer beyond the crystal wall, to see where she was, or if Jareth was nearby, but as usual, she could see nothing but a distorted reflection of the room around her.  Her breath steamed up the glassy surface, and she momentarily traced a smiley face in it before it evaporated away.
    "Hmmm," she said aloud, pondering.  She turned back to the bed, walked up to it and began fingering the tall bedpost, which promptly squealed.
    "Hey!  Watch where you're puttin' those cold hands, lady!" said one of the misshapen goblin figures.  She felt momentarily repulsed to be touching it, but realized that, to her fingertips, it seemed to be only what it appeared--simple wood.  She hesitated, then pressed a fingernail hard into one goblin's backside.
    "OWTCH!!!  Hey, whaddid I ever do to you, huh?"
    She peered anxiously at the crescent-shaped scrape she had made, thinking for a moment it might actually bleed, but it still, under the surface, was still just wood--she leaned in close--smelled like wood, too.
    "Don't get so personal!" snapped the goblin, and set off muttering to itself about ungracious guests who poked, prodded, and sniffed innocent furniture.  Cassandra turned back to the crystal wall.
    Yes, she thought.  It would work.  This wall is...breakable.  She looked over at the wardrobe.  Pushing it over would surely provide enough force to shatter the wall of the crystal and break her free.  That's why he never put anything in here with me before, she realized, then stopped. So why is he giving me a potential way out now?
    She sat back down on the bed, pondering that, and chewed a fingernail pensively.
    "Don't chew your nails," snapped a headboard goblin-face.  "It's unsanitary."
    Cassandra snorted.  "Goblins aren't exactly experts in clean living, Oakface."
    "Heh!" the goblin-face replied, and stuck its wooden tongue out at her.
    "Babe, I got two words for you," she said.  She leaned in close and whispered, "Fire...wood."
    The goblin fell silent.
    Maybe, she thought, the idea winding its way through her convoluted musings like smoke, maybe he's not entirely insincere...but she slammed a fist down on her thigh, rejecting the thought in an instant. He's tricked me at every turn, she reminded herself.  He lied to me about why he trapped me here.  And the things he's done to Hoggle's people!  Her stomach convulsed at the memory of the little man's hair-raising tale.
    She shook her head resolutely.  Something had to be done about him.  And I'm, she thought with a sigh, the only one who can do it.  She covered her face with her hands, and a slight groan escaped her lips. "I'm no good at scheming," she whispered so quietly she could barely hear herself.  "I want to go home."
    She thought of her house, and a tightness welled up in her chest. She'd hardly had time to acquaint herself with the place, the house where so many of her maternal line had grown up, the house from which they had all visited the Labyrinth. It was an old-fashioned looking place, yes, but she wanted more than anything, right then, to be there in it--just to go home and live quietly in peace, to gut the house as she had planned and redesign it, and hopefully by doing so, remove any trace of Jareth's "fingerprints" from the place.  If that was even possible.  "Maybe I should just sell it," she said aloud.
    "Sell what?" said the Goblin King.
    Cassandra leaped to her feet and saw him, lounging smugly against the wardrobe his arms crossed.
    "My chances for any privacy in this place!  They're going for a dime!" she said, leaping up and assuming a defensive posture before she could stop herself.
    "I'm sorry," said the suave king with a slight smile.  "Perhaps I should have knocked first?"
    She felt a sneer coming on, so she turned her back on him, the anger freshly stoked inside her and churning away like a coal-engine.  She was ready--as she had been so many times before--to strangle him on sight, but she had to try to control herself.  It would not, she reflected, be easy if he kept on harrassing her like this.
    She heard his footsteps come up behind her, and there was a pause, as if he were reaching out to touch her but withdrew his hand at the last moment. "Cassandra," he began, "I know you're angry with me, and I do admit that I haven't always been entirely honest with you--"
    She bit her lip, clenching her jaws tightly shut against the stinging reponse that fought to get out.
    "--but I do hope you'll believe me when I say I'd like us to begin again.  To have, you might say, a fresh start.  I want you...to trust me."
    I'll bet you do, Cassandra thought.
    "Because I know you don't really trust me," the Goblin King said, and she felt chills sweep over her like a wave of icy water.  Did he suspect?  Did he know?
    "At least," he added, "not yet.  You're far too intelligent for that.  I did, after all, trick you into coming here..."  He trailed off.
    She turned halfway toward him, and saw that he was pacing.  He almost looked...nervous.  She tried to keep the frown she felt from showing on her features.
    "Yes, you did," she said hoarsely.
    He didn't answer for a moment, and stood very still.  Cassandra realized her heart was racing--despite her hatred of him, she still feared him, still feared what he might do.  Still feared his eyes that seemed to hold so much power...
    "Cassandra," he said, in a different voice, and she turned to look at him.
    "As a gesture of trust, of a new start between us..."  He seemed to be having a hard time getting out whatever it was he wanted to say. She watched him, never having seen him quite like this before.  "...And as a token of my...affection and...regret, I'd like to offer you...a gift." And he held up a crystal, a perfect, shining crystal, in his gloved hand.
    Regret?  The word stopped her.  He had almost--almost--admitted he was wrong. Oh, he was good, this Goblin King.  Very good.  She doubted he'd ever regretted anything in his life.
    He stood before her, unmoving, as she stared at him, at his crystal.
    "What is it?" she asked.
    "It's a crystal, nothing more," he said, and she found herself drawn again to his eyes, and her heart raced ever faster.  The crystal began to dance about his hands like liquid light, an impossible dance of magic across his fingertips. "But if you turn it this way, and look into it, it will show you your dreams."
    She was frozen, nearly mesmerized by the crystal's sinuous swirling.  My dreams? she thought.  Ah, if it could do *that*--
    She'd left her dreams behind long ago, resigning herself to certain truths--a life alone, a life without family, a life devoid of any purpose but designing empty buildings for other people to live and dream and hope in and fill with life.  She'd forgotten her dreams--barely even recognized them anymore, so long had it been since she'd held them in her heart.  A chill passed through her, and a whisper of regret wafted by like fading smoke.
    "What do you know of my dreams?" she whispered, still gazing into the crystal.
    "I know all about you, Cassandra," Jareth whispered in return.  "I know your loneliness, your emptiness.  I know you search endlessly for something but refuse to find it.  I know you run away from every possibility of happiness.  I know you, Cassandra."
    She couldn't breathe; she couldn't think.  "No," she said, her voice tight, desperate.  "I don't want anything from..."  She trailed off, not finishing the sentence, remembering that she needed Jareth to trust her, and to believe she trusted him.  And that crystal--so pure, so clear, it seemed almost to be singing her name...
    "It's only a gift, Cassandra," came the Goblin King's voice like a breeze through her mind.  "A gift from me to you.  Your dreams."
    "A gift indeed," she whispered, barely recognizing her own voice. Without even thinking about it, she raised her hand toward the bright ball in Jareth's hand.
 

Part 4

    Cassandra raised her hand slowly toward the crystal the Goblin King held out.  "It will show you your dreams," he had said.  The thought of that!
    But then her gaze shifted and focused on Jareth's pale, sculpted face beyond, at the eyes that stared intently at her, willing her, pleading with her--
    She jerked her hand back and held it as if burned.  She turned her head, tearing her gaze away from Jareth's and focusing on the wooden floorboards.
    She saw the crystal disappear in her peripheral vision, but Jareth did not move.  There was a long, agonizing silence, so long that Cassandra actually began to think, desperately, of something--anything--to say, to end the silence, to make him go away.
    But finally he spoke.
    "Why?"
    In a flat tone, no hint of anger or surprise or hurt.  Just a question.
    For a moment, she had no answer.  *Why!  Because you want me to, that's why,* she thought savagely.  But she knew she had to play the game, to find an answer that he would accept, an answer that would help get her closer to home.  And a voice inside her asked, Why?  Why hadn't she accepted it?  What had she been afraid of?
    Afraid, that was it.  The truth stung her as if she'd been slapped.  Those were the moments she hated most--the moments when she realized her own fear, and was disgusted with herself for her weakness.  *No!* she thought.  *I can't be afraid anymore.*
    And yet...Jareth awaited an answer.  And there was one waiting to be given.
    "I was afraid," she finally said, in tones of utter defeat, the trembling in her voice no lie.
    And without warning, he was next to her, his body almost--but not quite--touching her.  "Cassandra," he said, so quietly she could barely hear, "I will not harm you.  Of that you can be certain."
    And with that he was gone, and she found that she was no longer inside a crystal room, but a real one, with the same stone walls as Jareth's throne room.  A room in the castle.
    She dropped to her knees and let out a brief sob, clutching at the front of her shirt as if to contain the roaring well of feelings rising up inside her.  Oh, how she hated when he came so near!  When that infernal voice of his whispered in her ear, into her very brain!
    *No!  No!  NO!*  She fought the feelings inside her, turned this way and that to avoid seeing them for what they were--fear, lust, loneliness, all spectres choking her from the inside, ghosts of feelings she thought she'd buried long ago.
    *Damn that Jareth!* she screamed inside her head.  *Damn him!*
    *He won't have me!  He will NOT HAVE ME!*

**********

    Cassandra was surprised to find that she was actually able to exit the room and wander about the castle.  Of course, there were goblins gibbering about in every corner, babbling and wailing and belching like cellar-dwelling pigs that had never seen the sun.  She couldn't go ten paces without nearly running into or tripping over one of them.
    Curious, she thought, that Jareth would lock her into a crystal--giving her a way to get out--then offer her a gift and, when she refused the gift, give her seemingly free rein in his very own castle.  Not only curious--downright strange.  It made her a bit edgy as she wandered the halls, which were not unlike a labyrinth themselves, trying to make sense of his behavior.
    Every door she came to, not surprisingly, was locked.  That, she reflected, is what she'd come to expect from Jareth, not this gift-giving and seemingly painful desire he had for her. Was it desire for her physically that motivated him?  Or some bizarre emotional obsession?  No, she reminded herself--he's simply trying to keep me from fulfilling my destiny of trapping him in this Labyrinth forever.  He's not sincere, she thought firmly.  He can't be trusted.
    But her curiosity kept prodding her--why?  Why?  Why was she free to wander the castle?  Not that it was getting her anywhere.  None of the corridors seemed to lead anywhere but to more corridors.  It was, she reflected, like trying to figure out the twists and turns of Jareth's mind, this castle.  It made her feel suddenly very odd, to think that this castle was, in a way, a reflection of the Goblin King's inner self.  Very odd to think, with a chill, that she was trapped in his very mind.
    Only symbolically, of course, she reminded herself, and took a deep breath, and pushed on, trying to create a mental map as she went, so she could find her way back if she needed to.
    And why, she thought, wrenching savagely at the doorknob in front of her, which refused to budge and, thankfully, didn't scream like the last three had, why did Jareth keep giving her a choice in the matter?  Why didn't he just spell her to do his bidding and be done with it?  Or keep her locked in a crystal until she had grown so old she couldn't possibly defeat him?  If, she realized, I'll even age here at all.  She hadn't aged so far, not one day, not one minute.  She froze in place, sickened at the thought that he could keep her here perhaps forever, unchanging, ever trapped, not just in this castle but in this place, this whole demented world, forever.
    Her head felt empty, and she heard a roaring in her ears, and she crouched down suddenly, bracing herself against the wall.  *No,* she willed herself, *don't pass out.  It's not forever.  It's not forever.  It's not...It can't be...*
    In a moment her vision cleared and she looked up, breathing deeply, expecting to see Jareth's tights-clad legs in front of her.  This would be just the type of moment he'd pick to pop in, she thought wryly.  But all she saw in front of her was the end of the corridor.
    No more turns, no more twists, just the end.
    And at the end was a door.
    She stood up and approached the door--just an ordinary door, no knockers or faces or shrieking doorknobs.  She took hold of the knob and turned.
    The door swung open and she blinked in the strange yellow light of the Labyrinth.  She was outside the castle.
 

Part 5

        Cassandra found herself at the backside of the castle, facing the wall in front of her and nothing else.  She hurriedly closed the door to the castle behind her and ran to the wall.  It stretched up over 15 feet, obscuring her view of the Goblin City beyond.  And, infuriatingly, it was too smooth to try to climb, and too far away from the odd parapets and strange juttings of the castle to make a leap for the top.  She sighed for a moment, then looked around.
        There was nothing here but several huge piles of junk not far from the door she'd come through.  It looked like the goblins had used this area as a garbage dump for a while, until the pile got so immense it threatened to cave in over the door.  Typical goblin ingenuity, she thought.
        It was no use, she decided, trying to walk around to the sides or front of the castle.  She'd surely run into some of Jareth's goons--those goblins who worked directly for him as his guards and other inscrutable positions that they probably didn't really understand themselves.  Those goblins were not fond of Cassandra, since the incident with the rocks in Jareth's throne room, and she was not anxious for any of them to realize she was outside the castle.
        But the silence and solitude were too tempting to give up just yet.  She climbed up onto an oddly rounded protrusion from the castle wall and sat, legs crossed, leaning back against the wall, listening to the faraway hum of the city and taking a moment just to relax.
       She nearly dozed off in this state, so complete was her privacy, but she stopped herself just short of an inadvertent nap and probable tumble to the ground below.  She sat up for a minute, her mind once again at work on the knotted rope of her predicament.
        "You'll never solve it, you know," came a voice from nowhere.
        Cassandra yelped in spite of herself and nearly jumped out of her skin.  It took her a breathless moment to locate the speaker--a dark, unpleasantly lumpy form sitting in a niche on one side of the junkpile.
        "Damn-NA-tion, I wish people would stop doing that!" she snarled, clutching desperately at the parapet to keep from sliding off.  "Who the hell are you?"
        "Don't have no name," the form croaked.  It seemed vaguely goblinish about the face, dark and pointy and yellow-eyed, but its limbs were splayed out almost spider-like, and it wasn't wearing any clothes. It hunched back closer to the junk pile, almost as if it were afraid of Cassandra, but its baleful stare never wavered.
        "What a shame," she retorted, assuming a more comfortable and less embarassing position.  "More to the point, what the hell are you doing here?"
        "Live here now," came the answer.  Why weren't the inhabitants of this Labyrinth a bit more forthcoming, she wondered.  Like pulling teeth to get anything out of most of them.
        She crossed her arms.  "Doesn't seem like much of a place to live."
        It jerked its head toward the castle.  "Useto live there."
        "And?"
        It seemed to shrug, if it could be said to have shoulders.  "They frew me out wif the trash."
        She frowned.  "Why?"
        "I'm a mirror goblin.  Don't nobody like no mirror goblins."
        She thought about asking what a mirror goblin was, but thought the better of it.  "Well, nice meeting you.  Can you go away now?  I'd like some privacy."
        "Can't."
        Cassandra restrained a growl.  "Why not?"
        "I'm a mirror goblin."
        She bit her lip, and could think of no reply to a statement like that.  Yep, it was a goblin alright.  Like all goblins, the things it said made no sense whatsoever.
        She started to slide down from her perch, her quiet haven no longer so peaceful.
        "That's right, just run away from the problem."
        She turned to the dark, staring heap.  "What?"
        "S'what you like to do.  Run away before sumfing starts gettin' serious."
        She leaped down, scowling at the repugnant creature.  "Don't get so personal, you creepy little pile of goblin parts!"
        The goblin never blinked, just stared steadily right at her.  "You don't like to hear the truf about yourself."
        "Would you stop that?"
        It shrugged again.  "Can't."
        "Then I'll make you stop," she snarled, advancing on the garbage pile in rage.
        "Only bothers you 'cause you can't control it."
        She froze.  "What are you talking about?"
        "You got to control ev'ryfing, you do.  That's why you hate bein' in the Labyrinf.  You can't control nufin' here.  Not even your own feelin's."
        Cassandra took a step backwards, stunned by the little creature's words, unable to think of any reply.
        "You're 'fraid to admit you're scared, scared of me, scared of the king, scared of never gettin' home.  Scared of--travelin' into the past? That don't make no sense, but there it is anyway.  You're scared of ev'ryfing."
        "I am not," she said, in a voice that was weaker than she intended.
        "If you wasn't 'fraid you'd have a plan by now," the little goblin said, pausing to scratch itself vigorously.   "Scuze me, now, that's better...And if you didn't like the king wantin' you so much."
        Cassandra's jaw dropped.  "What?  I--I--like the--?!  I never--I--you're full of--"
        "You ain't been wanted in a long time--you pushed ev'rybody away--it's nice to be desired, even if it's for the wrong reasons."
        The words sounded so strange coming from this nightmarish tangle of limbs and darkness--surreal, even.  But even as the words soaked into her, eased through her skin like bitter ointment, she knew it was true. Jareth's attempts at seduction--be they physical, emotional, or mental in nature, she wasn't sure which just yet--were, somehow, gratifying to some part of her.  And there was no denying her own attraction to Jareth--mainly physical--despite his outlandish mode of dress.  It was why she was so unable to look into his eyes, why they seemed to burn right through her.  She didn't want him to know that she desired him.
        Perhaps it had been that part of her that had wanted Jareth to go on trying to win her, that part that was pleased by the constant attention, that part of her that craved companionship of any sort over none at all, that had kept her from successfully untangling this knot and coming up with a plan and setting it into motion.  Even though she knew his motives, it had still been...nice, in a way, to be so steadfastly pursued, to be the apparent center of his attention.
        She sunk to the ground and her head fell to her open hands.
        The little goblin's voice wafted out again from the junk pile. "It's no wonder, wif you bein' so lonely for so long.  You never let anybody get close, ever."
        "I had no choice," she said sharply without raising her head.  "My mother was insane.  All she ever talked about was how I was inheriting the family legacy, the link to the Labyrinth, how I was never supposed to send anyone there.  I was always afraid to make friends.  I thought they'd be taken to the Labyrinth."
        She let her hands drop to her lap, and though she stared straight ahead, she could see nothing.  "When I was older I realized my mother was just nuts.  She said all of her maternal ancestors had had the same experiences as her--except that her little brother had never made it back from the Labyrinth.  I figured if all of them could have the same delusion, I'd eventually have it, too."
        "So you never made no friends."
        She shrugged.  "I didn't want anyone to know."
        "But now you're here, and you're thinkin' maybe she wasn't crazy after all.  I mean, this *is* the Labyrinf and all."
        She looked up at the odd, colorless sky.  "Yeah, well, maybe I have just gone insane like the rest of my matrilineal line.  Doesn't matter.  I've still got to find my way home."
        "You've got a plan, now, you're finkin' somefin', aren't you?"
        She looked at the mirror goblin.  "Well, you should know."
        "The king wants you to take that crystal."
        "Apparently he does."
        "You need a crystal to go back into the past."
        "Yes."
        "So you're going to take the crystal."
        "So it seems."
        "But you don't know if that will work."
        Cassandra frowned.  "It's no wonder they threw you out with the trash."
        "Like I said, don't nobody like no mirror goblins.  'Cause we always tell the truf."
        "But...why?" she asked.
        It shrugged again.  "Got to."
        She raised her eyebrows, impatient.  "Why?"
        "'Cause I'm a mirror goblin."
        She sighed and stood up, dusting sand and glitter off her jeans. "Well, I've gotta go, mirror goblin."  She walked to the door that led to the castle and opened it, then turned back for one more glance at the dark creature.
        "And, uh, by the way...Thanks."
        "It's just what I am."
        "Wish my shrink had done as good a job," she said, and closed the door behind her, leaving the mirror goblin to ponder the meaning of that, and to disappear like a shadow into the gloomy junkpile.
 

Part 6

        The hallway before Cassandra was oddly empty, as it had been when she left it.  She hoped wildly that she could remember the way back to the room Jareth had put her in.  The map she had been trying to compose in her head was fragmented from her cathartic conversation with the mirror goblin, and she'd come through so many twists and turns before making it out the castle's back door--she knew she'd be hopelessly lost.
        But there was no help for it.  She had to try.  She set her chin and strode down the hallway as if she knew exactly where she was going, her mind all the while winding its way through her plan to defeat Jareth.
       He had offered her a crystal that would show her her dreams, which she had rejected.  With any luck, he'd offer it again--he was nothing if not persistent.  And with any luck, it *would* show her her dreams.  She had to find out.
        She soon began running into and tripping over goblins again, exactly as before, and the goblins ignored her, as they had before.  She grimly waded through them, taking a left here and a right there, hoping she would soon see something she recognized.  She realized, with a chill, that the door to her room probably looked identical to every other door in the castle, but it couldn't be helped.  Maybe she'd even run into--
        "Well, well, well, what have we here?" said the Goblin King, standing before her with an arch smile.
        "Why, Jareth, fancy meeting you here," she said with as little sarcasm as she could manage.
        "And what, pray tell, is my honored guest doing in...this part of the castle?" Jareth inquired, striding in a slow circle about her as if she were his prey.
        "I got bored," she said coolly, while her heart raced.  What if he'd spied on her?  What if he'd heard her whole exchange with the mirror goblin?  "I decided to do some exploring."
        The pale king raised a meticulously arched eyebrow.  "And did you discover anything interesting?"
        Surely he knew, or he wouldn't be toying with her so, damn him! "I discovered that this damned castle has too many hallways that look just alike.  Really, Jareth, surely you could have picked a more imaginative architect."  She smirked, remembering that Jareth himself had been the builder of the palace, according to Hoggle's tale.
        But the Goblin King remained unflappable, as usual.  "Oh, do you think so?  Someone like...you, perhaps?"
        "Why not?" she said, feeling reckless in spite of her fear.  "I could have designed one hell of a castle.  Too bad you didn't hire me." She cocked her head to one side almost playfully, hating the man in front of her while, strangely, enjoying this game they were playing in spite of herself.
        Jareth stared at her for a moment, and she felt only slightly dizzy from his intense gaze.  Finally, he turned slowly away.   "Then perhaps you could oversee some renovations someday," Jareth said. Cassandra couldn't help being struck by the irony of what he said, by the unintentional double entendre.  For if she did accomplish her mission, she would have a very strong impact on the smug king's life--a renovation, indeed.
        "In the meantime," Jareth added, "allow me to show you back to your room."
        Cassandra realized that she was standing in her room in the castle, without having noticed the scenery change until it was over.  She had to fight to control the urge to yell at Jareth to stop doing that, to stop using his magic on her when she wasn't expecting it, but she had to remember her quest.  She was silent a moment, then said, "Guess that's a time-saver, isn't it?"  When he didn't answer, she said, "Thanks," as graciously as she could manage.
        But Jareth didn't leave just yet.  He stood for a moment, still, gazing at her from halfway across the room.  A whisper of fear shivered up her spine.  "What?"
        And instantly he stood close to her, so close his ornate jacket lapels brushed against her shirt.  She felt his breath ripple through her hair, and she stared fixedly at a point on the wall beyond him, not daring to look at his face, or into his eyes.
        "Cassandra," he breathed, "you must believe me when I say I will not harm you."
        "Why should I believe you?" she responded, in a voice as steady as a willow in the wind.
        "In all the years I have brought the women of your line here to my Labyrinth, I have never allowed any of them to be hurt.  Do you know why?"
       She stared at the strands of pale hair as they fell across the brown leather of his shoulder.  "Because you wanted to seduce them?"  She hadn't intended to say it quite that way.
        Jareth didn't answer right away, and his breathing seemed--uneven, as if her answer had upset him somehow.  "I wanted them, each of them, to stay at my side.  To be my queen."
        "Why would you need a queen?" she asked, wondering what poetically creative lie he would answer her with.
        "Because, Cassandra, like you," he said, turning so that his lips nearly brushed her cheek, "I do not wish to be alone anymore."
        She tried not to tremble, not to pull away, but she could hear her own ragged breathing.  Damn the man!
        "I have been alone a very long time," he went on.  "Longer than you can imagine.  Do you know what that's like?"
        She flinched as a black-gloved hand touched her face, traced her jawline down to her neck, the line of her jugular.  Her pulse must have been pounding.  Was he checking for a reaction?  She closed her eyes desperately.  She sure as hell was having a reaction.
        Jareth's lips came closer to her ear, murmurered ever softer, "Yes, I can see that you do."
        And then he was gone, standing on the other side of the room again, the spot where he'd been moments earlier.  Cassandra's breathing was heavy and ragged, and she inhaled deeply, trying to regain control. Jareth only stood, watching, as she grew more embarrassed by the second. She hoped he would interpret her flushed face as the remnants of his seduction attempt rather than sheer humiliation.
        And the crystal was in his hand again.  "My offer still stands."
        She watched as the crystal began its liquid dance across his gloved fingertips--truly mesmerizing, though hardly magical in nature, she realized.  Only a very skillful trick, one he'd no doubt spent many years perfecting.
        "Why..."  She licked her lips, cleared the hoarseness from her voice.  "Why do you--why are you offering me this gift?"
        "Don't you want to see your dreams, Cassandra?"
        She watched him warily.  "Doesn't everyone?"
        He merely smiled.
        "But that doesn't answer my question.  Why do you want to show me my dreams?"
        He looked at her, and even from across the room his eyes could drown her in their depths.  "If you accept the crystal, it means that you trust me."
        She tore her gaze away from his.  She had to admit, there was a certain logic to that.  Logic was something she hadn't expected from the Goblin King.  But then again, he was always full of surprises.
        But she couldn't bring herself to accept it just yet--she didn't want to seem too eager.  "What's in it?" she asked, staring intently at the crystal, which seemed to contain nothing at all.
        "Your dreams."
        What do you know of my dreams? she wondered silently.  But he was magic, after all.  Maybe--
        It was no use speculating.  The moment of truth had to come, one way or another.  The only way to find out was to--
        She looked up at Jareth, all defiance drained away.  He came slowly closer, holding the crystal before him, glinting and perfect.
        Cassandra took a step forward, reached out her hand, and took the crystal, heavy and cool, into her hand--she raised it before her face, and turned it, marveling at the empty depths, and looked into it.
 

Part 7

        Cassandra inhaled, breathing in the odor of...first, of flowers, some heavily sweet blossom hanging nearby, and second, the dampness of earth and moss.  She opened her eyes--she hadn't realized they were closed--and saw that she was standing in a clearing in a forest glade. The earth was soft under her feet.  Her...bare feet.
        She looked down at her bare toes, wondering what had happened to her shoes, and realized she was in a gauzy, plainly-styled pale gold dress that reached nearly to her ankles.  "What in the hell..." she whispered, plucking at the skirt that danced in the light breeze.  She looked around the glade, hearing the chirps of birds and unseen creatures, the sighing of the wind in the trees.  Where had he taken her?  It certainly didn't look like anyplace she'd been in the Labyrinth.
        She walked around the glade, examining every tree and every stone and every blade of grass, trying to figure out what was meant by it all. Except for the rustle of the trees overhead and the sounds of the animals all around her, there was no sound from the forest.  Looking straight up, she could see only the smallest patch of sky between the branches overhead.  It was a pale violet, and faint stars were just beginning to glimmer, as if night were beginning to fall.  At the edges of the clearing, the trees merged into a soundless darkness.  She thought about taking off into the dark woods, to see where she ended up, but then she remembered the mirror goblin's words--"S'what you like to do.  Run away before sumfing starts gettin' serious."  She gritted her teeth and sat down near the edge of the glade.  *No more running away,* she thought resolutely.
        Cassandra waited in silence for some nasty Jareth-style surprise to appear, but long moments passed quietly.  She began, at last, to relax, to soak in the tranquility all around her.  She'd had too little of it in her life; perhaps, since she seemed to have nothing better to do, it was time to enjoy it while she could.  She leaned back on the warm grass, breathing in the smells and letting the quietude wash over her.
        Darkness crept into the glade as slowly as the beating of her own heart, calmed for the first time in weeks by the solitude.  The moon began to weave bright beams through the tree branches, creeping ever higher over the little clearing.  She watched the beams dance, mesmerized by their clarity and brilliance, until at last the moon shone directly down over the center of the clearing, through the gap in the treetops.  The bright circle it formed was nearly perfectly symmetrical.
        Cassandra sat up, noticing a faint movement in the trees beyond the clearing.  She stood up hurriedly, stepping on her skirt-tail and nearly falling in the process, and peered fixedly into the dark. Something was approaching.  She stepped several paces back, to the edge of the clearing, expecting Jareth to appear, thinking how out-of-place his ostentatious style would appear in this place.
        She was startled to see, instead of Jareth, several small, naked figures emerge from the trees beyond the glade.  They seemed almost human, but the size of children, and with very large, dark eyes and quizzically slanted brows.  She cocked an eyebrow.  They were obviously intended to be fairies, elves, Wee Folk--either that, she reflected, or she was about to be abducted and probed aboard their ship.
        The little people gathered in the bright moonlit circle at the middle of the clearing.  Music suddenly came from nowhere--she glanced over and saw a group of the little people at the edge of the glade, playing strange instruments.  The music was lilting and light, but foreign, and the people in the circle began to dance, at first carefully and precisely, then gradually more and more joyously and freely.
        Ever so slowly, more little people emerged from the woods, creeping out from all around Cassandra, but not seeming to notice her--fixating instead on the dance at the center of the clearing.  As the dancing grew more vigorous, the onlookers began to clap and sing and do little private jigs of their own.  The dancers left the circle, inviting all who watched to join in their wild celebration.  They began to take the hands of onlookers, pulling them into the dance.  The entire glade was alive with the springing and writhing of tiny white bodies.  Cassandra laughed in spite of herself at the sight, and couldn't help feeling an urge to join in.
        Her breath stopped completely as she looked across the glade and saw a familiar face reflected in the moonlight.  Jareth watched the dance with a smile, clapping along with the music.  His hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail and his clothes were unusually ordinary, she saw. He glanced at her with a look that momentarily stopped her heart.
        She backed up, leaning against a tree, watching him.  But he was looking elsewhere, laughing at some dancer's antics.  *So,* she thought. *This is where the crystal took me.  These are my dreams.*
        Just then, one of the little folk grabbed her hand and pulled her out into the circle, into the fury of the dance.  She gasped, dumbfounded for a moment, but the whirling pulled her along, spinning dizzily from one tiny hand to the next, until she didn't know where she ended and the dancers began.  She was caught up in the flood of bodies, leaping and twirling and stepping as lively as the rest, her fear momentarily abandoned.  For a moment, she forgot everything she knew, and only danced.
        Then a familair partner whirled by--it was Jareth, joined in the dance.  She could barely catch glimpses of him as the crowd of leaping dancers grew to fill the entire clearing, climbing and tumbling over one another's heads in their frenzy.  First he was here, then there--she never knew where she would see him next.  She danced more cautiously, watchfully, but still managing to keep up with the crowd--and in searching the faces of the little people around her, she began to notice something--a strangeness, a  hollowness, perhaps, about the eyes--some unnatural quality she couldn't pinpoint.  Though they looked, at first, as if they were having the time of their lives, their eyes showed--nothing, no emotion, no joy or abandon or even merriment.  Only darkness, liquid blackness.  Emptiness.
        And the moon--she looked up, thinking the moon should have passed by the small opening in the treetops by now, but it hadn't moved one bit--still perfectly framed by the dark-silhouetted branches.  None of it--none of it--was real.  As with all things of Jareth's, it was only an illusion.
        Her elvish partner whirled her just then, letting go of her hand suddenly, and she careened, breathless and giddy, into a taller figure. She looked up--Jareth's arms were wrapped around her.  He smiled at her, his mouth turned up in a semblance of happiness--but his eyes...his eyes caught her, held her, as they always had, and she saw--really saw--the smugness, the desperation, the utter control--all the things that Jareth truly was, even in this sham dream-world he'd created.
        She shoved herself away from him and fought her way grimly through the frantic crowd, the loudness of their shouts and the music boring through her skull, her heart pounding desperately.  The pulled at her, shouted at her to stay, to dance, to forget--she wrenched herself through the clinging torrent of bodies that threatened to sweep her totally away forever.  She shoved at them, hit and slapped at them, kicked at the tiny frantic bodies in desperation, and finally found herself, bruised, dress torn, at the edge of the forest.  Without a glance back, she darted into the darkness, her hands out in front of her.  She didn't care what lay within the darkness.
        She suddenly saw something up ahead.  It grew larger as she approached.  But she could not--would not--slow down.  Whatever it was, she could deal with it.  Just not Jareth.  Not him and his lies.
        As the looming figure grew nearer, she slowed, gasping, staring blankly.  It was her own distorted reflection.  Just like that inside a crystal.
        "So this is what he means by giving me my dreams," she breathed, shaking her head.  So.  The Goblin King was unable to truly give, it seemed.  He only gave that which he could control, that which he himself devised.  She ran her hands over the curving glass wall, and turned resolutely back to the forest.
        Scrabbling about on the mossy floor, she soon found a rock--a fairly large rock, about the size, she reflected, of Jareth's head--and, gritting her teeth, she threw it with all her might at the crystal wall.
        The world shattered, and she plunged into wind and darkness.

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