And just a little while later, the family DunBroch were riding out into the frigid, windy winter night with much festivity, as if they hadn’t just been tousling with a warlord’s henchmen. The horses had been decked with all the bells and boughs that could be scavenged from the destroyed decorations in the castle, and with every step they took, they jingled and pealed. Pack ponies ambled behind them with laden baskets slung over their withers. The triplets sang carols as they rode on their matching geldings, for once using their energy to harmonize beautifully instead of cause chaos. Fergus had even allowed Leezie to quickly braid holly stalks with the pokiest bits trimmed off into his beard, and the berries gleamed red-red-red against his russet beard. (“The berries represent good fortune for the season,” Leezie had told him. “Do they now?” Fergus asked. “Probably,” she replied.) On all sides, Fergus’s men-at-arms carried torches and lanterns that lit the night.
They were taking the Christmas feast to the blackhouse village. All the potential partygoers had fled from the potential trouble the Dásachtach’s men represented, and now the king and the queen were going to reassure their subjects the danger had passed and make sure they still got the celebration they’d been looking forward to.
Merida couldn’t believe how different the night felt from just an hour before; she couldn’t believe how different it felt from the night twenty-four hours before. There was no wild fear or catastrophe threading this chilly blackness. Instead it was an intimate, convivial party bolstered against the cold.
As they rode, Elinor came alongside Merida and said, “My brave, hot-tempered Merida. What a wild plan. You will not have to go live in those places, though. Your father and I will come up with a solution for this bully before that.”
Merida basked in her mother’s words and wished she believed them.
“Ardbarrach,” Fergus said, riding his big warhorse Sirist up alongside them both, the breastplate jingling merrily. “That’s my suggestion. It’s just a day’s ride. Colban was trained there and he’d be happy to go back for a little visit. They run a tight ship, Ardbarrach does, and they’d be proud to show you how they do things. You can nip over there even before the weather turns if you’re crafty about it, give you something to do in these dark months.”
Good, Merida thought. The sooner this got underway, the better.
“I was thinking of taking a triplet along with me,” she said. “You know, get one of them out of your hair for a bit.”
Elinor glanced over at the triplets, who managed to jostle their horses against one another even as they sang in harmony. “A kind thought! Hubert would like Ardbarrach.”
“Yes he would,” boomed Fergus. “What about Caithness for the next?”
“Oh, no,” Elinor said, “Caithness is so backward. What about Kinlochy?”
“Oh, Kinlochy!” Fergus sang the word. “Fair Kinlochy town, how I miss thee, many a month, it’s been since I’ve seen—They have that handsome fella just about Merida’s age. Would make a fine match!”
“Fergus,” Elinor admonished.
“I’ll pretend he didn’t say that part,” Merida said. “Is it far?”
“A few days, but this big father of yours would be glad to escort you on the journey to grand old Kinlochy to see old friends,” Fergus said.
That was exactly what Merida wanted to hear. “And where for the third trip, then?”
Fergus and Elinor batted words back and forth. Strathclyde? Carrick? Buchan? Fife? Lennox? Mull?
Merida could tell they were getting into the fun of it, imagining the shape of all these possible trips. She knew better, too, than to expect them to follow through with their enthusiasm. That was all right, though. That was her job. All she needed at first was their cooperation.
“What about Eilean Glan?” asked Fergus.
Elinor went very still.
For a few strides, she was a carved statue of a queen, face unmoving. Merida stared at her, because it had been a very long time since she had seen her mother completely unable to put together a composed reply. Eilean Glan. The clear island. Merida had never heard of it before, but it clearly meant something to her mother.
“We don’t have to decide tonight,” Elinor said eventually, and then, after another long pause, found her gentle smile again. “Your quick thinking served us well, Merida. And yours too, my big bear.” She patted Fergus’s arm. “The Clan DunBroch! I am glad we are still sharing our good fortune and cheer.”
Without another word, she steered her horse away to the triplets. Merida heard her voice rise to join their harmony, and they kept it up right as they rode into the blackhouse village. The horses towered in comparison to the low stone buildings hunkered against the hills. It seemed quite abandoned, every tiny window and door shuttered tightly against the wind, but Fergus laughed his huge laugh, full of the joy of riding out with his family and the holiday, despite everything, and bellowed into the cold air, “Come out for your gifts, come out for your gifts!”
The villagers slowly began to emerge. Initially they appeared with weapons in hand—so Wolftail had been here first, Merida thought—and then, as they realized it was the family DunBroch, with babies in arms instead.
“Sorry for the scare,” Elinor gently told mothers as she handed out cakes and meat from the baskets.
“Thank you for your service,” Fergus roared at fathers, handing out oats and salt and candles.
“These are my favorite,” Merida added, giving the children some of Aileen’s ginger biscuits. “They bite you back.”
Through it all, the triplets kept singing lustily as they threw candies at other boys, and eventually the villagers joined in, too, with the familiar old songs. As the stars shone hard and cold above, Gille Peter and the others put out wood and set the big Christmas bonfire alight at the end of the main street. They’d brought enough timber to burn a bonfire straight through to the late winter dawn, and soon, dozens of people were gathered around it, singing and laughing, voices raised high and joyful, all of it a bulwark against the dark and cold and loneliness and violence.
Magic, magic, magic.
A very different type of magic than the Cailleach’s or Feradach’s. A magic that Merida liked an awful lot. The mundane, generous magic of her family.
She liked them an awful lot.
For all her complaining and frustration, they were still the marvelous family DunBroch, with all their messy and passionate affection for each other and the world. Three journeys to strange places? Merida would do three hundred journeys if that was what it took to save them.
As they gathered around the equitable Christmas bonfire as usual, the experience changed only by the location, she wondered at how, in the year to come, she would know the difference between stagnation and tradition. Was it possible to change the parts that were bad and keep the parts that weren’t? Was she in danger of losing moments like this by putting her family on a different path?
But in truth, any fear she felt about the future was feeble before the roaring bonfire and roaring voices. Uncertainty was burned to bits, drowned out by harmony.
That was the point of this celebration, wasn’t it?
Hope.
“I THINK we should make the Ardbarrach trip a Hogmanay visit,” Merida announced the following morning, over a breakfast of yet more canceled-wedding buns. Elinor was writing away in her little journal while the triplets threw sticks into the smoky fire to make it smoke even more. Merida hadn’t slept a wink all night with the two bargains hanging over her and she was determined to get started on the plan as quickly as possible. “We can be mummers!”
She would have been annoyed to give up Hogmanay for anything less important than this. Hogmanay in DunBroch was a splendid time, a noisy end to the Yule season. Like Christmas, Hogmanay sometimes involved presents, but it also involved balls of things set on fire and mummers dressing in heavy masks or donning antlers and blowing bull horns and springing suddenly out at doorsteps singing songs and asking for money for the poor or food for their supper. Some people preferred Hogmanay to Christmas Day, especially the sort of people who liked other people jumping out at them and saying oodley-oodley-oodley.
“Yes!” said Hubert. He was often the person jumping out and saying oodley-oodley-oodley.