Strong hands grabbed her shoulders and shoved her forward, out of the clearing. She stumbled, but the hands held her up. Just outside the clearing, two large flat rocks were braced up against one another, forming a natural lean-to. She was pushed into the crevice. She felt someone dive in after her, but he (or it) was still behind her. She could feel his hard breathing, but she couldn't twist in the tight space to see him. She was still trying to catch her breath, too. The angry cawing seemed far away now.
"It's okay," a male voice said, "he can't reach us here."
Startled, she managed to turn her head, and stick her face into a bushy beard. "Thank you," she croaked.
"My pleasure," he smiled. "Always glad to deny a victory and a meal to the crows. Let's slide out of here now."
Together, they inched out, feet first, then sat up against the two leaning rocks. Looking at him carefully now, she saw a chubby old man, not much taller than she was. His beard, hair, and feathery eyebrows were all a dark gray. He was dressed in brown leather, his clothes looking something like Robin Hood's. His whole face, especially around his eyes, was full of laugh- wrinkles.
"How did you get here so quickly?" she asked. "I didn't see you."
"I've been following you, and you didn't see me because I didn't want you to. Simple as that."
"Where am I?", she asked. "What happened to me? How did I get here? And who are you?"
"Which question do you want answered first?"
"Any one of them. Start with 'Who are you?'"
"You may call me 'Nick.' That's probably as close as you can get without hurting yourself. My name actually has eight syllables. Two of them are grunted, and one whistled. 'Nick' will do. And you are ...?"
"You may call me Alex. My real name is Alex, and it has two syllables, pronounced 'Alex'."
Nick laughed loudly, with his hands holding his stomach. Now Alex knew why he looked familiar: she'd seen this pose in an old edition of The Night before Christmas, especially laughing as he was now. She noticed, however, that he occasionally glanced upward, probably watching for the crow. "You're right. I guess I sounded a bit pompous."
"That's okay. But can you tell me where I am?"
"That one's a little more difficult. In some ways, you're very close to your aunt and uncle's garden. In other ways, you're very far indeed. Depends how you look at it."
"That's quite an answer. What does it mean?"
"It means that if you go back exactly the same way you came, it shouldn't take more than a few minutes. If you travel back by any other path, it could take years, or forever. You've passed through something we call a 'Bridge'. It's a way of passing from your world to mine."
Alex thought about that one for a few moments, and decided she didn't understand at all. But she was even more puzzled by her reactions to everything around her. In this situation - wet, lost, bewildered, and probably shrunk - she should be frightened. And yet ... she almost felt a sense of belonging-ness here. Even Nick, with his bad Saint Nicholas imitation, reassured her.
"You know, I don't know anything more than I did when we started this conversation", she said. "Am I shrunk?"
"Your size has adjusted to be consistent with your environment," Nick said.
"Does that mean 'yes'"? she asked.
"Yes."
"Thank you," she replied. Of course, that wasn't necessarily good news. Hopefully, it was reversible when she was ready to go home. "Does this place have a name?"
"Sandorra."
"And why were you following me?"
"Ah, that's a long story, and we're not too safe here. Would you accompany me to my village?"
She'd been told all her life about talking to strangers and, the ultimate mistake, going somewhere with one. But this situation was unusual. No one had ever saved her from a giant crow before. And while she shouldn't assume that a Santa Claus look-alike was necessarily saintly, going with him had to be safer than staying here and feeding the crows. She went.