Labyrinth: Wednesday Nights in the Labyrinth
Sir Didymus and Sarah played Scrabble every week in the library at the Goblin Castle.
“But what does croteye even mean?” Sarah asked despairingly, surveying the board.
Jareth looked up from the stack of papers he was reading through. “Sarah,” he said slyly, “are you challenging the truthfulness of your knight?”
Didymus huffed. “Fair lady, wouldst I deceive you?” He crossed his arms, the feather in his cap trembling with offended dignity. “It is a word known to every wight who doth ride to hunt!”
“No, no,” Sarah hastened to say, shooting Jareth a glare before turning back to Didymus and attempting to soothe him. “It’s just--I have never been on a hunt, Sir Didymus.”
Didymus relaxed his arms and shook his head sadly. “Tsk, lady, that is sad to hear indeed. The hunt is a most noble sport, and the exercise quite invigorating! His Majesty should invite you to the next.”
“Oh, I didn’t think Sarah would care for our kind of hunts, Didymus,” Jareth said from where he lounged in his chair. Catching Sarah looking at him suspiciously, he gave her a slow smile. “I thought she might find them . . . a trifle wild.”
It was the smile that always tangled her up in wanting to both kiss him and kick him. Sarah flushed, then pulled her gaze away from Jareth to look down at her few remaining tiles. “But isn’t a hunt supposed to be--a wild hunt--a Wild Hunt,” she repeated faintly, recognizing the allusion at last. “Oh.”
Didymus missed her dismay, his eye toting up the board. “I count five points for torc, milady, and--let us see--fourteen for croteye, but it falleth upon a triple word score--”
Sarah looked down again at the tile board in her lap, staring at the letters blindly. “D-do you,” she stuttered, unable to complete the question aloud, but thinking it nevertheless: Do you take the humans who see your hunt with you, whether they like it or not? Do they survive to return Above when the hunt is done?
Didymus, scratching numbers on a small pad, mistook her question. “A hart crotieth her fumes, milady, which the master of the hunt doth gather for study to determine whether she be good game,” he explained blithely.
Gloved hands gathered the hair at the nape of her neck and draped it over one shoulder, nearly surprising Sarah into spilling the tiles from her lap. “Still so squeamish, Sarah?” Jareth asked provokingly, his breath soft against her skin as he murmured the question in her ear. “What’s one hunter, more or less?”
I could quit and we could just go to bed right now, Sarah thought for one heated moment before she redirected herself to the topic at hand. She said angrily, “I’m not being squeamish.”
She cut short what she wanted to add when Didymus looked up at her, smiling with all the delight of a player in the lead. “It doth total ninety-seven points, milady, for I hath used all my tiles. . . Milady?” he paused, eye moving from her to Jareth. “Would your majesties prefer that I withdraw--” he began with a knowing delicacy that sent Sarah plummeting from the height of irritation straight into embarrassment.
“Sarah will see the game played out,” Jareth said coolly, sliding his hands from her shoulders to her waist. She felt their warmth even through the layers of dress and chemise.
Sarah swallowed her anger--and more--and nodded. “Yes, of course. Perhaps-perhaps I may rally still? What is the score?”
Didymus studied his pad in a moment of tactful silence Sarah used to jab at Jareth with her elbow. He chuckled and moved away as Didymus said, “Your points total one hundred twenty, milady.” He added, “It is a great improvement from last week! Although I fear I am still in the lead with three hundred and thirty-seven.”
Sarah mustered a smile for him. “I should be the fearful one, not you, Sir Didymus. But,” she said, a bubble of amusement tickling through her, “I’m glad that the Labyrinth’s Scrabble champion is willing to play me . . . even though my spelling is not up to local standards.”
“I hold myself always at the ready to play Scrabble with you, milady,” Didymus said with a courtly little half-bow.
Sarah studied her tiles in silence a moment, then selected four and placed them on the board, F-I-R-E, intersecting from the left with the Y of croteye. “There.”
Sir Didymus looked at the board, a familiar expression of chagrin making his whiskers quiver. “Milady . . . I am afraid firey ends with an I-E, not a Y. But do not worry, milady,” he said quickly, “we will have your spelling righted quite soon!”