Page 13 of Red

No one had slept that close to me—even stood that close to me—since I’d found my way into the forest. And how long ago had that been?

He went on, “So I owe you, not the other way around. But I’m really, really confused, and I need to know if you’re actually telling me the truth about things or if you’re living in some kind of wild delusion. And the only way I can figure that out is if you talk to me.”

That… was fair.

I didn’t like remembering life before the forest. Life out there, where Red had come from. But I could tell him how I ended up here, in this house, doing this job, without going all the way back to the bad times.

I cleared my throat, which was still full of porridge glue, unfortunately. Swiped the back of my sleeve over my mouth. “Right, well. You might’ve guessed I came from out there, in the world. Like you. But a long time ago. Not sure how long.”

“It’s 2026,” he said.

This number stunned me. “Surely not.”

He raised both eyebrows.

“I…” I swallowed hard, head spinning. I could’ve been misremembering, but the number 1929 was stuck in my mind. “Almost a hundred years, then.”

He frowned. I thought he’d object, call me a liar, get up and leave. My heart ached at the thought.

“Go on,” he said quietly.

I took a deep breath. “I wanted to disappear. So I did, if mostly by accident. Stumbled into a portal, ended up in a place like this. Found a witch’s hut.”

He gave a wry little smile. “On chicken legs?”

I snorted out a laugh. “No. But it was just like in the stories otherwise: a green, lush place in the middle of nowhere. I was starving. Half-mad. I wanted…”

I’d wanted to die. Unlike Red, I never expected to understand this place, and I certainly never expected to survive it. I just wanted to get away from my life, and so I did, and it brought me… there.

“She was beautiful. The most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Can’t recall what she looked like now—but that’s how it is with witches sometimes.” I set aside my bowl and leaned back into the couch.

He took my bowl and his, set them both up on the mantel, and then sat again with one knee pulled up, so he could face me. Could’ve sworn he was looking right through me.

Or, yet again, had I forgotten what it was like to be seen?

“She was panicked because of a lost goat. I found it for her. She let me sleep in the potting shed and fed me from her kitchen. Put me to work in the garden—I was a farmer.” I winced, fighting the onslaught of images from before. “By the time I realized it was all a test, I didn’t much care.”

“A test of what?”

“My heart,” I said with a shrug. “Whether I could help someone and expect nothing in return. A beautiful woman, and I was clearly attracted…”

Red nodded, full lips pressing into a thin line.

“She said she needed someone to take care of another forest for her. Ginseng. It grows wild, can’t be cultivated. It grows here, but it’s coveted—and she has enemies, as most witches do after a few hundred years—so someone has to keep watch.

“I said I’d do it, and she said, right, what do you want in return?” I stopped there. I had never talked about this part, not with anyone but Ma Greenwood. “So I told her that I wanted a different body. Might be hard for someone else to understand, but I grew up thinking… being told I was a girl.”

I didn’t know how else to say it, to explain it to someone. The witch had just understood. “I was already calling myself Jack by then. She told me I could call her Ma Greenwood. So I took that as my family name.”

When I dared a look at him, Red was nodding again, his expression soft and pensive. “Thank you for telling me that,” he said quietly. As if he had no further questions. As if it made sense. “I did see your scars, last night, but I didn’t want to make any assumptions.”

“Oh. You guessed that I was a girl, before?”

“That’s not what we’d say, where I’m from. We’d say you were assigned female at birth. Especially if you never felt like a girl."

“That’s it.” And I had to admit, “Does sound better, doesn’t it?”

He nodded, smile returning. Then his brows drew together again in sudden confusion. “Please, feel free not to answer but—the witch gave you top surgery?”