Bravely(5)

Merida jumped after him.

It was madness, of course. The river, wild with winter, was in the sort of mood to devour bridges, and from the feel of the debris-ridden water, it already had. Merida swam and tumbled. She hit boulders. Wood hit her. Her fireplace shovel swam away from her grip to start its own adventure somewhere else.

“I’m not leaving you!” she shouted, getting a mouthful of icy water. Who knew if the stranger could hear; possibly he’d turned himself into a fish. She barked her knee on a boulder. “You might as well give up now and answer my questions!”

Suddenly she was flying.

She fell—

fell—

fell—

Midair, she realized she was going over a waterfall. She knew this waterfall! She’d seen it many times during the day, and it had always appeared quaint, small, and picturesque. It didn’t feel that way at all when she was going over it. She fell for countable seconds, hit the surface of the shallow pool at the fall’s base, and then smashed her shoulder against the gravel bottom. There was just enough current left to unceremoniously wash her up to the pool’s edge. Her mouth felt gritty with river water. Her lungs felt pierced with icicles. Every limb was completely numb with cold.

Footsteps crunched on the brittle rushes by her head.

The stranger stood inches away, looking down at her where she lay on her stomach, completely robbed of any royal dignity she may have possessed before. “Just when I think I understand mortals. What do you want out of this?”

Mortal! It was shocking to hear him say it, even though she already knew after this chase that he was no ordinary human.

She licked her frozen lips to warm them just enough to speak. Her voice sounded thin as ice as she said, “I demand an answer. I caught you.”

He said, “You haven’t caught me.”

Merida reached out to snatch his ankle.

The stranger recoiled.

Not the calculated move of someone avoiding capture, but rather the involuntary jerk of someone leaping back from an adder. Stiffly, he said, “I don’t think you’d like that, Princess.”

Princess! It was as shocking to hear this as mortal.

“Why not?” she asked. She got to her feet, slower than she would have liked. Her bare feet were still completely numb, and a bit of a worrisome color. “Or is that another question you won’t have an answer for? Are you only a thing that runs away?”

“How do you know you want answers?” he shot back. “How do you know you want your prey? Are you only a thing that gives chase?”

“More questions? And still no answers,” Merida said, but as she did, she wondered if perhaps he couldn’t answer. Magic was funny that way, sometimes, according to some of the women she’d met at the shielings. Around the fires at night, they’d told her many half-believed stories about the fey beasts and uncanny entities that roamed their kingdom. In these legends, the magical creatures often had limits upon them, especially the human-shaped ones. They could speak, but they could only repeat what humans said to them, or they were extremely beautiful, except for an ugly rat’s tail, or they couldn’t touch water or sunlight lest they turn to dust. There were always consequences to appearing human. Maybe he was magically forbidden to confess his purpose. Or perhaps he had none. She mused, “Perhaps you’re just a bogle playing silly tricks.”

“You think I’m a bogle?” he replied, in disbelief.

“Or a pooka,” she suggested.

“A pooka?”

She could tell this needled him, so she went on. “A brag, a shellycoat.” She was running out of creatures who sometimes took human form. Her teeth were starting to chatter. “A…a…hobgoblin.”

His mouth puckered. “You want an answer. Here is an answer.”

She was mystified when he followed this statement by showing her his hands. They were covered by wonderfully made gloves, thin and supple as a second skin, stitched with oxblood thread.

He began to take one off now. Slowly. Dramatically. She was reminded that he’d been in the process of removing his gloves when she first saw him.

“Don’t look away, Princess,” he ordered. With his newly bare hand, he seized the narrow trunk of a sapling close to him. Skin to trunk, fingers immediately pinking in the bitter cold. He squeezed tight.

Merida just had time to think, Wait, maybe I didn’t want an answer, and then a sharp wind shouldered past her.

It was clearly on its way to the sapling.

Spiky white frost prickled up from the ground like colorless weeds. Frost wasn’t supposed to appear that quickly, but this frost did—only around the tree. Ice scoured the tender bark. And, worst of all, a wretched, wild dread surrounded them all.

Magic, magic, magic.

The sapling began to die.

The bark went dull, then dry, then colorless as every bit of green life went from deep within it. The very ends of its branches seemed shrunk in on themselves.

Merida could tell that if she put any pressure on the narrow trunk, it would simply snap.

The sapling was dead.

The frost vanished. The harsh wind subsided. The dread remained.

The stranger tugged his glove back on, his gaze fixed knowingly on Merida all the while.

Magic, magic, magic.

Oh no, Merida thought, but she didn’t even quite know why. She fought back her shivers. She did not want to appear to be afraid, even though she was. Oh no, oh no.