“I’m going alone, Mum,” Merida insisted.
“All the more reason to take Leezie,” Elinor said, adding ominously, “A princess should not travel alone.”
As a princess who had been traveling alone for much of the year, Merida resented this sentiment. Not only would Leezie not offer much in the way of protection if danger came about, but she certainly wouldn’t provide an obstacle to Merida’s amorously entertaining a suitor, either, since she was easily distracted. Surely Elinor was well aware of both of these facts. Moreover, the last thing she wanted to do was take Leezie along on a trip to bear witness to destruction. She would have to invent an excuse for visiting a ruined place without mentioning the bargain, and she was already tired of lying.
But Merida understood the true nature of Elinor’s request immediately after her mother pushed Leezie into the courtyard. Leezie’s lovely face was tear-streaked and puffy, and she looked, as ever, like she needed help. It was clear she’d been crying for a good long time. She had made herself a wreath of fragrant leafy bog myrtle and bright pink campion, and two branches were drooping on either side of her face, like the wreath was crying, too.
“Have a good time,” Elinor said, and closed the door behind her, leaving the two girls alone in the sunshine.
“Leezie, why are you crying now?” Merida asked, tucking the loose branches back into the wreath.
“That would spoil it. As soon as you say why you’re crying, you always stop,” Leezie replied, but she sounded cheerful about it. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Oh, hello, Brother, are you coming inside?”
This was directed at Feradach, who had stepped into view the moment Elinor had shut the door. His fingers strayed over his head and face, subtly feeling for his own appearance. He said in a very clear voice, for Merida’s benefit, “This particular monk is accompanying the princess on a walk.”
“Oh, good,” Leezie said. “Three is a much luckier number. Are we going far?”
Feradach looked at her curiously. This was a common effect Leezie had on people. Merida wondered if he’d ever seen anyone like Leezie Muireall in his long, strange existence. She wondered if he’d killed anyone like her.
Feradach said, “Not far at all.”
She didn’t ask where they were going, which was good, because Merida didn’t know. Somewhere Feradach had ruined.
The only thing was: it didn’t seem very ruined, once they got there.
Keithneil was a perfectly lovely little village arrayed on the banks of an idyllic wide river. Modest timber homes with neat new thatch roofs lined a center street busy with chickens and children. Long-horned, hairy cattle chewed early spring grass. Kittens swatted new spring flowers. The clouds were high and airy and white in the deep blue; the river reflected them beautifully. It was within several hours’ easy walking distance of DunBroch, but Merida had never been there. There was no reason for her to have visited. It was just an ordinary, peaceful little village. If there was anything remarkable about it, it was that it was so unremarkable, with no overt signs of hardship or illness.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Merida asked dubiously.
“This is the right place,” Feradach replied.
“It’s so pretty; I could just eat it,” Leezie said, snuffling and wiping her nose with her sleeve again. It was a habit that would’ve gotten Merida chastised, but Elinor let Leezie get away with it because, she said, Some habits are hard to break. “Is that the town name? What’s it say?”
Leezie gestured to a stone that rested at the edge of the village; it had a word carved into it. Her mouth sounded the letters out, but she didn’t attempt it aloud.
“Keithneil,” Merida read, knowing even as she did that she was doing what everyone did: seeing Leezie being helpless and helping her. “You know what, Leezie, you really should let Mum teach you to read. You could probably catch a better fish than the Cabbage if you knew how.”
Leezie’s eyes and nose immediately turned red at the mention of the Cabbage, but her voice was completely cheerful as she remarked, “Ila’s been teaching me to read…the clouds! Those stringy clouds there that point at the trees mean that luck is coming for fishermen. Or for fish. I can’t remember if they…” She turned her head sideways to look quite suddenly and alertly at Feradach. “Your gloves are very elegant with their red stitches! But they don’t match your robes at all—they aren’t very monkish.”
“The gloves were a gift,” Feradach said, same as he had said to Elinor about the hat Merida hadn’t been able to see.
Leezie smiled at him. Her tears-to-cheer ratio was improving. “I fancy them a lot.”
“Thank you,” Feradach replied gravely.
Feradach had avoided conversation with them during the walk to Keithneil, which suited Merida at first. But as they walked together on the worn track through the hills and fields, the silence eventually grew so deep that it became like a fourth party on the trip. Merida, Leezie, Feradach, the Odious Silence, four walking companions. If the silence had been radiating from one of the triplets or her parents, Merida would have assumed it meant their feelings were very hurt indeed and a sulk was in progress. But that was such a mortal, small reaction that Merida thought she had to be mistaken. Surely a god could not be that deeply wounded by a single human’s distaste for him.
She saw that he was glancing at her now, however, and as she tried to interpret the meaning of this look, it occurred to her that Leezie was talking about the same gloves that she could see. Even though he wore a different face for her, the gloves stayed the same. Choosing her words carefully to avoid mentioning magic, she asked, “Do you always wear those gloves, no matter whose company you’re in?”
Feradach seemed to have been waiting for her to speak to him, because he replied nearly before she was done asking the question. “Yes. No matter what, they are always there.”
“They must be very precious to you,” Leezie said. Merida could tell she liked the idea of this; she sensed a romantic story for this monk. “Who gave them to you?”
“I’m afraid the name would mean nothing to you,” Feradach replied. “I’m sorry.”
“She doesn’t want information,” Merida told him. “She just wants the juicy story.”
Leezie smiled breezily, looking pretty and helpless and appealing against the roses that grew around Keithneil’s marker stone. Merida wasn’t sure if this effect would work as well on a god as on mere mortals, but it must have, because Feradach said, “The story is a simple one, I’m afraid. I wanted something to cover my hands always, no matter the season, but there were no gloves that could do the job. A long time ago I met a man who had a special skill, and he said he thought he could manage the task. He made them for me and they have covered my hands ever since.”
He did not tell her why he wanted to have his hands always covered, and Leezie, to Merida’s great relief, didn’t ask. But Leezie did ask, “Does he still make them?”
Feradach folded his gloves tightly in each other. “He died shortly after he made them for me.”
There was a silence after the end of the sentence and Merida filled in the blank in her head: Feradach had killed the glove maker. It seemed obvious from the weight of the silence. From the way Feradach just stepped off and ended the story without any further niceties.
“I spoiled the story,” Leezie told Merida, “by asking for the end that came after the end. Never ask the minstrel what happened after the song ends, that’s what I’ve learned.” She looked suspiciously watery-eyed again.
“Is all this crying because you’ve changed your mind about the Cabbage?” Merida asked.
“Oh, no,” Leezie said. “It’s because I’m so sad I almost married him.”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I nearly did.”