Trust is ephemeral. It can be built up over a lifetime and squandered in a second. One careless word to the wrong person, one thoughtless action, and all that work, all that history, goes spinning down the drain.

I think we had earned a small amount of it with Bethany. We had saved her life, fed her and even tended to her injuries. Without explaining my ultimate plan, though, without revealing all our secrets with the attendant risk of betrayal, how was I gone to convince her to live in squalor as a slave on the trip back to the continent? And if I shared that explanation with her and she told someone else we captured, someone assigned to the company’s share, what incentive would that other person have to keep our secret? The answer was none. Dragged down into the depths of despair, many people wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to lash out and pull others down with them.

I really should have thought this through before now I cursed myself silently. And what happens if she is the only person we encounter, that we “capture”. Does she get sold and the proceeds split? Maybe I could buy out the company’s share, but with what money? I had left the bulk of my wealth back home at Greynard. If Bethany was forced to live a life misery for months would she ever trust us again? Would she ever integrate fully into our community or would she hold a grudge. What to do? What to do?

The first thing we could do was to try to gather some resources. As I glanced around the clearing I noticed the bodies of the two birds we had slain. In the full light of day, I realized that their plumage was quite beautiful. Shimmering with a multitude of colors, with an almost iridescent, metallic sheen, I assumed the feathers might be quite valuable to the right people. Colorful clothing was quite expensive in this world. Synthetic dyes had clearly not been invented and the natural plants that provided the pigments needed for vibrant colors were rare and expensive. Although a quantity of feathers could be quite bulky, they didn’t weight much. I stood up, went over to the nearest bird, and began plucking.

“James, what are you doing?” Aleyda asked.

“Harvesting something we can sell,” I replied. “Someone will likely buy these feathers. They are very vibrant and rich people like to flaunt their wealth.”

“That’s a good idea,” she said. Then, she went over to the other bird and began pulling out its feathers as well.

“Why can I understand you but not her?” Bethany blurted out.

“Magic,” I replied. “It’s real in this world.” That seemed to satisfy her for the moment. After everything she had been through and seen during her short time in this place, the idea that someone might have a magical translation ability probably seemed almost mundane in comparison.

It didn’t take us very long to harvest the usable feathers. The first bird, the one that had been quickly beheaded, yielded a good crop but the one that had been sliced and diced didn’t provide nearly as many. Too many areas of its body had been damaged in our struggle. I briefly regretted letting the bird I had injured escape. That was potential money running off down the trail.

After the usable feathers were harvested, we dumped the bodies off the cliff. We had spent too long talking the previous night and I didn’t trust that any meat we harvested would be unspoiled. Plus, for all I knew, maybe these things were naturally poisonous. I suppose I could have tested the meat to see what effects it had on me but the idea of being wracked with the pain of organ failure didn’t figure into my day’s plans.

As I worked, I pondered how to deal with Bethany. Finally, I decided honesty was the best policy, or at least as much honestly as my lack of trust allowed. I approached her once again and sat down in front of her, wiping my hands on ground around me futilely trying to clean them.

“Here’s the situation,” I told her. “We came to the island in a small company of others. They are trying to get rich off of the resources of the island, captured slaves included. We have a different goal. Back home, we have built a small community of people like you, those who are newly arrived in this place and forced into bondage. I bought the people there at a slave auction back on the continent but they all came into this world in this place just like you did. We didn’t have the money to pay for passage so we were forced to make a deal. One third of everything that we harvest from the island goes to the company. That means out of every three of your kind we rescue or otherwise acquire, one of them is destined to the slave markets. It’s a crappy deal, but it is the best one we could make at the time. We get to rescue two out of three.”

She looked around nervously, almost like she was considering bolting again. I didn’t blame her. In her position, I probably would have run for it and taken my chances.

“That’s the bad news,” I continued. “Well, not all of the bad news, but we’ll get to that later. The good news is that none of us view you as lesser somehow just because you were born with five fingers. The people who live with us are happy for the most part. We reside in a nice house and farm and ranch for a living. At times it can be a hard life, but we share equally in the comforts we have obtained. Now, I told the leader of the company that I had a connection with the slave auctions that would maximize my profits but that’s not true. I am looking for others that would fit in well with us. Those who would share are sorrows and our joy. I don’t know you well at this point, but I think you could be one of those people. I would offer you a place with us, a place to live a quiet but comfortable life. The offer is conditional, however. First, you must hold what I’ve just told you in confidence. If word got out about what we were really up others wouldn’t understand and that lack of understanding would risk everything. That even means not talking about it to any of the other five-fingered people we might encounter. Second, you will not be treated particularly well either on the island or on the voyage home. You will be treated like valuable livestock. Your living conditions will be deplorable. But we are trying to save you from having to spend the rest of your life in a similarly despicable state. What do you think?”

“Why shouldn’t I just run away and take my chances in this place?” she asked.

“You can do that and we will not stop you,” I said. “We’ll send you off with our best wishes and some supplies. I also expect that you will be either slain by one of the natural predators that populate this island or captured by slavers before the week is out. Who knows, though. Maybe you are tough and resilient. Maybe you are a survivor. Perhaps you can defend yourself and eke out a meager existence living in a hut or cave here, cut off from human contact and rarely knowing where your next meal is going to come from or what threats lay in wait around the next corner. The choice is yours, though. We can’t and won’t make it for you.”

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She sat there in silent contemplation for several minutes. Soon, I noticed tears welling in her eyes and sliding down her cheeks. She looked like she was teetering on the edge of shutting down, of breaking down. I didn’t say anything else, though. I meant what I said. It was her life and her choice.

“I don’t think I would do very well by myself,” she said in a broken voice. “I worked in a retail store selling clothes I couldn’t afford to buy. I always wanted to be a fashion designer. I’m not a soldier or a wilderness guide. Before last night, I had never spent a whole night outdoors. But there is a voice inside of me asking whether you are lying to me. Are you offering me something that’s too good to be true just to keep me complacent until I find myself on the auction block?”

“Nothing I say, nothing I do, will make that voice go away,” I replied. “You don’t know me. You have no basis to judge whether my word is good or not. It’s a hard thing, asking for trust when that trust hasn’t been earned yet. We could have just captured you and sprung all of this on you later but I believe in choices, in self-determination. Just like any of us, your life is your own and you get to decide where to draw the line, where to make a stand.”

“Some hope is better than no hope,” she sobbed out. “I hope you are not a liar. If I need to suffer to find out, so be it. I will stay with you all. I will keep your secrets until you prove that you can’t be trusted. If that day comes, I will do everything I can to drag you down with me.”

“That sounds fair to me,” I said. “If we betray your trust, we deserve your best shot. Now, we need to see about some better clothing for you. That nightgown will not do for long.”

She was several inches taller than Aleyda and quite a bit shorter and less heavily built than me or Bowen. Eventually, we cobbled together an outfit for her – a set of woolen leggings from Aleyda that only reached the middle of her calves and one of my spare tunics that hung down to her knees like a baggy, shapeless dress. None of us had spare footwear, though, and that was going to be a problem.

“I’ll be right back,” I told her. “I need to share your decision with the others.” Then, I stood and pulled Aleyda and Bowen off to the other side of the clearing.

“She doesn’t trust us but I think she understands we are her best shot at a decent life,” I told them.

“She doesn't know we are like her, does she?” Bowen asked.

"Weren't you paying attention when I talked?" I responded.

"Not really," he said. "I am tired and may have drifted off for a little bit."

“No,” I replied. “I just offered her sanctuary back at the farm. She doesn’t know we are five-fingered as well.”

Bowen sighed in relief. “Good,” he said. “Sometimes you are too trusting.”

“I agree. At times, I have trusted too much and paid for it with pain. I didn’t want to just capture her and spring everything on her on the way home, though. She might never trust us then, and without that trust she would always be an outsider and a potential threat to what we have built.”

“I think you did well,” Aleyda said. “Share a little but not so much that you put us at great risk. Now, on to another matter. What was that glowing thing you did? You said you would explain.”

“That was magic,” I said sheepishly. “Didn’t you wonder why I spent all that time last winter in my bedroom by myself? Well, you probably did wonder but trust me, I wasn’t doing what you all might have thought I was doing. I was meditating and practicing.”

I told them more of my story, parts of it that I wasn’t exactly proud of that I hadn’t previously shared. Explaining my essence crystal fueled visions took a little time. I let them know what I knew about how magic worked. I recounted my fight with the undead monstrosity back at the redoubt and how my power manifested for the first time. I winced as I told them how much gold I had spent receiving lessons from Master Mage Climmep back in Westfield, all the slow and painstaking progress. I talked about how I was clearly missing something, some insight that would unlock things for me. When I was done, they stared at me a little dumbfounded.

“You don’t think any of that was worth sharing with us,” Aleyda asked, a hint of anger in her voice.

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t think all of that effort would amount to much. Honestly, last night I thought I was destined to fail one more time. But I had to take the shot to level the playing field a little. Thankfully, it worked. I have been so embarrassed since I arrived here. I am not really cut out for this like you both are. You were both tested in your former lives. You both have skills that contribute to our survival. I was an idiot who didn’t have the strength of character to keep from following a woman I was infatuated with into drug addiction. My only talent seems to be making shit up as I go along, desperately hoping that it will work out in the end. There is a saying in my world, fake it until you make it. I feel like I have been faking it the whole fucking time, like any moment I would be found out and this whole thing will come crashing down on us. I’ve been afraid to let you all the way in because I was worried that you would think less of me. You and the rest of our people, our home, what we are building, that’s all I have.”

“Drug addiction?” Aleyda asked.

Sure, out of everything I just said that’s what she paid attention to. I quickly told them about Sara and my past mistakes and poor choices. By the time I was done talking, the anger in Aleyda’s eyes had been replaced with sympathy, which started to piss me off. I didn’t need sympathy. My mistakes were my own, and I deserved to pay the price for them.

“Well, that’s quite a story,” Bowen said. “I knew there was something I liked about you. Behind that crusading persona you are trying to cultivate you’ve been dragged through the dirt just like the rest of us. The fact that you’ve been there and come out the other side, that I can respect.”

“Thanks, I guess,” I replied, not certain I had actually been complemented.

“James, you need to stop being so hard on yourself,” Aleyda said. “Nobody is perfect all the time. We all do the best we can. If anything, knowing more about you, flaws and all, makes me feel closer to you and I am sure the others would feel the same. You talk about not knowing how you are connected to light. You put yourself at risk for us. You fought and bled for us. You rescued us even though you didn’t know us at all. Your vision, your resourcefulness has given each of us our lives back. Even now, we are out here at great risk trying to save others of our kind. You didn’t have to do any of it. You could have taken your wealth and done almost anything. You could have lived a life of luxury. Instead, you throw yourself into trouble time after time to help others. In our darkest hour, you have been our light.”

I tried to reply but I couldn’t find the words. Had I been looking at this wrong the entire time? Was it really that simple?