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I laughed, though I had absolutely no doubt he could. The arms on him. Damn. “I’m nearly as big as you.”

“Height-wise, maybe.” He very nearly smiled. “I did carry you home—and you were dead weight then.”

I snorted. “I’m fine. Get that big axe of yours, in case we need it, though.”

We started walking at a greater clip, and thankfully the stitch in my side stayed gone. I focused on the path, on not tripping over any underbrush, but after another fifteen minutes or so, the forest petered out into a clearing at the foot of a gigantic hill with a switchback trail.

Definitely had a ruin on top of it. Crumbling stone with flecks of green and gold, baking in the pale sunshine, peeked up over the top. “That it?”

“That’s it,” Jack replied, beelining for it.

Flapping sounds came from the forest behind us, and the cawing of crows followed.

I glanced back at them. “What is it?”

“He’s heading this way,” Jack said.

“Do the crows always tell you when someone comes into the forest?” I wondered.

“Yes. I feel a little bit bad for getting annoyed with them now. Thought I didn’t need to know about every wanderer, but maybe I do.”

I just snorted, falling back into my own thoughts. It was a weird kind of balance, a truly neutral one he was maintaining here; what was best for the forest, for the things that lived in it full-time, and nothing else really mattered. It was a wonder he’d saved me at all—

Except not. Because in spite of living for however many decades—maybe an entire century—upholding the natural balance and nothing else, his instinct had been to save someone powerless from a monster. If the magical forest life had sanded down some of his human edges over time, it had also left him with a very, very vocal human core.

And he hadn’t even known I had good dick then, either. Heh.

“Did I say the right thing, back there?” Jack asked as we started up the switchback.

“About… the crows?”

“No, sorry. Er, when you told me about your ma and dad.”

I tried not to look as surprised as I felt. “Um. Yes, I think so. You were very sweet.”

“I liked it when you said that to me. Thanks for telling me that.”

It took me a moment to remember what he was talking about. That first morning after he saved me—how did it feel like ages ago instead of twenty-four hours? He’d told me about Ma Greenwood over breakfast, about the top surgery she’d arranged for him. I said, “It’s a gift, when someone tells you their story.”

“I didn’t think about it like that,” he said, as if admitting to something foolish. “But it’s nice that you did. And then when you told me about your dad, I realized why, I think.”

“You really don’t get much conversation out here, do you?” But I was smiling, because he was just pure fucking sunshine.

He chuckled. “No. Crows talk, but they don’t listen much.”

“I don’t know if I could be friends with crows. They seem way too smart. Probably know-it-alls.”

“Oh, like you?”

I gave him a playful little shove, and we turned all our energy—and breath—toward climbing the switchback path. By the time we reached the top, both of my big toes were sore from the pointed tip of my boots and my side was stitching again, but I had not resorted to asking the big lumberjack to carry me. So that was a win.

The hilltop ruin was bigger than I expected, like something out of a postcard from the coast of Cornwall or some other place with wind-and-water ravaged castles and churches. I couldn’t get a handle on the layout—some of the walls were still in place, some were half torn down, and others were covered in grass as nature tried to reclaim the hill for itself. My gaze jumped from ragged wall to broken statue to chipped cobblestone floors—

And then I saw the little stone house. There was a clothesline outside, and on it flapped Amma’s favorite raincoat and paisley pashmina shawl. I fingered my scarf, the softness of it, the realness. “It’s really her. She’s here,” I whispered.

Then the little wooden door opened and she stepped out, long salt-and-pepper braid whipping behind her in a sudden wind. She looked tiny alone on that hilltop, dwarfed by her beloved ruins and even the “little” stone house she was always so keen to get back to. She looked fragile and old, even though I’d seen her only last week.

Out there. In our world.