Page 15 of Red

“Wulfric will be licking his wounds somewhere else, if he’s following his usual patterns. Don’t worry; the crows will warn me if he comes back.”

“Will he come after you?”

I snorted. “I’d like to see him try. You, maybe. Me, no.”

“But… he will hunt.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact.

So I nodded. “He’s not the only monster in these lands, either.”

“But he has to be stopped.”

I thought back to my first glimpse of Red, small and helpless on the forest floor beneath Wulfric. I hadn’t given it much consideration then, only acted on instinct to save him. Now I wondered if the sight of it, of fragile humanity and magical violence up close and personal, had shaken something long-sleeping inside me awake. “I stopped him.”

“I mean, he has to be stopped forever. We can’t just let him run around abducting clueless people and then hunting them for sport. And dinner.” He shuddered, going a little pale around the lips, as if he might be sick.

I wanted to say that it wasn’t my place. People came, people went, and some of them were monsters. If they left no trace, it wasn’t my business.

But that newly awakened thing in me knew better. I resisted the urge to put an arm around him for warmth. Instead, I hefted my axe over my shoulder and turned onto the deer track leading toward the valley.

“Jack.” His voice was urgent now.

I stopped walking and turned to him. “Red.”

He took a deep breath, as if trying to calm himself. His eyes, the darkest I’d ever seen, I was sure, were alight with some fire inside him. “You’re supposed to be guarding the forest.”

I nodded.

“Well, if monsters are coming in and torturing people on your watch, then you’re not doing a very good job, are you?”

I opened my mouth to argue. But then snapped it shut again. Not only was he right, in a way, but that was far too close to the thought I was trying to avoid, just then:

To his eyes, my usual indifference must seem monstrous.

He ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean that. You saved me. You’re a—a good guardian.”

I licked my lips, trying to think of something to say. I felt the need to explain why I wasn’t the same as Wulfric; that I lived to protect, not to destroy for my own entertainment. But when the words didn’t come, I waved him off the path and into the underbrush. I crouched atop a patch of leaf-covered earth where ginseng sprouted every spring. I couldn’t feel the taproots down there, exactly, but I squeezed my eyes shut and thought very, very hard about them. Imagined the sunshine, pulled it down from above the trees and pushed it into the ground. Imagined the moisture stored deep in the belly of the earth, in the roots and beneath the rocks, and pulled it upward. Got that tingling feeling in my toes and fingers that said it was working.

“What the fuck,” Red said.

When I felt them tickling my fingers, I opened my eyes to watch cinquefoil leaves sprout from the sleeping earth, all around my hands. I tugged at one of the stems, loosening the earth around it, and plucked out the long root, like a skeletal finger. Then offered it up to Red as my explanation.

He planted a hand on a large tree as if to steady himself. He repeated, “What the fuck?” But as a question this time.

“No matter the weather, no matter the magic, I can make sure things grow like they should,” I explained. I needed him to understand, to know I was more than just another monster. “That’s how I guard.”

Red leaned back against the tree, then slid down it until his backside hit the roots. “How…?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, really. But when she gave me guardianship, Ma Greenwood gave me this. I use it to keep the balance. To make sure no one and nothing else can interfere with the cycle of life for the forest.” I glanced down at the incongruous green leaves in the middle of the autumn forest. Not exactly a judicious use of magic, if I was just doing it to show off.

But seeing Red’s reaction, I knew it had been necessary to convince him that I wasn’t delusional. Or, even more importantly, that I wasn’t just another monster.

“What else can y-you do?” He stuttered slightly, as if shivering again.

“Are you cold?”

He shook his head and clutched at the bark of the venerable tree.

I returned to his question. “The opposite. If something’s taking over, or an invasive species comes in, I cull it. Wither it, root and branch. It doesn’t come back unless it’s reintroduced.”