Bravely(71)

“It’s not a task for someone with a daughter and three little boys!” Elinor said. “I was a mother.”

“You could’ve strapped me to your back,” Merida protested. “I would’ve been glad for it.”

“I’m sure you would’ve,” Elinor said, “but that was back when I was still believing you’d grow up to be a proper lady.” She smiled to soften the blow. “And the triplets…well. It was hard enough to get them into the world, and it’s a whole job keeping them here.” She smiled at Harris to soften these words, too, but he just sat across from her at the fire as he always did, his eyes giving nothing away, his mouth still.

Merida badly wanted to know what the Dásachtach had whispered to him, but of course he’d just gone all scornful and silent when she asked. Harris had liked his secrets before they left, and he hadn’t changed a bit since then, now that they were almost back.

And there just wasn’t much time left.





MERIDA found herself quite out of sorts after they got back to DunBroch. Part of it was just that everything was so very different. By the time they returned from Eilean Glan, the seasons had decidedly changed and it was well into the skinflint days of late autumn, each hour of daylight meted out with a miser’s sneer. The sun had changed, too. It stayed low and sulky for the entire day, barely appearing in public before vanishing again. It gave everything a forever evening cast, a sense of always waiting, never receiving.

With the lack of sun came chill, of course, and the smell of peat burning as smoke piped out the top of the blackhouse village chimneys and from the tacksmen’s houses down in the fields. Blazes rose up high in DunBroch’s fireplaces, altering it even more than it had already been altered. Merida knew the physical changes to DunBroch were a big reason why she felt out of sorts. It was clear Fergus had put all hands on deck to get the transformation done by the time his queen arrived home. Every room sparkled. Every beam that could be replaced had been replaced. Every tapestry that could be cleaned and repaired had been cleaned and repaired. Every staircase was new. Everything that was supposed to be straight was straight, everything that was supposed to be a perfect spiral was a perfect spiral. The tables in the great room were new; the beds were all new. The kitchen had new cupboards and bins; the armory was full of new weapons sized just right for Hubert.

The common room wasn’t even smoky anymore. The furniture had all been moved back in from its temporary home in the music room, but it still looked different because the air was sparkling.

Oh, and the glass, the glass! Fergus had sold who knew how many cows and furs in order to have glass put in every window in the castle. Before, only the rooms that welcomed guests had glass. Every other window was open to the air, covered with one or two or four tapestries to keep the midges out in summer and the cold out in winter. But now there was glass, actual glass, in every window, often in pretty colors, too. It made the castle warmer than it had ever been before, but it was also disconcerting, because one could no longer hear everything that went on outside in the courtyard as clearly as if one were standing outside. Instead, there were two DunBrochs: inside and outside, two worlds one now could only traverse through a door rather than sort of existing in both.

The courtyard was paved and sharp, too, of course, and the stables and outbuildings had been shored up. Fergus had also wanted to show off for his old friend the king of Ardbarrach and all the other royals who had come in for the Hunt for the Unnamed, which hadn’t hurt in quickening and expanding his efforts. And it was a good thing he’d renovated all the outbuildings, too, because two young orphans the triplets’ age were coming from Eilean Glan in just a few days, and three times as many as that would arrive in addition before the weather turned, and Elinor needed every bit of space she could get to put them up. Aileen, to her delight, got upgraded to the newly finished attic, which had always been the warmest place in the entire castle. And the family DunBroch gave up all pretense that Leezie was anything less than a DunBroch, too, and also that she’d ever do anything like housekeeping, and moved her bed into the tapestry room above Merida’s. Official papers were sent off making her part of the proper family line and they had a cake to celebrate it and everything.

Leezie no longer talked about falling in love; instead, she talked about the holy well, and gods of ruin, and the Sight, and because she could not find any priestess to teach her more about this, she began to sit in with Elinor’s students to learn how to read so that she could read the books Elinor had on it instead. She still gave up on a great many things halfway, but she didn’t give up on all things halfway: she had changed.

Hubert was home for the season now, and to Merida’s great relief, he was not horribly altered. He was not the Hubert she remembered—he was far more dutiful and less boisterous—but he was still good-humored and had his old enormous laugh, and he set the dogs loose upon her in bed the very first day he was back, so she did not think she had entirely lost him to a rigid, premature adulthood.

Hamish, on the other hand, was often not home, as he traveled with Gille Peter to Cennedig to train for a few days at a time, when Cennedig did not come and stay at DunBroch. Strangely enough, Hamish had become a little bit more like Hubert—the old Hubert. Now that he was no longer pressed so small by fear, he got sillier and louder and bigger. He still looked like he’d been kept out of sunlight for too long and like he might float away if you didn’t tie him down, but his smile lit rooms dark with winter.