The searing heat. The choking smoke. The stinging eyes. All of it is too overwhelming, and I lose myself to an intense scream.
My first instinct, my first thought, is to bolt as far as my feet can take me. To shove through the underbrush that hasn't quite fully caught flame, to dodge falling timbers that explode into embers upon their impact against the earth. My pained eyes can just make out a path through the dark, crimson wildfire.
Where am I? What is this?
I push against the ground with too small hands, caked in dirt and greying ash, but a tremendous weight presses against my lower back and legs, one I cannot easily surmount. I can barely shift a few inches.
Shifting my head up, I peer through the smoke and choke out a gasp, a fresh mouthful of smoke forced down my throat.
A horrifically burned human face lies just above my shoulders, the weight of her body pressed against mine. Caked with ash and blackened skin, too exposed teeth are pressed together in a tight embrace.
I try to flip to the side, but my body cannot move – the corpse pins one of my arms in place, too heavy for me to move.
But… my arms aren't trapped?
I can see both hands gripping the soil haphazardly, feel both arms as I try to shove, but there's something else back there-
"How many more are there?"
That sneering voice breaks through the din of crackling embers, of burning leaves and of falling trees. A group of three men burst into the clearing, one holding a torch and two holding machetes. Ash covers their tunics and their ruddy faces, and blood drips from their blades.
"Not enough. It'll never be enough."
I try to stop struggling, but every fiber of my being wants to cry out for their assistance, and that subconscious desire powers to the surface. "Help! Please!"
"Oh?" the nearest man says, his face alit with the crimson of the flames before him. He turns and meets my gaze, his long, bladed weapon dripping onto forest floor. "We got a live one over here."
He moves forward and kicks the corpse with a leather boot, some of the slick flesh stuck to the end of it. The dead weight doesn't fully leave my back, but I press with all my might into the ground, shimmying free.
My legs find footing once more, so quickly that my head swims in a daze.
"Oh look! It's a mere babe!"
"We ought to pluck its feathers before it leaves the nest!"
Their delight is a disease, infecting me with its poison as assuredly as the smoke in the air.
I pull away a few steps in a panic, frantically searching for a path that is not yet ablaze.
The third man holding the torch looks down toward the corpse his companion kicked. Two large growths emerge from the body's back, so blackened I can't quite comprehend what they may be. "You think this was the mother? It's so burned, it might be the father."
His chuckle with fill my nightmares.
"Who cares?" the closest man says, brandishing his machete in my direction. "I haven't yet had my fill."
The third man glances toward me, meeting my horrified eyes. "We gonna kill a toddler?"
I don't hear the reply, my feet pounding hard into the underbrush, leaves singed with embers and crunching under my feet. I duck under a nearby log that has not yet caught aflame, an easy task for someone of my height.
A toddler? How…? I was almost thirty!
I have tiny hands, tiny feet. The kind of extremities that would fit a toddler, with the body to match. And something swishes behind me with every movement, something that I can feel… an extra pair of limbs?
Navy feathers fill my sight as one of my wings comes into view in front of me.
What the hell is this?
This nightmare is too real, too vibrant. The kind of dream I'll never quite escape.
Flexing new muscles, moving new bone – feathers flutter around me as I push these limbs through the space around me. Proportionally, they are exactly as large as you'd want them to be for someone who is maybe two feet tall, but they still feel massive. They should be foreign and feel foreign, but moving them is not difficult. What is difficult is keeping them out of the underbrush of this burning forest.
I can hear their footfalls, their voices calling after me as I run, but damn it, I'm never going to get away from these men like this. Not with legs this size, not with the wildfire all around.
No, I'd need to somehow use these things to fly.
"C'mere birdie!"
The sheer rage in the man's voice is palpable as he gets closer, his own lungs heaving with effort as he chokes on the smoke.
"Leave me alone!" I shout helplessly, my voice far higher than I expected it to sound. My calves propel me forward and toward an incline, a grand hill rising before me. Thick roots and wide trunks fill the space everywhere that I can see, and chaotic flames spread both near and far.
A careful push of my left wing tests its weight, but the effort is nearly interrupted when a hand scrapes against my right wing.
I yell as loudly as I can, jumping forward and skittering up the hill, only mere feet ahead of a bloody machete. The face of its wielder looms below, eyes reflecting like pools of crimson fire.
Both wings snap down as quickly as they can, even as I speed forward. Smoke shifts in flurries behind me, and the wind passing through my feathers feels right. I jump and a second snap of the wings carries me aloft, hovering for just a moment before gravity claims me again.
"Don't let him get away!"
The closest man lunges upward, the other two not far behind. His free hand latches onto a handful of feathers near the end of the wing, and he swings his arm backward with such force that I tumble, end over end, nearly fifteen feet behind both of us. My backside slams hard into a tree trunk, the bark scraping against my lower back and ripping my shirt.
Coming to a stop in a heap amidst the roots of a tree, I scream in agony and terror. Fresh smoke pours up from the nearby blaze, stinging at my eyes and ruining my throat. Nausea billows in my gut, hatred filling my heart.
"What the fu-" I cough as the three men stalk closer, certain that I haven't the energy to escape. "-fuck is this? Who are you? Why?"
Is this hell?
What did I do to deserve this nightmare?
"Oh, he's got a mouth on him." The nearest man runs a gloved finger along the blunted edge of his machete. "They won't like that."
A solid kick to the jaw, and sweet darkness overtakes me.
.:ODW:.
A tight soreness across my abdomen and shoulders is what finally pulls me back into the land of consciousness. Horrendously dry eyes blink open to a darkened interior, a cramped room filled with dust, cobwebs, and crates that could not possibly have ever been organized.
Thick chain ties my wings to my back and pins my upper arms in place. I pull at the bindings, but it's useless.
I stalk through the empty room, glad that my hands and feet are free. A single, small window near the top of the wall reveals this is likely an underground room, maybe a cellar, and a set of stairs in one corner leads up and outside.
Where am I? What is all this? Why do I have wings…?
This has to make logical sense somehow, but nothing about it does. These men have kidnapped me from a forest they set on fire, and it was an easy thing to do for them – I am a child! Somehow. With wings?!
Were the Christians right and this is some hellscape?
Did I die?
G-god, I…?
My breathing becomes ragged as I pace back and forth, eventually settling to try to do something productive.
There's gotta be wire cutters or some other thick cutting tool in these boxes – maybe there's some power tools somewhere, or a hidden phone on a shelf. An emergency number could send police!
From the state of this haphazard place, I have to believe this group were stupid enough to leave me an out. There has to be something that I can do.
I gingerly begin opening crates and sifting through their contents, hoping to avoid letting anyone know I'm awake. No canned meats, no canned soups or veggies. Burlap bags of flour and salt. A whole sealed box of salted pork, the kind of stuff that you want to preserve but know that it doesn't last as long as you want. Not without a meat cooler or a freezer. Why aren't they using one?
The first few crates have nothing useful for cutting me out, but I do find an old hand shovel, one still sharp enough that maybe I can use it as a weapon if I need it.
Discouraged, I precariously climb atop a table nearby, feet coated in cobwebs from the attempt, and peek my head up to look through the window.
It's either sunset or sunrise, evident from the orange and purple hues that dance across the horizon. No buildings are visible nearby, and a long dirt path seems to trail off as far as I can see from this angle, the trail a few dozen feet from the house.
…
No powerlines.
I turn to survey the room and realize very quickly that there are no lights anywhere, not even a dangling lightbulb from the ceiling. A few unlit candle holders are on display near the entrance to the room.
Is this building off the grid? Actually off the grid? There… wouldn't be a phone, if that's the case. Could I steal a cell phone somehow?
How would I even explain any of this to the police? As strange as the kidnapping is, the wings are far, far worse.
I turn back to stare out the window, trying to placate my anxious brain.
A few moments of staring pass until I see a figure approaching on horseback, riding down the trail at a high speed. Dust lightly trails behind him, the grassy hills nearby obscured.
Hmmm. Horses? Not unheard of, but…
As the figure turns to approach the building, two figures approach from around the corner and into view. I'd recognize them anywhere – two of the three men who kidnapped me. They are no longer covered in ash and soot, not even their clothes, but I do not have that luxury.
The horseman skids to a stop and hops off of the sleek black stallion. A metallic black breastplate glints in the odd twilight as it rests on his torso. A spear rests on his back, a sword at his side, and-
Oh no….
No power, no freezer, no phones, no cars.
I cannot quite make out what the soldier and the two men are conversing about, but my mind is reeling.
Am I in some weird alternate tenth century, where small children have wings?
The soldier walks toward the saddlebags and yanks one pouch open. A few moments later, he presents the bag with one hand, the other thumbing the hilt of his sword. One of the men takes it in his hand and begins counting, while the other heads out of sight.
The unmistakable noise of creaking floorboards causes me to drop off of the table quickly enough that I almost knock over a crate. The same man bursts through the door at the top of the stairs, a smile brimming across his face as he sees me struggling to stand back up properly.
"Good things are coming for us, pal, because o' you."
He stalks into the room and yanks me toward him, thick fingers clasping completely around my arm. I try to pull away for a moment, only serving to anger him, before I give up completely – it's smarter, for now.
He leads me upstairs and through the small house, never releasing his iron grip on my arm. The home seems lived in, but I get the sense that it's not by these men. Squatters, maybe.
The front door opens with a soft kick from the man in question, and the soldier I come face to face. His brown eyes are almost hidden by the helmet, tufts of ruddy brown hair poking out of the seams. A thick scar pokes across one cheek and over the bridge of the nose.
"See, we told ya."
The soldier nods. "Good. I know quite a few who will be pleased."
The other man impatiently looks toward me and the other. "You sure we can't just get the other half now, and let you take him off our hands?"
He shakes his head. "No, these roads are dangerous enough as it is these days. Bringing a heron just invites undue attention."
Heron? My wings perk up through what little movement they can make, and the chains flutter.
"When can we expect you back, Riordan?" As the man's question continues, his grip gets ever tighter.
The soldier, Riordan, points to the trail with a thumb over his shoulder. "Got some things to take care of back home, so give me a few. I'll have the rest of your coin later." He shakes both of their hands and then mounts his horse. "I'm expecting a healthy investment when I get back, Vincent."
Vincent nods assuredly, his grip loosening for the first time. "Of course. See you soon."
As the horseman rides away, my eyes blink with surprise as the realization sinks in.
I was just sold into slavery.