Bravely(54)

“It’s a stone,” Leezie said carelessly. “I like that ring of them north of DunBroch better. There’s loads of bog myrtle there that keeps the midges away.”

“This is Feradach’s stone,” Ila said. “That’s its name.”

Merida instantly felt her hands go hot with anxiety.

Leezie asked, “Who is Feradach?”

“Can you tell with your Sight?” Ila asked.

“I don’t think the Sight can tell me that,” Leezie replied. She shrugged in an exaggerated way, emphasizing just how much she cared in her attempt to show how little she did. “It’s just a silly thing, anyway.”

“Maybe he was a chieftain,” Elinor said. “Someone’s son who died, someone who deserved a solstice stone in memorial.”

As the others leaned over the well, Merida studied the stone anew. It was covered with little worn interconnected spirals all over, just as she remembered, but now that she was right next to it, studying it carefully, she saw an additional shape, right near its base.

A handprint, sunk deep into the stone, nearly worn away with age.

Feradach.

She wondered how old the print was. What terrible fate had this place endured because of him?

And what fate would it endure again, if Merida couldn’t find a way to change Elinor, Harris, and Leezie still?

She hovered her hand over the handprint, thinking of how Feradach had shown her Keithneil’s past. Then, because she also remembered him saying that he didn’t think she was a coward, she put her hand right into it.

But the stone stayed just a stone, cold and worn under her palm, and she didn’t travel through time and memory.

“I wish to fall in love,” Leezie said, crouched by the edge of the well. “Oh, bother, I said it out loud, do I have to do another one?”

“I think so,” Elinor said.

Sighing, Leezie dropped the other half of a sweet biscuit into the well and closed her eyes. Her cheeks pinked slightly, which made Merida think her revised wish was probably not too much different from her first.

“Are you going to make a wish, Merida?” Ila asked as Merida joined them at the well’s edge again.

Merida would have liked to wish for her family’s safety, but she knew that wouldn’t satisfy the bargain’s need for balance. The Cailleach had already given as much as she could. It was up to Merida to do the rest. Gazing at the water, she once more imagined the rubble of Kinlochy, the hands stretching out hopelessly. Only now the rubble was DunBroch, and the hands belonged to her family.

It was so hard to carry this entirely by herself, the weight of this knowledge—

Don’t cry, she thought furiously.

But she did.

Just one tear dripped into the water. Her mother did not see the tear, but she saw the ripple stretch out from it, and she said sharply, “Merida, what’s wrong?”

She wanted to say she was afraid that if Elinor didn’t travel again, Elinor would die. They all would. She wanted to say that she had just seen a lot of people die and it was too easy to imagine it happening to DunBroch. She wanted to say that she was so scared that she would fail.

“Mum, please,” started Merida. “Please, please. Come with me on the last trip? Don’t just say yes. Please really do it. I’m sorry I was awful. Please just come.”

To her embarrassment, more tears fell in the well. Not just a few. A lot. All the tears she’d wanted to cry for Kinlochy and hadn’t been able to until now.

Ila dropped a flower on top of them, hiding the ripples away.

“Oh, Merida,” Elinor said. She wiped away Merida’s tears and brought her into a hug. For a long moment, she just held Merida, smelling, as she always did, of roses and the gentle smoke of the common room. “All right. I really mean it. I will come with you. I’ll take you to Eilean Glan.”

This time, Merida believed it.





THERE was one of Fergus’s renovations that Merida liked at once. He had set quite a few hands on restoring DunBroch’s wall, and now one could get to the wall walk from many points along it, as all the guard towers had been made accessible. Entire sections of wall that had been unpleasant to roam were now truly pleasurable, lifted many yards above the biting midges down below.

As Elinor threw herself into the planning of the long journey to Eilean Glan, which was apparently a distant island off the coast, Merida threw herself into walking the wall. She needed something to keep her from the anxiety of wondering if this was going to be just another Spain or Kinlochy trip, and Elinor had completely taken over the game fields at the moment, ordering a contingent of Fergus’s soldiers to work on their archery and otherwise sharpen their skills.

Merida didn’t think she could bear it if Elinor backed out again.

Luckily for her, walking the wall worked almost as well as archery to clear her mind, particularly at the golden hour of this golden season. The long warm light that came just before the night shimmered like water. As fall approached, the sounds of bellowing red stags punctuated the wood, fierce as bears. The leaves were not yet changing, but there was something substantial and weighty to them, a fullness that could be heard when the breeze lifted them. Summer was building, building, until it had to collapse into fall, and the effort was breathtaking to watch.

She stood on the wall on one of these evenings and listened to the sounds of DunBroch both natural and unnatural. In addition to the birdcalls and stag growls, there was also the rippling sound of Hamish playing Elinor’s harp with the window open and Leezie practicing her moaning down by the vegetable garden and Fergus’s ever-present workmen hammering away at some project in the kitchen. Merida couldn’t hear her father, but she heard Elinor laugh, and she knew that Fergus had to be close, because her mother only laughed like that for her father.