Bravely(56)

He fell silent.

“So you are here because the Cailleach demands it,” Merida said finally. “And what have you found?”

“I see that your father is changing the castle,” Feradach said. “And himself. I see that your brother Hamish has found himself. You are making progress.”

But Merida already knew both these things, so there was no satisfaction in hearing him acknowledge it. “And yet if the others don’t change in time, you’ll do the exact same thing to DunBroch that you did to Kinlochy.”

Feradach just shook his head, but not in the way that means no, the way that means what do you want me to say?

“Because the balance,” she said coldly. “Because your duty.”

“There are consequences to not keeping the balance,” Feradach said roughly. “There are consequences to not fulfilling this duty. I have executed this duty for centuries. I have lived with these consequences for centuries. I am Feradach. This is my role. I will not be chastised by a mortal.”

They stared at each other across the length of the high wall.

Feradach finally asked, “Will you come with me to see my work, as per the bargain? Tomorrow, if I return?”

“Do I have a choice?” But it wasn’t really a question, any more than his had been a question. She had to see it. He had to see hers. She was angry that she had to do it, though, so she said, “I saw your stone. Feradach’s stone.”

His body went very still. “Did you now?”

“Yes, and you know what? No one remembers anything except your name. No one knows who you are,” she said. “The Cailleach, they knew who she was. Not you. No one knows you exist.”

How can you be so cruel?

Feradach looked at her for quite a long time then, his expression unreadable, his gloved hands folded in each other, and then he said, “You do.”





MERIDA braced herself for Feradach’s return, but he didn’t come back the next day, nor the day after that. In fact, so many days went by that Merida began to wonder if she had succeeded in keeping him away, and if that would affect the bargain.

But nearly two weeks after she saw him on the wall, she woke in the morning (having had a ridiculous dream that foreheads were now considered vulgar and one had to brush one’s hair across it in order to be considered decent in public), got dressed in the new riding dress her mother had completed while she was gone to Kinlochy, and managed to pick her way downstairs (which involved climbing up the stairs to the tapestry room and wending her way across the attic and then down through the remodeled music room and triplets’ room, because of all the stairs under construction), and found that Feradach was not only already in the castle, but that he had already mingled with practically everyone.

In the kitchen, he had talked to her mother, who thought he looked like a nun and had talked to him about the holy well and his feelings on it.

In one of the stair towers, she discovered he’d had a spirited conversation on carpentry with the man who was working on her stairs, who had thought he looked like a very tall fellow craftsmen.

In the common room he’d played a game of Brandubh with Harris, who said he’d never seen an old woman so ruthless at the game and that surprise was the only reason why he’d lost.

In the music room Hamish had seen him, too, but as a fellow little boy who was also interested in the instruments and how their tuning had been disrupted by the changes to the space and to the weather.

To Leezie, he was an idle, unrecognized member of the kitchen staff, and had looked all through her pressed flower books with her, asking her about each.

In the garden, he appeared as a gentle old man who paused to help one of Aileen’s staff pick peas.

In the stables, a stable boy found him a ruggedly built young man who left him comparing his muscles to the other stable boys’ after he departed.

“Is there a single person in DunBroch you didn’t speak to today?” she asked him crossly when she finally got to him. To her, of course, he looked as he always did, that young man with the tree-root brooch and the mane of light hair.

He smiled at her thinly and she had half a mind that all his conversing was entirely to be contrary about what she’d said before, about no one knowing him.

“They still all saw someone different,” she muttered, but she knew it sounded more childish than properly mean.

“And what do I look like to you?” he asked. But she didn’t intend to answer and he knew it, because he didn’t wait for an answer before adding, “I’ll need to borrow a horse. I changed my mind about what I want to show you and it’s further than I expected to go.”

“Borrow a horse! What use is there being immortal? Is there no magic way that you get about?”

“Not unless you’d like for me to beat you there by many hours. I could give you directions and a head start if you’d prefer.”

“I would,” she said.

But he simply stood around until she gave in. Eventually they set off, her on the Midge and him on a gelding that took quite a bit of kicking to go, because she didn’t feel like giving him a horse he could appear noble on.

“Do you appear as something different to every horse, too?” Merida asked.

“I haven’t asked them,” Feradach replied.

She couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not. “Can you talk to horses?”