All That Is Red Read Free Page B

eyes.
    “That’s why you helped me,” I whispered softly. I wondered before why he had stood by me, but I had never really connected it with his wants.
    “I don’t know who I am ... That’s what I want. I want my identity, my name.”
    And that was how we came to begin our journey together. One wanted to feel and the other wanted a name. Together we were alone no longer, yet we both still felt desperately separated from
humanity.

C HAPTER 4
    I don’t remember how long we walked. It could have been for days or just minutes, but what I do remember is that I felt uncommonly at ease with the nameless boy. Even
though I had no idea what we were walking toward, walking with him seemed to be the most natural thing to do. Neither of us followed the other. We just let the river direct us.
    I was the first to spot the strange man. He seemed to be in his late thirties and had Red stubble spanning his face. The stubble matched his Red hair, which gave him an appearance not unlike the
boy’s. None of this struck me as much as how we found him: he sat in the middle of the river, its Red waters at his chest, and all he did was laugh.
    Even as we walked closer, the man didn’t appear to notice the boy and me. We stood at the edge of the riverbank and I wondered if we should approach him. Thankfully, the boy made that
decision for me and I followed him, as he started wading into the blood Red water.
    “Sir,” the boy started. His voice was filled with hesitance, but he continued wading toward the peculiar man.
    The man grunted an incomprehensible reply and proceeded to break into hysterical laughter. With every guffaw, his body heaved backwards, closer to the water, until a final laugh completely
toppled him over. In that instant, his head went in after his body and he disappeared through the film of Red.
    Panicked, the boy and I scrambled through the dark water trying to grope for the man’s form. We were both thoroughly drenched with Red when at last we heaved the man out onto the shore. I
turned the man’s face toward me to check his breath and an uncontrollable gasp escaped me.
    The man had a face on each side of his head: three in total. They were all identical and they were all unconscious.
    I glanced up at the boy, who had been drawn to my side by my gasp. He hovered at my shoulder, looking at the three-faced man in the same way that I had.
    “We can’t leave him,” he said, echoing my thoughts.
    “We’ll just have to wait until he comes to.”
    Luckily, it wasn’t long until the man regained consciousness and soon he was sitting upright with support from the boy.
    “Are you ... all okay?” the boy asked, changing his original question when he saw the man’s two other faces.
    “Don’t know about the other two, but I’m fine,” the middle face replied with a smile.
    “Of course you are!” the face to the left growled. “It’s not the first time you pulled something like this. Now don’t associate with the humans.”
    “That’s not nice, Ralph. It’s also not nice to point fingers at people,” the middle face chided with a chuckle. “Besides, they just saved our life.”
    “It’s not nice to almost drown us all either, Ralph.”
    Before the left and middle faces could argue further, the right intervened. “I’m so sorry my brothers are like this.” He sniffed, as if holding back tears. “We’re
Ralph,” the right face said, holding out one of the brother’s two hands.
    The boy and I both shook his hand in turn. When it was my turn, I didn’t know which face to look at, so I tried to smile at all of Ralph’s faces.
    “We’re all very much obliged for your help. If you hadn’t been there ...” The right face broke down crying.
    “You’re always too sentimental,” the one on the left snarled.
    “Oh, I think it’s adorable,” the middle face happily added.
    “So, why are you here?” the boy interrupted, cleverly changing the subject and avoiding another disagreement. He sat