Merida thought to herself that Hamish was actually much braver than she was. She did wild things all the time, but she wasn’t afraid before she did them. Hamish was terrified to do almost everything, and he did a lot of things anyway.
She wished she could believe that playing for these people would change him. Convince him to not be afraid on the other side of it, since nothing bad happened to him during it. But then the tune came to an end and it was as if the music itself had propped him up. Hamish shrank back down into his usual shy self and handed the lute back. His eyes dropped away from everyone and he did his very, very best to disappear.
Merida had no idea what it would take to change him.
IT WAS funny for Merida to see Fergus get excited as they grew close to Kinlochy. He began to point out landmarks and wave his arms and tell fragments of memories that trailed off as he realized the group he was traveling with hadn’t been there for them and that it would require rather a lot of work to put them in context. He seemed rather like Hubert when he was like this, scattered and enthusiastic, too happy to focus. Well, rather like the old Hubert, pre-Ardbarrach, the Hubert she used to think would grow up to be like Fergus, big as a house, with his big Norseman hair and big Norseman beard. She had no idea what he would turn into now, with his hair shorn short and his blue beads abandoned beside his bed.
“Kinlochy!” shouted Fergus with enthusiasm as they rode into the town.
They arrived at the outskirts of Kinlochy just as the long, long day was coming to a close. The brief night seemed even less convincing here than it was at DunBroch, however, because Kinlochy was a kingdom on the sea and the sun lasted forever out there over the ocean. “Night” was simply a gray-brown version of day. Even though Merida couldn’t see the ocean, she could smell it, that clean, fishy scent, and she could see it in the sky. Skies right by the ocean always had that strange, open look to them, as if the light was coming from all directions and the clouds couldn’t be bothered to remember which way was down.
Merida was relieved to find that the town of Kinlochy was nothing like Ardbarrach. It had an altogether less strict look to it. Its partial wall was in fine shape but was clearly from an era long ago, from when the Romans had pressed as far north as they could before receding, leaving behind only odd names. The buildings inside the wall looked modern and productive to Merida’s eye: shops and factories, places to buy things and places to make things, places to put things into carts and take them to other towns and places to unload carts from other towns. Signs and banners hung from all the gray stone buildings, showing and describing the jobs each did. An elegant, expensive tower dominated the town; the winding main street led to its silhouette by the seaside. The amount of prosperous trade that must have happened to build a town of this size dazzled Merida’s imagination.
It all was quite lovely. Peaceful.
As they rode toward the tower, Merida tried to imagine herself living in a place like this. What were the people like? So far, they hadn’t encountered anyone.
“The mead they have here,” Fergus roared to his children. “There’s a thing called Kinlochy ale, but it’s mostly eggs. It’ll put hair on your chest. Well, hair on your heads.”
Their horses’ hooves clopped across the cobblestones, echoing against the buildings assembled close to the road. Brionn ran busily up and back in front of them, sniffing away, tail high.
They still hadn’t seen a single person. Was it because it was late? At DunBroch, when the summer sun stayed up late, so did the people. Perhaps here they kept to a better schedule and slept when they ought to, instead. The houses they passed did have their shutters closed, after all.
Fergus’s voice bounced back at them in the empty streets, but he kept talking louder and louder, as if he could drown out the echo. “And Hamish, you’ll love the music here. We once had a Kinlochy group out to DunBroch. You wouldn’t remember it because you were just a little midge when we had them, but—”
“A harpist,” Hamish said, without hesitation, “with a long pointy beard. And those three pipers. That musician with the lute with two necks that he played at the same time.”
“By the Cailleach, however do you remember that? You would’ve been just an egg!”
Hamish never forgot something that had to do with music.
Where was the Kinlochy music now? There was no sound at all, apart from the cry of seabirds as they finally rode right up to the tower. It was an impressive shape against the ocean-shimmery sky above it, gulls white and buoyant around it. The tower seemed to be silently watching them approach.
“This is quite something,” Fergus said, as soft as he ever said anything, his bluster quieted by the hush of the streets they’d come through.
The door to the tower hung open a little. Not propped, just hanging.
Fergus slid off Sirist and walked up to it. He called out and then, after a moment, pushed the door further open.
Merida caught her breath, wondering what was on the other side.
But it was just a man and a woman, half asleep in chairs just inside the door. They were dressed in the luxurious apparel Merida would have expected for a place like this. The man had little gold threads woven through his beard. The woman had a web of pearls netted over her hair. But they were both sitting quite lazily, and they didn’t straighten when they saw they were observed.
“Who’s there?” the woman asked in a sleepy way.
“Fergus of DunBroch, here to see his old friend Ronald of Kinlochy! Bang some pans and wake him up if you must!”
The woman just blinked at them. Without a lot of enthusiasm, she asked the man with the gold-threaded beard, “Do you know what he’s talking about?”
The man shook his head. He yawned, more uninterested in the chore of greeting people than even Leezie was in any of hers.
“On your feet, man!” Fergus bellowed. “Can’t you see we’ve come from DunBroch? Now, I’m not a boor, but I know what you’re meant to do, and you’re meant to tell your king when another king has arrived with half his progeny! Off you go!”
He said it all in his big voice with his big humor and it was the kind of thing that would ordinarily have made people laugh along with him and do what he asked. Another king would have been well within his rights to shout at these two for their insolence.
And maybe he should have, Merida thought. Because the man and the woman just regarded each other in a shrugging sort of way before eventually shambling deeper into the dim interior. They did it with so little urgency that it was hard to tell if they were going to do as Fergus had asked, or if they were merely leaving so he would stop asking them.
After they had gone, Merida said, “How rude!” even though rude wasn’t exactly the right word for it. “Was it…like this before?”
“The discipline was never very rigorous!” Fergus said, but he looked disgruntled. When he saw Hamish leaning his cheek drowsily against Humor’s mane, he added, “Don’t sleep yet. There’ll be celebration once we get to Ronald. That man can throw a feast like no one’s business. Every night is ridiculous with him and Caitrina. Swimming in mead. Singing until dawn. Sword fights on the tables. Performers from Spain.”
Time passed.
The town around them stayed quiet. The castle before them stayed quiet.
The horses began to fidget. Merida peered into the tower’s dim interior for any evidence that the man and woman were returning.
“Any sign of them, bear-maiden?” asked Fergus.
Merida shook her head.
As the gray-brown night crept around them and the silence only deepened, Merida and Hamish at last dismounted. Fergus took Hamish onto his shoulders.
Then they cautiously led the horses right into the castle.