Within Gold and Glass (Book One of the Jamyria Series)

Misunderstood (Pt. 2)

The day stretches on. The sun behind them now lengthens their shadows. Margo remembers the drawing she found at Nick's house and wonders if a person will suddenly appear from the distorted shadows. Though the sun is low and the colors around them are filtered with an orangey tinge, it is only mid-afternoon. "The sun plays tricks on you in this world," Cameron had explained. "Telling time by the sky is a reformed art here and rather difficult for a new enterer."

After some time passes, Cameron speaks up with a guilty tenor. "Oh yeah... Nick also asked me to teach you how to fight."

"Fight?" Margo snorts. "Sorry, Cameron, but that's not likely to happen." Barely over five feet tall and much too skinny, Margo is unable to picture herself fighting.

"You're going to have to learn." Cameron sighs. "I'm not thrilled with the idea either, but Nick insisted."

"Why should I learn?"

"Have you not heard everything we've been telling you? These people will kill you!"

"Well, I know that! I just didn't expect to have to fight back."

"What, did you think we expected you to just stand back and die?"

"I...don't know." Her voice drops because that's exactly what she had expected to do. "I just assumed I would either find the way or die. I never thought about trying to prevent it."

"You — you didn't think about that?" He is appalled by her reaction.

"I've thought about dying," she whispers.

"Margo, listen, that's not going to happen."

"How do you know? Janie made it clear it's a definite possibility, so how can you be so sure?"

"Because I'm with you. And I won't let anything happen to you. I'm going to do everything I can to help you get ready for whatever lies ahead of us — that includes fighting. Just promise me you'll try to learn."

"Okay, I promise," she says reluctantly.

"Good. Janie will be pleased. It was mostly her idea, actually. She just put Nick up to making it a mandatory part of our trip. She has quite an influence on that man...."

Margo's heart warms at the thought of Nick and Janie's quirky relationship. Even though they act aloof, there is certainly something between the two of them. They remind her of her relationship with Cameron. Even though there isn't anything complicated about their situation, they deny such an obvious truth.
"They're together, aren't they? Nick and Janie."

"Maybe," Cameron says.

"Don't you think she's a bit young for him?"

"Hardly! She entered less than a decade after him. Only he lost his immortality, and she didn't."

"How did...? I know they mentioned the people here are 'temporarily immortal.' That whole concept just doesn't make sense. Not yet, at least." She tacks the last part on in hopes that her effort to learn is noticed.

"It's hard to understand anything about this world when you're new. In Nick's situation, the Queen lifted his seal of immortality after she discovered he was the New Mark of that time."

"So he's going to die?"

"Not a chance. That happened long before you and I were even born. He's had enough time to create his own seal."

"So, if I'm following, he and Janie are about the same age, only he looks closer to..." Margo didn't want to risk guessing the wrong age.

"Fifty."

"And Janie looks just as she did all those years ago when she entered." Could that woman actually be over a century old? Her skin is flawless, her hair as smooth as silk. Margo whispers, "It's fascinating," as her head drops to Cameron's shoulder again, thinking over all their conversations. She must be dreaming because she's remembering things they've not only talked about today, but moments they've lived in the past. Sitting high in swaying Ferris wheel cars. Ice cream sandwiches by the moon-kissed pond. She dreams of people traveling through darkness and a beautiful girl with mix-matched eyes. And pennies, many tries and just as many failures. Thoughts of craters and cities within, and turrets on mountaintops with a Queen whose grey eyes haunt. And blood — her own blood — spilled over the land...

Margo's eyes pop open as she jumps.

"You alright?" he asks.

She shakes away the tiredness to see she is still in the forest with Cameron. But is this the same forest as before? Margo must have been out for a while, without a clue of how long they have been traveling. The changes around her make no sense because they aren't in a forest at all.

They are in a jungle.