Bravely(20)

“That’s the plan,” Merida answered back, just as casual. She wanted to ask why Elinor had gotten so quiet after he’d mentioned Eilean Glan, but she knew this would drive her father right back to the castle. She and her father didn’t really have meaningful conversations these days; the closer they got to real feelings, the more uncomfortable both of them became. So instead, she said, “Did you send off the letter?”

“I dictated it to your mother,” he said. “I asked them to take you because you were a handful and you were also eating us out of house and home.”

“Dad.”

“I said ‘please,’ too.”

“That’s better.”

Merida felt quite desperate for him to say something else, although she didn’t know what, exactly, that something else was. What she wanted was to talk with him about the intense combined weight of the bargain with gods and this new bargain with the Madman, but the first subject wasn’t allowed because of magical rules, and the second one wasn’t allowed because of father-daughter rules. So she just asked, “Will I like Ardbarrach?”

Fergus shot a few more arrows off into the darkening brush. None of them were anywhere near the target. Finally, instead of answering directly, he said, “It’s no DunBroch. But what is, really? Hubert will be wild for it, I’m sure. This bow is useless. Look how it does whatever it wants. I think it’s bent. It’s broken in some way, obviously.”

Merida reached for the bow and he handed it over with a rueful smile. It was a lovely bow, in much better shape than Merida’s, because it was used less. Unlike hers, with all its carvings worn to smooth invisibility, his bow was still etched up and down with a beautiful stylized pattern of flowers and bears. It was sized for her tall father and not for her, so she stepped up on a stump so that its height had somewhere to go. Then she nocked an arrow.

“Would you like to place a wager where you think this arrow’s gonna go, then, Dad?” she asked, with a wicked smile, testing the tension of the string.

“I’m no fool,” Fergus said. “I know where it’s gonna go.”

“With this wind, you can’t know anything for sure,” Merida said. She nearly said With this breath of the Cailleach instead of with this wind, and then she realized that this casual phrase she’d said a hundred times before felt dangerously close to talking about the bargain.

Her smile had slipped. She put it back up again, but she knew Fergus had seen it.

“When it’s you, I’m sure you hit your target,” he said. “Wind or no wind. Poor target. I shed a tear.”

Merida felt the breeze on her cheek and against the arrow’s tip, watched the way it shook the empty branches at the end of the field, and waited until it stilled just a bit. Then she loosed the arrow.

Thwuck!

“Bull’s-eye,” Fergus observed. Then he paused. “It’s a brave thing you’re doing, Merida. All this.”

Merida looked over at him, her heart pattering. It was what she wanted. Well, it was part of what she wanted. She wanted him to talk about how she was the one to stand up and make a counterproposal instead of him. She wanted him to talk about how Elinor had gone quiet at the mention of Eilean Glan. She wanted to hear him promise that she wouldn’t have to move anywhere if she didn’t want to. She wanted him to ask Did you make a bargain with a death god? so that even though she couldn’t answer, she could just look at him heavily and he’d know all the things she had to bear for the year to come.

But Fergus just blustered, “Now give me back my bow before it forgets everything it just learned from you.”

And just like that, their meaningful conversation was over. But Merida tucked away the tenderness of his expression in her memory for easy access later.



Just a few days later, only slightly behind schedule, they set out for Ardbarrach. Either way, it was a good, bright January day. The sky was beautiful and high above them, with thin, icy clouds that looked like interlacing fish scales. The landscape was frozen so that nothing moved. Ice coated every single branch so that it glimmered. Every time the horses put a hoof down, it made a delicious crunch through the thin snow.

The hope was to arrive before dark. This was not the most dangerous season for wolves, but it was the most dangerous season for going to sleep and waking up frozen to death. Traveling only when the weak winter sun was out and being tucked away from the weather before the wild winter night wind kicked up was important.

It felt glorious to be out of the castle. Merida couldn’t tell if this was because it felt good to finally be doing something about the bargain, or if it was simply because she’d gotten so used to traveling that staying in one place had started to feel odd. Either way, it was startlingly satisfying to be on the road again.

Unfortunately, they were very slow.

On horseback were Merida (on the Midge, the bitey young mare she’d been gifted when she began her travels last spring) and Gille Peter, one of Fergus’s oldest guards (on Angus, Merida’s former horse, who had been pulled out of retirement as no other horse was tall enough for Gille Peter). Elinor’s two ponies, Humor and Valor, pulled the Friendly Box (which was what the triplets called DunBroch’s old pony cart), which carried Hubert, Leezie, and another of Fergus’s guards, Colban. Following behind was Harris’s terrible spoon-eating dog, Brionn, as he’d shot out after them and no amount of calling would bring him back into the courtyard.