Disclaimer: I do not own the Labyrinth, nor any of the characters or creatures from the movie. Shove, however, is his own creature, and I'm proud to call him friend (when he's not eating my socks, that is).

AN: Before we begin, I just want to say "I'm sorry." I'm sorry. I know that I have a half finished Labyrinth fan fic that has been on hiatus for... well... a long time. But sadly it couldn't be helped. See the thing is, as I was writing it I realized that when I wrote "Immortal Love" I'd only told half the story! There was so much else that went on in my first Labyrinth fan fic that happened when Sarah wasn't around to see it, and some of that stuff was going to be important in "Dangers Untold." So I thought and thought about it, and what you are about to read is the result. This is everything that you DIDN'T read in "Labyrinth: Immortal Love" (which, if you haven't read that yet, it might make this one make a little more sense). This is the story of a little goblin who did some very big things. Coincidentally, it is also the story of a King who fell in love with a mortal girl. Please, patient readers, read on... and don't fear, I still have every intention of finishing "Dangers Untold."

Shove's Story: A Goblin Tale

Chapter 1

Shove loved libraries. First of all, they were usually big, and old, and full of wonderfully stuffy librarians who startled easily. Second, they were quiet. So quiet you could hear a pin drop, although Shove never bothered with pins. Third, there were books. Lots and lots and lots of books. If there was one thing that Shove loved more than libraries, it was books.

Most books were bigger than he was, but that didn’t bother him much, since he was a very strong little goblin. And books could be heavy, and hard to move, but that wasn’t much of a problem either. In fact, add all of that to the satisfying THUD they made when they fell off a shelf and hit the floor (and occasionally the accompanying swear word from the unfortunate grad student who happened to be standing underneath), and books became Shove’s favorite thing in the world to push off of a shelf.

Shove was very good at pushing things. It was how he’d gotten his name. When he’d been only a little goblin, still partially human with a human baby’s mindless determination, he’d loved to put out his still pudgy hands and shove away the older goblins who had watched over him, preferably into something messy. So they’d named him Shove, and he’d grown into his name. Despite his tiny size—and he really was rather small for a goblin—his overdeveloped forearms were corded with muscles, and were long enough that, to move quickly, he could use his arms like an extra pair of legs to propel himself along.

Which is what he was doing now, loping along on all fours, down a deserted aisle of the University’s largest library. He was following the scent of magic (the only thing that was almost as strong as Shove’s forearms was his sense of smell), a soft, flowery scent that had tickled his nose almost the moment he’d entered the building. It wasn’t goblin magic, which smelled a bit like rust and mold and old crumbling things and a little like leather. It wasn’t pixie magic, which smelled like champagne and cheap perfume and made him sneeze. And it wasn’t Fae magic, like the King’s, which was dark and spicy and thick. No, this had the scent of white roses and cool water and sunlight—a distinctly Aboveground smell, sunlight—and was altogether different from anything else he’d ever encountered... and yet, it was familiar, barely. It made him curious, and as the Goblins say “Curiosity cooked the cat”—meaning: dinner for someone—and so Shove had set out to track down its source.

He dodged through gaps in the books, between shelves, his long pointed nose sniffing the air: yellowed paper, dust, cobwebs, an old gum wrapper with some chewed gum hardening in it stuck behind some books (he grabbed it as he passed, to savor later), dirty sneakers, after-scent of human sex, some sunflower seed shells still coated in saliva, and there, stronger now, white roses.

The tiny goblin moved cautiously, clambering up inside of the shelves, in the gap where one bookcase backed another, using his arms and feet to scuttle along, agile as a spider, until he’d come near enough to the source of it to see. Magic users, Shove had learned, could be a testy lot, and it was best to approach one with the same amount of caution one would use when approaching a snarling guard dog. He crept around some books, resisting his natural impulse to knock them over, and peered down at a quiet table, where a young woman had her dark head bent over several books.

She was beautiful, Shove thought, although goblins don’t normally judge beauty the same way humans do. But she shone in his vision, as pure as a star, her dark hair glossy as a raven’s wing, her skin the pale color inside of a shell, and what was more, he knew immediately who she was, which made her seem all the more beautiful.

She was the Lady.

Shove had been a very young goblin, when the Lady had first come to the Labyrinth. Too young in fact, to have fought in the Great Battle of Goblin City in Which Stones Rolled and the King was Defeated (though the goblins tended to only mention the last bit when the King wasn’t around to hear), so he’d spent most of the battle in the castle, perched in a high window in the throne room, throwing whatever was handy (mostly chickens) at the city below. Which was why he’d been the only goblin to see the Lady arrive in the Throne Room. She’d been accompanied by the Hedgetrimmer, the Rock Caller, and the Rather Stupid Knight of the Stinky Bridge, and Shove had watched in amazement when the Lady had told them she would continue alone. That they were there at all was amazing, but that she had gone on to face her enemy alone, without their help, well that made her almost heroic.

After she’d gone up the stairs, Shove had scuttled down the wall, and come forward to sit at the Hedgetrimmer’s feet. The gnarled dwarf had looked down at him once, then turned his head back to watch the stairwell, as if he could see beyond it to what was happening in the Inner Tower, where even the Labyrinth itself could not watch or listen.

“She gonna make it,” Shove had said matter of factly.

“Sarah win?” said the Rock Caller softly. Shove patted the big beast’s toe.

“She’ll win,” the Hedgetrimmer had said. “She made it this far, didn’t she?”

“You help,” said Shove, curious.

“Not much,” said the Hedgetrimmer.

“Thy betrayal weighs heavily upon thee,” said the Rather Stupid Knight, “but do not let it worry thy heart, friend Hoggle, for thou art still her friend.”

“What he say?” said Shove, confused by the Knight’s speech. He was slightly above average in intelligence, for a goblin, but everything that came out of the knight’s mouth sounded like rocks hitting a gong—noisy, sort of annoying, but not very clear.

“He said she’s gonna make it,” said the Hedgetrimmer. “But the end is still undecided.”

“He loves her, methinks,” said the Knight, and Shove had scratched his head. Love was an alien concept for goblins, though they knew it existed of course. Love wasn’t much fun, so they didn’t see the point of it. But the King wasn’t a goblin. Oh, he thought like a goblin, sometimes, and he could be mischievous, and clever, and wicked like a goblin, sometimes, but when it came right down to it, he was still a Fae. And the Fae had a tendency to fall in love quickly, and passionately. But the King had never been in Love before, so it had never occurred to the Goblins that he might, and what that might mean.

Shove thought back to the stories the other goblins had told him about the Fae Courts and the way they all fell in Love with one another and made silly stupids of themselves. The King hadn’t acted like that at all in the last thirteen hours. He’d been a little meaner than usual, a little surlier, and he HAD threatened to make that pudgy little straw-haired human a goblin babe, when any goblin with eyes could see that he was perfectly healthy and happy and would make some pair of childless elves somewhere a nice little changeling.

But then, the Knight was Rather Stupid, and was probably wrong. Shove shrugged. The light in the Throne Room had grown dim.

“Rocks feel strange,” said the Rock Caller. “Say Tower break but not broken.”

“That’s not possible,” said the Hedgetrimmer, frowning.

“The Lady has reached the Babe,” said the Knight, pounding his staff with certainty.

“How do you know?” said the Hedgetrimmer suspiciously.

“For if Sir Ludo is right, then the Tower hath fallen, has it not? She has reached his Heart, and now he wilt fall upon his noble knee and beg for my Lady’s hand, and she wilt give him hers, and come to rule us as Queen...”

The Labyrinth trembled. The Knight fell silent. Shove felt the floor beneath him groan, as if in pain, and at the barest edge of his hearing, he heard the many, many, voices of the Labyrinth cry out; some in despair, some in disbelief, and quite a few calling in wagers. The light grew dimmer, the Labyrinth fell silent, and the four who stood in the throne room waited.

He ghosted in on silent white wings, and shifted from owl to man so slowly that even Shove could see the transformation. He walked stiffly, proudly, but as one weary and tired, slipping through the shadows toward the throne, only his hair glittering a little in the faint light. His booted feet had made no noise as he had taken his seat, throwing one leg over the arm, and resting his head in one gloved hand.

“She refused me,” he said, his voice barely louder than a breath. Shove had crept forward slowly, until he was sitting at the King’s foot, closer to the King than he’d ever been before. As Youngest he was rarely allowed within twenty feet of the King.

“But she won,” said the Hedgetrimmer, his gruff voice soft. The King laughed at that, a harsh, sharp sound.

“She was too young to understand what she’d won,” he said, his voice thoughtful.

“Time,” said the Rock Caller.

“Yes,” the King mused, “‘world enough, and time...’ At least, we have forever, don’t we? That’s not long at all.” His head had come up then, slowly, as one listening, and an anticipatory hush had fallen over the Labyrinth.

“Higgle,” said the King.

“Hoggle,” said the Hedgetrimmer.

“Whatever,” said the King. “You won’t believe this.”

“What, Your Majesty?”

“She needs you,” his voice was flat, emotionless, but Shove thought it sounded green around the ‘you’ part. The dwarf had looked incredulous. “Well,” the King had said. “Don’t just stand there like an idiot—go to her.”

“Are you sure, Your Majesty?”

The King had growled, “Someday, Hedgewort, I will have her back, but until that day, every single subject of mine will be at her beck and call. Every goblin will listen to her and obey her as if she were me. She must want to come back, and you will do everything within your power to make sure that she is happy, or I will personally submerge you in the Bog of Eternal Stench myself.”

The dwarf looked pale, but he and the other two had bowed, and then vanished, the Labyrinth itself facilitating their departure.

The King had sighed, deeply, his gloved hand over his face again, and Shove had tentatively reached out and patted his boot. The King lifted a finger, enough to peer down at the tiny goblin at his foot. He smiled then, a soft smile that Shove had never seen before.

“Hello,” the King said. “The Youngest, aren’t you? What have they taken to calling you?”

“Shove, Majesty,” he had said.

“I suppose this makes you the Grand High Whatever this evening, doesn’t it?” Shove looked around quickly, realizing that he was the only goblin in the Throne Room, and then grinned, his sharp teeth glittering. Goblins are not unlike other creatures, which judge their importance by their proximity to those in power. However, unlike most creatures, goblins take that quite literally, and whoever happened to be nearest the Goblin King at any given time was automatically the Grand High Whatever. If someone stronger or cleverer managed to weasel themselves closer, then the position went to them. The Goblin Court, therefore was often similar to a human game of King of the Mountain, with goblins constantly fighting and squabbling over who got the honor of cleaning the King’s boots.

“She’ll come back,” the King had said, although he sounded as though he were trying to convince himself. “I’ll make sure of it.”

“Why her?” Shove had asked, curious. The King had never been so interested in a Runner before. The King’s eyes had grown distant, his face haunted.

“I do not know,” he said, finally. “Something in her eyes... so sad, so innocent. She’s lovely, of course, but...” he broke off, standing. His long legs took him quickly to the window, and he turned at the last moment, just as he was beginning to shimmer into owl form again. “Remember, Shove, she is your Lady. She just doesn’t know it yet.” And he’d ghosted out into the night.

Shove remembered. He remembered all of it, which was rather unusual for a goblin, since they tended to have rather short memories. But perhaps the King had done something, or perhaps it had burned itself into his memory, for he remembered it with perfect clarity as he peered over the shelf at the young woman studying below. He studied her in turn.

She was lovely, but he could not see her eyes, could not see what had so tempted the King. She was looking at a book, flipping through the pages, and then she stopped, and her dark head had bent for a closer look. Shove leaned out a little further, trying to see what she was looking at, holding onto a book for leverage.

Probably a mistake, considering that when she breathed the King’s name, it startled him so badly, that he—for once—accidentally knocked the book off the shelf.