CHAPTER NINE
The King of the Red Forest
Christian’s hand covered mine as it rested on the place of pain on my chest. The sword was in the mirror. I could see it sticking through the glass, but I felt it like it was in my heart.
I stared at him wide-eyed. “I thought you were…” I gasped. “I thought you were supposed to be gone.”
He looked around the room. “I just got here. How could I be gone?”
I staggered away from the mirror and fell to the floor, breathing hard. As I leaned against the altar for support, I noticed he was not wearing the sarong, but a red tailored suit. He had a crown on his head. Bits of his fair hair curled around the dark circlet. He was the king in the first room, not the victim on the altar from the second room.
I chuckled as I sank further to the floor. I had awoken another one of them.
He knelt beside me and when he put his hand firmly on my ribs, all the pain disappeared.
“You made the pain go away?” I gasped.
“Of course, I did,” he said, compassion glimmering in his eyes.
I flicked his crown with my fingers. “What are you the king of anyway?”
“The Red Forest,” he answered modestly. “And I don’t mean to alarm you, but the sword in your heart might be made of information about the one of the hundred and twenty-five elements existing on this planet, but it’s still a sword and it’s still stuck through your heart. If I wasn’t here to heal you every one-hundredth of a second, you would be in unbearable pain.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, still feeling a tightness in my chest.
“Can you tell me what’s happened?” he asked pleasantly.
I had known a lot of doctors from my time living in a hospital and King Christian’s bedside manner was top-notch. The look in his eyes and the timbre of his voice were both excellent.
I told him everything that happened, everything that the Other Christian had told me and if he had wanted more, I would have told him my whole life story, he listened so kindly.
“You’re doing great,” he said evenly, “but something has gone wrong. I’m going to have a look in the mirror and see if I can figure out the problem. Keep breathing.”
I watched him stand up and examine the surface of the mirror. He slid his fingers up and down the sword like he was contemplating pulling it out.
I stayed quiet and let him figure out what he could. Soon he abandoned his idea of removing the sword and crouched beside me. “Please forgive me if any of what I’m about to tell you is redundant. I’m just meeting you for the first time, Beth, so let's try our best to be patient with one another.”
“How do you know my name? The Other Christian didn’t know anything about me.” I questioned.
He gave me an adoring smile. “I gave you my heart. Without a King of the Red Forest, neither of us would have lived through that operation.” His eyes lingered on my chest, on the exact spot where I felt the pressure from the sword. “Just now you awoke me by stabbing that sword through my heart. The Christian who was in this room, the Other Christain, you just called him, the one who was attempting to forge a connection… He has probably failed.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I’m repairing this heart a hundred times every second. I can do so with less than a thought. If the Other Christian made it back to my body, my real body, through a particle channel, he would be able to pull the sword through on the other side immediately. It should have been painless from your perspective. Painful from his, but painless from yours. The fact that he hasn’t pulled it through means he has failed. He didn’t open the gateway between you and the real Christian.”
“What?”
King Christian sighed and explained, “It should have opened a gateway so that the mirror is no longer a mirror, but a window or a doorway. It would become a channel for you to talk to me… the real me. Something is wrong.”
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“What could have caused our plan to fail?” I croaked, still breathing strangely.
He shook his head. “It could be any number of things. Maybe I’ve fallen so far that I can’t remember how to walk into my Red Forest. Maybe your heart has disintegrated so badly inside the real Christian’s body that it needs to be repaired before the sword can be pulled through. If the real me is in the middle of running or fighting, I might not be able to forge a decent connection, even with everything in alignment here. Whatever the problem is, rest assured, the Other Christian, who was sent across airwaves like an encyclopedia to accompany the sword, will be a force for good, almost as if he were a real person.”
I nodded, believing him completely.
“And immortality is pain?” I said.
He smiled. “For now. There is one thing I can tell you that might comfort you. You’ve not perfectly invulnerable yet, but until you are, I will protect you like an unsleeping bloodhound. You won’t suffer a scratch that I won’t immediately heal.”
He kissed me, and it was like the kiss the Other Christian had given me. I could feel his lips pressed against mine, but still, it was more like the memory of a kiss than a real one.
“This still isn’t real, is it?” I asked, pulling away.
He smiled and shrugged. “I would understand if it wasn’t your cup of tea. The physical mechanics of what I just did are not as they appear here, and well… I won’t kiss you if it’s only a sad imitation.”
I frowned. “That was why Brandon and Pricina didn’t want me anywhere near the real you because loving you in the real world would distract me from what I could learn here.”
He stood up and reached for my hand. “Let’s go have a look at your body.”
I got up and, holding hands, we left the shrine.
The Red Forest looked the same as it always had, like a wet jungle where a brutal massacre had just taken place. I felt more self-conscious than ever. Perhaps I was supposed to do something more to tame the forest, and I had not. I hadn’t even thought of how to do it.
“Beth,” he said, looking at the forest’s edge with compassion in his eyes. “At its height, when you have the finest body I can make you, your forest will no longer be red. It will be white.”
“Is the inside of your body white?”
A sad smirk played across his face. “Probably not, but it used to be. You can fall from any height or power… supreme knowledge… invulnerability. Brandon and Pricina are doing everything they can to save the real me.”
“You know them?”
“Of course. I worked with Brandon when we did the operation that switched our hearts.”
“Why did you package yourself up and come over to my side?”
“Someone like the Other Christian told me where I was supposed to be and it was here.”
I thought back. He was talking about the Christian in the last chamber. If King Christian had memories from the real Christian, I had to get him to share what he knew. “Hmm… When I tried to mention the Red Forest to you… uh… to the real Christian before I was kidnapped, he didn’t seem to know anything about it. How was Christian changing faces or pumping his blood through his body without you, without a heart, and with no access to the Red Forest?”
“He would just wish for what he wanted and it would be, but his talent for that was fading. By the time he switched hearts with you, I know he was relying on makeup and other things to hide what he couldn’t do.”
I grumbled at all I didn’t know.
King Christian rested his head on my shoulder. “You should leave me here,” he murmured, kicking a root with his toe.
“Why should I leave you?”
“Because communicating with me is ineffective. I have complete access to your body. I’ll work on it for you. For now, you need to go back to the real world and use your new abilities to reform the castle. When you fix the structural abnormalities, new passages will appear. You’ll be able to leave.”
I sucked in my breath. “Where should I go? It’s very cold outside. Snowing.”
“Don’t go outside. Heal the castle. It’s much larger than it looks from the rooms you’ve seen. If you move everything to where it’s supposed to be, you’ll find a way down. It will lead you to Nhagaspir.”
I bit my lip. That was the village of the immortals that the Other Christian told me about. I had to go there alone?
“Listen,” he said, taking my hands in his. “There is nothing to be gained from staying here to see if the Other Christian was successful. The moment he pulls the sword through and opens the channel of communication, you’ll know it. It will be very obvious. You can safely pay attention to escaping the castle.”
“It’s a real sword?” I asked, looking for confirmation.
“It’s not made of metal, but it is as real as my soul and yours. As I said before, it would not have hurt you if the Other Christian had been able to pull it through on the other side. For now, it is pierced through your heart and you’re only feeling alright because I am here, saving you from the anguish that it would inflict on someone as weak as you at ruling the Red Forest.” He stroked the side of my face. “This place will be different when you come back. Go on. It may be that the real me is waiting for you in the village, but I lack the power to rescue you from the castle without the knowledge of the Other Christian.”
I stepped away and repeated his instructions back to him. “Rearrange the stones, find the passage downwards?”
“You can do it,” he affirmed.
I waved goodbye to him.
“Imagine yourself a belt to go with that dress,” he called to me as I disappeared.
That was just like him. Giving fashion advice when he was only a fraction of a person.