Bravely(82)

Then Harris pointed at Ila and said, “She’s the Cailleach.”

Merida wanted to say what! But she had literally only just promised to believe him. So instead of saying anything at all, she just looked at Ila, who was once again wearing her secret catlike smile, and she nodded.

A familiar moaning sound, much like wind through rocks, or perhaps like a faraway laugh, began to sound.

And then Ila began to transform.





THE Cailleach stood on the font, lit brilliantly by the will o’ the wisps all around her. Her one starry eye matched the round starry opening of the well beneath her.

“It was you all along?” Merida exclaimed.

I had to keep my eye on you.

Merida thought back to the very first moment that Ila had appeared in her room on Christmas morning, quite impossibly, in time to inspire her to action when she was feeling discouraged. She thought about how all these months, Ila had been teaching Leezie about the Sight and guiding Elinor toward the trip to Eilean Glan in the guise of an innocent little orphan.

“Feradach was right!” Merida said. “You do cheat!”

“I told you.”

At the sound of Feradach’s voice, Merida’s breath got all stopped up in her throat. The Cailleach had turned her attention to the dark stone, and as Merida and Harris watched, Feradach stepped silently from the shadowed stone named after him. As he came just to the edge of the wild green light, she could see that he looked as he had all the other times. A blond-maned young man with a kind face and wonderfully made gloves with oxblood stitching. But there was something different about him now, Merida thought. A realness, a weight. He knew what he looked like now, and he had been seen like this by more than one person. He had lived in time, not simply watched it.

It had changed him.

When he ducked his head away from her gaze, it was with the sort of knowledge that came of knowing how one’s body moved, knowing how much one’s face could give away.

I did not cheat, Feradach. I was only present as much as you were.

“And when I kept this face for everyone who saw me?” Feradach challenged.

A gift.

But the Cailleach sounded amused with herself. He had been right about that, too, Merida thought. It had been a trick. She’d known it would end up with him in the courtyard, unable to bear what he needed to do. What else was a trick about her?

“You know what I am now, don’t you?” Feradach asked Harris. “No more pretending you can’t tell?”

Harris was very pale. He nodded. “You’re…”

“You don’t have to say,” Feradach said.

Harris climbed down from the boulder he’d been standing on to press against Merida. He did not bother to hide that he was afraid now. He was trembling as badly as Hamish. “So what I saw was true.”

Merida felt a terrible pit in her stomach. It had only just occurred to her that this was all coming to an end. A year had seemed like a very long time. Now there was no more time to try to change anything. There was only time to find out if it had worked. And then—what came after? She didn’t know that, either. For an entire year she’d shaped everything around the journeys with her family and Feradach’s visits, and she had forgotten what life used to be like before that. “It might be, or it might not. That’s what we’re about to find out, isn’t it?”

Yes, the year has ended. It is now time for me to render my ruling.

The old woman on the rock tilted her blackened staff toward Feradach, who was as dark and motionless and still as the stone behind him.

Unless you have any objections to the way the bargain has been run.

“No,” he said.

Feradach lifted his eyes then and held Merida’s gaze. They were equals in that moment. Perfectly matched. The Cailleach had been tricking them both all this time. Whatever the ruling was would be whatever she had wanted it to be all along, Merida thought. She had been nudging both of them in whatever uncanny direction she wanted them to move; this was the trouble with magic, the trouble with gods. One always thought one had the upper hand, and then in the end discovered it wasn’t even a game that used hands. Feradach, young god, had forgotten along with her, so nearly human as he was. Merida had the odd thought that during this judgment, Feradach should be stood on the other side of her, opposite Harris, holding her other hand, waiting for the ruling on their fate. But of course that was impossible. Illogical. His hand was the thing that would ruin them, after all.

Then let my verdict be witnessed, the Cailleach said. Let the winds witness it and let the rain witness it and let the winter that is coming witness it and the summer that is past witness it. Let this land I live in and on and under and over witness it and accept it. Let all of them feel the balance that holds us all together in a dance as perfect as the stars overhead and below. Over the course of this year, I have watched every member of DunBroch and felt the balance shift this way and that, first in Feradach’s favor, then in Merida’s, and then back again, so on and so forth, until now, we come to the end and see where it has come to rest. If it is in the favor of change, Merida of DunBroch may go back to her home to live out the rest of her days as she pleases, so long as she still holds her tongue about the nature of this bargain. If it is in the favor of stagnation, Feradach must ruin DunBroch immediately on this night.

Feradach looked away from Merida.