Footsteps crunched on the brittle rushes by her head.
The stranger stood inches away, looking down at her where she lay on her stomach, completely robbed of any royal dignity she may have possessed before. “Just when I think I understand mortals. What do you want out of this?”
Mortal! It was shocking to hear him say it, even though she already knew after this chase that he was no ordinary human.
She licked her frozen lips to warm them just enough to speak. Her voice sounded thin as ice as she said, “I demand an answer. I caught you.”
He said, “You haven’t caught me.”
Merida reached out to snatch his ankle.
The stranger recoiled.
Not the calculated move of someone avoiding capture, but rather the involuntary jerk of someone leaping back from an adder. Stiffly, he said, “I don’t think you’d like that, Princess.”
Princess! It was as shocking to hear this as mortal.
“Why not?” she asked. She got to her feet, slower than she would have liked. Her bare feet were still completely numb, and a bit of a worrisome color. “Or is that another question you won’t have an answer for? Are you only a thing that runs away?”
“How do you know you want answers?” he shot back. “How do you know you want your prey? Are you only a thing that gives chase?”
“More questions? And still no answers,” Merida said, but as she did, she wondered if perhaps he couldn’t answer. Magic was funny that way, sometimes, according to some of the women she’d met at the shielings. Around the fires at night, they’d told her many half-believed stories about the fey beasts and uncanny entities that roamed their kingdom. In these legends, the magical creatures often had limits upon them, especially the human-shaped ones. They could speak, but they could only repeat what humans said to them, or they were extremely beautiful, except for an ugly rat’s tail, or they couldn’t touch water or sunlight lest they turn to dust. There were always consequences to appearing human. Maybe he was magically forbidden to confess his purpose. Or perhaps he had none. She mused, “Perhaps you’re just a bogle playing silly tricks.”
“You think I’m a bogle?” he replied, in disbelief.
“Or a pooka,” she suggested.
“A pooka?”
She could tell this needled him, so she went on. “A brag, a shellycoat.” She was running out of creatures who sometimes took human form. Her teeth were starting to chatter. “A…a…hobgoblin.”
His mouth puckered. “You want an answer. Here is an answer.”
She was mystified when he followed this statement by showing her his hands. They were covered by wonderfully made gloves, thin and supple as a second skin, stitched with oxblood thread.
He began to take one off now. Slowly. Dramatically. She was reminded that he’d been in the process of removing his gloves when she first saw him.
“Don’t look away, Princess,” he ordered. With his newly bare hand, he seized the narrow trunk of a sapling close to him. Skin to trunk, fingers immediately pinking in the bitter cold. He squeezed tight.
Merida just had time to think, Wait, maybe I didn’t want an answer, and then a sharp wind shouldered past her.
It was clearly on its way to the sapling.
Spiky white frost prickled up from the ground like colorless weeds. Frost wasn’t supposed to appear that quickly, but this frost did—only around the tree. Ice scoured the tender bark. And, worst of all, a wretched, wild dread surrounded them all.
Magic, magic, magic.
The sapling began to die.
The bark went dull, then dry, then colorless as every bit of green life went from deep within it. The very ends of its branches seemed shrunk in on themselves.
Merida could tell that if she put any pressure on the narrow trunk, it would simply snap.
The sapling was dead.
The frost vanished. The harsh wind subsided. The dread remained.
The stranger tugged his glove back on, his gaze fixed knowingly on Merida all the while.
Magic, magic, magic.
Oh no, Merida thought, but she didn’t even quite know why. She fought back her shivers. She did not want to appear to be afraid, even though she was. Oh no, oh no.
The stranger drew himself up. All the tentative bemusement had gone from his voice as he said, “I am not a bogle or a hobgoblin or a pooka or a brag. I am Feradach, and I am here to ruin DunBroch. I come where there is rot, and I dig it out so that the world can begin again. I ruin that which has fallen into stagnation to clear the way for new growth. I strip the ground and the bones down to new bare earth so the Cailleach can do her work of renewal. Do you understand?”
She did and she didn’t. The part of her that was tuned to the uncanny prickling of magic seemed to understand it perfectly. It was her more ordinary human side that couldn’t accept what he was saying. No one had threatened DunBroch in years. Danger was a thing Merida had to travel to find, not a thing that came to her home.
“DunBroch is rotten,” Feradach said.
“You’re—you’re mistaken.”
Feradach gestured over his shoulder. From where they were, DunBroch was just visible, silhouetted on the rocky outcrop. The night and the distance erased all its finer points, so all that was truly visible was its tattered banners, the sagging roofs, the crumbling battlements. She saw it through a stranger’s eyes. Through Feradach’s eyes. It looked like a ruin already.
“Ah, but that’s not the truth of it,” Merida protested uneasily. “It just needs a bit of love, is all. Dad’s said he’s going to work on those roofs once the weather’s good and warm, and Mum’ll fix the banners when the rains come and we can’t do any more planting outside. And anyway, that’s just a building. The people—well, the triplets are growing like horses. Leezie’s getting married. Those are big changes.”
“Change isn’t about getting taller or changing the roof over your head. Change happens in your heart, in your way of thinking, of moving in the world. And if it were present at DunBroch, I wouldn’t be called here. Moth to flame, osprey to water, salmon to birthplace; they have their nature, I have my nature.”
“You’re mistaken,” Merida said again.
“I cannot make mistakes.” He added, dismissively, “Anyway, look at you.”
“Me?”
“You’re the daughter of kings, the daughter of queens. Is this all you think you were made for?”
Merida sputtered, “I’ve been doing things for months! You have no idea—”
“Up to the shielings with the crofters. Reading with the sisters at Morventon. Riding with the mapmakers,” Feradach said. His tone was patient. “Yes, I know about all that. How are you any different than when you began? Before you left, you were a person who would do those things. Now that you are back, you are a person who has done those things. You would do them again. What mark has been left on your heart or in the world from the doing of them? You have been learning new skills and riding horses here and there for your entire life.” He shrugged. “Some storms make a lot of noise but move no rooftops.”
Merida opened her mouth. She closed it. It was the first time in her life anyone had ever said something like that to her. In fact, people were usually saying the opposite, that she was moving too fast, asking for things to shift too much.
“This country has lain fallow for too long now,” Feradach said. “It is time for a new generation to have its chance. Nothing can stop me now that I am here.”
They both looked at the dead, dead sapling between them. She wanted to deny all of it again, but hadn’t she just been thinking that she felt exactly the same as before she’d left?