Alfred Hitchcock had it right. Birds can be fairly creepy, especially when they are tall enough to reach the middle of your chest. If you take all that plumage, all those cute feathers off of them, they are the descendants of the dinosaurs. Not just any dinosaurs, mind you. Their lineage can be traced back to the theropods, at least on Earth. Notable theropods included the Tyrannosaurus rex and the velociraptors. They come from a line of stone cold killers. Yeah, like many kids I went through a dinosaur phase as a child, stuffing my brain with trivia that seemed useless at the time. Now, it appeared to be a little less useless, and these birds looked more dinosaur than most. Perhaps they were transplanted here a long time ago.

Even on Earth there were birds that could end your life, and I am not just talking about the zoonotic diseases that backyard poultry could transmit. Do some research on the cassowary sometime. Watch a few videos. They have been known to eviscerate humans or to slice their jugular veins. The birds that chased the unknown human into our camp didn’t look nearly as friendly as the cassowary. If it came to battle, we would be fighting to survive. And it was too damn dark. One missed block, one slip, one poorly timed dodge and I might lose another of my companions. At least Aleyda was armored, dressed in the fruit of Sathebeena’s labor, but Bowen and I were both fairly vulnerable.

One thing I know about birds is that they are, by and large, sight hunters. That would make me feel a lot better if I didn’t also know that their eyes are often better adapted to seeing in the dark than yours or mine are. We were definitely at a disadvantage and I knew just the thing to level the playing field.

Back at home, when I practiced my magic I always did it in private. It seemed so feeble, so useless. Honestly, I felt a little embarrassed by it, so I hadn’t shared knowledge of it with any of my companions. I hadn’t practiced it on the ship because there wasn’t enough privacy, so I was a little rusty. But if there was ever a time we could use some light, that time was now.

Ignoring the pounding of my heart and the fight or flight of my adrenaline, I reached inward, grasping for my power. I mentioned previously that during the prior winter I had learned to reliably manifest light when I was conscious. I also noted that I doubted whether I could do so under stress. This would be the litmus test. Had I progressed far enough with my training that my magic could help to save us, or was I destined to fail yet again?

When I briefly turned my senses inward, I felt the warm pool of energy hovering around me. All I had to do was reach it. Initially, I pushed towards it as hard as I could but made little progress. There were too many thoughts racing through my mind. I was too wired, not in the appropriate state of mind. The many times I had been consciously successful before shared one commonality. Those successes occurred when I was calm and collected, usually following meditation. I didn’t have time to meditate, though. We would all be dead long before then. Taking a deep breath, I centered myself and tuned out what was happening around me. I tried again.

All this sounds like it was taking forever but it wasn’t. The mind is much quicker than the body. My initial failure took only an instant. Of course, if you stitch a few instants together, fairly soon real time has passed. I would have one more shot at this. If I failed again, we would have to fight in the dark.

Tuning out external stimuli was a dangerous gambit but I did it anyway. Taking slow, deep breaths, I reached towards the energy once more. All of the meditation that I had done must have paid some dividends because the distance between that warm pool and me started closing. It came closer and closer but I was running out of time. It was now or never. I mentally lunged towards it.

I exulted when I felt the connection snap into place. A warmth suffused me, thrumming through my muscles, cycling through my veins and capillaries. My eyes snapped open. My body was lit up, pouring a warm light out into the clearing.

“What the hell,” Bowen exclaimed loudly. Oh yeah, I guess I should have warned the others. I think I just blew their night vision and in the process maybe made things worse instead of better.

“I’ll explain later,” I called out. “Fight now!”

When I got my first clear glimpse of our opponents, it didn’t make me feel any better. Inside their beaks, their mouths were filled with sharp, vicious looking teeth. Their feet were also well equipped for mayhem. Although they appeared to be flightless, sharp looking nails extended several inches past the front of each fairly flat foot.

While the light was disconcerting to my companions, it had a similar effect on the three birds we faced. Could they even be called birds if they had teeth? When the light burst out of me they aborted their charge and were warily circling us, trying to regain their sight or looking for an opening.

Not wasting any time, I stepped forward and chopped at the lower leg of the closest predator. It must have not have been seeing very well because, although it tried to hop backwards at the last moment, I scored a hit on its right lower leg. Its squawk of pain and fury split the night. It stumbled when it landed, trying to put weight on its injured leg, but it did not fall.

“That’s right,” I shouted. “This prey has teeth, too. We can fight back.”

I advanced towards the injured bird preparing to swing again. It wanted no part of me. Previously, it had probably viewed humans as easy prey, especially the ones that were deposited into its territory without a means to defend themselves. But I was no longer easy prey. I had injured it fairly severely and it must have decided that there had to be safer things in the forest to hunt and kill. It turned and fled, limping its way back up the forest path, blood dripping down onto the stony ground. I was content to let it go.

Turning my attention back to the rest of the battle, I took in the scene before me. Another of the birds was down, Aleyda’s work I supposed. Its body was lying in a heap and its head and several inches of neck were a couple of feet away resting on the ground at an oblique angle. That’s the thing about long and sinuous necks, I guess. They don’t stand up well to the slicing edge of a sword.

That left one bird. Bowen engaged it, fighting defensively, dodging and parrying the snapping teeth and the vicious nails. Aleyda was already moving towards it and I headed in that direction as well. Sensing that it was overmatched, it started to try to gain some space so it could flee. I would have just let it run away back up into the forest, but Aleyda wasn’t having it. She sprinted forward directly at the bird. Its right foot lashed out, aiming at her chest but she adroitly parried the blow. The predator landed awkwardly due to the force of the parry, slightly off balance. That small opening was the only one that Aleyda needed. She launched a scything chop at the side of the bird, cutting deeply into its flank and unbalancing it further. Then, she began lashing out like a whirlwind, attacking over and over so that the bird could not regain its balance. It began to sharply keen in pain but she didn’t relent. Finally, it couldn’t take anymore punishment and it collapsed to the ground. It did not rise again. She continued to rain down strikes until there was no question it was dead.

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Then, she turned and looked at me.

“James,” she said. “Have you noticed that you are glowing?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I’ll explain later.”

I turned my attention to the young woman who had led the birds into our camp. She was standing well away from the battle bent over, her hands on her knees drawing in sharp, gasping breaths. I started to walk towards her but she stood up and started to move away from me like she was preparing to bolt again. I suppose that having someone approach you who is glowing with an unexplained eldritch light is not the most comforting thing in the world, especially when he is wielding a bloody sword.

“Don’t run,” I called out, sheathing my sword. “We don’t mean you any harm.”

“Stay back, demon!” she responded. “Why can’t I wake up. I need to wake up.”

“I can explain if you will take the time to listen,” I said, sitting down on the ground. “Here, I’ll sit down so you know that I am no threat to you. My name is James.”

She still looked like she was considering making a run for it. Now that there was light, I could see that she had five fingers on each of her hands.

“The two with me are named Aleyda and Bowen,” I said, gesturing at each of my companions in turn. “Like I said, we don’t intend to harm you.”

“That’s just what a demon would say,” she shot back angrily. “And then, when I let my guard down, you will take me and have your way with me.”

Great, she thought I was a demon rapist. Someone had obviously read a little too much paranormal fiction.

“I am going to make the light go away now,” I replied. Then, I reached inward and severed the connection to my power, plunging the clearing back into near darkness. “We will not move closer to you. Aleyda, Bowen, come have a seat next to me.” They hurriedly moved to comply.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Do you think I am a fool?” she replied. “I know that names have power.”

“Fine, we can get to that later. Before we go any further, though, I need you to understand one thing. You obviously think that you are trapped in a nightmare. You aren’t. What is happening to you right now is real. You can get hurt here. If you get hurt badly enough, you will die. By fighting off the birds that were chasing you, we saved your life. I think that’s worth at least a little credit, don’t you?”

“What do you mean that this isn’t a dream?” she retorted. “The last thing I remember is going to sleep in my apartment. Then, I find myself here. If this isn’t a dream then what is it? Was I drugged and abducted while I slept?”

This was shaping up to be one long ass night.

“You were abducted, but not in the way you are thinking,” I said. Then I started trying to explain what I knew to be true. I talked about dimensional leakage. I told her she was on an island far out in the middle of an ocean. I mentioned this world’s history with five fingered humans, that here she would be treated like property and that slavers hunted the island for people like her. As I talked, she interjected questions from time to time that I tried to answer the best I could. There was a quiver in her voice and I don’t think it was entirely caused by emotion. The night was cold and she was dressed in light sleepwear. She had to be chilled and uncomfortable, especially now that the heat of her exertion had worn off.

“Would you like a blanket?” I asked her.

“I would like one very much,” she grudgingly admitted.

“Since you don’t trust me, I will have Aleyda approach and toss one to you. Is that all right?”

“I suppose so, but don’t try anything,” she said.

“Let me ask you a question,” I replied with more than a hint of frustration. “Do you really think that if we meant you harm we couldn’t run you down?”

“I’m fast,” she responded. “I was on the track team at school.”

“That may be true, but you’ll be running over broken ground with bare feet and little to wear. You might not have noticed, but we are clothed and wearing boots.”

“I suppose that’s true,” she said. “And my feet are all cut up and they hurt like hell.”

We had talked for a long time, hours in fact. The faintest hints of the impending sunrise were starting to lighten the sky.

“How about some breakfast?” I asked.

“I am fairly hungry,” she replied.

“Do you remember ever getting hungry in a dream?”

“No, I don’t,” she said. “Not really. I know that I have eaten in dreams, but I can’t remember feeling hungry like this. This all feels so real.”

“That’s because it is real,” I said. “Just like I have been trying to explain to you.”

She stood and shuffled over to us, slumping back to the ground facing us. Aleyda stood and walked over to our packs, returning with a blanket that she tossed to the young woman and some trail food.

“I hope you like jerky and bread,” I told her.

“I love beef jerky,” she said.

“I’m not sure it’s beef,” I replied tossing her a piece. “But it tastes alright.”

As the sunrise continued, I returned to my explanation. Really, I wanted to tell her that none of us were from this world either. I wanted to explain that we had a place set aside for her, that she could be a member of our small community. I couldn’t though, because right now she seemed a little flighty and I didn’t trust her. After all, for every three people we found one would end up in a life of bondage and servitude. It was the price we had to pay to save the other two, a devil’s bargain if there ever was one. We didn’t know one another and until we did I couldn’t put the rest of us in that kind of jeopardy.

As often happens, our conversation started to wind down. There were longer pauses between her questions as she tried to digest what I was telling her. She looked like she was on the verge of collapse, physically if not emotionally. That wasn’t surprising with her coming down from her fight or flight response. When it started to get light enough to see more clearly, I noticed that she wasn’t lying about her feet. They were lacerated in several places.

“Aleyda has a little medical training,” I said. “Can she take care of your feet for you?”

“That would be great,” she responded. “They really hurt.”

I nodded at Aleyda and after retrieving her medical supplies she approached the woman with a skin of water to clean the wounds and some bandages. Then, she gently tried to treat the damage.

We sat there quietly, each of us lost in our own thoughts until finally the woman spoke again, breaking the silence.

“My name is Bethany,” she offered.

I guess she decided I wasn’t a demon after all.