Bravely(81)

Harris frowned from Ila to Merida. “What is she talking about?”

But Merida didn’t have an answer. Or rather, she didn’t have an answer for why Ila was talking about it. Even in the cold, she could feel her palms sweating with nerves. “I didn’t tell you any of this. I kept my word. I did everything alone, in secrecy.”

Ila smiled her small, catlike smile. “You did. You have acted most bravely.”

“What is happening?” Harris demanded.

“Tonight is the night that magic changes DunBroch’s fate,” Ila told him. “And your sister has been working alone on it. But no longer. You’re both here now. With the magic. This isn’t the first time magic has changed DunBroch’s fate. Harris, do you know what the last time was?”

Harris shook his head, but in a way that Merida recognized well. That head shake didn’t mean no. It meant I don’t want to admit that the answer is yes.

“All the signs you’ve seen, Harris,” Ila insisted. “The dreams. The wisps that have been calling you to the truth. Her journal.”

“I didn’t read the journal,” Harris said stubbornly.

“Not even a little peek?” Ila asked. “The wisps led you right to it.”

Harris shook his head.

“Now I want to know what’s happening,” Merida said. “What are you two talking about?”

Ila leapt onto the well’s font. It seemed vaguely sacrilegious to do so, although Merida had never been told not to. She just could clearly hear her mother’s voice: Don’t climb on the holy well, Merida! But her mother wasn’t there, and so Ila stayed there, precise and intentional. With all the light coming from inside her and from below, she looked like part of it.

“A little under a decade ago, magic came to DunBroch,” Ila said. “Elinor, queen of DunBroch, was due to give birth to three triplet boys. How wonderful! How anticipated they were. But there was trouble. She had not been long at the delivery when she began to bleed, and although the midwife there did not tell the king, she suspected the queen—and her triplets—might not survive the birth. Luckily for Elinor, the midwife knew the old ways. She called in the handmaid, and put Elinor’s coronation crown into her hand, her most prized possession because with it she had been crowned Peacemaker, acknowledging her accomplishments as a young woman before settling down, and then the midwife added her own most precious possession, a beaded belt she was very vain over, with a bead from every woman she had ever met who had appreciated her work. She bid the handmaid to run as fast as she could to this very well, and to throw these precious things into the water, and to ask the Cailleach for a miracle.”

“The Cailleach!” Merida said. “The Cailleach saved our mother?”

“And the triplets, too,” Ila replied. “And it was a good thing Leezie Muireall’s mother put two things in the well that day, because the miracle to save mother and babies was a large one. First she saved Elinor, who, by all rights, should have bled to death that day. And then she saved one of the triplets, who had his cord tied right round his neck, turning him quite blue. You might have only had two brothers, Merida.”

“Which triplet?” asked Merida. But she knew from the way Harris squeezed her hand which one it was.

“Saved by the other side, and now he can see the other side, but he doesn’t want to look, does he?” Ila asked.

Harris didn’t answer. He had his most still and remote expression, the one that meant he couldn’t be badgered into speaking.

“Ila,” Merida said, “how do you know all these things?”

“Harris knows,” Ila replied. “He must. If he looks hard, he must.”

But when Merida looked down at the most difficult of her triplet brothers, his eyes were closed fast shut and his mouth made a very straight, distressed line. When she glanced over at Ila, she saw that Ila was watching her instead, though, waiting to see what she did.

Because this was the last moment to change him.

But what could Merida say? The truth, she supposed.

She knew Harris wouldn’t like it if she leaned down to his level, so instead, she used his hand to encourage him to step up onto one of the boulders next to the well. Now they were eye to eye. She fixed him with a hard stare, this strange brother of hers who had gotten older so much faster than the others. “I know it’s hard to see things no one else can see. It’s hard to know things no one else knows.”

“You wouldn’t believe what I’ve seen,” Harris hissed. His voice turned a little pugnacious, as if daring her to believe him. “Dad said it was in my head. Mum told me to stop trying to frighten the others. I saw DunBroch in ruins.”

“I believe you,” Merida said. “Trust me, I believe you. I see things too, sometimes. Look, Harris, you’re very clever, you know that. And you’re very brave. But you don’t have to be lonesome. You can always talk to me about it, and I’ll always listen. I might not know what to do about what you see, but I’ll listen. And believe.”

“Always?” Harris asked.

“Yes.”

“Always?” he insisted.

“Yes.”

Harris glanced over at Ila. For just a very, very brief moment, he looked just the age he was supposed to be, just a kid, and Merida thought she was learning something about what people looked like, how maybe it wasn’t just Feradach who looked different depending on who looked at him.