Elinor pretended none of this had happened. She just said, “Leezie, are you taking some air with us as well? We’re going to the wall.”
Leezie was lying on her stomach in a slovenly way, dress dangerously close to the hearth, slowly turning the pages in a book Elinor had pressed flowers in and studying each page. Her hair was curled prettily all around her face from where she’d splashed water on it. Every so often she reached to take a honey-covered almond from a tray beside her, licking her fingertips after each one. Merida had never seen someone who looked less likely to go on a walk.
Leezie said, “Take my spirit with you; she’s all that has energy. Tell me how many doves you see between you and the moon, though. I need it for my records.”
They did not take Leezie’s spirit, but they did take some warm spiced bread from the kitchen on their way out. Merida held hers to her cheek as they headed out. Ila cupped hers in her hands. Elinor tore hers into small pieces and ate it on their way to the guard tower that offered access to the top of the wall.
“Spring is finally here after all,” Elinor said, gazing out as they emerged at the top of the stairs. This was less a remark on the chill, which was still quite present, and more on the light, which remained even this late in the day. The brief winter days were slowly stretching into the lovely eternal, elastic things they’d become by midsummer, and it felt nice, like being given more time overall. “I always manage to forget how good the view is from up here.”
The wall, which partially surrounded the accessible side of DunBroch, had been built by long-ago defenders to repel long-ago invaders, and all along it was a high protected walkway meant to be patrolled by guards. Now it was more often patrolled by red squirrels and stoats. And Elinor. When the weather was kind (meaning the wind was not so vigorous that one would be knocked askew), Elinor walked the wall to “take some air.” Elinor’s mother had died of some illness that had come about from not taking air, apparently, and so Elinor took literal steps to avoid the same fate.
She used to insist the triplets come as well, but they groaned so much about the length of the walk that she eventually gave in. It was true that once you began, you were somewhat of a prisoner of the walkway. There were guard towers every hundred yards or so, but they had not been cleaned out in decades, so the stairs inside them were masses of brambles and bracken and the creatures that lived in brambles and bracken. Only one tower at each end was kept tidy enough for human passage.
“This weather will be very good for journeying,” Ila said. She was still holding her bread, uneaten. Merida squished hers into different shapes. Aileen would have been annoyed that she wasn’t enjoying how light and airy she’d managed to make the buns, but Merida preferred these spiced ones when they were gummy and dense.
“Yes, you will have a good time, I think,” Elinor said.
Merida walked on for several yards before the phrasing of this struck her. “I’ll have a good time?”
Elinor inhaled deeply, taking in the earthy scent of the wall, which was all moss and soaked ivy. “Yes, I think so.”
Merida repeated, tone a little more dangerous, “I’ll have a good time? You’re going, too.”
Elinor’s tone was precisely the same as she continued strolling. “I know you heard us discussing this. Your father and I decided that one of us needs to stay behind to run all the affairs of the kingdom; it’s just too busy a season to delegate to someone else for that amount of time.”
This was a trick, Merida knew, just as clever as one of the Cailleach’s. “I definitely did not. You knew it was going to be this season when you agreed!”
“I was hopeful,” Elinor said. “Optimistic, really. But then reality set in.”
“Perhaps, ma’am, you could go and the king could stay,” Ila said. “I would watch your things for you.”
Elinor laughed gently and hooked her elbow in Ila’s as they walked. “That’s very kind of you, Ila. But the king loves Kinlochy and I wouldn’t take this trip from him.”
This was what Elinor always did. She always made it sound inevitable. Merida should have remembered what happened with the Spain trip. Instead she’d been thinking of the last trip she’d taken with her mother, to the shielings.
The trip had happened quite a while ago, when she was about the same age as the triplets were now. Merida had spent plenty of time riding in the countryside, but none living in it. She didn’t know anything about the subjects her parents ruled: the crofters, the fishermen, the dairymen, and the weavers. Back then, Merida had thought perhaps everyone lived in a castle. She’d never seen anything else, and for all she knew, everyone who worked in and around the castle went back to their own castles.
But one spring, Elinor had told Merida it was time for her to see what a queen’s job was. She packed for an extended journey, and then they went on the first trip Merida had ever been on. It was wonderful.
The shielings were seasonal. Every fall, the crofters moved their cattle to the richer lowland pastures near the village, and over the winter, the cattle nibbled them to nubbins. In spring, the crofters drove the skinny cows up to the shielings, the sloping mountain pastures, so that the lowland pastures could recover.
It wasn’t just a place. It was a way of living. All through the warmer months, families lived in simple summer bothies with just bundles of heather as beds, and they ate oatmeal and cheese and butter and milk from the cows they watched, and they sang songs and traded stories under the stars. It was the very best of a simple life, and it was very different from the very best of castle life.
Merida flourished. Her hair never had to be tied away under wimple and veil. Every day was different. She was never asked to perform or pretend to be someone she wasn’t.
But, even more astonishingly, Elinor flourished. Elinor—delicate, cultured Elinor, so suited to all things royal—was a force of nature there among the bothies. Merida had never seen her so powerful as she was that summer, even in her plainest tunic and her hair knotted messily to keep it away from the butter she churned alongside the other women. All day long, no matter where she was, people came to Elinor for advice, and for plans, and to settle arguments. She never gave orders, but because she was so clever and fair, she ended up ruling the bothies anyway—not because she was their queen by name, but because she always knew how to set things right.
Merida had never thought she was much like her mother, but that summer, she’d never wanted to be like her so badly.
And part of Merida had hoped the trip to Kinlochy might feel the same.
But, walking along the wall with her mother, she realized she’d forgotten how just Elinor had come to mean never leaving DunBroch. She wheedled, “Mum! Please come!”
Ila spoke up in her dainty tone, “You said I did a very good job, ma’am. You said I made it easy to imagine being able to nip away, don’t you remember?”
Exchanging a look with Ila, Merida saw that her expression was conspiratorial. She was on Merida’s side. She added, “It’s only a few weeks!”
“If Aileen’s not cooking for the whole family, she’ll have time to help with the rest of the castle, too,” Ila pitched in.
Elinor gazed out over the darkening landscape. From here there was a good view of the loch, and it was golden and illuminated in the low light. There were a few swans still left, and they glided like dark dragons across the glinting water. Somewhere close by a fox barked. “This just isn’t the right time, girls.”
Merida burst out, “You always do this! You always wiggle out of it!”
“Don’t be mercurial,” Elinor replied, not raising her voice. They hadn’t fought for years and she wasn’t about to start now. “Look, there, two doves for Leezie. Don’t forget to tell her.”