Jamyria: The Entering (The Jamyria Series Book 1) (3 page)

Curiosity overcomes her. The dirt road slips behind as she joins the animal on the narrow trail. It is unlikely Margo will catch up with it, but it’s too beautiful and rare an animal not to try. Imagine the discovery of a new creature, a new life form, a new existence…. It’s well worth the slander of a Hederman.

Oddly, the woods shift from amber to green as she presses onward. How unlike September to carry such rich, lively colors. Even the soil on the path seems fresher, filling the air with the scents of sweet earth. The trees grow tighter as she walks along the unknown path. There is hardly room to squeeze through. Margo forces on, determined not to lose the flaming creature.

She comes to a halt, facing a wall comprised of thick, unified shrubbery, which ends the path and her search, as well. It is an unsatisfying conclusion, but turning back seems unavoidable until Margo lets out a small yelp. A thorny vine overhead has caught hold of her hair in its hand. She reaches to untangle the strand from the nasty vine when a faint triangular splotch of orange light catches her attention. It dances around her forearm like a prism set in a window casting its colorful rays upon a wall. As if to catch the light in her palm, she turns her hand over twice, and slowly follows the direction of the light to find a small opening in the shrubs.

Peering through the keyhole in the leaves, the orange light bouncing across her cheek, she sees it: the mystery animal. A tall, exotic bird, much like a peacock, with feathers of vibrant orange shimmering in the sunlight and the long graceful legs of a heron. Its tail drags behind it with long feathers whose tips are blue-green, and atop its head sits an emerald crown of feathers. The bird pecks its pointed beak at the ground.

All of the pieces seem to fall into place at the sight of it. Obviously, she’s encountered the same bird whose stray feather she found that morning.

A twig snaps as she shifts her weight.

The bird’s head soars high, its long neck curving elegantly. Its tiny head shoots in several directions until its eyes find Margo’s and locks with hers. With that, the bird soars through the trees like a gazelle.

Determined not to lose it again, Margo pulls apart the vines like tissue paper and forces through, ignoring the scratching thorns against her bare arms. Without much time wasted, she catches sight of the bird not thirty feet ahead of her. Running at a rapid speed, its head bobs gracefully with every stride. The closer Margo gets to it, the more dominant its colors become. Its body is not merely orange but has hints of reds and golds, and the feathers of its tail have blues and deep purples. Like a bleeding watercolor, its vibrant colors dazzle in the light. Her heart pounds in her ears and her chest burns, but she has come too far now.

Suddenly, Margo is forced to a stop.

A narrow opening in the woods is laid before her as beautiful as a page torn from a fairy tale. Sunlight pours through the treetops in rays that dance upon vibrant green grasses. A cluster of moss-covered boulders is strewn across the area. Pops of red from mushroom caps and wildflowers add zest to the already perfect setting.

But what truly demands Margo’s attention are the thousand light specks bouncing around the clearing. The grand bird stands before her proudly with its tail feathers spread. Like water upon a flame, the cool colors of its tail surround its blazing body. And to Margo’s satisfaction, the peculiar bird no longer runs but waits, studying her while she studies it.

Her mouth gapes as she absorbs the beauty surrounding her. A dream would make more sense. Surely this is no reality.

The bird stands strangely before her now. Almost as if waiting for something; its beady eyes are fixed on Margo. She takes a few cautious steps closer, and it shows no sign of fear. The sun reflects off of a glossy surface from behind the bird’s spread feathers.

“Are you keeping something?” she asks, automatically feeling silly for questioning a bird.

But the focus of its eyes intrigues her, as if it would indeed answer.

No sooner had Margo made that assumption, the creature bows its graceful head and retracts its tail feathers to reveal what is behind it: a globe set in a gold stand which rests upon a boulder. It couldn’t have stood more than ten inches high with perfectly smooth glass and glistening filigree.

The colorful woods suddenly turn gray as ash. Nothing matters but what is now placed in front of her., the only thing remaining in color: this globe. She is drawn in like a magnet. The world around her slips away. The only clarity lingering emanates from this globe.

She blinks. The world erupts into brilliant color as she stumbles backwards to the ground. She curses under her breath clutching her numb hand into her chest.

“What…” Margo searches the woods, disoriented. Her arm throbs in violent spasms up to her shoulder, but her hand remains deadened. “How did my…arm…?”

She breaks off in a scream as the pain suddenly becomes unbearable, her face meeting the grass, which she finds is not as soft as it appears. She writhes, its blades scratching her cheek, as the icy current pulses through her arm.

She notices it then. The woods are strange, much too vibrant for early fall, the grass too green, mushrooms too bright. Even the trees seem oddly hued as if brought in from a different forest.

“
Margo
,” calls an airy whisper.

She scrunches her eyes tightly shut. “No!” she wails. Rolling over, she uses her bad elbow to help push herself to her feet, ignoring the razors digging under the skin of her arm. Her hand flops about as she makes a break for the path.

“
Margo
.” The voice returns. Not a man, nor a woman. Just a taunting voice, one she should not acknowledge. “
Margo
.”

But this time she spares a glance in its direction. The colors of the forest dull into grays around the source of the voice once more. Her feet carry her toward the whispers, the woods no longer holding a flicker of her interest. Eyes black with lust, she craves for the promises of the globe. She can hear it calling for her, begging for her to take it into her hands. To own it. To claim it as hers.

“
You cannot escape what has already been decided. I am yours. And you
will
be mine
.”

She peers into the crystal sphere and finds a forest encircling a small city glittering with tiny lights.

“A snow globe,” whispers Margo.

“
That was all you could say upon our last encounter.
”

“Perfect…snow globe…”

“
More perfect when the snow is falling
.”

She marvels over its every detail. Crystal smooth as glass, golden trees intricately shaped in filigree, and, most unusually, a spiral-shaped etching in the front of its base. It appears haphazardly added, its style contradicting the fairy tale feeling.

“
You who are cursed must meet your fate
.” The whispers grow impatient. “
Take me, Margo. You are only prolonging your suffering.
”

The fire blazes within her, the yearning overwhelming. Her numb hand reaches outward and ignores the fact that the cold, deadening feeling grows stronger. She lays her fingers upon its cool surface, and her pain ceases. Life returns to her hand. It seems such hilarity for it to have hurt mere seconds prior when all it took to subside the pain was a single touch. She even laughs aloud, though it is a strange laugh that doesn’t belong to her body.

‘More perfect when the snow is falling
,’ it had said.

Margo picks the globe up in her hands looking deep into the forest. She gives it a shake and watches the little sparkles float down from the crystal sky like fairy dust.

Smiling at her new possession, Margo sets the globe down to properly enjoy the falling snow and tries to let go.

All greed vanishes. The fire within her extinguishes.

“How did I…?” She stares at the globe in her hands unsure of where it had come from. She cannot let go. Ice creeps through her fingertips and into her palms. Fingers contorting, she tries with all her strength to peel away from the globe. She puts her foot on the globe to force her hands apart.

“Gah! Stupid!”

Her impulse lands her with three limbs fused to the globe. Her body weakens, and she does the only thing she can think of: she screams at the top of her lungs, knowing it is a wasted effort. The closest house is Michael’s, nearly a mile away.

The cold spreads into her forearms and calf like icy splinters climbing from the globe into her body; her scream shifts from a plea of help into pure agony. In a matter of seconds her entire body is frostbitten.

Rays of light break through globe, and it shakes uncontrollably in her hands. The forest is drowned in white. Her eyes tighten; her lids glow red. Wind rips at her hair, and her feet leave the ground. The ice sends her into convulsions until her body shrivels and twists into any shape to ease the pain. Her throat throbs, head feels as though at any moment it will burst.

The cold, hard earth meets her back, and everything stops.

Margo lays upon the ground panting with her eyes still tightly closed, wondering what pain could be inflicted upon her next. She cringes in fear, not certain it is truly over. But all she feels now is cold prickling at her skin.

Something else is different. She opens her hands studying her palms. The globe is gone.
Maybe it allowed me to drop it through the torture
, she thinks, instantly mortified for considering it allowing her to do anything. As if it thinks…

She spares a glance at her new surroundings. The once bright forest is now very different. Darkness has fallen over the woods and the coldness from the globe lurks. A layer of ice frosts over everything. The wind whips violently through the air. But what disturbs her the most is the way she had entered this clearing is flipped in the other direction. It is as if everything is opposite, like looking through a mirror.

Margo hops frantically to her feet, scrambling around in search of answers, until —

Her steps grow wobbly and her head heavy. The ground teeters below her as what little light is left continues to fade.

She isn’t sure what is happening, but two things are certain: one, touching that globe was a huge mistake; and, two, she is passing out.

Her body falls limp to the ground and she hits her head on something hard. Slowly, Margo gives in to the darkness and drifts off into nothingness.

Chapter Three: Beneath the Icy
Surface

Two faces emerge from behind her lids, swallowed in blackness. Margo waits amidst the dark void, preparing for the minute possibility the boy’s silhouette would define its eyes, and that they might momentarily lock with hers. The longing seems to last for hours aching her to her core. But when the time arrives, the other set of eyes open instead exposing an emerald so vivid they light up her whole face. Her creamy skin shines more radiantly than Margo remembers. Blonde strands ruffle around her heart-shaped face, softening her already smooth lines. She smiles as if thankful Margo has finally let her into her dreams. The brightness flowing from the being illuminates the entire vision, the golden light taking the form of the dream’s backdrop.

The boy for once fades away.

“Margo,” she calls out from across the Hederman’s golden fields of wheat. She giggles and runs in what she considers her ‘stealth mode,’ though she is hardly as sneaky as she thinks.

“Kylie, what did you do?” Margo fusses but couldn’t help laughing back at the sight. Her sister has hold of the rim of her tee shirt with a bulging weight sagging its middle downward and bouncing off her abdomen with every stride.

“Hedermans are out,” she pants. “Thought I’d show Helen. Live up to the name of ‘brat.’” Mrs. Hederman isn’t exactly fond of the two of them roaming the farm, Kylie in particular. She’s been known to throw a few parties past the eastern side of the farm where the woods meet with the creek. Though she’s never been caught red-handed, the aftermath is enough for Helen Hederman’s assessment to point toward the two Grisby girls. She was only half right.

Kylie catches up to her sister, and Margo joins her flight back toward the house, catching sight of the green rounds her blouse holds. “Apples? The Hedermans already suspect you for last week’s party. You know they’ll catch on.” She glances over her shoulder at their landlord’s grand white house with its green-tiled roof. It sits at the opposite end of the pond as the little replication they rent. Their driveway is empty of the blue pickup.

“Don’t you see?” she asks, almost surprised at Margo’s remark. “That’s the point! Let her know it’s me, but only on the inside. She’ll never catch me. It’ll drive her insane!”

Margo pops the latch on the picket fence that runs the perimeter of their house letting Kylie slip in first. The steps moan as they make their way up the porch and into the living room. Her sister drops the pile of fruits onto the kitchen counter sending them spinning in wild circles. Their mother looks up from her book sliding her reading glasses down to the brim of her nose.

“Where did you —” She shakes her head. “I don’t want to know.”

Kylie’s glorious smile spreads across her face, hardly masking the mischief inside.

*

Margo awakes to a rough texture, cold and sharp as daggers. The skin of her arms is exposed and numb. Her eyes crack to see a cloud of frozen air streaming from her nostrils and blades of grass individually frozen over peeking through a light dusting of snow.

It wasn’t a dream; she is still in that dark, cold place, crumpled in pain on the hard ground. When has St. Joseph ever been known to have such sudden-changing weather? In all of Margo’s life, she’s never seen it shift so drastically.

A moan escapes through clenched teeth, a plea for warmth.

The sky glares down upon her with angry clouds, threatening to release their violent weather again. Frost-coated trees line the clearing with icicles snarling down at her like pointed teeth.

The stabbing pain in her scalp suddenly returns. She finds the warm, sticky patch of matted hair which throbs beneath her quivering palm. Margo sits up, much slower this time, to look at her red, tacky hand and stares, once she sees it behind her, at the bloodstained patch of snow. Crimson upon white stretches on.

Lightly massaging her head around the severed spot, she finds the bleeding has greatly slowed. Once she makes it home, she will likely need stitches, but her mom won’t be pleased with a trip to the hospital in the middle of this storm.

Still a little dazed, her eyes sweep over her surroundings. The reality of the situation is sinking in and approaching fast. Her body creeps from the feeling of cold into a silent numbness. Blood pumping slower, muscles stiffening…

But she will not give into nature, no matter how strangely it decides to act. Suddenly, Margo is on her feet and determined to escape. She keeps her arms wrapped around each other trying to create as much friction as possible. Her purple hands contradict her white, splotchy knuckles.

A sudden chill runs up her spine that has nothing to do with the cold. So much has changed in this autumn forest. Sunlight no longer pours through the trees. A heavy fog lurks over the area making it nearly impossible to see more than a few yards ahead, and a light sleet streaks the air stinging her bare arms with each drop.

Branches bow, straining against icicles’ pull. She notices, then, a tiny hint of green hidden under the casing of ice. The leaves are still bright beneath, and she realizes the life of the woods hasn’t fully disappeared; the ice merely stifles it. The grass is still fully green under a thick layer of ice. Mushroom caps have frozen solid. Even the wildflowers hold their blooms perfectly. Yes, there is still much life to be found in this forest.

What caused such bizarre weather anyway
? she wonders. It’s late September in the south; snow isn’t due till mid January if it is to even come at all.

The wind tears through the icy branches creating a dulcet sound like wind chimes. The sharp wind encourages her to get moving. She cannot be sure of which way is home, but her feet seem to lead her in a good enough direction. With every step there is a sound like the snapping of bones. The sleet, now accompanied with snow, beats across Margo’s face. She uses a frost bitten tree to brace herself on a slick patch of ice when —
Snap
!

A massive icicle, thick as Margo’s thigh, falls from the trees towering above. It stabs the earth not three feet from her.

Change of plans.

She backs into the middle of the clearing again, huddling next to one of the large rocks and trying to get in the direct center of the clearing. She scurries to the top of one of the stones, but it, too, is covered in ice. She slips back to the ground, slightly injuring herself again.

Now with a scraped knee and a bloody head, Margo looks quite disastrous. But her only worry is finding protection against the harsh winds, and since walking home is no longer an option, crouching between the stone parapets is the next best thing.

The wind is kept to a minimum, but there is no way to avoid the falling snow and ice. She digs her foot in the ground to soften the icy grass and sits on the cold, damp ground to wait out the storm.

Over the next half hour, Margo stays curled up in her soft patch of grass, checking her cell phone for service to no avail. For each gust of wind, she braces herself for the coming crash. She cringes at the sound of each fallen icicle.

While she isn’t worrying about life-threatening ice, she tries retracing her steps in her head. She remembers following that unusual, fiery bird that disappeared without her even realizing it. She chased it through the trees down a path she didn’t know. Deeper into unknown territory. Deeper….

And then she was here in this very clearing.

Something deep down tells her there is more to the story than she remembers. This place is off, other than just the weather.

“Y-yes!” she attempts to shout.

Her school bag is still draped over her shoulder. She yanks it open and searches through it frantically. She pulls out a textbooks and rips out its pages between tender fingers to use as kindling only to realize she doesn’t have a lighter. To be certain, she digs deeper, tossing everything out that is in her way, desperate for anything of use. Of course, she has no need to carry a lighter or match. The closest thing to an emergency item in her bag is a small flashlight on a key ring.

“Sh-shoot,” she stutters, throwing more things into the snow.

After a moment’s pout, she wrinkles her face up to fight back tears as she bends forward and puts her fingers in the icy snow to gather her things. With jittery hands, she buckles the flap of her bag in defeat and slings back it over her shoulders.

What if I’m so lost I can never find my way home?

She squeezes her eyes again. She barely kissed her mom goodbye that morning. Margo can’t bear the thought that their conversations that morning might be their last. She wonders if her mom has even realized she’s gone yet.

A pang of guilt hits her. She may assume Margo’s skipping out on her chores again. She drops her head to her knees, flushed with anger. If only she’d gone straight home she probably would have never followed that stupid bird and never have found….

Her head snaps up, eyes widened in realization. “The snow globe,” she whispers. And then she remembers everything. The globe. The allure it held. The pain. The coldness running through her body. The twisting and contorting of muscles. The wind. The bright light. The whispers blending into her screams. And of course, the changing of scenery as she fell upon this cold, hard earth.

Is it possible that I’m crazy…to think that I’m in a different place?
Margo shivers and shakes harder, the panic taking over.

It isn’t logical. New places don’t just come about at the turn of a globe. But this certainly feels new. Not only must she have fallen into a different forest, but into a different season, as well. Maybe in this place, fall has long since passed and winter is at its peak. Maybe the globe sucked her through time and spit her out on a different part of the planet. But what if she’s not even on the same planet anymore?

Suddenly, the millions of questions halt, and her mind is silent, reeling her back to her first question:
where is she?

The white fog against the snow makes it near impossible to see, especially crouched below the scattered boulders, but for some reason Margo concentrates harder than before as if trying to place something. Perhaps something has subliminally caught her eye….

Her heart skips a beat, picking up at double time.

Two luminous rounds of aquamarine float in the white fog, a pair of curious eyes. Their sharp, intense gaze sends needles up her spine. The figure stands on one of the overlooking stones, dangerously close to Margo’s safe place.

She scurries to her feet clumsily and stares back at the figure, her heart pounding out of her ears. Suddenly Margo feels more alone as she stands there. It is just her and this stranger in the thick white infinity.

Backing out of her stone protection, she doesn’t dare look away from her visitor. The eyes follow her every step, and for the first time she is oblivious to the sleet’s sting as it beats across her skin.

The faint edges of the lurking creature become clearer as it steps lithely down from the boulder and prowls toward her, a thick body standing on four muscular legs as high as Margo’s chest. It moves in familiar, cunning patterns. The edge of a tail flicks outward, a feline’s sign of distrust. Nearly transparent in the whirl of snow, the pure white lioness watches Margo curiously. Her thick fur ripples in the wind as she skulks forward. The beautiful beast turns and encircles her, eyes twinkling through the flurries. She cracks her jaw to glare dagger-sharp teeth as long as Margo’s fingers. A purr-like snarl seeps through.

The cat drops her head to her front paws, her back curling identically to the Hederman’s barn cat. The pose snaps Margo out of it. This is no beauty. This is a hunter and, scrawny as she is, Margo her prey. A lump forms in her stomach as this sinks in.

The wind clatters the icy trees and whistles through Margo’s hair. Her hand twitches involuntarily at the open air, as if some form of salvation would magically appear. But it won’t. She is quite alone.

A second flick of the tail. The cat claws the ground with paws the size of mitts.

Without a plan, Margo does the only thing the prey of an animal can do. She uses her instincts. She runs — straight into the dangers of falling icicles. But she’d rather take a spear through the head than be eaten alive by a wild cat. Panting, blind against the snow, she knocks branches out of her way, giving the cat exactly what she wants: a head start in the game.

Thum-dum! Thum-dum!

The rhythmic thudding of feet catches up faster than she expected. She weaves between trees. If only the snow wasn’t falling so hard….

Not ten feet ahead, the outstretched body flies through the air landing with an ice-crunching crash. How the cat ended up in front of her, Margo is not sure. In two bounding strides, it is right on her, paw extended and swiping through the air.

A blaring sound escapes Margo’s throat. The impact against her cheek shoots bright lights across her vision and sends her flying into a tree. She quickly pulls her legs into a fetal position just before the second attack plummets from above. A dozen icicles shower down from the treetops like darts. Once the creaking of the straining tree above her quiets, she peeks through her arms hoping the icicles scared the cat away.

It hadn’t. The feline paces as curiously as ever, not the slightest bit baffled by the fallen spears.