Bravely(83)

Merida closed her eyes.

But there was no comfort in that darkness, because in it she saw the burning castle of Kinlochy and the plague victims and the rising floodwaters. And even if she knew that whatever would grow after this would be good, because that was the nature of Feradach’s work, too, she didn’t want her family to die.

My verdict, the Cailleach said.

“Wait,” said Feradach, voice rough. “Can I—”

DunBroch has changed enough to be spared.

Merida’s eyes flew open.

Feradach stood with his hands clasped to his chest, glove tucked against glove, chin bent prayerfully. The Cailleach stood with her staff pointed high to the sky, sending the green that was threaded through the stars pulsing with fervor.

For a very long moment, Merida couldn’t really believe it. She just gazed up at that night sky that looked the same as the night sky one year ago. How much had changed since then. How much indeed.

Merida seized Harris into a huge hug and spun him. He was about as rewarding as hugging a suit of armor, but she didn’t care. She hugged him hard. “We did it, we did it!”

But disaster is still coming to DunBroch.

Merida stopped dancing at once. She looked hard at the old woman, waiting for her to clarify or change her statement, but she just pointed her staff toward the southern horizon instead.

“Is this a trick, Old Woman?” Feradach demanded. “What is it you want from me?”

Listen for yourself.

Feradach lifted his face to the wind, which raised his mane of hair. His eyes squinted, seeing something Merida couldn’t, or hearing something she couldn’t.

“Oh no,” said Harris.

“Oh no,” said Feradach.

Merida lost patience with all of them. Scouting for a way to get a better vantage point, her eyes landed on Feradach’s stone. She crossed the distance with a few light strides and then threw herself upon it neatly as she would scale any of the stones she’d climbed in her hikes around DunBroch. Her fingers and toes found purchase on the carved swirls and imperfections, as long as she went fast. And she was fast. The feeling of dread propelled her all the way up the dark stone to its top, where she perched sure as a rook in the rain, peering out across the landscape.

In the distance she saw glowing lights bobbing with movement. She heard a low roar, like there were lots of bodies moving. It seemed like they were far, but only because the dark erased all the finer details. Merida knew that if she could pick out the individual shapes of the torches, they were not very far at all. The lights were as far from Merida and Harris as Merida and Harris were from DunBroch, and marching steadily closer. Coming in the dark of night. Not in the bright, not nobly, not with diplomacy on their mind.

This is not Feradach’s ruin approaching. This is no intentional restoration of balance. This is the razing that only humans can do to each other. This is destruction for the sake of destruction. This is ruin that means to stay ruin. This is…

Harris finished her sentence. “The Dásachtach.”





MERIDA had grown up hearing songs and ballads of war and battles. The walls of her home were decorated with axes and swords and shields. She’d worn the armor, she’d shot the arrows, she’d learned to ride her father’s war horse. She lived in a castle with walls thicker than a man was tall, and she knew that wasn’t for looks. She had grown up in a life shaped by war.

She’d never seen it.

But she was seeing it now.

By the time they fled back to DunBroch, they discovered that Fergus’s men were already arming themselves. They’d spotted the army, too. It wasn’t difficult; the Dásachtach’s men were now close enough to hear them. The clank of metal. The scream of horses. The bellow of men.

“What will happen?” cried Hamish.

“Nothing will happen to you,” Leezie said. She was holding a frying pan in what she must have thought was a threatening way. She wasn’t even strong enough, however, to lift it with just one hand, so she simply looked as if she were about to fry an egg. She looked, as ever, like she needed help. “It will be okay. I see it. I see it.”

Behind her, Hubert was uncharacteristically quiet as he suited up to fight. To fight! Merida couldn’t bear that.

The orphan girls stood on the stairs, peering down, looking frightened in the way only those who have already lived through terrible things can. They knew all the ways it might not be okay.

“Take them away up into the attic,” Elinor cried. “Merida too.”

“No,” Hubert said grimly, and for once he sounded as old as Harris. “You’ll need us.”

“I’m afraid he’s right,” Fergus said. “Merida, go with them, my love—no, don’t protest. I need you there because you can fight, not because you can’t. Get up into the rooms, smash out the glass if you must, and throw down whatever you can find below. We’ll hold as best we can. This is all my fault.”

“No, it is mine, too,” Elinor said. “I baited him on our way back from Eilean Glan. I knew what I was doing.”

But it was also Merida’s fault, she thought. For making a plan with Wolftail, leaping into it, and then never really intending to follow through, because her eyes were fixed upon changing her family. Probably she could have been using those times to make friends with powerful allies instead. Being a little more like her mother and less like the girl she had always been.