A Work in Progress_

I'm frightened by what I see,
But somehow I know that there's much more to come
Immobilized by my fear
And soon to be blinded by tears
I can stop the pain if I will it all away-

-Evanescance, 'Whisper'

Chapter Five_

Goblins, dwarfs and other magical creatures rushed through and around the narrow pathways between the crudely made booths of the marketplace. They bellowed to venders and others they believed that they knew. To Amarante, who was more accustomed to quite surroundings, thought the marketplace to be a loud and rambunctious place. Secretly, she loved the bustle of the marketplace within the Goblin City. It was so different from the routine of the castle, which was what she adored, the adventure and the change into something fresh.

Amarante wordlessly sauntered beside the Goblin King, Eunan. He occasionally made stops along the way of their journey and would point at some of the items held on display at a nearby booth. Amarante would simply fake a grin as if she was pleased, but none of what the king could show her could to satisfy her growing curiosity.

Amarante's eyes nervously darted around her and she swallowed the lump of sudden dryness that grew in the back of her throat. She carefully drew the hood of her blood-red cape over her braided locks and intensely observed the king partaking in conversation with a shop vendor that sold crystal goods. Her eyes expeditiously tore away from their target and without giving her actions a second thought, Amarante disappeared off into the rocketing commotion of the crowd.

She unhurriedly promenaded down the crowed streets, wide-eyed and grinning from ear to ear.

This is so much better without a chaperone, Amarante merrily speculated while gently tugging the heavy cloth away from her head. She turned and continued to walk down another narrow pebbled street. The warm sunlight beamed down on her as she amusedly glanced at the roadside shops and read their signs aloud when she passed by them.

"Ludo's Meats: Monster meats at rock solid prices." Amarante soundlessly giggled and unconsciously strayed onto the next shop.

"Sir Didymus and Ambrosius: Knights for hire." A wicked smile appeared onto her sly face. Perhaps if I had the money, I could hire them to vanquish Eunan. Her snickering grew louder and she insouciantly ran along. She came to a halt when she stumbled across a small jewelry stand. Amarante quickly read the faded white letters that where painted onto a sign that hung above the quaint roadside shop.

"Hoggle's Jews and Gems: fine dwarf-crafted products for you and yours," she declared aloud and then sweetly laughed to herself. Hoggle... what a funny name.

Crystals and other precious gems gleamed and clinked against one another in the warmth of the bright sunlight. They were all so beautiful and each seemed to call out to her, 'Pick me.' Amarante transiently glanced at the necklaces displayed on a large, wooden rack which spin about on a turning wheel. She glimpsed away from the rack to the booth's countertop and a gem on a finely-made golden chain caught her wondering eye. Amarante plucked up the jade pendant from the polished surface of the counter.

Amarante gently fingered the tiny band of gold that surrounded the precious jewel. It beautifully gleamed from the palm of her hand, enthralling Amarante under its spell. Her hand quickly flew to the hollow of her throat and lightly touched the crystal talisman that lay there. If only she could... Amarante winced and was admonished at herself as if she were a small child with her hands caught in the forbidden cookie jar. A sinking feeling coursed throughout her, compelling Amarante to positioned the pendant back onto it's place on the counter. She had wanted the jeweled necklace badly, but it could never supersede the place of the talisman. It meant far too much to her to be giving it away as trade for any other normal, or perhaps even beautiful, jewel.

"Amarante!"

Amarante's head abruptly snapped up. The voice shattered through her thoughts like a stone rending through the frailties of glass.

"Oh no," Amarante softly whispered aloud. Eunan knew she was gone and was searching for her. Panicking, she sought out a place to run and hide, but Amarante found nothing through bustle of scurrying magical creatures. Trying to enshroud her dismay, Amarante buried her face into her hood and quickly turned toward the direction of the king. She peeked over her shoulder to get one last look at the tiny shop and she froze. Time unexpectedly stood still and her heart began to wildly beat inside of her chest with each shook up breath that she took. It mattered very little to Amarante if the Goblin King were casting about for her, she could not take her eyes away from him.

He was tall and thinly built. Dark chocolate colored straps of worn leather were interwoven around his arms, shoulders and broad chest serving as a type of shirt. Amarante's breathe caught in the back of her throat and her hands began to quaver as her heart slowed its troubled beats of hurried madness. He took a step toward her, the pendant that she had been admiring was loosely dangling from his slender fingertips. The chain glittered in the sunlight, momentarily catching her fleeting gaze. She swiftly glanced away it and into the eyes of the mysterious stranger. They were shocking beautiful and Amarante was spellbound. One was the color of the bluest oceans and the other was greener than any emerald that Amarante had ever seen. His eyes were painted on a canvas of wrinkled porcelain, for he did not materialize to be a man of youthfulness, but he was still devilishly handsome. Snow-white locks of powdery hair haphazardly drifted into his supernatural eyes that were acutely concentrated upon Amarante. She too, returned his intense gaze of inquisitiveness. Her full lips parted as she deeply breathed and it hit her like the incoming tide against the eroded ocean's shores... Familiarity.

"Do I know-"

"Amarante!"

Amarante blushed deep crimson and her hushed words were lost. She drew the hood closer toward her face and shamefully spun away from the man with eyes of beautiful strangeness.

"Adieu."

The crystal in her prized talisman caught the luminous rays of the morning sun and merrily shimmered while she veered away. The man gasped out with astonishment and the jade pendant gracefully slithered away from his fingers to the ground. He could only watch her exquisitely walk away from him into the vigor of the lively crowd and disappear as if she had never been there at all.

"Could ya help me here!" A voice gruffly demanded from behind an immense pile of swaggering boxes. The boxes fell and tumbled to the ground in a loud and disorderly heap. A dwarf popped out from the cascade of fallen boxes and kicked the one nearest to him. His blue eyes churned with undeclared spells of temperamental rage as he evilly glared at his enthralled companion. "I have done everythin' ya have ever asked me to do and you can't help me with these here boxes!" He angrily nailed another box with his leather-clad foot.

The man did not answer to the dwarf or to his blunt rudeness, he was far too busy dreamily goggling off into the crowd.

"She ain't there, so stop your gawkin'. You're goin' to scare the customers away." The growling dwarf hobbled away throwing his hands into the air and huffing to no one in particular. "Damn you Jareth."

Jareth closed his eyes and deeply exhaled. Dread flooded over him, then sweet feelings of relief. He thought of her to be nothing more than the workings of a simple daydream, a trick playing in the weariness of his mind.

Amarante...

He surveyed the crowd parading in a rush, back and forth. Jareth selected the pendant from the ground and brushed away the loose soil that clung to its polished surface. He breathed in and sighed. He could still smell her, sense her presence as if she were still there at his side and it haunted him down to the bitterness that grew at the core of his mortal soul. He missed her and he was grieving, a human emotion he swear that he would never come to. Jareth veered away from the herd of creatures and leisurely maneuvered toward the loneliness of the isolated jewel stand. He securely placed the pendant into his pant pocket and made a promise fueled by an urge in which he would risk everything to see the perfection of her smiling face again.

He stowed her away in one of the many castle towers as punishment for wondering off at the marketplace that morning. Amarante woefully leaned against the tower's wall of jagged stone. Its coldness seeped into her flesh while her thoughts ran amuck within her mind, full of bitter venom and unmanageable fits of anger. She absentmindedly traced her fingertips around the edges of the square shaped stones, while carefully listening to the king's rat-like hounds, Phobos and Deimos. They iniquitously snarling and growling at each other while attentively safeguarding the tower's barred door. Amarante knew they were there to insure that she would not try escape from her discipline. She knew she could not, she was sealed in tighter than sardines in a tin can.

Dropping her hand away, she murmured and despondently paced over to the only window located within the tiny chambers. Amarante doubled her arms onto the window's edge and longingly gazed over the vast Underground landscape.

Amarante desired to scream, let her boiling rage fly free, but she could only inexpressibly stare out of the window and observe the birds soar by and normal society stroll out of the fortress's stupendous drawbridge. She wished she could walk over it and never return, however, she could only peer out and wonder what freedom could feel like.

I am a prisoner of my own life, Amarante lamentably noted as a salty tear toppled down from her heavy eyes. She hastily wiped it away from the smooth flesh of her cheek. Amarante stubbornly refused to give him the ultimate pleasure of seeing her cry like a two-month old child. There was no skepticism in her mind that the king was studying with those orbs of his. Laughing no doubt. She mournfully sniffed and smeared back another tear. Oh! How she loathed him, Eunan, the king of the goblins.

Amarante craved to remonstrate her hate of him by shrieking blasphemies of eternal damnation, but she secretly knew she could not and should not, for he prided himself to be her only 'friend' in a world full of mystery. She bitterly snorted and her tears vanished.

"Allo."

Amarante's head darted around the room.

"Down here silly girl. On the floor, near to your feet," the high squeaky voice chirped. She scanned the floor and sadly managed to smile. It was the British worm, whom Amarante liked to call a friend. The half blue and peach-white worm beamed a warm smile when it noticed Amarante pinpointed his location.

"Hello Mundy-Min," she softly murmured. She saw he still wore a red colored scarf that matched his large eyes. "What are you doing in this terrible place?"

"Why! To see yourself, of course!" Mundy-Min happily declared as the tuffs of blue hair prodding out from his sides shook. "I cannot go into your room anymore, not after what that bird of yours nearly done to me."

Amarante quickly covered her mouth and softly giggled into her palm.

"Fibril was only following her birdlike instincts," Amarante told him, defending her childhood friend. The worm's eyes grew huge and his mouth flopped open with astonishment.

"Only!" He loudly screeched with disgust. "Your friend nearly ate me!" The worm violently tossed about his head and the three puffs of blue hair atop his head collapsed on into his horse-like snout. He irritably huffed them away and rolled his eyes. "I really do not believe she cared too much for me anyway. When she was a malicious goblin, the horrid beast dared to step upon me." Mundy-Min shuttered at the unpleasantness that the memory bore him.

"What are you doing up here my dear?"

"I am being taught a lesson," Amarante cantankerously retorted. Mundy-Min gloomily shook his head at his friend's woe.

"What for this time?"

"I wandered off in the marketplace today," Amarante shortly answered. "I was only curious, but the great Goblin King doesn't understand that." Amarante sunk onto the floor while fanatically managing to hide the tears in the heels of her hands. Mundy-Min sighed and lugubriously peered up at her. Her hazel-gold eyes where at the brim with delicately-formed tears. He took it upon himself to interchange the topic of conversation.

"What did you see in the market?" He gently inquired. Sniffing, she hurriedly wiped her eyes as gigantic grin broke through the threads of depression branded on her face.

"There were so many things-" Amarante began, "-I don't know where to start! There were all these stands by a dirt road. They looked like tiny shops..." She excitedly chattered on for her wormy friend. "There was even a tea stand." His face lit up brighter than an evergreen on Christmas Eve.

"A tea stand!" Mundy-Min happily exclaimed, his head bobbing as if he were a dashboard doggie. Amarante gleefully nodded her head yes and her smile grew bigger. "The Misses would love that!"

"I meet someone," Amarante dreamily whispered. Her cheekbones flushed and she quickly turned to gaze at the spaced tiles of the floor. Mundy-Min slowly cocked his head as confusion on the sudden change of topic warped into his simple mind.

"Oh... and who would that be?"

"I can't say for sure, Mundy-Min," she humbly remarked, eyes peeling from the floor and back to the anxiously listening worm. A shy grin arose onto her lips. "I don't know his name, but he had these amazing eyes of two different colors. One was blue, the other light green. They were warm, but yet they felt as if they were ice. And his hair was frosted, almost like snow-"

Mundy-Min snorted, interrupting the poetic rants of the awestruck girl. He harshly glared at her, left eyebrow wrenching, compelling frenzied jitters to spill down Amarante's arched spine.

"Forget about him. He sounds like nothing but trouble," the worm abruptly commanded of her. Amarante shut her eyes and slowly exhaled. Her mind was buzzing with an onslaught of confusion and a million questions that desperately needed to be answered.

How can I forget him? I felt like I knew him from somewhere. Or do I?

Amarante's eyes unexpectedly snapped wide-open, stopping the unrestrained flow of her mind's bothered perception.

"What?"

"I hear footsteps," she silently replied. "You need to leave, my friend." Mundy-Min's head tottered in agreement and he leisurely pivoted himself toward a crack-like opening where the floor allies with the wall.

"When you ever get out of this place, you need to come, meet the Misses and hava nice cup of tea." With his farewell said, the worm disappeared into the velvety darkness of the wall's rupture just as the heavy tower door vehemently exploded open. Amarante jolted up with large, innocent eyes keenly pressed toward the door as Eunan grimly marched through it. He looked upon her with eyes as hard as the stone that lay beneath her.

"Do you care to join me now?" He quietly requisitioned in a curt tone. Unyielding to his sudden bitterness toward her, Amarante pulled herself to her feet and calmly brushed the loose grime from the ample curves of her backside. King Eunan swallowed, his storming rage causally dispersing away as he observed the slow, delicate movements of her hands. Amarante could feel the burning of his penetrating gaze and she wanted nothing more than to gouge out his eyes with a sharply pointed dagger, but she could only return his lustful stare with the silent fires of sultry anger that fumed deep within hers.

She did not respond his abrupt questioning, but simply meandered past him and into the hallway. The door was angrily slammed shut behind her, and her eyelids rapidly flew down as her heart savagely pulsed into her throat. Eunan leaned over her shoulders and loudly hissed into her ear.

"You pert, little bitch." He coercively shoved Amarante forward, her feet blindly staggered in their footing and her body convulsed with undeniable amounts of fear. "Move."

Her pride torn into nothingness, Amarante numbly sought out the marble-crafted handrail that coiled down the stairway of the tower. With her head lowered to the stairs, she began her slow descent into the prison of Eunan's company. Her broken heart grieved and her essence drained from the hollows of her mind and soul. Eunan's dark gaze followed her and a smug smile crossed the scared surface of his highly drawn features. He wrenched his fingertips together and a snapping echoed forth from them. Phobos and Deimos, his honed clawed minions, maliciously snarled arose from their hind hunches and closely shadowed behind their master.

Disclaimer_

I do not claim to own the Labyrinth nor do I claim to own any of its characters. All characters and original plot ideas belong to the Jim Henson Company and LucasFilm LTD. However, I do own the ideas and characters not expressed in the film. Please do not take them.

Disclaimer #2_

I introduce the character Mundy-Min. The character itself ISN'T mine, but the name is.