Bravely(86)

“Run away and never come back,” Fergus called out to the Madman. “Because you told us to make friends with the neighbors, and we did, and none of us like you.”

“If you never look our direction again,” said Elinor, “we will never look yours.”

“And perhaps one day we’ll meet again,” Harris hissed to the Dásachtach, and there was that strange old glint in his expression.

“Merida!” Leezie said, grabbing her arm, getting her attention. She was disheveled and pretty in the morning light, but for once, she didn’t look like she needed help. She said, “Feradach.”

Merida followed her gaze. Leezie was pointing to the woods. Brionn stood at the edge of them, tail up and fringey. Just behind him was a blue glowing orb, slowly fading to nothing in the morning light.

For the final time that year, Merida set off in pursuit of a god.





SHE found him at the pools. There was a good view of the castle from here, so it made sense. He stood there by the waterfall looking out at it with his mane of blond hair, his kind face.

“Feradach!” Merida shouted.

“You’re an impossible person,” Feradach said. “You’re always chasing.”

She tried to catch her breath; gave up. “I heard what you said. I heard the bargain you made. Is it true?”

“I wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t true. I have only ever said things I think are true.” When she didn’t say anything, he added quickly, “Do not mock me for what I said, Merida of DunBroch. I couldn’t bear it.”

“I wasn’t going to mock you,” Merida said. She didn’t want to mock him. She wanted to say earnest things to him, the sort of silly things Leezie talked about, things about love. She didn’t know how to, though. She couldn’t say them, only feel them. “You don’t have to go. Or rather, you could come back. I know you can’t stop doing what you do. This doesn’t have to be goodbye.”

“I would only be drawn here if there was stagnation,” Feradach said. “And you would not want that.”

“Then I could go to you,” Merida said. “I could seek out places that need it, and maybe see you there.”

“Is that what you want from your life?” Feradach asked. “To do as I do, to always be following your feet to places that are about to be swept away? That are at the ends of their lives? To ride all over this country looking for the worst of it?”

“Don’t you want to be known?”

She saw from his face that he did want it. He wanted it very much.

And she wanted to know him. She knew Feradach the god now, but she wanted to know who he was, and who he would become, if he got to be known by at least one other person in the world.

“What a life that would be for you,” Feradach said. “Chasing me forever. What a life that would be for me. Being caught again and again by a mortal. You are an impossible person.”

“I wouldn’t just be catching you,” Merida said. “I could also be ganging up on you. I think the Cailleach would be happy to use me to trick you to save a few people here and there, and I don’t think I’d mind that. If you wouldn’t mind losing some more.”

“The balance was corrected. I didn’t lose at all.”

Merida thought about what the next year would look like. Preparing for another year of journeying, adventuring far and wide on her irascible Midge. She knew she could do it, because she already had done it. And as soon as that thought crossed her mind, the uneasiness that she’d been feeling earlier congealed into an obvious and unsightly blob. She said, “Was the balance corrected? I was thinking about it, and that was the biggest cheat of them all, isn’t it? The Cailleach let you get away with it, who knows how she did, but you must have known. You just didn’t say, because you were biased, too. You were both biased. But there was one person who didn’t change at DunBroch, wasn’t there?”

Feradach didn’t answer, so she knew she was right.

“At the beginning of all this, I was so busy, all the time,” Merida said. “I traveled all over. And then I spent all my time this last year trying to get everyone else to change, and I didn’t think a bit about what I was going to do with myself when it was all over. I just lived for other people this whole year, and that’s okay, that’s what it took, but I look at myself after all the things I’ve learned and I know I’m just the same old me.”

“It doesn’t matter now, though,” Feradach said. “You have time to figure it out.”

“I’ve had time,” Merida replied. “I’ve had lots of time. I can feel how I want to stay the same, though. All my ideas are the same ideas I’ve already had. I’m a storm moving no roofs.”

He recognized his own words at once. “That was very cruel of me to say.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Merida said. “Or at least, it wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t changing. I still haven’t. I don’t really know how, still.”

Feradach’s gloved hands were in loose fists now.

“Which means I need your help,” Merida said.

She gestured to his glove.

Feradach jerked his hand back.

“I’m not afraid,” Merida said. She had seen all the ways his destruction could manifest, when he was the one choosing it. Sometimes it was the terrible fire, like at Kinlochy, but sometimes it was the flood, or the broken hand of a harper. She knew it was going to hurt, but she knew it would be fair. She knew in the end, she’d be like the scholar, like the harper. She would be a better version of herself. “Please.”