Disclaimer: Labyrinth and all its characters belong to Jim Henson and company. I am making no profit from this story. Storyline and original characters belong to me.

Summary: Sarah travels to Ireland for the reading of her great-aunt’s will – a great-aunt she never knew existed. The sole heir of her aunt’s considerable fortune, Sarah discovers that nothing in life is ever simple, and nothing is ever quite as it seems…

Rating: PG-13

Lineage

Prologue: You Can’t Choose Your Family

It is often said that blood is thicker than water, but love is thicker than blood. Perhaps that was why Sarah Williams always felt out of place in her family. Perhaps it was also why she always wondered why she was neither like her father nor her mother – not in looks, not in temperament, not in personality.

Her father was a very bland, mild man who never became riled at anything, even when it was deserved. A lot of things seemed to go right over his head, either because he truly was a product of a generation that had difficulty relating to the current one, or because he simply didn’t care enough to even try to understand.

Sarah’s mother was a selfish, narcissistic actress. In Sarah’s younger years, she had tried to emulate her mother and dreamed of a life on the stage. As she grew older, however, and realized that her mother just didn’t give a damn about anything but her career and her looks. In rebellion, Sarah changed her goals and aspirations, determining to be as different from her mother as possible.

Of course, she also had a step-mother, Karen, and in that relationship, her feelings of alienation were perfectly natural. From her step-mother’s union with Sarah’s father had sprung a half-brother, Toby, whom Sarah loved but couldn’t relate to. Several years’ difference separated them, and as Sarah grew older and developed her own interests, they grew still further apart.

At large family gatherings, Sarah was mercilessly and endlessly teased by her relatives for being different. She constantly heard from them that she had her head in the clouds or that she thought she was too good for the rest of the family. That wasn’t strictly true; Sarah simply felt like a fish out of water whenever forced to spend time with her aunts, uncles and cousins. She didn’t feel a kinship with even one of them.

When she was old enough, she usually made excuses that she couldn’t make it home for these ‘special’ occasions. She would say that she wasn’t able to get away from school – she had finals or projects or thesis; work was too busy, too many people were already taking off the time and Sarah was badly needed. Sometimes the excuses were valid reasons, but usually they were nothing more than… excuses.

After graduating from college, Sarah had moved out of her dorm and into a small apartment. She took several jobs with various newspapers, and now, having paid her dues, she was happily situated in her current job as editor-in-chief for Saucy! Magazine. It wasn’t the most politically correct magazine out there, nor was it the most socially aware, but it paid well and was a great stepping-stone to a more substantial career. After all, Sarah was only thirty years old, and only just that.

After her first two years with Saucy!, Sarah had left her tiny apartment and rented her first house, a two-bedroom, two-bath cottage style home in an upscale neighborhood.

It was actually the in-law quarters of Sarah’s favorite professor, Tess Freihlhing. After Sarah graduated, she and Tess had stayed in touch and grown to

be close friends. Tess was more a mother to Sarah than Linda or Karen had ever been. Tess’ mother had lived in the small home until her death, and Tess, knowing Sarah was looking to move, had offered it to her for a song, provided that Sarah would paint and do minor repairs.

Sarah had friends… mostly ones she had gone to school with and who had settled in the college town as Sarah had. None of them were particularly close friends, however, which Sarah found liberating. She didn’t relish the idea of a roommate or having friends over several nights week. She spent more time with Tess than any of her other friends.

Her life was comfortable - not exciting or dramatic, as she had once hoped it would be, but peaceful and satisfying. She was neither rich nor poor; she was neither popular nor ostracized.

As for men, Sarah found that most of them bored or irritated her. Most of them were intent on a very brief, very physical relationship, which went against all of her ideas of romance. She was turned off by their limited scope of interest, which leaned toward sports, their careers, other women, and getting drunk every weekend.

Sarah wanted more. But more of what, she didn’t know. It was as though she compared every man she met to a non-existent, fantastically perfect man with impeccable taste and manners. A man who was ceaselessly romantic and caring, yet not without a certain prideful exterior that no one could see through but Sarah herself. Nothing about any man she ever met measured up to these impossibly high expectations. It was hopeless.

Sometimes Sarah still thought about him. He had been a fixture in her life for several years, until she finally had a stern conversation with herself about fantasy and reality, and forced herself to start to forget. There was no sense in hanging on to a dream. It was silly and childish. But oh, how she had enjoyed having him in her life for those vital years…

She had even imagined – or dreamed – that she was whisked away to his world, the Underground, when she wished Toby away. He gave her thirteen hours to solve his Labyrinth and save her baby brother, and he had hindered her at every opportunity.

Of course, the entire premise of the fantasy was based on a book – her favorite book, The Labyrinth. From that book had sprung a thousand dreams and ideas, keeping her imagination alive and thriving. After her imagined trip to the Underground, however, she knew she had to live in the here and now – reality. It had been very difficult to say goodbye to her childish and fanciful notions, and he had been the last one she let go of… the Goblin King.

Whenever she thought of him now, it was with a rueful laugh at her own silliness. He had been such an outlandish being… part glam rocker, part menacing enemy, part romantic hero.

He had wild blond hair that both stood on end and draped his shoulders. His blue eyes were unusual, especially for an imaginary character; one pupil was permanently dilated, making it appear to be a much deeper, darker color than the other. His face was accented with fascinating colors and glitter, just like the musicians Sarah had considered cute when she watched videos on MTV.

His clothes… on any other man they would have been hilarious, but on him they were nothing but appropriate. Dramatic, high-colored and beglittered cloaks had adorned his shoulders, flowing out behind him. Ruffled, pirate-esque shirts and fancy vests accompanied scandalously form-fitting pants that looked suspiciously like tights. High-heeled boots and gloves completed his ensemble.

What bothered Sarah was that he still invaded her dreams on a fairly regular basis. It was ridiculous; if she were to come across such a man now, she would avoid him at all costs. The Goblin King had been arrogant, deceitful, mocking and petulant… In her teenage mind she had pretended that he was in love with her. Indeed, in her elaborate dream, when she bested his labyrinth, he attempted to distract her from her quest in a final, desperate plea for her love and fear.

For a while, Sarah had believed that her adventure through the labyrinth had been real… that such a place and its odd assortment of inhabitants actually existed somehow, somewhere. She scoffed at herself now, and never allowed herself to truly meditate on what had happened, because whenever she did, it started seeming real again. At such times, she feared that her grasp on reality would slip away altogether… and then where would she be?

No, she was firmly rooted in the here and now. She didn’t read fantasy books nor did she see such movies. If it wasn’t practical; it wasn’t based on real, solid, earthly life, she didn’t want any part of it.

And so it was a shame that, being as rooted in reality as she was, Sarah Williams was about to get blasted right back into a realm of fantasy, unreality, and glitter once again. If only she had known…

…such a pity.