Margo glances down at the chair and recognizes the warmth in her cheeks. For the first time this afternoon she truly feels safe. It is in the arms of these two strangers she takes comfort, and she is gracious to happen upon them.
Just as she is about to accept his seat, her smile quickly fades. Before she hadn’t noticed that his right hand is completely covered in dark scars very similar to her own cuts. A vine-like pattern scrolls across the back of his hand.
What she also hadn’t noticed is that half of his hand is missing. He lacks his ring finger, pinky, and the outer half of his palm. A chunk has been sliced clean off.
Margo feels her mouth fall slightly open, and snaps it shut, feeling rude.
“As I said before,” Nick says darkly, “we have much to discuss.”
Chapter Five: The First Man
Margo’s eyes are incapable of leaving his hand. The brown cluster of scars screams for her attention. She feels a strong connection to this stranger, certain she is not alone in her suffering.
“Well,” he says after a moment or two. “First of all, I’m Nick Thomas.” He waits, but when Margo does not reply prompts, “And you are?”
“Margo Grisby,” she blurts, breaking her gaze from his hand. “What happened to your–” She stops herself, flushed in embarrassment by her audacity.
“We’ll get to that,” he promises. “But first, tell me what happened to you. What can you remember?” He leans forward, eyes intense, and crosses his arms so he can tuck his partial hand into his side.
Margo thinks this over for a minute. “Well, the last normal thing I remember was walking home from school.” Had that walk down the dirt road been merely a few hours ago?
“Yes, good! What next?” He asks it as if he already knows how the story will unfold, which Margo is certain he does.
“There was a bright bird, as bright as fire. I followed it through the woods.”
He and Janie turn to one another in confusion, as if thrown by something she’d said.
“A fiery bird?”
“It led me to where it was guarding a globe.” Margo’s eyes dart to Janie just in time to see her spilling hot water onto the counter as it overflows from her cup.
“Guarding it? As in keeping you away from it?” asks Nick.
“More like it was trying to bring me to it. Like it wanted me to…” Her voice trails off as the flash of a memory stirs her. Touching the globe, all the pain in that instant. The icy splinters under her skin. Muscles so strained they could have peeled from her bones.
“Well,” says Janie. “That certainly is…different.”
“Different, indeed.” Nick’s face twists up in concentration. He paces back and forth in the tiny kitchen. It only takes him two steps to reach each side, and he nearly knocks Janie out of the way in each passing.
“Is something wrong?” Margo asks nervously. The weird parts are yet to come, and she is surprised to find that this part of the story has set their minds turning.
“It’s just that I’ve never heard of one of this world’s creatures crossing over to the Real World. It’s quite strange.”
Janie is silent in the background keeping her eyes on the floor. Both are in deep thought. Margo almost dreads telling them the rest of the story. Almost.
Then his words hit her a little harder.
“I’m sorry,” she says too harshly, tensing her back. “Did you just say that we’re in a different world?”
Nick chokes, turning slightly green. “Oh, dear… Janie I thought you’d already gotten that far.”
“No, I —”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Margo says quietly, placing a hand over her heart. “I was afraid I was losing it.”
The tension lifts. Nick chuckles. “I’m impressed, actually. You seem to be adapting pretty well. And fast. Most new enterers have trouble accepting even pieces of what’s happening, but you seem to really have a knack for this.” He smiles crookedly to himself.
Janie shoots him a nasty look.
“I’m serious,” he goes on. “She hasn’t once asked when she gets to go home or anything. Like she already knows why she’s —”
“Nick,” Janie says firmly.
He clears his throat and is back to business. “So after you saw the bird guarding the globe, what happened?”
“Well, I felt funny. Like I couldn’t escape from it. Something felt very wrong, but I had to shake it.” She skips over where her memory clouds. “Then everything grew bright, and I woke up in the snow.
“Then, there was this huge cat.” They exchange another nervous glance. “It was all white and tried to attack me. I couldn’t outrun it. I thought I was going to die but… There was an icicle in my hand — I don’t know how it got there — but I… I killed it.”
To Margo’s surprise, Nick bursts out into a hysterical laugh. She grimaces.
“Well, that’s something we didn’t see coming,” Nick belts out.
Janie nods back, joining his laughter.
“Sorry, but you lost me again.” She fails to mask her irritation.
“We’ll explain it all, I promise. Now, please continue.”
She sighs, and continues to tell them the rest. Without any more interruptions, she tells them of the nagging cold and spotting the village from above the valley. How the circle of light cast down upon her and somehow cut her arms and neck. They listen intently to every word and even after Margo has finished they wait patiently in silence for more. “So then I just came down here to find help after the ice was gone.”
Nick’s pacing finally stops, his face still scrunched up in concentration. “Can I see them? Your marks?”
She nods while removing the filthy poncho once again. Janie silently darts over to her side to help and then backs out of the way with the poncho draped over her arm. Margo hopes she incinerates the thing.
Nick steps forward with his partial hand holding his chin and begins studying the marks as Janie had — as if there is meaning beneath the strange characters. She stretches her arms out into the shape of a U for him to have a proper look at her inner arms.
Margo, too, gives them a scrutinized look-over. There are four rows of patterns that hide neatly in her side when her arms are down. Each row contains a single line of sharp, jagged characters running from her elbow all the way to the joint where her arm meets her shoulder. Studying them even closer, she sees that there are etchings within each tiny character. She is curious to see the one on her neck.
What’s strange is that even though she received these cuts merely hours ago, they are completely healed. The skin isn’t pink as an ordinary scar would be but has healed a shade or two darker than the tone of her skin, leaving them brownish.
Nick traces the scars with his two fingers, carefully examining them.
“I just don’t think I understand what happened to me,” Margo finally says, interrupting his studying. She can feel her eyes widening in fright, although she is trying her hardest to keep her emotions under control.
“There’s just so much to tell. Where to begin, where to begin?” He sighs, looking down at Margo with troubled eyes, and she knows then that something greater than all that had happened today is coming. “Alright, Janie. You start, I’ll finish.”
He gently glides Margo’s arms back to her side and offers the same chair he’d pulled out a moment ago. This time she sits without question. Janie places a cup of steaming tea in front of her.
“Well, this is Jamyria,” says Janie as she grabs the other two cups and hands one to Nick. They both sit down across from Margo, settling in for a long discussion. “Jamyria is a world that was created by someone with great power. We’ve learned as much as we can about this place over the years, but we were brought in here just as unexpectedly as you.”
Only one word sticks out to Margo, and it isn’t the obvious. She should be terrified that someone created an entire world with their ‘power.’ Or that everyone here was brought against their will. But that isn’t what scares
her.
“Years?” It can’t be possible for them to have been here for that long. Surely they have families looking for them, detectives and police searching for answers.
“Years,” Janie repeats, her smile vanishing. “Some for centuries even.”
“Centuries?” For a moment, Margo can’t even form another sentence. “How is that even possible? Unless… Oh, you mean they’ve died here….” She bites her tongue.
Janie’s lip twitch slightly. “No. You see, when you enter Jamyria, the Queen — that is, the creator of this land — sets a curse on you so that you can only age to a certain degree, and then you stop. This allows children to grow to their fullest potential, their most powerful stage. You become temporarily immortal, meaning once she finished with you, you’ll continue to age until you pass.”
Margo processes this. It all sounds so bizarre and unreal, but why stop believing at this point?
“As you can imagine, we all want to get out of here.” Janie takes a sip of her tea between sentences. “In a way, we’re all prisoners. Slaves to contributing energy to her source of power.” Margo isn’t sure what that means, but Janie speaks too quickly to ask. “Sure, we do what we can with what we’ve got, but who wants to live their entire life that way? Who wants to be told that the only freedom they have is within this little box?” She air-draws a square with her thin fingers. “And even still, we have limitations of what we can do and where we can go within our box. It’s miserable, Margo.”
Her chocolate eyes plead. For a moment, Margo empathizes. Until she remembers that this hell is her reality, too. Janie searches Margo’s face for something, like she desperately has something to ask.
“But we’ve done our best,” she finally says. “We built this town from the ground up, starting with this very cottage. Nick built it himself.” She smiles at him, though it does not touch her eyes.
“You built this alone?” Margo asks, amazed.
“From the ground up,” Nick repeats proudly.
“Margo, I honestly feel like you’re missing the major points here. Your questions seem to be avoiding the facts, so let me reiterate.” Janie takes in a deep breath and slowly releases it through her tightly rounded lips. “You are in a different world. And we are all stuck here.”
Margo is somewhat miffed that she’s spelled it out so simply. Of course she heard what Janie had said, but somewhere inside of her, Margo had already sensed that.
“I understand, really,” she defends dumbly. “But to be honest, I feel like you’re not telling me something.” Margo’s voice is even, eyes dead on Janie and unwavering. At last, she sees what she needs: Janie’s gaze nervously flickers to Nick and back.
“Perceptive, eh?” says Nick, the wrinkles around his eyes more dominant as he grins. “My turn, Janie. Thanks for the intro.” He rearranges his posture and intertwines his two fingers with his good hand. “Well, Margo, it’s time to talk about your marks.”
This she is not surprised to hear.
“When someone enters Jamyria, normally they simply fall into the snow and wait for warmth to come. After about an hour or so, the sun will come out, and as soon as the light spreads, the cold vanishes melting the snow and ice away instantaneously. But every fifty years, someone will enter who has more meaning than just being captured by the Queen.” He leans in on the table, his eyes wide. “They’re destined to enter.”
Margo’s eyes narrow, still unsure where this is leading.
“Those destined are brought here just as unknowingly as any other person and have what’s already growing inside of them revealed. These marks. These,” he taps the scars on his right hand lightly, smiling crookedly, “are marks of power.”
Margo’s own scars come into focus. What exactly is he saying? That these marks have power in them…?
“Yes, Margo. You, too, have that power in you. And you have a lot of power, I might add. Look at all those markings!”
“Don’t forget the ones on her neck,” Janie adds.
“It’s remarkable! Unheard of.”
She stares at him blankly.
“You’re confused,” he points out. “Several unique things have happened here; two very significant unique things. One, there’s never been a marked woman.” Margo raises her eyebrow skeptically, knowing that he just mentioned a queen having power to create this world. “Let me rephrase that. There are marked women, but a woman as the New Mark, now that’s unheard of...
“The second thing is that I’ve never seen so much power wrapped into a single body.” He absentmindedly traces the etchings on his hand again. “The more detailed the patterns are, the more power that person contains. And yours are so big! But, at the same time, intricate.”
“New Mark?” Margo sighs. “I really am trying, but it’s hard to keep up.”
“Once someone has been given this power,” Janie says softly, “and once they know what they’re doing with it, they can pass it along to someone else. There are plenty of women that have marks here, but we’ve never come across a woman that has received a New Mark, as we call it. That is, their mark is original...freshly created and unique. Do you understand, sweetie?”
“What about this queen?” Margo asks.
“She got hers from her father,” Nick answers before Janie can. “That happened long before anyone was in Jamyria, though. Long before it was even created.”
“You said this happens every fifty years.” Margo went back over their conversation. She glances at Nick’s marks. “Does that mean you’ve been in here for fifty years?”
“Wish I had,” Nick says darkly. “I’ve been here for over a hundred.”
The room falls silent. Margo isn’t sure how to respond to that. That’s a lifetime, or more. And to spend it all here… There’s a small part within Margo that cannot help but worry that that will be her fate, too.
“We’ve gotten a little sidetracked again,” Nick finally says. “So, after I entered Jamyria, I received my power, my markings.” He holds up his partial hand, and Margo can’t help but wince. “My whole hand was covered then.” He keeps his eyes on his hand, reminiscing.
“I thought I was going crazy, too. One minute I was in my house, the next I was in this wintry forest. I wandered, searching for any type of shelter — the ice was harsh, as you know. That’s when I saw a tower of smoke in the mountains, so I headed that direction. When I grew closer, a man cut off my path. I was so relieved to find someone else that I didn’t even think to fear him. But before I could ask him for help, he struck me to the ground. I surrendered hoping that he would either kill me quickly or at least bring me to warmth — you’re willing to do almost anything in a moment so desperate.”
Margo shivers remembering the icicle in her hand, the hot blood spilling down her hand.
“But I was lucky. I was brought to the pillar of smoke which was coming from the Queen’s house.” He pauses, watching for Margo’s reaction. “He took me into a grand white room lined with scarlet drapes. And directly in front of me she sat there watching me with a cold grin on her face, but she still managed to come across as beautiful. Her smoky-grey eyes…somehow they drew you in, making you almost believe she was good.”
“But,” Margo says interrupting for the first time, “she’s not, is she?”
“No.”
Margo guesses she should have realized this, but from the way he describes this queen, she almost believes differently.
“Does she do anything besides just take people in?”
“Far worse,” he replies somberly. That is the only answer Margo will receive for now. “When I met the Queen, I was not afraid — not of her at least. She greeted me politely and introduced me to Jamyria, much like Janie just did for you. She also explained that there was no way possible for me to go back and that I would have to get used to life here.
“I became her servant in the beginning, helping her with whatever task or assignment she had for me. I watched her bring in more people, too. Some of them she became more a
ttached to and hired to work for her as protection rather than as mere servants — her Crew, as she calls them. So we servants, along with some of her Crewmen, were ordered to build the castle. It took us many years, but once it was finished, the Queen had no further purpose for most of us. She released us into the jungle.
“It was a relief to be free from the life I had been forced into, but as Janie said earlier, we are only free to a certain extent. We are still extremely limited. I, for example, was never allowed to return to the castle without the Queen’s request. And returning to the Real World is impossible. The only chance of that happening occurs every fifty years.” They both stare at Margo again. “Are you making the connection, Margo?”
But Janie speaks first. “She’s just a girl, Nick. She isn’t ready for this.”
“Fate certainly thinks she is,” he says. “About a year before the Queen released me,” he continues. “Rumors began to spread of a prophecy stating that every fifty years the New Marked One would enter. That one of these New Marks would free all of the people of Jamyria.”
And now it all makes sense. The click in Margo’s mind as she makes this connection is nearly audible. “So you think I’m this ‘New Mark?’” Margo cannot help but to burst into hysterics at that.
“You are the New Mark, Margo. The question is: are you the one who will save this world?”
Margo gives this a generous thought of about thirty seconds before she replies, “No thank you,” and scoots her chair out to leave.
But before she can rise to her feet Janie reaches out for her hand. “Wait. Please, just consider it.”
“Consider what?” she snaps. “I’ve barely been in this place a day, and you’ve already got my life mapped out. I don’t even know who you people are!”
“We’ll help you as much as we can —”
“Why didn’t you free everyone?” she shouts at Nick. “And if it’s every fifty years, isn’t there another one out there somewhere?”
Nick’s face slightly drops. “I was injured,” he says, quietly glancing down at his hand.
Margo is suddenly ashamed of her reaction. Of course he would have tried. He’s been in this world — she will have to get used to saying that — for over a hundred years.
Jamyria: The Entering (The Jamyria Series Book 1) Page 6