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.
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