Coda

Skerplň the Messenger pulled a lopsided cart behind him. It was piled high with rolled bits of parchment. In his free hand he held a long list of names, the heads of all the teams and details and crews scattered throughout The Labyrinth. He paused on his way to scratch out the Proper Swamp Fermentation Crew. Next on the list was the Maintenance Detail. Outer edges. The lucky bastards who could slag off as they pleased, far off as they were from Goblin City. Skerplň's cart rattled and heaved over roots and pebbles, until he came across a dwarf in a heavily patched, red leather cap. The dwarf glared at him, then went right back to sucking on a clay pipe, feet propped up on an upturned bucket.

"You Humble?" Skerplň said.

"Ain't no such thing," the dwarf said. "It's Hoggle." He chewed on the end of his pipe. "Some kind of message from his nibs, I gather."

"If by his nibs you mean King Jareth, then yeah, from his nibs." Skerplň pulled a parchment cylinder from its pile, then rummaged in one of several saddlebags tied to the sides of the cart. He took a small pouch from it and tossed it at Hoggle. "Them's your wages for The Londonderry Shift. And there's one of them parchments for you too."

Hoggle ignored the parchment. Likely some useless proclamation or other, some path leading to nowhere getting set up somewhere to the east. He pried open the pouch and grunted at the onyx inside. Sizeable. Valuable. Mighty generous of Jareth, all unpleasant things about him considered.

"Don't bother showing up at work tomorrow," Skerplň said. He scoffed and spat at Hoggle's expression. "Don't look so blinking worried. Advisor Royal's as passed away. Funeral's tomorrow. Labyrinth-wide holiday. Day of mourning and whatnot."

"Pam is dead?"

Skerplň shrugged, then picked up the handle of his cart. "If by Pam you mean the Advisor Royal, then yeah, Pam's dead. Hardly knew ye, and all that."

"What of?"

"Old age, as I gather."

"He wasn't that old."

Skerplň shrugged again. "He's dead. Can't see as to what difference it makes what he died of. He's still dead, and I'm grateful for the day off. You should too, dwarf."

As he rattled away, lobbying another wad of spit at the path, Hoggle sat, fingering the parchment cylinder. Likely the official announcement, times for the viewing of the body, the funeral, long list of Pam's achievements. Hoggle tossed the parchment into the shed behind him. Then, he topped up his pipe, lit it, and sat back to smoke it in peace and quiet.

He had liked Pam. He would miss him. Stuffy, officious kind, Pam. But Hoggle owed his freedom to him. Fool of a Jareth would have made Hoggle Advisor Royal if not for Pam. And he had not been all that bad, really, aside from his penchant for way too many words.

"I'll smoke to ya, Pam," Hoggle said. "Flights of owls take you to your rest."

Hoggle remained at his post at Maintenance Detail on the day of the funeral. The following day, his pay rate was cut for the second time since King Jareth's coronation. And a week later it was announced that the post of Advisor Royal was henceforth abolished, nulled, voided, and declared obsolete.

Pam was known from then on as The Last Advisor Royal, as was proper and right according to protocol.

Mayte Orozco was no longer Mayte Orozco. This caused her a great deal of distress. She had become quite attached to that particular human skin. Ah well. Easy come, easy go. At least the Underwood kid was safe in Kent, and Mayte was—thus far—safe from The Labyrinth.

That she had failed to help Linda Williams haunted her. She dared not set foot in The Labyrinth again, had already cast several concealment and obfuscation spells around herself, and so she had no way of knowing what had become of Linda.

This much Mayte knew: Linda had not returned aboveground.

Worse and most hurtful of all, Doña Orozco had to be told that her daughter had been found dead in her Londonderry, New Hampshire apartment. Smoking in bed. Fell asleep. Everybody else in the apartment building had gotten out, one Filipino woman crossing herself over and over and murmuring of an angel in a vision, warning her.

"Was beautiful, glowing angel. Smaller than pictures, but I know it was angel. She warn me. She tell me of flames, and I take my family outside, warn neighbours."

Doña Orozco sat in her room for days, dressed in black, fingering a rosary and gazing at a picture of Mayte. She would wear black for nearly two years, a picture of Mayte pinned inside her blouse, next to a scapular of San Antonio de Padua and Our Lady of Altagracia.

In February 1979, her niece, Gabriela, had a baby daughter. She brought her to meet Doña Orozco on a Sunday, kissing the tiny girl's forehead and murmuring, "Say hello to your tia abuela, eh? Say hello." Then she passed the baby, carefully, almost reverently to Doña Orozco. She stood back, expectant, wringing her hands. "Well?" she said after a while. "Do you think so too? 'Cause Miguel says she looks just like…"

"Mayte," Doña Orozco said. "She looks just like Mayte." She smiled, her face cragged and sunburnt. "Ay, mija, it's like seeing her all over again. Dios me la bendiga." She kissed the baby's forehead loudly, paper thin lips trembling. "What is her name?"

Gabriela exchanged a look with her brother, Miguel. She gave her aunt a shy, devoted smile. "Mayte. Juan and I named her Mayte. Mayte Angela Dominguez." She reached out and stroked her daughter's fine, curly hair. "For you, tia, and for her."

Doña Orozco cried. And, in her arms, Mayte Angela Dominguez gurgled and smiled and could not wait until she could talk, because she was going to tell Doña Orozco how much she loved her every single day. Maybe she would even tell her about The Labyrinth, spin tall tales and summer night yarns from it, about piskies and goblins and dwarves and this one piskie who grew bored of it all and maybe, just maybe, came to live in the Dominican Republic.

"What self-respecting piskie would do that, mija?"

"You never know, tia abuela," Mayte would say. "Maybe she just really liked tostones."

Mayte remained in the Dominican Republic, in the city of Santiago de los Caballeros. Over time, she became quite famous for her Tarot readings. Some said she spoke in voices, distant and ancient voices, like the crackle of autumn leaves or hundreds of twigs snapping underfoot. Some said they could see a glowing aura around her, pink and red and blue and purple, depending on her mood. People came from miles to have their fortune read by her.

To her never-ending delight, none of those people ever turned out to be goblins.

Sandra sat in her bedroom and rocked Baby Joe in her arms. She had not kept any newspaper clippings jumping all ecstatic over the news of the miraculous return of Joe Underwood, The Stolen Kent Baby. She left the tears and the community spirit and the late news babble to the people of Kent. George had kept all the balloons, cards and presents the neighbours and the elected councillor and random strangers had piled at their doorstep. He jammed them into one corner of the hall closet, talking about a one day when he would show them to Joe. But Sandra barely thought of them.

She thought of Joe, and of how light he was in her arms.

In the kitchen, George flipped through a photo album. He had a six-pack of beer and, after a long while searching through the photo album, a picture he liked of a lanky young man with mousy brown hair and mismatched eyes. George propped the picture up against an ashtray, dropped back on his seat and looked at it for a good five minutes.

He cracked open his first beer and raised it to the photo.

"Sandra's not gonna like this," he said. "'Cause I'm gonna get well an' good pissed. But it's fittin', Davey, 'cause I'm drinkin' to you, mate. Wherever you are."

He gulped down a long drink of beer.

"Here's to you, David Jones."

And George Underwood sat and drank and held a wake for his friend.

Robert Williams packed all of his belongings into his old Datsun. He helped Sarah dismantle her bedroom and did not say a word as she took as many things as she could that had belonged to Linda. It was only natural, the school councillor had said, and part of the healing process. Give her time. Give her space. Give her love.

The TV cops had knocked on Robert's door on 16 September 1977.

"Mr Williams?" Henriksen said, rumbling into his leather jacket. "I'm afraid we have some very bad news."

Robert nodded. His rib still hurt, from whatever had happened to him that night he had panicked, when he had thought that Sarah was in danger. He could not remember much about that night, but he must have slipped, must have somehow crashed into Sarah's bedroom dresser. How that had broken his rib, Robert could not begin to explain. Not in any way that made sense. The doctor said the fractures were consistent with a beating. His jaw had been swollen. But the police had discovered no evidence of a break-in, no footprints, no fingerprints, nothing to show that anyone but Robert and Sarah had been in the house. Robert decided it was best to think about it as little as possible. And he decided it was best to just nod at the TV cops, Henriksen and Dorsey, because he could not think of what else would be appropriate in light of what he knew they were going to say.

"Sir," Dorsey said. "We found your wife. I'm so sorry, sir."

Linda, his wife, was found within an automobile the New York City police had pulled from the Hudson River. Passenger seat. Seatbelt fastened. The impact had killed her. The driver side seatbelt had been unbuckled, the window rolled down. The police had dragged the body of David Weddell out of the river two days after they found Linda.

Robert identified her at the morgue. He gazed down at her still, pale face, and he thought of wax dolls, of life-sized porcelain. He bent down and kissed her forehead (his rib protested), and then he left.

She had eloped with David Weddell. The police uncovered their apartment in Manhattan. Dorsey handed Robert an enveloped filled with newspaper clippings and a Playbill magazine with Linda on the cover.

But, Robert's mind said, but how could she have been there all along? How could the police not have known? Linda Williams, on Broadway. How could they have missed that?

And then, he simply did not think about it anymore. He found, as the days wore on, that he remembered things incorrectly anyway. There had never been a nation-wide hunt for his wife. Everybody in Londonderry knew she had eloped with David Weddell. He knew as well, had always known. He had been the luckiest man in the world for a good seven years.

Now Linda was dead.

Now David Weddell was dead.

Robert sold their house, moved himself and Sarah to a two-bedroom rental across town, close to the border with Derry. His psychologist agreed that it was a good idea. Distance. Time to heal and put his life back in order.

Sarah kept the envelope of clippings, the Playbill issue, Linda's costumes, her perfumes, as many things as she could hide in her closet. She thought Robert did not know. She worried her homeroom teacher for a few weeks, talking about doors burned into walls and a man with a crow's head and of faeries and how the owl no longer followed her around. And then, she simply stopped. She gathered her toys and played by herself and completed her work and behaved very politely to all of her classmates.

"We'll keep an eye on her, Mr Williams," the homeroom teacher said. "Children cope with tragedy in a vastly different way from adults."

Fantasy. Sarah coped with fantasy, and a closet full of her mother's belongings. Robert let it be.

After a while, after the years had passed and Robert had decided it was time to return to Londonderry (to a new house) (far from the old one), he began to notice a rather striking blonde at Sarah's school's functions. She would catch his eye across the auditorium, look away, search him out again a few minutes later. Made him rather jumpy. In a not altogether unpleasant way.

"Irene?" Tom said over lunch. "My brother knows her. She's got a niece a few years older than Sarah." He chewed on a fry, then said, in a knowing way, "She's, ah, not married."

She married Robert on 4 March 1984.

And Robert often thought of Linda, and he thought of her with love and regret and maybe even with anger and jealousy. He thought of her alive and smiling, holding his hand, and he thought of her pale face sinking below the Hudson River. But these thoughts came to him less and less, until Linda became only the vague recollection of some great pain.

And the vague recollection of great love.

There was an owl in the tree outside the Londonderry Middle School. Sarah sat at the bus stop bench and watched it. Students yelled and hollered and bubbled with conversation all around her, their voices mingled with those of parents and teachers and car horns and school buses lining up as hundreds of people battled their way back home. Too many people. Too many eyes. If Sarah had been alone, she would not have sat at the bench, merely watching the owl.

She would nod her head, and she would curtsy. As was proper.

The owl was a king, after all. And the king was madly in love with her. With her, a (nearly) fourteen year old girl. He was madly in love with her, and he knew how forlorn (that was a good, hefty word) Sarah (Princess Sarah) was, and what indignities she suffered at the hands of her wicked stepmother, a queen with the ludicrous name of Irene.

Really, who had ever heard of a Queen Irene? It was too ridiculous.

Now Queen Linda, there was a name. The beautiful Queen Linda, who had won the heart of King Robert (before he had gone off and done something as vile as marrying the wicked Irene) (obviously under a treacherous spell, one day to be broken), but had died tragically while Princess Sarah was only a child (the tragedy was vague, and Sarah only knew that it somehow involved Queen Linda floating down a river, framed by her long black hair and beautiful, midnight black clothes). Queen Linda had been brave and noble and courageous, all qualities that Princess Sarah had inherited, and which had drawn the attention of the owl. Who was a king, of course.

The king of the goblins. And he was madly in love with her.

And Sarah knew this was all a great deal of make-believe and possibly even nonsense, but it made her very happy. Dad would say, "Such an imagination, sweetie," and leave it at that, while (her wicked stepmother) Irene would say, "It's just a barn owl, Sarah. Probably escaped from the zoo. They really should keep a closer eye on this kind of thing." Sarah pitied them. Who wanted to live in a world where barn owls were simply barn owls?

No, the world, her world, was different.

Up in its tree, the owl would have agreed with her. It preened and blinked one wide blue eye, its damaged left eye open and fixed on Sarah. Sorry, sorry little Sarah.

You shall never have her, Linda had said.

Not for lack of trying, Jareth thought. Not for lack of trying, love.