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Epilogue: The End

We’ll be back .

I wanted to believe Red when he said it. I wanted to believe that the way his granny looked at me right before they stepped through the portal meant she thought it’d be best for him to return with her—because I had no doubt she would return. She’d been returning for years, and it was easy to see the only reason she ever left was her love for Red.

He would at least want to visit her. So I would see him again. Sometimes. Almost certainly.

But when I thought of the bruises on his side from Wulfric, the scrapes on his knees and backside from the portal basement, the wild look in his eyes as he watched Wulfric swallowed by a portal in the dark…

It was all right, for me. I was used to the magic. To the madness and the monsters. And in her way, so was his granny.

Red, though. He might be whip smart, but that only meant it would all be harder for him to accept. He’d need explanations, and not everything had one, here. I would bet my axe that his granny would never discover the story of the keeper who’d come before me—if that was really who’d collected all those portals and built the little stone house. I’d bet my cabin that she wouldn’t mind; all she wanted was the mystery, and if it lasted forever, so much the better.

Like her grandson, she was too smart to be idle. It’d drive her to a different kind of madness, if she was.

And so it would drive Red mad too, if he came back for good. No, he’d need to go back out into the world, to have a job, to have friends, connections. To have all the things that made me hate living out there. So how could I want this, for him?

The truth was that I didn’t. I wanted it for me.

I wanted him.

I wanted him in the evenings when I sat by the fire, skeins of the spring’s wool untouched, needles quiet, pretending to knit him a sweater I couldn’t bring myself to work on. I wished I had spinning to do, or even fleece to wash and card, as those were more meditative, less thoughtful for me. But staring into the fire, sitting on my couch, even, how could I think of anything but him? The way he’d shivered so hard I could’ve heard his bones rattle; the way he hadn’t stopped until I’d crawled under the bear fur with him, my hand against his hip, his heartbeat steady in time with mine.

I wanted him in the mornings when I woke to my dying stove fire, the gray late-fall morning sending cold fingers through the windows to strangle the cabin. I wanted him asking me to wait for him in the outhouse, looking at the sheep with a mixture of curiosity and distrust, asking me the names of all the things in the forest, magical or otherwise.

I wanted him in the afternoon, chopping onions at my table or bathing in my wool tub, showing himself off and giving me that smile that made my stomach clench and my cock stand at attention. I wanted to kiss his forehead and tell him he was safe with me; I wanted him to look up at me with those huge, dark eyes and make me feel trusted, admired, understood.

As the days crept onward and the forest dozed off little by little, preparing for the long frost, I grew more and more certain he wouldn’t return. What did I have to offer him? Sheep? Handmade sweaters? Terrifying magic in world he didn’t understand or ask for? I was a fool who hadn’t even realized he was lonely—until he wasn’t, all of a sudden. And Red had so much more to look forward to out there.

I wasn’t sorry he’d come, though. I was grateful he’d awakened my long-sleeping humanity again. I was a real guardian now, not just of the plants and animals the witch had trusted to my care, but of all life while it was in my forest.

One afternoon, I went out to check the ginseng patches from last spring, just to make sure all was well underground. The crows circled overhead but they had no news for me; possibly it made them nervous that I’d been asking more than usual. I was grateful for the company, either way. While I was on my knees, murmuring to the taproots, I caught movement in the corner of my eye. I whirled around, leaping to my feet, axe in hand.

And then I realized the crows hadn’t announced anyone. Which could only mean one person.

I dropped back to my knees, expecting she’d move on, as she always did when we encountered one another in the forest. The Greenwood. Heh. Funny that they named it after her when she was hardly ever here. It was just a garden she paid someone else to keep, to her. To me, it was everything.

Would I trade it, to have him back? I could. I could go back out there, learn all about the ways the world had changed into something that could produce someone as beautiful as Red. He never could’ve existed in my time there, I was sure. Too wise for his age, too thoughtful for a boy, too open in his love, for my time. He would’ve hated it as much as I had.

Not that he seemed to love it, now. But his life was there. And I loved mine here.

I drew magic from the wind, from the fall sunshine, and pressed it through my fingers, down into the earth. The tingling numbness congealed around my hands, familiar and sweet. And I smiled, knowing the roots were safe for the winter.

“So, he passed his test, too.”

I straightened, jerking my head up in surprise.

She leaned against a nearby tree, her black dress displaying all of her curves to great advantage, her pale hair long over one shoulder, her decolletage just as tempting as I remembered. Yes, I’d forgotten the details of her, but now I saw her again, after all these decades, she was so, so familiar. I relaxed again and sat back onto my heels. “Ma.”

“Jack.” She gave a cheeky little smile, eying me up and down. “You’ve done good work here. The forest loves you.”

“Your forest,” I said.

“No, child. It’s not named for me. It’s named for you. You’re a legend in your own right, now.”

I frowned in confusion.

Before I could ask anything else, though, she said, “He’s a darling little thing. And I am very curious about that grandmother of his.”