"My Lady," Didymus exclaimed. "Why are you weeping sweet tears? I shall smite the one who hath caused thee such distress!" He growled, brandishing his spear.

"Ludo smite," Ludo agreed, nodding his heavy head.

"Not now, you two," Hoggle griped, swatting at them to get their attention. He then turned back to Sarah. "We don't have long, Sarah. Things are rough in the Underground."

"Oh, Hoggle," Sarah said as she turned around to face them. She halted, however, and looked around for them. They were nowhere to be seen.

Turning back once more, pale and terrified, Sarah saw Hoggle nod at her solemnly. "Rough things," he repeated, shrugging a little. "We can't even get here anymore, unless you work up the magic for it on this side with your story. But even that's not going to work for long. It's tied to the other one too much."

She tried to speak, but found that she couldn't. She looked at the clock in her room and saw, with horror, that it was 11:45. "My brother is going to die if I don't help him," she said numbly. "And right now, I don't know that he doesn't hate me because… because of something I have no clue about."

Ludo perked a bit, and then went despondent. "Ludo love Sarah," he said, trying to make her happy again.

Sir Didymus climbed up on her bed and had a seat in the mirror. She almost turned around again, but knew that it was useless. "Perhaps, fair maiden," he explained, "it has to do with our own troubles?"

Hoggle followed Didymus' example and sat on the edge of the bed nearest to her. Had he been there in the flesh, he would've been able to reach out and pat her comfortingly. "Well, there ain't much time," he sighed. "So, here's the short version. Remember how's I told you that Jareth had gone? Well, he's trapped in that owl form of his, and doesn't have no powers. Seen him flitting to and fro myself, looking more and more poorly. I wondered why, until I could see it with m'own eyes." He tapped at the side of his face a bit near one of his large eyes. "Underground's dying, missy. Jareth was the magic of it, the… batt'ry, you call it here? He's the King, after all."

"Oh no," Sarah whispered, shaking her head a little. "I had no idea… but I had to get Toby…"

Hoggle waved that away. "P'shaw, Sarah, ain't nothing of your fault. Full circle. Had to happen at some point. Trouble is, we been livin' off what magic was stored in the Underground by Jareth's bein' there for these years without him, and it's about dried up. Things are looking bad over here, cause we need magic to survive."

"Indeed, my Lady," Didymus agreed, his fox-tail twitching lightly. Ambrosius poked up his head from around the corner of the bed, and wagged his tail so that the tip could be seen above the edge. He barked once at seeing her. "Though these things must happen, it appears as if we have a common problem."

Ludo shuffled forward a little, but didn't knock anything over in her room for once. "Need king," he told her mournfully. "Need king now!"

Hoggle rolled his eyes a little. "What the hairy oaf is trying to say," he expanded, "is that with Jareth gone, we need a new king. And, truth be told, it's going to be your brother, Toby."

"What?!" Sarah yelped, her eyes going round. "It can't be! I got him out of there once! Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"Would it have made a difference?" Hoggle responded calmly. "You came to take him home. He'd have been a goblin if you'd failed." He grumbled and hopped off the edge of the bed to pace. "Look, missy, Jareth supposedly came from the last time someone won the game the ruler of the Underground plays with Aboveground folks. The story changes, but the end's the same: there have to be losers to populate the Underground, but there's only ever one winner who changes things around so that it stays fresh." He saw that she wasn't quite accepting or understanding what he was saying, and so made the final connection for her. "The one in charge gets too lazy when his Labyrinth stays unbeatable, and doesn't change things around much. Stays with a few things that work, if you will. The Underground… stagnates. Then someone comes along, after a good while, and solves the puzzle. Why? Who knows. Maybe fate. Maybe destiny. Maybe damned good luck. But they win, and a new person takes control, and the Underground gets a new lake of magic, and a makeover. Fresh ideas, fresh puzzles, fresh faces."

"But… why Toby?" Sarah demanded after a moment. "Why my brother, when I went in to get him before?"

"Because he could not be the King when there was one," Didymus chimed in gently and politely. "He was still under the geas that the book had placed upon you, as the girl who had to face Jareth. But you won. That means that your brother, as well as yourself, have been touched by the magic that we survive on, and thus have to have a part in the new world that needs to be built."

"So, because I won, and brought Toby back," Sarah stated, distraught, "he has a connection to that world? It wants him and not me?"

Didymus looked at Hoggle and shrugged a bit. "That depends," Hoggle replied evasively. "I mean, I don't know nothin' myself, so I won't steer ya wrong, but seems to me that if it wanted you, it could take him and get you that way. And if it wanted him, it would need you anyhow."

She frowned at him and leaned towards the mirror. "Wait, Hoggle, what do you mean it would need me?" she asked warily. "Can't it take him?"

Hoggle shook his head a little, but it was Ludo who answered. "Say words," he encouraged Sarah, motioning with his ham-sized hands.

Didymus nodded his head. "Yes, my Lady, my brother is correct. You must say the words."

"Words?" Sarah asked, confused. "What words?"

Hoggle looked at her steadily. "The ones that brought the goblins to you in the first place. They can come one last time with the magic that those words give you, and once he's in the Underground, the magic will start to return."

Sarah rose and shook her hands and her head at them. "No way! He's mad at me enough as it is, but if I sent him over there, I couldn't get him back! I can't get back to your world on my own. It took Jareth to do it last time!"

"Did it?" Hoggle responded quickly. "Or was the magic all your own so long as he was there, and brought forth by your own need? He was your tool, Sarah, to get what you needed, and when your brother is here, then that tool has returned to you. All you need to do, is write it down."

Sarah hesitated a moment before looking at them in the mirror again. She leaned down on her hands, giving them a quizzical look. "Write what down?"

"What has transpired until that point, my Lady," Didymus told her with a fluid gesture. "How things began today for you, how you felt, your troubles, and everything else. Once that is finished, all you must do is write down what happens next, and bring the words with you when you arrive."

"But how will I know what happens next if it hasn't already happened?" Sarah asked them curiously.

"Make story," Ludo proclaimed in triumph, his ears perking and his tail wagging happily that he'd contributed such important information.

"Er, yes," Hoggle replied, looking up at her from the mirror. "You write what you want to happen to get you to the Underground, and it will happen."

"But, why?" she asked, and then stopped as she saw them beginning to fade. She glanced at the clock and found herself looking at only two minutes till midnight, when Toby would turn sixteen.

"No time!" Hoggle told her. "Thank us later! Go send him to the Underground before it vanishes, or he fades away! Hurry, girl!"

She watched them for only another moment before one word slipped through her lips. "Toby," she whispered, and then bolted for her door.

She ran down the hallway to where her brother's room sat waiting, and knocked on the door wildly. "Toby?" she called once. "Toby, let me in! I know how to save you!" She tried his door, but found it locked.

"Go away, Sarah," Toby called gloomily from the other side. "You're too late."

"Toby, you unlock this door right NOW!" she demanded, beating on it again. "I'm not going to lose you again, you hear me? Unlock the door!" She felt her throat constricting as the need to cry came over her again. "Please?" she begged, tugging on the knob again.

There was a silence that stretched forever, and she could hear the grandfather clock downstairs ticking her brother's life away during it. She counted sixty of them before she tried it again. "Toby?" she called with trepidation. "Toby, please let me help you."

"Why? So you can tell my parents how crazy I am? So you can find your little friends and live happily ever after while I can't?"

Sarah made a frustrated sound in her throat. "Why are you acting like this?" she shouted through the door. "I loved you enough to give up everything for you, and I would do it again if it meant you'd be safe again! Open the door!"

There were five ticks of silence before Toby spoke again. "Would you be with him, if you had the chance, this time around?" he asked, his voice muted and strange.

Sarah nearly reared back at the question, but knew she had only a scant few seconds to decide and answer. She couldn't lie, that much she knew. She'd lied too much. But the truth was too horrible to face for her as well. She closed her eyes tightly, grit her teeth, and knew there wasn't an easy way out. The truth would set her free and might get Toby to open his door. He seemed upset that she had forsaken Jareth, of all things. "Yes," she said at last, as the first blast of thunder rocked the house.

Lightning flashed immediately after, herald of another rumble, and she heard the door unlock even as the clock downstairs made the final few ticks that heralded the onset of midnight. She opened the door immediately and found herself assailed by the storm winds outside.

Toby had his window open, and in the flash she saw a tattered old barn owl sitting perched on his arm. Both he and the owl stared at her with twin sets of mismatched eyes, one old and the other young, and she almost lost the will to speak.

She faced Jareth, and he'd heard her say the thing she most dreaded him hearing. Toby, however, was smiling faintly, pinched and drawn already as if he were being sucked dry early, and she focused her attention on him. "I wish the goblins would take you away," she said firmly, wanting it with all her heart, as much now as she had the night she had first sent him away even if the desire behind it was different, "right now."

A flash of lightning and blast of thunder came, deafening in its proximity to the window, and Sarah shrieked and held her ears, cowering at the sudden noise as the lights all went out. The thunder that occurred began as a roar and lasted for what seemed an eternity as the winds swept through the room with a chill silken feel.

When she dared to look up a few moments later, dreading what she'd find, she saw in the half-light of the lightning outside that Toby and the owl were gone, and that the last six chimes of the grandfather clock counting out midnight were slowly pealing through the night-dark house.

END PART ONE

(To Part Two)