Matters of the Heart (1980s Labyrinth fanfic)

Chapter 7

"Sarah, dinner time!"

The voice of Sarah's stepmother rang through the house.

"Hold on!" Sarah called back, racing up the stairs and into her room, "I just need to grab my sweater!"

"Well, hurry up!" came the reply.

Sarah huffed in annoyance as she bounded into her bedroom, sweeping the room with her eyes to make sure she hadn't left her sweater lying around someplace again. After making sure she hadn't, she rushed to open her dresser drawer. There was her sweater, lying in an untidy heap on top of all the other neatly folded clothes. She threw it on just as her stepmother's impatient voice sounded a second time.

"I'm coming!" Sarah yelled, turning to leave.

She stopped dead in her tracks, her gaze trailing slowly to the long mirror hanging on the far wall where her old shelves had used to be.

Looking back at her from the mirror was a beautiful brown-eyed woman, her hand pressed against the glass and a look of grief in her eyes.

Sarah did the only logical thing she could think of. She screamed.

Her Dad was up the stairs in a matter of minutes, bursting into her room and looking around quickly for any signs of danger. His wife followed shortly, an expression of bewilderment on her face.

"What's going on?" she demanded.

Sarah pointed frantically at the mirror. Her parents' heads turned simultaneously towards it. Then they looked back at Sarah.

"What about your mirror?" her stepmother asked.

Sarah's hand dropped to her side, "What? You don't..." She swallowed. Out the corner of her eye, she could still see the woman in her mirror. But her parents couldn't. What did that mean? "It was nothing," she said quickly, forcing down her fear, "I just caught sight of my reflection and it startled me. That's all."

"That's all?" her stepmother echoed incredulously.

Her dad sighed, "Come on, Sarah. Let's go eat."

Sarah nodded, "I hope I didn't scare Toby."

As the family sat down to dinner, the wheels of Sarah's mind turned furiously. Was she going crazy? Maybe...or maybe something else was at work. Sarah couldn't help thinking of the time three years ago when her world had been turned upside down by a stupid wish she had made. She had wished her baby brother Toby away. As she looked across the table at the smiling child, she wondered how she had ever come to think of something so sweet and adorable as a nuisance.

As for her 'wicked' stepmother as Sarah had used to call her, she was still strict as ever. But they got along a little better now.

On that fateful night three years ago, Sarah had been tasked with babysitting Toby for the night while her parents went out to dinner. At the time, she had been so taken with a certain little red storybook called The Labyrinth. She knew the words of the book almost by heart, and feeling frustrated with her brother had pushed her to hatefully utter, "I wish the goblins would take you away right now!" She had had no idea exactly what kind of disaster those words would bring upon her head. That night she had wound up stuck in a hellish sort of maze, forced to solve puzzle after puzzle in order to rescue her baby brother from being trapped there for eternity. And always present, there had been a solitary figure, constantly finding ways to trip her up and turn her around.

Sarah pushed away the thought, summoning up any recollection of the girl she had seen in her mirror. But she'd never seen such a person! The only creatures she remembered seeing were goblins for the most part.

But what if there had been more to the underground than just the goblin city. What lay beyond it? There could be any number of races living there! Who knew, maybe even other humans lived down there.

Sarah's thoughts wondered upstairs to her room. Would the woman still be there when she returned? Would she be able to speak to the unknown entity? There was only one way to find out.

Sarah rushed through the rest of dinner and excused herself. She was up the stairs in a flash, pausing as she placed a hand on the doorknob of her bedroom door. Sarah could feel her heart racing with both excitement and fear. Slowly, she pushed the door open.

The woman was still there. It looked as though she hadn't moved at all. There was only one difference now. She was crying.

Sarah stared at the mirror, frozen to the spot. Willing her feet to move, she made her way over to the looking glass.

"Who are you?" she murmured, kneeling down in front of it, "Why are you crying?"

"Please." The voice was faint and echoed slightly. "Please come back."

Come back? Sarah's excitement rose. This woman, whoever she was, was definitely from the underground. But how did she expect Sarah to come back?

"He's lonely."

Sarah's eyes widened.

"What?" she demanded, "Who's lonely?"

"Please come back."

Sarah furrowed her brows in frustration. Perhaps the woman couldn't hear her after all. Sarah raised her hand to see if she could touch the woman's hand that was placed on the mirror.

"He's lonely and I can't—"

As Sarah's fingers brushed the surface of the mirror she was suddenly hurled forward. She didn't have time to scream before she fell face-first onto a hard and unyielding surface. And everything was strangely...dark, except for a pale light coming from behind her.

"Finally!" a voice said impatiently, "I've been here for a whole day yelling obscenities at your room! It felt very unbecoming."

Sarah pushed herself up into a sitting position, looking around her in total shock. She was in a glade sitting atop a stone pedestal with a bright mirror standing behind her and vines growing under her feet. Above her was the night sky, its starlight muted by cloud cover. Next to her, sprawled comfortably on the pedestal was the woman she had seen in the mirror. There was no trace of tears on her face; she didn't even look remotely sad but cold and unwelcoming instead. She was wearing dark leather and a red cloak. And she was armed.

Sarah swallowed the lump in her throat, "What just happened? Where am I? Who are you? What do you want?"

"Slow down with the questions please," the stranger answered, raising a gloved hand. "First of all, you just came through a portal. Second of all, you're just beyond the border of the Fae kingdom. Third of all, you don't really need to know who I am. Fourthly, what do I want? Good question. What do all people want out of life? Money, fame—"

"That hardly answers my questions!" Sarah said, getting to her feet, "Portal? Fae kingdom? And who are you and what do you want?"

A nearby rustling turned the stranger's head. She smiled as a figure emerged from the darkness into the light of the mirror.

"Ah, perfect timing," the woman said, turning back to Sarah, "Perhaps he can answer all your questions."

Sarah turned to see the newcomer, feeling a sense of dread rising quickly inside of her as he gazed back with wide eyes. It was hard to believe, but he looked just as astonished as she did in that moment.

"Sarah..." he murmured.