Bravely(79)

Uneasily, Merida asked, “He said that?”

“You’ve seen him,” Hubert said. “Come on.”

She didn’t like thinking about it, but it didn’t seem impossible when she did. Join the Dásachtach? Did Harris really want that? And if that was what he needed in order to change, was she willing to make that happen to save the rest of them?

She thought about the destroyed village. The salted wells. The mutilated trees. Ruin for the sake of punishment, of warning. Ruin for the sake of ruin. Nothing she stood for. She might not have liked Ardbarrach, but at least they weren’t training their boys to pillage for the sake of pillaging alone.

“There’s got to be a way to talk to him,” Merida said.

“Oh, nobody has problems talking to Harris,” Hamish said. “It’s getting him to talk back.”





SHORT days bled into long nights, which then became more short days and even longer nights.

The more Merida tried to show she wanted to talk meaningfully with Harris, the more scathing and remote he became. Often she’d make a plan to corner him individually after breakfast and find that as soon as he got up from the table, he had taken off. Literally running, surely, because by the time she got to the door, she’d see him and Brionn off in the fields, a tiny speck already.

It was difficult not to resent him when so much was hanging on his existence. He didn’t know, of course, and she couldn’t tell him. It all weighed on Merida, and no one else in the world knew except Feradach, and he was hidden away until he found out if he was to destroy them.

And then, all at once, it was the night before Christmas.

The entire castle was outfitted for the feast for the next night, and just as it had the year before, it looked splendid. There was no snow this year, only frost, and so all of the newly renovated castle was undisguised and elegant, glazed with a shimmering layer that only emphasized how far it had come in a year. Lanterns glowed in the windows. Beautiful, intricate bowers braided by Elinor and all her foster girls hung heavy around each threshold. The air was scented with exotic, sharp Christmas spices. The guest rooms were full of Cennedig and his family, lords Fergus had reconnected with after the tragedy at Kinlochy, ladies Elinor had invited to see how to teach their own children. The castle was full as it hadn’t been since Merida was a child.

But Merida couldn’t celebrate. She felt she would go mad being the only one who knew on the last day that it mattered.

She retreated to the wall as the sun went down, watching the last of the golden glow shimmer across the loch before it vanished into darkness.

Just like last year, there was an enormous moon.

As she looked out over the moonlit forest, she heard familiar barking. Brionn. His high teen bark had not changed with age, although he at least stuck firmly by Harris’s side now.

This was her last chance.

She used her vantage point on the wall to spy her brother out across the game fields, walking. It was so bright under the moon and stars with the glaze of frost that she could even pick out his familiar, stiff walk.

Hiking her skirt, she hurried to the closest guard tower, down the stairs, across the courtyard, out across the field. Thank goodness her father had ordered them cleaned out.

“Harris!” she called, catching up with him.

He didn’t alter his stride, just kept doing that chilly, austere walk of his, his hands in his pockets, posture perfectly straight. He didn’t say anything, either, but it nonetheless felt as if he found her silly and disorderly, because she was out of breath and running after him, and he was in control and walking away.

Merida grabbed his arms and stopped him. “Harris, stop. Stop and look at me.”

Harris was stiff as a bathed cat as she turned him to her. He looked thin-lipped and irritated. As ever, he appeared far older than he was.

“Do you hate us, is that what it is?” she demanded.

His expression, if possible, seemed more scathing than ever. He waited for her to lose interest in him and release him.

“Tell me why you want to go with him,” Merida said. “Give me all the good reasons, and I’ll listen, and if they aren’t totally stupid, I’ll help you, okay? I don’t like him, and I don’t like what he does, but I’m not you, and it’s not my life. If that’s what you want, I’ll help you.”

Harris just stared at her. He repeated, “Help me go with him?”

“The Dásachtach, yes,” Merida said. “Hubert and Hamish told me.”

“They told you I wanted to go with him? That’s what they think?”

Merida released Harris. “Y…es?”

This wasn’t going the way she expected at all.

Harris made his little condescending huffing sound like he was about to laugh, and then he did it again, and then Brionn pressed his head close to his leg and Harris twisted his hand in Brionn’s collar and started to cry. Just two angry tears, running fast down his cheeks.

She tried to reach for him to give him a hug, but he moved rigidly away.

“Harris,” she said, “why are you so mad at me? We used to be such good friends, didn’t we?”

“Why do you care?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“You left,” he said, very simply.

Merida opened her mouth and then closed it again. She thought of another thing she might say, opened her mouth again, and then closed it again. She had left. She’d gone off on her big adventure across the kingdom and not thought about the triplets staying behind, because they had each other, and they had her parents. She just figured they’d be back here waiting for her, unchanged, and they were in this entire predicament because, for the most part, they were.