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The girl loved stories; That much was clear to Sarah Carpenter's dozy parents. When they trudged into the old house at precisely 4:15 every day, it wasn't uncommon to see a shapeless mass of blue blanket perched on the window seat, with two spidery pale hands poking out and barely, just barely hanging onto the cover of some long forgotten book. Sometimes it was a medieval text, basking in the attention of such an avid young reader, and other times, it might have been the jungle safari of a most recent author on a riveting adventure. However, more times than not, it was a small, red leather book with the oddest gold insignia and fancy lettering skating across the front cover like lovers on a cold winter day- a book whose name was "Labyrinth."

On the inside of the cover within the very first pages was an illustration of a young lady (rather close to Sarah's age, I should think) with dark, lacy, brown hair that curled into gossamer tendrils over her bare shoulders, her dress a heavenly confection of white floss spotted with small glittery stars which appeared to give off a faint glow. Her delicate feet shod in silvery sandals looked so light as she danced across the page, and her heart seemed even lighter.

Sarah would have given anything in the world to be this girl, to be among the fantastical worlds which had so much more to offer than her own. In the book, this girl was a queen whose power was unrivaled by opposition throughout all the three kingdoms- the wretched goblin kingdom, ruled by the cruelest master ever to grace the pages of literature, the kingdom of light, which belonged to the Queen and the Queen alone, and the kingdom of mortals, a dull, immoral place, but still closer to the Queen of Light than Sarah could ever be. Sarah's heartstrings yearned for the day she could leave her own world and enter the paper-stricken universe.

But alas, this journey could never be, as Sarah lived in a rather mundane place, somewhere in the suburbs right outside southern Pittsburgh. She imagined what it must be like; the rolling hills of Pennsylvania became to her the hills and homes of the small folk, and the rivers and creeks became the bed of the fire gang whose wild tempers and obnoxious countenance could only be quieted by the incessant trickling of a small brook. The monumental glacial boulders that came down in national parks became the lair of the stone-speakers, gentle giants who were becoming alarmingly extinct due to the outrageous royal hunt of the Goblin King.

The Goblin King. Oh yes, he was surely a sight for word hungry eyes, imagery so stark and so real, Sarah sometimes felt as though he was reading intently over her shoulder. The Goblin King had devilishly mismatched eyes, one a startling blue and as light as ice, the other a muddy brown, which looked as though if you gazed too long, would suck your toes into its deep, dark craggy mires. His hair, an unfortunate salad of dirty blond and of all ranges of unnatural color (depending on his mood, the color changed...) jutted up from his skull like a patch of weeds the gardening boy might have missed during his daily maintenance. The Goblin King had no semblance of a soul- if he did, it was a dull, broken thing, for he loved nothing more than to cause harm and mischief to all those who stood for what was right...including the Queen of Light. She was his dearest ambition, that he might harness her to his yoke of a life of unbearable solitude, to be alone no longer and fix his broken soul. But what astounding beauty of both heart and body could learn to love such a hateful beast? The illustration, aside from illuminating the Queen in all her gloriousness, was a token to one of the key events of the book- the part where the Queen regains her power stolen by the Goblin King and is reunited with her loyal subjects.

Sarah cried nearly every night looking at this picture. Her life felt incomplete, meaningless without the well of magic that her dry soul sought. And so, books became her opium, a drug with which she could drown her hate for a normal, boring life.

*

It was easy to see this deep, dark spiral into which Sarah was descending, the substitute of paper for bread, of ink for water, and words for soul. Reading was a good thing, but this...this was bad. One stormy day, Sarah's mother observed tear stains on the old, crinkled pages of her favorite copy of "A Little Princess." The tears had bled the old ink, weeping blacks and greys into an illustration of a little girl sitting forlorn in an attic.