Labyrinth Read Online Free PDF Page A

still want to look for him?”
    “Yes.” She swallowed. “Is that …” She remembered the words. ” … the castle beyond the Goblin City?”
    Jareth did not answer at once, and she turned around. He was still there, watching her intensely, but they were no longer in the house. They stood facing each other on a windswept hilltop. Between them and the hill on which the castle stood was a broad valley. In the darkness she could not tell what was down there.
    She turned again. The wind blew her hair over her face. Brushing it back, she took one timid step forward.
    Jareth’s voice came from behind her. “Turn back, Sarah. Turn back, before it is too late.”
    “I can’t. Oh, I can’t. Don’t you understand that?” She shook her head slowly, gazing at the distant castle, and to herself, quietly, repeated, “I can’t.”
    “What a pity.” Jareth’s voice was low, and gentle, as though he really meant it.
    She was looking at the castle. It seemed to be a long way off, but not impossibly far to travel. It depended on what she would encounter in the valley, how easily it could be crossed. Was the darkness down there perpetual? “It doesn’t look that far,” she said, and heard in her voice the effort she was making to sound brave.
    Jareth was at her elbow now. He looked at her, with a smile that was icy. “It’s farther than you think.” Pointing at a tree, he added, “And the time is shorter.”
    Sarah saw that an antique wooden clock had appeared in the tree, as though growing from a branch. On it were marked the hours to thirteen, as on the nursery clock in the lightning.
    “You have thirteen hours to unriddle the Labyrinth,” Jareth told her, “before your baby brother becomes one of us.”
    “Us?”
    Jareth nodded. “Forever.”
    Magic still hummed in the air. Sarah was standing still, hair tossing in the wind, looking out across the valley toward the castle. After a while, she said, “Tell me where I start.”
    She waited for an answer, and finally she heard him say, “A pity.”
    “What?” She turned her head to look up at him, but he was not there. She spun all around. He had vanished. She was alone in the night, on a windswept hilltop.
    She looked across again at the castle. The storm was passing away. Blades of clouds sliced across the moon. She thought she glimpsed the figure of an owl, high above, wings spread wide on the air, as he flew steadily away from her.
    She took another step forward, down the hillside. But there was no ground beneath her feet. She began to fall.

Chapter Three - Pipsqueak
    Sarah felt herself toppling forward, into the darkness. Only by swinging her arms wildly did she manage to keep her balance. The hillside was very steep.
    Her mouth had gone dry with fright. Carefully, she sat down. That felt safer, but she could not afford to sit there long, with only thirteen hours to get through the Labyrinth and find Toby in the castle.
    She tried slithering down the hillside on her bottom, but that was no good either. Rocks and little shrubs impeded her, and she dared not stand up to get past them. It was so black, she might have been trying to find her way through a sea of ink. She felt tears rising, but blinked them away. She would do it. There were no limits to what she could do, given the determination (which she certainly had), and the ingenuity (which she had never lacked yet, admittedly in more humdrum predicaments), and maybe a little luck (which she deserved, didn’t she?). She would do it, she vowed, as she sat on the black hillside with no idea how to move another foot.
    High above her, where the owl had flown, she heard a lark sing. She peered up at it, and by taking her eyes off the blackness below she became aware that a hint of light was staining the rim of the dark sky. She watched the light grow brighter, changing from red to pink, and then pale blue, and when she saw the edge of the sun inch up over the horizon she shut her eyes and took a deep breath.