Bravely(62)

In the dark, Merida said, “Do you think it’s true, what Ila said, that you’re like your mum?”

Leezie didn’t answer right away, and Merida wasn’t sure if this was because she had fallen asleep, or because she didn’t know, or because if it was too difficult to talk about. Leezie’s mother had been dead only five years, which felt like both a long and a short time. Merida had never known her; they came from different worlds. Leezie had lived an entire childhood down in the blackhouse village before coming to work and live at DunBroch and managing to somehow become an honorary member of the family DunBroch along the way.

“I don’t know,” Leezie said at last. “People said she was a silly person. They say I’m a silly person, too, I think.”

“You are a little silly,” Merida said. “But in a Leezie way.”

“It’s the only way I am, so I don’t know any other way to be.”

“If anyone says it in a mean way, I’ll pull their hair for you.” Merida tried to remember all the things Leezie had ever said about her mother. She had never really said much except that she’d been a midwife. “Your mum had the Sight?”

Leezie was quiet again for a long time, and again Merida thought perhaps she’d gone to sleep. But then she murmured, “She believed people came back again and again. To life. In different bodies. She heard about it from a bald man from somewhere in the south. She always said the first thing a bald man says when you meet him is always true and the last thing he says is always a lie.”

Merida was amused. “And the first thing he said was people come back again and again?”

“Yes, that Mum’ll come back in another baby and do it all over again, which sounds like a lot of trouble,” Leezie said. “But nice to get to taste things for the first time again, though, I think.”

“What was the last thing the bald man said to her? Did she tell you?”

“‘You’ll have a nice Christmas this year,’” Leezie said. “She died at Samhain.”

Two months before Christmas.

“I’m awfully sorry,” Merida said.

“Thanks. I always wanted to meet a bald man to see if it was true, but they’re harder to find than you’d think. Oh, that monk we went to Keithneil with—do you think he counts as bald?”

Feradach. Merida asked, “What was the first thing he said to you?”

“That Keithneil wasn’t far,” Leezie said. “That was true.”

“And the last?”

Leezie thought about it. “That he hoped we’d meet again. Well, that’s dull.”

The tent fell silent then. Merida turned on her side to go to sleep, but she didn’t go to sleep.

“Good night, Ms. Leezie,” whispered Merida.

“Good night, Ms. Merida,” whispered Leezie.



Merida kept turning the conversation over and over in her head. It felt important to understand Leezie and what she had been moaning about this year, but because she and Leezie were so different, putting herself in Leezie’s shoes was always a multistep process. By the time Merida understood what had motivated Leezie to do one thing, she was on to her next thing and Merida was having to understand her again. Until now, everything she didn’t understand was easy to sweep under the just Leezie heading.

If she wanted to help Leezie change, that wasn’t a good enough understanding of her.

I’m running out of time, I’m running out of time.

She thought she would never sleep, but she must have, because she got woken by a sound, and one can’t get woken without sleeping first.

She opened her eyes, but there was nothing to see but blackness in the dark tent.

Then the sound came again, from just outside: “Hsst.”





“HSST.”

It was a very intentional sound. A sound meant to pull the occupants of the tent outside. But who would be hssting to them? Harris was not the sort to hsst. Ila surely couldn’t manage to hsst without adding a ma’am.

Who could it be? she wondered. It’s almost the middle of the night.

It was exactly the middle of the night, actually.

Merida quietly got up. She didn’t need to get dressed or put on boots, as she had gone to sleep wearing everything she’d been wearing during the day. This was not only because it was cold overnight, but because she was used to traveling without Elinor’s comforts and fail-safes, which required one to be on one’s toes at all times. Perhaps Elinor was content leaving safety to the soldiers, but Merida couldn’t get used to it.

With a glance back at the other motionless bedroll, she pulled aside the tent flap and looked out at the camp.

There was no one there. The remains of the fire outside the largest tent smoldered red. The sounds of horses snorting in the night were nearly inaudible over the sound of the drying leaves on the trees hissing against each other in the breeze. Not too far off, Merida could hear one of the soldiers stamping his feet against the cold at his post.

So who had hssted at her?

In the woods, she saw a flash of movement, then a flash of light.

At first she thought it was na Fir-Chlis, that strange green glow of the Cailleach, of the will o’ the wisps, but then she saw that it was just the reflection of the firelight in an animal’s eyes.