Just as the cramping reaches a peak, strong hands pull her through the door.
A random Guardsman is pushed in armed only with a handgun.
The pull is so hard she lands on the floor.
Nathan helps her up and she instinctively reaches her for stomach.
She doesn't respond to queries of whether or not she's ok, she rushes past them to the restroom.
For her 12th birthday, Abraham throws his daughter a lavish birthday party.
She wakes up to a new dress and new jewellery and her favourite breakfast.
If only he didn't invite Mrs. Dooley to the join the festivities.
Mara really doesn't understand this brutal boorish woman who lugs her long suffering dog with her everywhere, and is only able to speak in low grunts and harsh one sentence replies.
This occasion is no different.
She watches as Mrs. Dooley scarfs down finger foods like she hasn't eaten in centuries, or why she allows her poxy dog to taste them.
Still, it's an enjoyable afternoon. William gives her a scroll bound with a ribbon, and urges her to play it for her guests.
It's a pretty melody which reverbates nicely if played in the right rythm.
Her fingers move over the keys, slow at first and picking up in the middle.
If only the incessant barking would stop interrupting her.
"Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet"
The melody increases in speed and in volume.
When she finishes, the only sound is a strange panting noise coming from the back of the room.
Mrs. Dooley lets out a strange yelp and for the first time Mara learns that the mutt actually has a name.
No one ever really figured out how Mr. Cooke's vocal chords apparently vanished in the middle of a crowded room.
For the first time in a long time, Mara actually feels a strange satisfaction
Jennifer sits on the closed toilet lid, the vial with black powder still heavy in her coat pocket.
The cramping has lessened, but still definitely there.
When she closes her eyes she sees strange images.
A pregnant belly with a black handprint, a hand smearing it all over.
"If she tries anything, ingest it anyway you can."
She puts some of the substance on her fingertip and watches it glow in the ridges.
It spreads over her entire palm and dissolves into an oily substance.
It's warm on her lower stomach as she applies it and the cramping is now fully fading.
"Jacob Nathaniel Crocker, but you'll call him John."
Jennifer Mason never thought that relief would feel this good.
After the party guest have gone, she finds William sitting on the dock watching the sunset.
She hands him back the scroll but he refuses it.
"You keep it, for the future."
She thinks of Mr. Cooke, and of Mrs. Dooley who left the party inconsolable.
He tells her of a dream he had a few nights ago. Of them sitting together at a piano with an empty music sheet in front of them.
Of Mara touching a key and a note appearing.
More and more as her fingers moved.
He recalled the notes from memory and spent hours trying to re create them.
"Keep it safe, Mara, for it's no ordinary chamber music."
Jennifer spends a long time in the bathroom.
Long enough for Nathan and Vince to come looking for her.
She lets her hand linger for a moment longer before responding.
Before they can ask what's going on, a shout comes from downstairs.
The guardsman who she was traded for earlier is standing in the middle of the compass symbol, his gun pointed at the cage.
Mara laughs as he fires. The bullet freezes in mid air, as she flexes her fingers.
"Now, where will I send you?"
She wiggles her fingers and the bullet turns around and slowly approaches the man's head.
Just before impact, it stops and freezes again.
It lands on the concrete floor with a small chink and rolls into one of the crevices of the symbol.
"Had you, didn't I?"
She laughs again, that horrible mocking giggle that makes the temperature in the room fall down to below zero.
Dwight pushes past her, ready to reach for the stungun, or worse.
"Oh, that again."
Mara sighs as if she finds this whole captivity thing far beneath her.
The wires hit her chest, and she slumps down on the bench thinking how much fun she could have had if electricity had existed in her own time.
Mara guards her role of special music close.
She keeps it in a locked box on her dresser, and takes it with her when Abraham sends her off to school later that year.
It lives there throughout every sad homesick night and every hope filled morning.
Sometimes she'll sneak out to the music room and play it softly while she cries her eyes out.
She thinks of William and of Haven. And how no one here really appreciates good sunsets or the stillness of the water.
Over time, her homesickness fades and scars over.
When she's bored she'll fold paper until it forms shapes. Flowers and animals. Her art teacher praises them, but Mara can not find it in herself to appreciate it. At the end of the day, it's still paper. It's boring.
So one night she folds a flower out of paper that she painted a deep red.
She places it on top of the piano as she plays Williams music and watches as it turns into the most beautiful orchid she's ever seen.
It's kept between her French dictionary and it becomes her new favourite possession.
Often she wonders about William, now far away at his own school and if he misses her too.
Dwight Hendrickson looks at the sleeping woman in the cage and takes a deep breath.
Audrey. Not Audrey. Mara.
He thinks of that woman he used to know. Of that time he watched her race across a baseball field to save a kid from a falling electricity pole.
Of that woman who made Nathan Wournos happy, which in itself is not an easy feat.
The woman who made the Troubles.
When he first joined the Guard, they told him a vague fairytale of a witch and a barn and how important it was for her to leave when her time was up. No one ever told him just how that story came to be. Perhaps that's the thing about public secrets. If they're kept for centuries, the details fade away.
He thinks of his daughter, who inadvertently died because of this woman.
He should be angrier, but he's not.
Because all he can think of is Audrey Parker and all the things she's done for this town.
And how she deserves a place in this world.
Mara comes home for Christmas one year to find William sitting on the front step the house waiting for her.
She flies into his arms, because she's honestly never been happier to see anyone.
He swings her around and tells her he's got a surprise for her.
Only it's not the surprise she was hoping for.
It's a clearing.
High on top of a cliff overlooking the town.
In the middle, there's a small branch sticking out in the snow.
He dances around her all excitedly and points at it.
"What is this?"
"It's going to be our laboratory, Mara."
It's too cold to do much of anything, but she smiles at him and in the background, the branch grows a few inches.
Note: Sorry for the wait. Hope you still enjoyed this chapter.