No matter what the boy is doing, as long as he’s within sight of his neighbor’s strange and ugly house, he cannot stop looking at it. The house sits on a bizarrely exposed point on the cliffs, separated from his home by a stone wall. Often, he tries to look through its dark windows but can’t see anything. He has, however, seen its occupant before: a large woman with unnaturally red hair. He’s curious as to how she seems so idle compared to the rest of the town’s women and is fascinated by her. Today, the boy’s mother is leaving with his father to visit a cousin. She feels concerned leaving her son behind, but he has told her he’s going to see Lucy, a girl who is interested in him (though he doesn’t return her feelings). His mother approves of Lucy and encourages him to see her, but once his mother leaves, the boy begins wondering why his mother likes her so much. He then wonders if his mother is only afraid of leaving him at home because he might see the mysterious neighbor. This only increases the intrigue the boy feels for her.

Suddenly, the woman’s bright red hair catches the boy’s eye, and he sees her leaving her house to walk down the road through the apple orchard. Knowing he must take the same path to see Lucy, he steels his courage and prepares to meet her, inwardly hoping to meet the neighbor instead. He remembers that the man who made the woman’s house, Morgan, had often taken trips to town to get drunk. Upon his most recent return, he brought back the woman and died a month later. The boy’s mother hears word that the woman is hoping to sell the house soon and move back to town. His mother has said before that if the only way to get rid of their neighbor is to buy her house themselves, they should do it. The boy begins running down the road he saw the woman take and, upon seeing a bird struggling to fly in the wind, thinks of the children’s rhyme “the north wind doth blow”. He wonders if it is about a bird too eager to fly in spring air getting caught in winter winds.

After running for a bit, the boy slows down, eventually stopping when he fails to catch sight of the woman. He then decides to cross the wall between their properties, but senses her coming up the road. The boy panics, pinning himself against the wall to hide. He doesn’t hear her approach but feels her. When she has long passed, he emerges to find the world strikingly different. The sun is a rich red against the dusk sky, and the boy barely recognizes his own home in the distance. As the woman crosses over the wall, he feels a connection between them. When she slips inside her house, she leaves the door open. The boy comes closer to the house, noticing that it gets darker as he nears it. After a moment of hesitation, he goes inside.