Bravely(59)

Merida vowed there would be nothing to make Elinor dread travel.

She also took her time to blackmail Harris into going with them on this last journey. She’d thought about it for a long time, how best to convince him, and ultimately decided to simply play his own game. It was easier than trying to imagine how to persuade him to talk. She’d collected all the precious things in DunBroch that Brionn had put chew marks in, beginning with her Christmas spoon and ending with her mother’s wedding shoes, and threatened to bring them to their parents with an assessment of Harris’s dog-training skills unless he came along and promised to take care of any errands Elinor might have during the trip.

Harris actually seemed grudgingly appreciative of her blackmailing efforts.

In any case, he agreed to go.

It was right in the middle of these preparations that the harp arrived.

“What is that?” Merida asked with astonishment.

The harp was set right in the middle of the Great Hall, and set right behind it was Hamish, his eyes shining with feeling. There were many other things in the Great Hall, too, like baskets of cloth and buckets of turnips, but mostly Merida had eyes for the harp. It was plainer than the one in the music room, but also newer, lighter, sturdier looking, a harp meant for going places. Behind it all, the grand doors to the hall stood open, revealing a merchant cart driving away through the early fall weather. The kitchen help trotted after it, throwing buns and joyful shouts.

“Little Bear’s new harp,” Fergus said grandly. “Just in time for his first trip to Cennedig of Fife!”

Merida was just as shocked by this as she was by the harp’s appearance. Harps took a very long time to build, and even if this harp had not been built specially for Hamish, things took a very long time to make their way across the countryside. “You arranged for a harp?”

“I wish I had, but I can’t take credit,” Fergus replied. “This one rolled in by accident. The merchants were headed to Moray and said the floods kept pushing them further and further off their path till finally they just washed up here and decided to see if we wanted anything they had. And did we, boy?”

Hamish’s smile was bigger than his face.

Harris, behind him, rolled his eyes. “Everything in this place is an accident.”

“Hold your wheesht,” Merida told him, “and spit those lemons out. You’ll be out of this place tomorrow.”

“Is it tomorrow we’re going?” Elinor asked, sounding quite harried.

Merida felt a pang of anxiety, and then a pang of irritation, and then another pang of anxiety. Elinor couldn’t back out now, could she?

Of course she could. She had fooled Merida before and she could still do it.

“It’s the date you set yourself, ma’am,” Ila broke in. She had appeared from nowhere, a stack of linens piled in her arms. “And Ms. Leezie would be quite upset if you moved it.”

Leezie had declared tomorrow’s date fortunate by some arcane calendar she had found. Three priests had come to the blackhouse village, and she’d used most of her spending money to buy a tiny statue of a frowning saint from an exotic country to the south. The saint statue was supposed to grant safe passage over water, which they would need to get to Eilean Glan.

“You don’t all have to stare at me like that!” Elinor exclaimed, color coming into her cheeks. “I just lost track of the days!”

As Merida hurried out on her way to check the kitchen supplies one last time, she exchanged a grateful look with Ila.

They were going. They were really going. One last journey. One last triplet. One last season before autumn rolled into winter and Christmas came with its doom or salvation.

It was a wild last day and night. Aileen made a grand going-away feast. Fergus gifted Elinor a fine new cloak for her jouney, lined with shiny black fur. Elinor gifted Merida a third dress to replace her dress worn at the elbows from shooting. Hamish played his new harp without stop. There was no sign of the slump-shouldered, uncertain triplet when his long fingers were on the harp. This was the boy who had saved his father as the world crumbled beneath him.

Old friend, Cennedig had called his harp.

Merida had no doubt Hamish had just met one of his own.

Later that night, after Merida had checked and double-checked and triple-checked their preparations, she’d settled down into bed for her last sleep in a good bed for many days. She lay there in her bedroom, listening to the mice have their way with her things under her bed, looking at the familiar shadows of all her childhood things, wondering if her mother was still going to back out at the last minute. She thought about getting up to find a cat to quiet the mice, but then she thought about how she would have to find something to quiet the cat. And then she thought about the trip some more.

And in the midst of all that, out of nowhere, as she ran out of things to think about, she realized the harp had to have been Feradach’s doing.

She felt stupid at once for not immediately putting it together. Feradach knew Hamish wanted to be a harper, because he had come to see her directly after their return from Kinlochy. He’d had an entirely different proof of ruin to show her, which he’d altered after seeing how upset she was; the trip to Cennedig was clearly an improvisation, hence the delay in his return and the need to borrow a horse. Why take her to Cennedig of all people? Yes, the harper’s story was a kind one, but in retrospect, of course he had meant for her to secure an apprenticeship for Hamish. And now, freak flooding had directed this harp right to their door just the day before she left. When had merchants ever accidentally found themselves at DunBroch? It had never happened before.