...wake up, she thought. That must be what was happening. The reason why the alarm had never rung this morning was because she was still sleeping. Of course that's why Dinah the cat didn't beg for breakfast.

Of course. Of course.

And as the clocks in the room in her dream all went off, a cacophony of risings, she knew it was time to wake up.

She felt herself rising out of sleep, slowly, like falling backwards into a pool, inside out rising to the surface.

But before she could wake, her grandmother rose from her chair, what she had taken to be Grandma's favorite shawl unfolded and stretched behind her into wings the color of midnight blue silk.

"It's not a dream," her grandmother said, looking directly into Birdie's eyes.
Birdie could hear Maggie saying, "what, Grandmother? what's not a dream," but it was muffled and indistinct and then she was in her own bed in her room, and it was dark as night. But she knew she was not alone.

She slipped from under the covers and padded through the shadows. At her kitchen table were two men. A skinny dark haired guy who was eating the Chinese food she had been saving for dinner tonight, and a nervous little man who was pacing the floor.

They didn't see her, and she liked it that way.

"Mike, I don't like it. I don't like it. This place gives me the creeps, that guy scares me. Something's not right about this gig, Mike." He didn't seem to be able to stop talking and he kept rubbing his arms, as if he were trying to rub away his goose bumps.

"Hey," Mike said. "You should try some of this. It's pretty good." He offered, but never held out the carton to his friend, just shoveled my dinner into his mouth.

"I don't like it!" the little guy shouted again. He was shorter than her by an inch or so, and she was only 5'2". "What did this girl do that was so wrong, anyway?"

"Not our business, Duff. We get paid to bring her in, that's all. We get paid a lot, too."

"But what's he gonna do to her?" Duff said. Birdie settled in to her shadow, willing the slimer eating her food to answer the question. She focused on his beady little eyes, whether he could see her or not, and drilled her gaze into him. Tell me.

"Why the heck do you want to know, anyway? We get in, grab her, take her back to the place, and that's it. Why do we care if he wants to stick her in a dungeon and lock her away until she turns to dust?"

The little guy stopped his pacing and looked surprised. "That's what he wants her for? That doesn't make any sense. Why keep her locked up and not just kill her? It's not like he is afraid of killing people, we've both seen it."

Mike sat up, swinging his feet onto the floor and putting the carton down on the table. "What? Who said that? I don't know that. Why would I tell you that? I don't know nothin'."

Duff looked up into the night time shadows of the room as if he could hear something.

"Someone's here," he said. Birdie shrunk into her corner.

They both whipped out guns and looked around. She was afraid they could hear her heart pounding.

Then, a flash of green light caught her attention. Outside the window on the fire escape. Two cat's eyes. Dinah. She looked right at Birdie and blinked.

Go, Birdie heard.

And then Dinah jumped through the window frame and screeched an ungodly sound.

The men spun on the cat and there were gunshots but Birdie had already started running and before she could turn back to check on Dinah, she found herself stumbling through the curtain of greenery and back onto the path.

Birdie came to a halt, her breath coming fast and heart in her throat. Her "friend" was standing there, his warm golden eyes glinting and a small smile on his lips.

"You should not go wandering off the path if you are not ready to step out of...

Careful -- or Careless -- Footsteps

"And we have got to close that thing before any of those troublesome not-friends slip through behind us."

The Stranger, Birdie's new "friend" -- if friend he was -- gestured upwards at the hole. Birdie thought she saw a hand reaching through the hole but it suddenly (perhaps sensing what was about to happen) pulled back. Like an iris, the hole winked out, plunging them both temporarily into darkness. Then there was a sound like a grilled-cheese sandwich being bitten into, an odor like that of new mint being crushed underfoot, and a sort of whirring sensation. When the natural light returned, Birdie and The Stranger stood in a garden which Birdie thought she knew, vaguely. Was it from a story...?

But the garden wasn't the main attraction. Nearly all Birdie's attention was drawn to The Stranger -- her savior or her abductor.

He stood well over six feet tall -- it couldn't have been seven, could it? -- and his height was accentuated both by the dark broad-brimmed hat and the... the cloak, she decided (fighting her intuition): it had be a cloak after all. His face was long, his hair ebony, his eyes, yes, warm and kindly.

But his mouth looked warm and kindly not at all. The thin lips bespoke cruelty, and the way one corner turned up and one down seemed to taunt her: whether he turned out friend or foe could, in her mind, well depend upon which way he faced when she decided.

It was time to test his "friendship" with something a little more substantial than a sudden miraculous escape from a subway platform.

"So you're my friend," she said. "And you've 'saved' me. Now that I've been saved from a threat I did not feel or recognize, then as my friend I assume you will let me now go?"

Both ends of that strange mouth twitched. "But of course. There's the path." He gestured, and Birdie saw a line of flagstones leading from the spot where they stood. But then he said, "...and there's another path," gestured again, and there was a pond on the other side of the garden, across the surface of which floated a line of sturdy-looking lily pads.

Birdie looked once more at those eyes. Not good enough, friend, she thought. She turned and set out directly between the flagstones and the pond, straight through a bed of periwinkle, in the direction of what looked like it might be an opening through a hedge around the garden.

Over her shoulder, she heard The Stranger's voice. "You are a very difficult girl." She approached the hedge, pushed the opening apart further. "...or a very foolish one," she heard him add. And then, although she couldn't be sure, as she stepped through the opening she thought she heard him say, "...or perhaps not a girl at all."

But that wouldn't make any sense, of course.

Then she was through the opening, which closed behind her like a drape. Before her...