Labyrinth (8 page)

All it needed for the story to finish now was that they should come to a dead end. Around a corner, they found one. A heavily barred door closed the tunnel in front of them.

Sarah gasped. The whizzing blades were rapidly drawing nearer.

Hoggle was pawing pathetically at the great door and mumbling to himself.

But Sarah wasn’t listening to him. She was looking around for an escape — above, below. She dashed along the side walls, looking for a handle or button. There had to be some way out. That was how the Labyrinth worked. There was always some trick, if only she could find it.

The clanking, whirring, seething, brushing noise was louder. She glanced momentarily at what Hoggle was doing. He was still just scrabbling at the door. It was no use trusting to him. What could she do? What?

Her eye fell on part of the wall, to one side of the door, that looked distinct from the rest, a panel of metal plates. She pushed at it and felt it give a little.

“Hoggle!” she shouted above the echoing din.

“Sarah!” he answered, hammering his pudgy fists against the door and kicking at it, as though it could be expected to relent in the face of such frustration. “Don’t leave me!”

“Get over here and help me,” she yelled back at him.

Hoggle joined her. Together they shoved with all their weight at the metal plates.

“Come on,” Sarah told him, “push, you little double-crosser. Push!”

Hoggle was pushing. “I can explain,” he panted.

“PUSH!”

The panel caved in suddenly. They fell through the space it left and sprawled flat on it.

Behind them, the machine slashed through the air just beside their feet. When it reached the great barred door, there was a terrible crunching sound as the knives and cleavers bit through the wood, spitting it out as splinters, which the whirling brushes swept up neatly. The machine was cranked along by four goblins, standing on a platform behind the wall of knives. They were grunting and sweating with the effort of turning handles and working levers to keep the contraption whirring. The racket clattered onward, through the demolished doorway, and off into the distance.

Sarah lay on her back, recovering her breath. Hoggle looked down at her. “He’s throwing everything at us,” he said, and shook his head with a trace of admiration. “The Cleaners, the Eternal Stench — the whole works. He must think a lot of you.”

Sarah answered with a faint, forced smile. “He’s got some funny ideas.”

Hoggle was busy again. Eyes darting left and right beneath his bushy eyebrows, he clumped around in the shadows until he found what he was looking for. “This is what we need,” he called. “Follow me.”

She sat up and looked. There, on the floor of the tunnel they had entered, she saw the base of a ladder. It led up into darkness.

“Come on,” Hoggle was calling. The first rung was too high for him to reach, and he was hopping around trying to jump up to it.

Sarah went over to him. The ladder looked unsafe to her. It was constructed of an odd assortment of bits of wood, planks, and branches, patched together with ends of rope and half-driven nails.

“Come on, give me a hand,” Hoggle urged.

She stood with one hand holding the ladder. “How can I trust you,” she asked, “now that I know you were taking me back to the start of the Labyrinth?”

“I wasn’t,” Hoggle protested, and stared fiercely at her with those piggy eyes of his. As a liar, he was so bad it was quite touching. “I told him I was taking you to the start of the Labyrinth, to throw him off the scent, d’ya see? Heh-heh. But actually —”

“Hoggle.” Sarah smiled reproachfully at him. “How can I believe anything you say?”

“Well,” he replied, screwing up one eye, “let me put it this way. What choice do you have?”

Sarah thought about it. “There is that.”

“And now,” Hoggle said, “the main thing is to get back up.” And he started again to try and hop up to the first rung of the rickety ladder.

Sarah gave him a leg up, watched him start, and followed. At any moment she thought the thing might collapse; but then, as Hoggle had said, what choice did she have?

Without turning his head, Hoggle called out, “The other main thing is not to look down.”

“Right,” she called back, and, as though it were a playground dare, she had to snatch a little look past her feet. “Ooooh!” she cried. They had climbed much higher than she would have thought possible in the time. The wobbly ladder seemed to stretch down below her forever. She could not see the bottom of it, nor could she see the top. She felt unable to climb another rung. Clutching the sides of the ladder, she started to shake. The whole ladder shook with her.

Above, Hoggle clung desperately to the shaking ladder. “I said don’t look down,” he moaned. “Or perhaps don’t means do where you come from?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize …”

“Well, when you’ve done all the shaking you want, perhaps we could continue.”

“I can’t help it,” Sarah wailed.

Jumping around like a monkey on a stick, Hoggle managed to answer, “Well, we’ll just have to stay here until one of us falls off, or we turns into worm food.”

“I am sorry,” Sarah told him, still shaking.

“Oh, good. She’s sorry. In that case, I don’t mind being shaken off to my certain death.”

Breathing deeply, and looking resolutely upward, Sarah forced herself to think of happy, secure things: Merlin, her room, lovely evenings out with her mother, multiplication tables. It worked. She gained control of her body and started to climb again.

Hoggle felt her coming, and he went on, too. “See,” he called to her, “you’ve got to understand my position. I’m a coward, and Jareth scares me.”

“What kind of position is that?”

“A very humble one. That’s my point. And you wouldn’t be so brave, either, if you’d ever smelled the Bog of Eternal Stench. It’s … it’s …” It was his turn to pause on the ladder, and control his shakes.

“What is it?”

“It makes me feel dizzy just to think of it.”

“Is that all it does?” Sarah asked. “Smell?”

“Believe me, that’s enough. Oh, dear me. You wait, you just wait, if you get that far.”

“Can’t you hold your nose?”

“No.” Hoggle shuddered again, but started to climb. “Not with this smell. It gets into your ears. Up your mouth. Anywhere it can get in.”

Sarah thought she could see the top at last. There were chinks of daylight above her head.

“But the worst thing,” Hoggle continued, “is if you so much as get a splash of the mire on your skin you will never, never be able to wash the stench off.”

He was on the top rung now. He reached up, fiddling with a sliding bolt and pushed open a wooden hatchway.

Outside was a clear blue sky. Sarah had never seen anything so beautiful

Sarah joined Hoggle on the top rung of the ladder, gratefully clutching the side of the open hatchway. It felt like firm land after a voyage at sea.

They were looking at a garden, where birds were singing. It was surrounded by well-trimmed hedges — box hedges, she thought, and indeed they ran so straight, with neatly cut openings in them, and turned such precise right angles, and the lawn was so flat and tidy, that the garden was like a green box, with the blue sky for a lid. But that was not why they were called box hedges, was it? It was a rather formal garden, with carefully positioned stone monuments. On the stones were runic carvings, and a few faces — more of those Phony-Warnings, Sarah decided, preparing herself for gloomy predictions.

The hatchway through which they had emerged was itself the top of a large ornamental urn, set upon a marble table. What a ridiculous arrangement, Sarah reflected, as they clambered out of the urn and stepped down to the lawn. Nothing was what it seemed to be. It was like a language in which all the words were the same as your own, but where they meant something quite different from what you were used to. From now on, she would take nothing at its face value. She looked with suspicion at the urn, and then down at the grass. She stepped carefully. It could turn out to be the top of someone’s head.

Hoggle spread his hands. “Here we are then. You’re on your own from here.”

“What?”

“This is as far as I goes.”

“You …”

“Said I didn’t promise nothing.” He shrugged, callously.

“But you …”

“And you said you didn’t need anyone to save you.”

“You little cheat!” Sarah was outraged. “You nasty little cheat!”

“I’m not a cheat. I said I’d take you as far as I could go. Well, this is it.”

“You’re lying. You’re a coward and a liar and — and —”

He sniffed. “Don’t try to embarrass me. I have no pride.”

“Pipsqueak!”

“Don’t say that.” Hoggle tightened his fists.

“Nasty double-crossing little runty cheating no-good pipsqueak!”

“I said, don’t say that!” His eyebrows beetled.

She leaned toward him, and whispered, “Pipsqueak.”

“Arrgh.” Hoggle’s body clenched. He bared his teeth, then opened them to scream. With his feet together, he jumped in the air, thumping the ground as he landed. Then he lost his balance, and rolled on the grass, beating his fists in the air, kicking his stumpy legs. His voice alternated between a growl and a scream. “It was you insisted on going on. I said I’d get you out, but oh, no, you’re so clever. You knew better, didn’t you? Arrgh. Well, now you’re on your own, and good luck to you, and good riddance.” He closed his eyes, and rolled on the grass again.

Sarah watched him, her mouth open in amazement. She had never seen anyone so angry, not even Toby.

Eventually Hoggle subsided, and lay for a while, his eyes still closed, his body twitching occasionally. Sarah wondered if he needed some sort of help. She felt guilty. She had provoked all that with just her one word, which was clearly more hurtful than sticks or stones.

Hoggle opened his eyes. He did not look at her as he stood up, brushed himself down, and pretended he had enough dignity left to turn away with his head held high. “Hoggle won’t be coming back to save you this time,” he informed her.

“Oh, yes, he will,” Sarah muttered under her breath. And before he could get away, she darted forward and snatched the chain of brooches and badges from his belt. She had to tug quite hard to get it off, and he staggered forward.

“Hey!” he protested.

“Ha-ha!” She held his precious jewelry too high for him to reach.

He danced around beneath the dangling chain, trying to jump up and grab it. It was no good. “Give that back!” he shrieked.

“No. You can have it back when I get to the center of the Labyrinth.”

“But you heard Jareth,” Hoggle whined. “The center is farther than I can go. No! No!” His whine had risen to a shrill whimper. “Upside down in the Bog of Eternal Stench,” he said. His eyes closed, and he shuddered.

“Now there’s the castle,” Sarah said, in a deliberately matter-of-fact voice, one a parent might use to a child after its tantrum. Over the hedges, she could see the castle’s spires and turrets and towers gleaming in the sunlight, and she pointed to them. “Which way should we try?”

“I don’t know.” Hoggle had turned sullen.

“Liar.”

“Give it back!” Hoggle was trying to leap up and grab the chain again. “Give it back!”

She ignored him. “Let’s try this way,” she proposed, and walked smartly through one of the gaps in the hedges, into a hedged alley.

Hoggle followed her reluctantly, his chin on his chest.

She led the way down the straight alley, and soon came out into another garden, very like the one they had just left. Indeed, it was so like the first garden that … it was the same one, she realized. She went to the urn, and lifted the lid, to check. Yes, there was the ladder leading downward. She frowned. “Isn’t this the place we just came from?”

Hoggle was paying no attention to anything but his string of baubles. “You — you …” He leaped, but could get no more than half an inch off the ground. “Give it back!” he bellowed.

“I’m sure it’s the same place.” Sarah stared at the hedges and decided to try another gap. “Come on,” she told Hoggle, “let’s try down here.”

He trotted miserably after her.

Again the alleyway ran geometrically straight, at a right angle to the hedge bordering the garden, and again, within a few strides, they emerged into a garden so very like …

Sarah groaned. “Oh, no.” They had come out through a gap directly facing the one they had entered.

“Give me my things.” Hoggle was trying on a tone of menace. It was easy to ignore.

“Come on,” Sarah said, undaunted, and tried a different gap.

The result was the same as before. They were facing the gap they had entered, and Hoggle was watching nothing but his jewelry. Sarah scratched her head. “I don’t believe it,” she muttered, and looked around the garden. “Which one haven’t we tried?”

Hoggle pointed at a gap.

“Well, let’s try that one, then.” She plunged into the gap.

This time, Hoggle didn’t follow her, but waited, arms folded, on the lawn. It was only a moment before she reappeared.

“Oh,” she groaned, “it’s impossible.”

“She’s so clever, is she?” Hoggle sneered. “Thinks she can do it all. And she’s lost before she’s even started.”

Sarah turned on him. “There’s no point in sounding so smug. If you don’t help me, you won’t get your stuff back.”

“But …” Hoggle’s face fell. “I don’t know which way to go,” he admitted.

“Then you’ll have to help in some other way, won’t you?”

“Them is my rightful property,” Hoggle complained. “It’s — it’s not fair.”

“No, it isn’t,” Sarah conceded. She found herself smiling, and it took her a moment to realize why. Then she saw it, like a conundrum that would never fool her again. Nothing was fair. If you expected fairness, you would be forever disappointed. She turned a broad grin upon Hoggle. “That’s the way it is.”

At that moment, she spotted a curious robed figure strolling across the lawn, apparently deep in thought. Where had he come from? He was an old man, with a long white mustache and white eyebrows, but the most striking thing about him was his hat, which was topped with the head of a bird, with a sharp beak and eyes that were darting glances everywhere.