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“You’ve been lurking at my garden gate for almost an hour, sweetie.”
Reid startles, knocked out of his miserable reverie, and he hurriedly wipes at the tear tracks on his face, as though speed will make the movement less noticeable or less damning. He looks with wide eyes to the front door of the modest cottage in the middle of the woods.
The witch stands in the open doorway, leaning against the threshold with one hand on her hip, expression inscrutable. She’s tall, a pink-fabric eyepatch hiding one of her eyes, and dressed in a soft pink dress that ends just above a pair of brown leather boots, a cloak of an even brighter pink around her shoulders.
“I – I,” he stumbles, face burning with embarrassment, scrambling to regain a shred of composure as his heart pounds in his chest and his breaths catch in his throat. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I was just…”
“Just?” The witch raises a sharp eyebrow.
“I was just going,” he says, ducking his head in a slight bow, shoulders tense. This was a mistake. No good would come of this because nothing good ever came of this. He had known that before he left his home earlier that morning, but he had come regardless. Now, finally faced with the witch herself, he is abundantly aware of his foolishness. He’s past thirty now, and it’s been long enough. He should know better by now. “I apologize for disturbing you. I’m sorry to waste your time.”
“I’ll thank you not to decide for me what’s a waste of my time, and you ain’t wasted any of it anyway. At least not yet.” She gives him a critical once over. He flinches from the scrutiny. “You should come inside.”
“I’m fine,” he lies and forces a polite smile. “I – this isn’t something you can help with, unfortunately.”
“I’m a woman with many secrets and tricks up my sleeve, baby. Maybe I’ll surprise you. Besides, something’s botherin’ you enough to bring you all the way out to me; you got me curious. Come on in, let’s talk and see what ol’ Goromi can do for you.”
Reid does not want to talk about it, actually, but the witch – Goromi – taps her foot expectantly and the quiet misery that has followed him for so many years has drained the fight out of him. He walks up the neat path between the growing flowers and vegetables and follows her inside.
The cottage is cozy, with the front room serving as both a witch’s sitting room and a healer’s clinic, with a kitchen just through an open doorway on the far wall. There’s another, closed door, presumably a bedroom, and not much else. Reid looks curiously at the collection of potions scattered across various shelves and flat surfaces in the room, the talismans and amulets resting on a shelf under the windows, the herbs drying in small bunches dangling from the rafters, the books with titles he can’t read from this distance stuffed into a bookshelf that looks too small to comfortably contain them all. No pointy hat, though, and most disappointing of all, no cats. At least not that he can see. His own cats hide from most visitors, though, so Reid decides to hope.
Goromi leads the way to a set of mismatched but comfortable-looking chairs around a square table, and she seats herself like a queen, inviting him to sit with a grand gesture. He sits.
“Ya got a name, kid?” she asks, arching an eyebrow at him.
He considers the question and eventually says, “Reid,” and forces himself to meet her eyes, jaw clenched like his fists are clenched where they rest on the table in front of him. He waits for the awkward hesitation, the sneer, a question, as though somehow he might be mistaken about his own name.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Goromi gives him another critical once-over. “You seem a little tight-lipped, so how ‘bout I give it a guess?” She doesn’t wait for permission. “Let’s see. If you were sick or hurt, you wouldn’t spend an hour deciding whether to come knock on my door. Same thing if it’s family or a friend who’s sick or injured.”
She taps a long finger against her chin thoughtfully. “No way in hell is a man with a face like yours havin’ trouble finding a lover, I’ll eat my own damn cloak if that’s why you’re here. Trouble keeping your lover? Maybe. Definitely more likely than trouble finding one in the first place, that’s for sure.”
He stares sharply at her, studying her face for any trace of mockery. He doesn’t answer.
“Really?” Goromi asks, eye widening with surprise as his reaction leads her to the wrong conclusion. “You? You are having trouble finding a lover?”
Reid can’t help but feel a little flattered that she seems so genuinely shocked. He rubs the back of his neck. “No,” he answers stiltedly. “That’s not it.”
“No?” She watches him, waiting expectantly.
He shakes his head. He drops his gaze to the table and follows the grain of the wood with his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at her.
“Come on, kid,” she says quietly. “Ain’t nothing you can say that’ll shock me. Live as long as I have, ‘n’ you’ve pretty much seen it all.”
“I’m not worried about shocking you,” he says without inflection, trying desperately to keep his voice even.
“But you’re worried about something, huh.”
He nods, still not looking at her, frustrated with his own fear. His manhood is not subject to debate. He has nothing to prove. And perhaps more importantly, he doubts that there is anything she could say that would be worse than what others have already felt free to say to his face.
So he says, “You called me a man.”
“Got one of the worst cases of baby face I’ve ever seen, honey, but I know a man when I see one. Y’ever thought about growing a beard? Might make you look older than twelve.”
Reid’s mouth twists unhappily, unable to savor the fact she hasn’t commented on the disparity between the pitch of his voice and his choice of haircut and clothing. Because he’s about to ruin it, and then she’ll know, and then she’ll talk to him the way women talk to each other, and the humiliation will haunt him for the rest of his life.
“I came here because most people don’t know a man when they see one. I guess that’s a good way to put it,” he says eventually, each word underlined with tension.
Once the words are out of his mouth, his gut twists with the despair of inevitability, and he looks back at her face, waiting for whatever it’ll be this time.
“Most people are idiots, baby,” she says with a sharp smile, her eye meeting his unwaveringly. “People sometimes have trouble knowing a woman when they see me, especially if they've also seen me when I'm in a less ladylike mood, if ya catch my meaning.”
Reid sucks in a wet breath, eyes darting away, all of a sudden feeling very small and very, acutely aware of the weight of grief that has hollowed out his chest for so long. “Is there anything – “ he rasps, words like broken glass. He had practiced what he would say for weeks, but nothing he has practiced will make it into his mouth. “Anything,” he tries again, voice breaking, just like his heart is breaking open with the desperation to be understood, with a terrifying hope because she seems to understand him.
Goromi reaches out to touch his hand gently. “What’re you looking for?”
“Anything,” he repeats softly, still not able to look at her because if he looks at her, he might cry, and it is awful enough just to talk directly about this. “I don’t know exactly.”
“Deeper voice? Chest hair? Ya want a beard?”
Reid hesitates but nods. “I’d at least like the option,” he admits with barely more than a whisper. “Yes.”
“That’s easy enough. I know just the thing. It’ll take a few weeks to get the right ingredients and brew it proper, but that’s no problem.”
“Could you…” He really tries, but he can’t get himself to say it. He gestures awkwardly towards his chest and hopes she will understand.
“That’s a little more complex, but yeah. There’s a few things.”
Reid doesn’t manage to fully choke down the sob that tears itself from his throat, and he presses a hand to his face. “You’re not joking?”
Goromi laughs, a soft, gentle little sound. “Not joking.”
“Fuck,” he mutters, pressing his hand harder against his eyes, trying and failing to hold them back. “Fuck. I’m sorry, I just – I just didn’t think, I thought you’d – I thought I was going to have to live like this forever.”
She moves from the chair across the table to the one next to him. She doesn’t touch him, doesn’t try to pull him into an embrace, and he’s grateful because he would shatter into a million pieces if she did and he doesn’t think he could survive that. But her proximity and the kindness and dignity she has afforded to him makes something in him finally crack, and he weeps and weeps and weeps until the well of fear and exhaustion and misery finally exhausts itself.
Goromi pats his hand. “Feel better?”
Reid laughs and wipes his face with his sleeve, nodding. “Yeah. A lot better.”
“Good!” she crows. “Love to hear that.”
He laughs again, feeling more fragile and more hopeful than he ever has. “How long will you need to – ?”
“How about you come back in a month, just to be safe, for the potion that’ll literally put hair on your chest. And I’ll need the time to start brainstormin’ how to get yer chest right. Ain’t gonna make any promises about what exactly the end result will be, though, because the type of stuff I have experience with ain’t the same.”
“I just want it flatter,” he manages to say, like he’s confiding a secret. “Just enough that my clothes will fit normal.”
“I get’cha, don’t worry.”
He hesitates, fear gnawing at the edges of this new relief. “I don’t have much money saved right now,” he feels compelled to warn. “I’ll need some time. I would understand if you want to wait until I’m certain I can pay you in full. How much for the – for the potion? If you happen to know. That’s the – the more important, the most important one.”
Goromi scoffs, as though he’s offended her. “This one’s on the house, kid.”
“Surely you’ll understand if I find that hard to believe,” Reid says flatly.
She shrugs. “Makes no difference to me if you do or don’t believe it.”
“So you’re not asking for any gold. What about a favor?”
Goromi levels him with a deeply unimpressed look. “No offense, darlin’, but gold’s the only thing of yours I’d be interested in, and I already said I ain’t interested.”
“No offense taken.” Reid chews on his bottom lip. “I just.. I don’t understand.”
Goromi sighs. “Listen, kid, the way I see it, just havin’ the balls to know you want this is enough to convince me to help ya out. It ain’t complicated.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure!” she barks.
Reid winces with a smile. “Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s more like it,” she sniffs. “Should’ve started with that.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, ma’am,” he demurs.
“See that you do,” she instructs. “Come back in a month and I’ll have things ready and be able to tell ya more about next steps, alright?”
“A month,” he agrees, and a tiny flicker of hope takes root in his heart. His chin wobbles as he says, “Thank you.”
“Unless you need somethin’ else like a love potion or something to ward off thieves, I think we’re all squared away, hm?”
“No, that’s – that’s all,” he confirms, as though it’s some simple little favor she has agreed to do for him. As though she has not promised him something that will make every second of the rest of his life a little bit easier. He stands and sniffs, wiping his eyes one last time. He bows deeply, but it’s an inadequate demonstration of his gratitude. “Thank you, Goromi-san.”
“Yeah, yeah, beat it, honey.”
Reid lets himself out, closing the door behind him, and takes a deep breath. He looks around, a little startled by how vibrant the colors of the forest around him are, by the clear birdsong in the air. He feels lost, unsure how he can just walk back to the village and back to his house as though his world has not fundamentally changed. For a moment, he’s afraid that the last half hour of his life was a complex figment of his imagination, and that once he walks away from the cottage, it’ll disappear and life will go back to normal.
“Get the fuck off my porch, ya creep!” The door behind him doesn’t do much to muffle Goromi’s shriek.
“Sorry,” he mutters, doing as he was commanded, walking back to the forest path that will take him back home, unable to stop a smile from curling at the edges of his mouth.
A month? He has known himself for over ten years. A month’s wait is nothing in comparison.
Reid walks home, and in his chest, his heart is soft and light.