Jamyria: The Entering (The Jamyria Series Book 1) by Madeline Meekins Read Free Book Online Page B

large, exotic petals. Even little things she notices — the soil she walks on being too fluffy or a patch of weeds she brushes against too slick against her skin — are strangely off-putting.
    The great vast of turquoise sky peeks through break in the trees ahead, attracting her attention. She suddenly remembers the city below and sprints to the edge of the cliff to capture the full view of the valley.
    Expecting to find the village as oddly hued as the forest, Margo is surprised to find the opposite. The town is drained of color. The grassless land of dust has a few dozen rows of shacks running down its center. There is little vegetation, which appears to be only several acres of crops and a few trees, though even these plants are gray. There are small plots of land with pitiful tufts of grass to feed unrecognizable animals. The buildings are constructed of what appear to sea-bleached logs, but there is no ocean in sight.
    The sadness Margo feels for the deadened town lifts when she notices movement below. The villagers hurry about as if simply getting on with their lives, not taking notice to the vanishing ice and lava-spewing spotlight from moments ago.
    The arduous drop will pose a problem. She cannot make it safely down from such height. Searching the edge of the cliff for some sort of pathway, her mouth gapes. What she stands on is not merely a valley but a crater, a circular chunk sliced clean out of the ground. The cliff wraps around the city with a several miles between Margo and the other side.
    She scans the entire lap, but can find no obvious way below. She does notice something; though, it is not nearly as safe as she had hoped. A tree grows from the valley below extending above top of the cliff. Its branches brush against the side of the bluff and grow into the wall of the cliff, forming a perfect ladder. It must have been planted for this very reason, she decides.
    She reaches out and grabs onto a sturdy limb about eye level and peeps over the edge. The ground below sways. Margo and heights are not exactly on good terms. But she only needs to step a few feet over and then climb down.
    Something catches her attention causing her to freeze in place. The inside of Margo’s left arm is covered in congealed blood. She runs her fingers over the area flaking off some of the loose pieces and looks down to finds various blood splatters all over her clothes. From the cat, maybe?
    It wasn’t. It was from her.
    Looking closer at her arm, she finds a series of oddly shaped cuts, almost pattern-like. Her other arm has similar cuts, too. What’s strange is that they don’t hurt. If Margo hadn’t looked, she wouldn’t have even known they were there. Strange, yes, but the questions will have to wait until she is on lower ground, or at least not halfway hanging off a cliff.
    Margo gulps back her fears and pulls herself onto the tree, focusing on the injuries on her arms rather than the jagged rocks below.
    As she climbs down, she tries thinking back to what might have happened to get the cuts. The cat did jump at her, but she didn’t feel anything from the impact. She was already dead by the time she hit Margo. The first time she struck, her claws weren’t even out. Even if it were from the cat, these cuts are not in the shape of claws but more like…etchings.
    There isn’t much else Margo can think of as she lowers herself down the tree. The branches hold their form as she drops down onto each one below. The gray stone of the cliff runs parallel to her with veins swirling a design on its exposed surface.
    Margo freezes mid-step as she remembers something.
    The light, the explosion, it had hurt her arms. Actually, it was the very spot of these cuts. The back of her neck hurt as well, and, as she thinks this, she reaches her hand back to where she had felt the pain. And there it is: another grouping of slightly healed gashes. But what can this mean? Is this one of the unusual punishments received when someone enters