AN: Hey there! So, I guess I don't really have much to say, besides enjoy! This story isn't like many others I've found on this site, so I hope you like it. It takes place about 30 years after the movie and revolves around Sarah's daughter, my OC. It IS a JarethxOC romance, which is something that, for some reason, people don't write a lot.

It's extensively researched (Labyrinth is a huge passion of mine) and I don't think there are any discrepancies here, but if you spot them point them out. Sources are mostly the movie and Brian Froud's Goblins of the Labyrinth, as well as various lore about faeries and other magical beings.

No, Vanessa is not Jareth's daughter. That's weird.

Enjoy!

"ACTRESS KILLED IN TRAGIC CAR ACCIDENT"

"Sarah Williams, 28, known for her extensive work on Broadway and involvement with our community theater, died last night along with her fiancé, Alex Winters, after being fatally wounded in a car crash. While rounding a highway corner at 1:33 in the morning, a semi heading in the opposite direction broke across the concrete barrier in the middle of the road and struck the couple's car. The truck driver is currently under arrest for manslaughter, having fallen asleep at the wheel with a BAC of .14.

A private funeral will be held later this week. Miss Williams leaves behind her parents, a younger brother, and one daughter."

Toby locked the door stealthily behind him, closing the room in soft darkness. For a long moment he stood in utter and guilty silence, staring through the shadows at the crib against the opposite wall.

Disgust boiled in him - both the task he had been sent to do and the fact that he had actually come so far with the intention of doing it made him feel filthy. In this was the knowledge that, for the rest of his life, this stain would hang over him. There would be no self-forgiveness until he knew it had all worked out for the best, and it was likely he'd never know if it had at all.

Toby stood still for a very long while.

The soft gurgle of the baby finally broke the tension, and suddenly the boy found himself moving, sliding right up to the cradle to look down upon his infant niece, Vanessa. She'd just woken up, and she smiled at him, sleepy and warm and content. It broke his heart all over. She looked so much like Sarah had at her age, in all the old pictures on the mantelpiece downstairs. The baby had her mother's green eyes and full lips, and Toby was pretty sure that she would soon sprout dark hair.

He was only thirteen years old when he lost his half-sister suddenly - not nearly old enough to cope with the death of his best friend and loving companion. The past few weeks had been a painful blur of memorial services and tears.

And now...

Now Toby had to do the hardest thing he had ever done. At an age when the world was constantly in flux, when his emotions were on overdrive and his voice never seemed to stop cracking, he had to act with a maturity and strength far beyond his years. He didn't want to, but it had been Sarah's wish. Her only wish, the one thing she'd ever asked of him, the promise she'd made him make time and again since the baby was born - whispered over the phone, late at night, in the park, watching the stars… She had been deadly serious, as though she knew her end would be a premature one.

"Toby, if I die..."

Why she had asked this, he didn't know. The Labyrinth, the secret of which he and Sarah were the only mortal keepers, had given both of them so much trouble over the years. For Toby personally, growing up under the influence and shadow of the Goblin King had not been so easy. It was fun sometimes, sure, but he'd never be able to blend in up here. He was, he would always be, the untouchable one, easy in grace and beauty. The lucky one, for whom things always went his way. The one you didn't want to sit with at lunch, because you might say something wrong, and you didn't want to chat with in class, because he might say something weird or wise or scary. Toby was an outsider - a wanted, envied outsider, and he'd begun to hate it. Just as Sarah had.

He knew that Jareth was, in his own inconceivable way, simply watching out for him. He never did anything that didn't seem like he was trying to help. It was always about entertainment, beautiful gifts and dark secrets. Things to fascinate the boy. Things that simply showed how fond the Goblin King was of him. Things to help him grow and learn and find the magic in the world.

Sometimes it'd be a harmless surprise, like a hobgoblin sticking its nose out of the shrubbery to hand him a shiny bauble when no one else was around. Or the enormous "toad" that had found its way into the desk of Toby's least favorite teacher (the "toad" had managed to eat most of the teacher's wallet and had stolen all of her plastic pen caps before scampering away on two legs).

Those events in themselves had been okay. But the fact was, a lot of weird things happened around Toby Williams. And sometimes he himself would be the source of the weirdness. Like when he'd burst into laughter in the middle of a geometry quiz last year after an unseen hand wrote "MUST WE REALLY SPEND THIS MUCH EFFORT ON A SINGLE TRIANGLE?" at the top of the page. That had gotten everyone staring. And then there had been that whole field trip fiasco involving two chickens, a goblin in a blond wig, way too much maple syrup and twenty screaming school children. That one hadn't technically involved Jareth at all, but Toby still didn't even want to think about it.

The fact of the matter was the Labyrinth and its reluctant ruler had a hold on Toby, one he knew he'd never escape, one he accepted as inevitable. The adventure of which he had no recollection, the events that had happened before he'd been old enough to know his own name, would always haunt and exalt him. It would lift him above the rest of the world and cast him below it.

He would forever be different from Them, the ones Jareth called "mundane."

For Sarah it had been different. No goblin hijinks or faerie rings in the backyard. Toby could hear as easily as anyone the screams at night. He'd never forget the many times she had called him, sobbing, asking him to ask the Goblin King to stop, just stop, please stop. She would put aside her pride and beg, such were the nightmares Jareth subjected her to when it was in his heart to be cruel.

And then there were the darker things. Now that he was older, Toby could vaguely understand the dark attractiveness of his second father, and he understood another way the man had tortured his sister. Despite this, Sarah had assured him over and over that Vanessa was not the daughter of the king, that she'd never allowed that to happen, that that was all part of their battle.

The baby's father, Alex, never had an inkling of Sarah's war with the fantasy man. Toby had attempted to feel out whether or not Sarah was completely faithful to her fiancé, when presented with such a temptation as Jareth represented to her. The only time he had outright asked, she had slapped him.

"Of course I'm faithful to Alex!" she'd exclaimed. "You listen too much to Jareth. As if I'd ever let him touch me..."

Toby shook his head. He didn't even want to think how Jareth would torment a pretty little thing like Vanessa when she got older. Jesus… Sarah's daughter! A miniature of his enemy, as lovely and breakable as the original, blooming just as Sarah began to fade. Why, in the name of everything holy, would Sarah want to send her closer to him?

Toby almost left then and there, abandoning his mission and saving Vanessa the trouble. But it had been one of Sarah's last wishes. And he knew if he left this time, the next night would find him coming back to the same place, caught in this torment forever. He'd been keeping it a secret from the ever watchful king but he wasn't sure how much longer his defenses could hold.

Slowly, Toby picked up the beautiful baby girl. He tucked a note written by Sarah when she'd first conceived the child into the baby's coverall pocket - again, as though she had known her death was imminent. Toby hadn't read it. Sarah had asked him not to. He kissed Vanessa's head and she squirmed and cooed as he placed her gently back in the crib.

Oh God. He'd come to love the little thing.

He only hoped Jareth would let him visit sometimes...

The moment was now. He'd have to do it or he'd explode.

Mustering all of his strength, Toby spoke the hardest words he would ever have to say, directly to his niece.

"I wish the goblins would come and take you away, right now."

Toby left the room. The next morning, the baby was gone.

The sun had barely risen over the huts and thatch-roofed houses of Goblin City as Vanessa stepped, bare-footed, out onto the dusty deck. She shooed a few chickens away as she dumped old water from the clay jug she carried and started to make her way towards the fountain in the center of town. It was another blistering day, and if the water wasn't home by the time her mother woke up, she wouldn't be able to get away to explore outside the city walls again. The goblins were a superstitious lot. Many of those raised between the city walls considered the rest of the Labyrinth forbidden ground, where only the king and those he ordered to guard could step foot. Her mother also ascribed to this logic.

Vanessa, however, had not been raised with such a limited perception of the way things worked here. Being the only human creature around for hundreds of miles - and thus blessed with a brain larger than the size of a walnut - she was permitted special privileges.

From a very young age she'd gone to see a tutor, a wise old dwarf named Hemlot who, despite being absolutely ancient, taught her anything and everything there was to know. She'd been raised studying English, Latin and Goblinese (though Goblinese tripped clumsily on her tongue, English was used by the goblins more often than their own language, and Latin was dreadfully boring.) She knew four hundred years' worth of the history of the Labyrinth, since it had been shaped from the contours of dreams and earth. Though whenever she attempted to delve deeper into the beginnings of King Jareth himself, Hemlot whacked her with his cane and told her that there were things none of them were really supposed know. He considered anything not written in an easily attainable textbook forbidden.

As such, Vanessa was insatiably curious about it. That never got her anywhere, though. She supposed she had to give Jareth privacy where it was due.

The king was kind for letting her take such lessons and kinder still for allowing her a place among his goblins. Her 'mother,' Alaizabel, loved to relate to anyone who would listen the night she had found the squabbling human changeling on her front porch with a note from His Royal Majesty Himself, King of the Goblins and the Labyrinth, He Who Protected Them All from the Dangers of the Aboveground, to look after her as her own.

No one, not even Hemlot, knew why the king had allowed for something so out of the ordinary. Nor did she know why he hadn't simply turned her into one of his creatures and been done with it.

Vanessa's life in the Goblin City, all nineteen years of it, had been monotonous and singular. She was examined almost constantly by the other creatures - spied upon, followed, poked and prodded as though her novelty would never cease.

It probably wouldn't. Even Alaizabel, who had raised her, sometimes stared at her with wide eyes, amazed that she was so human. Vanessa knew such big words, after all. She could even read and write!

The goblins were such a simple-minded lot that many of the ones with whom she had romped as a child forgot daily who she was. Often, in her youth, the goblins would raise an alarm at her approach or try to send her to the king, despite the fact that she had carried on a conversation with them the day before.

Her tutoring sessions with Hemlot were intellectually stimulating and difficult. Her conversations with goblins were simple and dull. There was no in-between.

The only time she was ever able to escape such dichotomy was when she could sneak out of the city for a few hours to explore the forests and mazes. She'd been doing it since childhood, consequently bearing in mind an extremely good map of the land - despite its changing, twisting nature. She liked to think she was friends with it, or at least acquaintances. She could make her way through the Labyrinth - beginning to end - with almost no difficulty, allowing her instincts and memories to divulge the path ahead. Well, and a few a good shortcuts.

Sometimes, when she was profoundly lost, she would ask a wall to move or a locked door to slide ajar and it would comply with little resistance, opening a gateway to a more familiar area.

The goblins out there were wilder than those in the city. They were more accustomed to humans, as sometimes one or two ran the Labyrinth (but never got very far), and far less interested. She was usually able to pass through without being harassed, though she did get the occasional creature attempting to make off with her ears or use her head as a landing place to nest.

There was a darker side to the Labyrinth, of course, but she knew mostly when to escape when things got heavy. There was a subtle shift of mood in the air, a change in atmosphere when things were going to turn for the worse. Goblins scattered at such moments if they weren't the cause of the mischief, and this impulse she had picked up from them, from living her life among them. It was the reason most mortals never made it through the maze within the king's time limit, usually half a day -thirteen hours - sometimes more, sometimes less. They were almost always caught up in some danger or hardship that they hadn't managed to escape in time.

Vanessa had never been trapped so. There were some perks to being raised with goblins.

At the well, Vanessa bent to scoop fresh water into her jug, shooing yet more chickens from her path. Small goblins peeked over the rough stone sides just to catch a glimpse of her, so she sent them scrambling with a little hiss and a big scary hand motion. Goblins were cowards, stupid and violent, but they harbored an enormous sense of self preservation. A maternal goblin was an almost impossible thing to find, but Vanessa thought that her surrogate mother of all these years was as close as you could get.

Smiling, picturing Alaizabel's crinkled face, she dipped the jug into the water and was about to pull it up when the her hand slipped on the wet clay and the jug sunk rapidly into darkness. Vanessa let out a cry of disappointment, bringing a sopping wet hand up to push her hair from her eyes. What the hell was she supposed to do now?

"Did you see? It lost its pot," a throaty old voice said from beside her, and she glanced around to find a prehistoric thing called Groggen, dressed in tattered rags, resting against the stone well wall.

"Hey Grog," Vanessa muttered.

Groggen was old enough that bits of the cracked skin on his hands were being taken over by moss and lichen, and the only hair he had on his head was sprouting, white and sparse, from overlarge ears. But he had a memory on him, and he was not such an idiot as the younger goblins. Sometimes he would brag in his slow, deep voice that he had been one of King Jareth's first… creations, as it were.

Groggen was about as wise as a goblin could get, and her respect for him was enormous.

"If it lost its pot, how is it supposed to run the Labyrinth today with old Groggen, hmm?" he asked slowly, his watery green eyes turning on her mournfully. Vanessa sighed.

"I don't know," she said, leaning dejectedly on the edge of the well. "I was looking forward to it, too… You said you'd show me the underground caves on the western edge again."

"Did Groggen tell it that?" he asked, looking genuinely amazed. "Then Groggen will show it. But it must bring water back to its motherling."

"I know," Vanessa said, flicking one of Groggen's ears, managing a grin.

"Would it like Groggen's help?"

"Of course I would."

Groggen smiled, his face splitting widely to show off mossy green teeth. He had one of the kindest smiles Vanessa had ever seen - so genuine, so pure. He groped around under the long, draped robe he wore and suddenly produced for her an empty flower vase. It wasn't a water jug, but it would do the job. Vanessa laughed in delight and kissed Grog's cheek. He waved her thanks away.

"It will get the water now," he said, obviously a little embarrassed that she had kissed him. "And then it will meet old Groggen by the gate soon, hmm?"

"I'll see you there, Grog," Vanessa said. "You're a lifesaver."

"Old Groggen will do for it what he can," he muttered, shuffling away.

Vanessa beamed after him. If Alaizabel was her mother, Grog was her father.

"Al, it's me, Vanessa! I'm home!"

She called that every time she entered the house nowadays, simply to prevent Alaizabel from attacking if she mistook her for an interloper. She'd once been beaten over the head by her surrogate mum with the bristles of a broomstick while the little goblin woman screamed, "Don't you dare come into my house! Don't you dare try to hurt my Vanessa!"

To an outsider, it was pretty amusing. To Vanessa, it was old.

"Oh yes, I see it's you, dearling," Alaizabel greeted, coming out of the kitchen holding a pot of slop. Vanessa wasn't able to bring herself to eat what the goblins in the village called "food." From her youth Hemlot had weaned her from it, showing her the wonders of bread and roast beef and greens. She took her meals in Hemlot's chambers - the only part of the palace she was allowed to enter - or in the orchards of the Labyrinth, where there were so many fruits and vegetables growing that she was able to concoct delicious meals using little more than an earthenware bowl and her fingertips.

"I brought the water," Vanessa said, a little more slowly than usual, as though speaking to a foreigner. Alaizabel preferred Goblinese over English despite it being a rather archaic language, even here, and she sometimes had difficulty understanding.

Vanessa refused to use Goblinese anywhere besides in class with Hemlot. She hated the slimy sound of the words and the way it forced you to randomly shriek or squawk. She only liked it when Alaizabel sang it in a lullaby, as she had done for her in her youth.

"Oh, such a good dearling," Alaizabel said, nodding sleepily.

It seemed nowadays the goblin woman was always sleepy. It scared Vanessa. Sudden lethargy in goblins was never a good sign and her mother tended to snooze the hours away now. It reminded her of a symptom of an awful disease, one which usually resulted in a quiet but premature death, but she refused to even think about that. The idea of losing Alaizabel was more hideous than anything she could imagine.

"Tip it here, yes?"

The little goblin woman proffered her pot of boiling putrescence and Vanessa, wrinkling her nose, added a bit of water to what she knew Alaizabel considered "stew."

"I think I'm going to go meet Groggen. We want to-"

"—run the Labyrinth together, yes. I know. But no, no. This won't be likely today, my dearling."

"What?" Vanessa said, frowning. "Why?"

"Hemlot came while you were away," Alaizabel answered blithely, strolling back into the kitchen. "He wants you to meet him, yes. As soon as peas, he said. As soon as peas."

"Why?"

"Bat's toes only knows," Alaizabel replied. "Go on, then, yes. Go on." Her hand flitted through the door to the kitchen, waving Vanessa away.

Smiling, Vanessa turned towards the front door, pausing to call back over her shoulder, "Love you, Al."

"Don't call me Al," her mum mumbled. Laughing, Vanessa left the cottage.

The vast library had been there for ages, since the dawn of history as it was written. Like everything else, of course, it had suffered some damage in the Conquest of the Witch, but it was far enough underground - underground the Underground - that most of it had remained intact. Some of the books had been lost and the weaker beams had collapsed, but King Jareth had been able to rebuild it rather quickly.

Vanessa didn't entirely believe the Witch story, come to it. It was passed around as a bedtime fairy-tale nowadays, a narrative to frighten young goblins to sleep: "If you don't behave, the Witch will get you. She made King Jareth himself fall. She hates all of Goblin-kind. She pitted herself directly against the king—who was not a goblin himself at all!—simply to wipe out the race. You must be a good little goblin and stay tightly in bed. She went back to her realm in the Aboveground, but you never know… She can hear anything. She might be coming for you!"

The Witch was a favorite monster for the little goblings in the city. Often, as a tot, Vanessa herself had played the Witch in their games. She was human, after all. She looked most like the evil creature.

When goblins dressed as her, they'd spread mud on their heads - she was reported to have had long brown hair - and piece together costumes depending on which variation of the stories they'd heard. Some put on britches and baggy white blouses, while others insisted the Witch was always dressed to the nines in ball gowns.

The discrepancies in the tale were ridiculous, enough to make anyone with half a brain - a commodity very few of the goblins actually had - skeptical of what was called "history." But the thing that really sealed Vanessa's disbelief in the story was the part that claimed Jareth's fascination with the Witch, his attraction, perhaps even his affection.

Now, Vanessa had never met the king himself, and she'd only ever seen him once or twice in person, but there were enough artistic interpretations of him throughout the Labyrinth and stories of his might to tell her that no being from the Aboveground - even if she was a "witch" - could ever attract him like that. The king was known to be beautiful, vain and exceedingly clever. His disdain for his citizens, his kingdom and his kind alike were well known. It was said he considered humankind beneath him - he was Sidhe, after all - which accounted for the huge number of his citizens who had once been human children.

Again, this begged the question why Vanessa hadn't been turned. Tradition held that Jareth couldn't make goblins out of anyone more than ten or eleven years old, but what had protected her through the decade since her birth?

Her personal theory? He'd forgotten her.

That was likely. The king was capricious as he was wise. In all likelihood, he'd agreed to Vanessa's presence on a whim, for whatever reason, fully intending to turn her into a goblin when she was a bit older. Then his attention was distracted and he never thought to return to the question of her humanity.

That was alright by her. If there was one thing she valued, being raised in part by Hemlot, it was knowledge. Becoming a goblin meant your brain shriveled along with the rest of you. She preferred being human.

Vanessa ran her hands along dusty spines, making her way through the maze of shelves to the center of the castle's subterranean library, where a roaring fire had been lit and decadent armchairs were cast in a comfortable circle around it. Despite the bookcases having been constructed specifically to lose readers between them, she knew her way by heart - she could probably do it blindfolded if she had to.

"You're late, young woman," Hemlot's creaky voice announced before she'd even entered the circle of light.

Vanessa lazily plucked a book from the shelves and stepped towards the old dwarf, standing casually by a table piled with scrolls and tomes.

"You never gave me a time," she replied, "so I couldn't possibly be late for it."

The deep wrinkles at either corner of Hemlot's wide mouth twitched in amusement. He pretended to be so stern (dwarves tended to do that) but he was a softie at heart (another trait common among his kind.)

"I meant you didn't hurry," he said. Vanessa opened her mouth to protest her innocence, but he waved her words away and ordered, "Sit down, childling."

"What is it?" Vanessa asked, plopping down in a particularly soft cushion which nearly swallowed her whole.

"Astronomy," Hemlot said, brusque as always. "And astrology. To be frank, you've been neglecting the stars. Not acceptable, young woman. Not acceptable."

"You haven't given me any assignments!"

"Don't interrupt," the dwarf snapped. "Tonight this will be rectified. You will go out to the maze and you will map the constellations. You will observe the regression of Nemonius and chart the change in light patterns due to his shift in course. You will also explain, in a well written paragraph, how this might affect my fate and the fates of those born under his sign. Is all of this clear?"

Vanessa felt deep rage boil in her. She hated homework almost as much as she hated Tallow Goblins, and that was saying a lot.

"I despise you," she told Hemlot, not meaning it.

"I know," the old dwarf said. "Now come. Find all the volumes you can on our interstellar neighbors for reference later. You will spend the day reading Latin and practicing your Goblinese."

"So, you're saying I have to sit through torture?"

"You're permitted to stand, if you wish."

He kept her there the remainder of the day. Vanessa was simply wracked with guilt every time she thought of Groggen, probably waiting all alone by the city gates. Her attempts to appeal to Hemlot were useless. The dwarf was much like his king and had no sympathy for goblin kind. He considered Groggen a fool and he considered Vanessa faulted because she was affectionate towards him.

"One step up from animal," the wise old being grumbled.

Vanessa hated these prejudices, but they were everywhere she turned nowadays. Each creature was so proud of its own kind.

Being a lone human had, at least, given her a sort of humility absent in the others. Despite being unique, she was nothing special. She was not stupid as the goblins were, yet neither was she capable of such knowledge as the dwarves and gnomes could be. She was modeled in the shape of the gods and goddesses, yet not so beautiful as her second cousins, the Sidhe. She lived longer than the dogs and chickens but had nowhere near the lifespan of most of her contemporaries.

Humans were created for such mediocrity. They were the link between High Beings and Low, in the middle of both groups but part of neither, partially due to the fact that they kept themselves separate.

Of course, humans were capable of magic, so at least she had that going. But the powers she wielded had been watered down over the centuries, disused by her ancestors, whoever they were. Being raised in the center of the Labyrinth had affected her though. She was saturated in magic and probably would look quite powerful to everyday witches in the Aboveground. But here being able to force growth, part clouds and make waves of water was very basic magic. Even some goblins could do it.

Hemlot was in the process of teaching her to summon and banish, but these took insane amounts of concentration and she found she couldn't idly do it. Hemlot claimed it was only a matter of time, but Vanessa felt like she'd never pick it up.

Night after night in her youth, Vanessa remembered staring up to a high window in the tower of the castle, watching crystals float from it as easily as bubbles on the wind, set there by the hand of the king. Magic was effortless to him, and she remembered feeling exceptionally worthless.

Her greatest internal conflict in her childhood stemmed from the fact that, in many ways, she was alike to the king - two legs, two arms, two eyes, a nose, a mouth, hair, no horns, no tail. They both took on the same shape - one those in the Aboveground would call "human," but what was actually god-like. She and King Jareth were both modeled after the many deities that ruled the universe.

Yet, somehow, his highness was so much more than she was. He had deep and powerful magics - his will flowed through every leaf and stone in his Labyrinth. He was more beautiful than anything she could remember seeing and he knew it. He was ruler and she was nothing. Why? Why had he been chosen as Sidhe and she was stuck as human, living among goblins?

It hadn't made sense then and it didn't make sense now, though Vanessa had stopped thinking about it so much. You couldn't dwell on the cruelties and unjust nature of the world or you'd go crazy.

When Vanessa was finally released from Hemlot's grasp, night had fallen. She left the library with armfuls of scrolls and a borrowed telescope, deciding not to even run by her home and bother Alaizabel. Instead she made her way towards the city gate, leaving the town silently and skirting the edge of the junkyard until she'd reached the forest. Few knew this, but there was a door - one of the few that actually stayed where it was - hidden in a rock, which led to a series of tunnels. Depending on which you took, you would end up wherever you wanted in the Labyrinth.

Vanessa though, looking for a good place from which to watch the stars, bypassed the tunnels and made her way along the darkened tree-lined paths into the woods. She was headed towards an ancient fortress that still stood there, the highest point in the forest, rising above the trees. It was rumored that the walls used to be part of a tower folly, but no one really knew its history. It was simply there, overgrown by moss and vine, as much a living part of the environment as the very trees.

Vanessa just happened to know a good set of stairs winding up one side which would deliver her to the top of the monument, so she scaled them and set up her telescope. Then she immediately got distracted by the sheer beauty of the night sky and abandoned all thoughts of schoolwork to simply lay on her back on the ground and stare upwards, lost in thought and fantasy.

The Underground sky was as shifting and tumultuous as the Labyrinth itself. If she paid enough attention, she was able to see the stars move, shift in their places, restless and playful. There were bright pinpricks of white light up there, but she could also see red giants and their hotter brothers in blue. The sky itself was not simply black, but azure, violet and emerald - a perpetual aurora, blazing with life and luminescence.

Quite suddenly, there was a stir in the atmosphere. Vanessa could feel it - indeed, the idea of not feeling it was absurd; it was an extremely powerful rush of energy as magic was sucked from the air around and then forced back into it.

Someone had just manifested nearby, and by the feel of him - for, surely, he was a him - he was no simple or Low Being.

Vanessa sat up, wary and alert, looking around for anything that might point her in his direction but seeing no one. When something alighted on the branch above, Vanessa's gaze snapped up, finally laying eyes on the creature that was the source of the disturbance.

A snowy white owl was perched in the tree just over her, its eyes fixed firmly in her direction, blatantly curious and more than a little annoyed. The energy washed from it in dark, sinuous waves, and she could see its glamour flickering. But she could not see what was underneath the guise of the bird.

"Rude," she told it, meeting its gaze without fear. "You can't just expect to sit there and spy on me. Who are you?"

The owl merely cocked its head at her, playing stupid. Vanessa rolled her eyes.

"It's not hard to see you're not an owl," she said, starting to get a little irritated. "So, I'll ask again - who are you?" Still, the bird stayed silent. Vanessa sighed. "Okay, I'll start with an easy one," she announced, her tone sarcastically indulgent. "Just tell me what you are."

The owl gave a gentle hoot, clearly meaning, "What? Me? I'm just your ordinary, everyday owl."

Vanessa groaned lowly.

"It's no use talking to you, anyway," she muttered, not really sure why she was still doing so. Perhaps it was the fact that the bird was watching her with far greater intelligence and intensity than any member of its supposed species was meant to have.

"I suppose you're faerie, aren't you?" Vanessa guessed. The owl ruffled its snow-white feathers. "Of course you are, and an exceptional fool at that. Is this your idea of a good time? Flying around in disguise, spying on innocent people just trying to get their schoolwork done? Go away, you stupid thing. You're bothering me."

The owl cocked its head to the other side and, quite abruptly, it shifted so quickly she couldn't really catch it with her eyes. Suddenly it was gone from the branch, fluttering towards the ground.

Only it was no longer an owl.

It was a long, billowing robe of white, the color of which slowly darkened to grey then black as it fell, solidifying itself into a tall, lithe shape - the shape of a man.

"I knew it," Vanessa got out, before her eyes widened in disbelief as she realized who this intruder was.

She scrambled to her feet, horrified. Because there was no denying it.

She recognized this man. His long, lean frame. His wild shoulder-length hair, the color of moonbeams. The markings around his eyes. Even the sleek decorative armor he wore was familiar to her. He was, after all, the most renowned personage in the country... his country.

"My gods…" Vanessa breathed, then lowered her eyes and, remembering herself, swept into a clumsy curtsey. "K-king Jareth… Your highness!"

Woo! Hope you like it! More to come, certainly.

I did mention Tallow Goblins. Here's a quote directly from Froud's book, explaining what they are

"The Tallow Goblins are much maligned primarily because they are disgusting, shifty, aggressive little freaks who would cut their own granny open, stuff her, and use her as a sofa as soon as look at her."

:)

Thanks for getting this far! Review please! (If you've read any of my other stories, you'll know I'm a review fiend!) Tell me what you think!