This last bit was perhaps the biggest, boldest evidence that Fergus had changed. There was quite a bit of hunting at DunBroch. They hunted for food: rabbits, deer, grouse. They hunted for fur, and to cull the weasel population lest they devour all the eggs in the henhouses. They hunted for protection, against the wolves, on the years when the mercenaries didn’t come to collect money for pelts. They hunted for justice: a few years back, a man down in the village was accused of smashing his brother-in-law’s head in with a rock, which was not ideal, and then a few months later he stabbed a bunch of villagers with a sword and then ran off into the woods shouting that he was going to raise an army of fairies to kill everyone else, which was even less ideal, and finally the sister came to DunBroch in hopes of bringing him to heel. Fergus put together a hunting party of several hundred men and eventually the villain was found in the bracken and brought to trial.
But for the longest time, the most famous hunting at DunBroch was the Hunt for the Unnamed, an annual tradition that had dwindled only to memory over the past few years. Neighboring kings and their men arrived, and for one day and one night, they hunted through the forest with their dogs, crawling all over and making a huge racket. They never returned with a carcass. They returned, instead, with stories of the Unnamed. Each year it seemed to have grown. It was the size of a pony, then the size of a horse, then the size of an ox. It had ten points then twenty then forty. Its rack was like an oak tree’s branches spied over a hill. No animal had existed like this. How cunningly the stag had evaded them this time, jumping over a fence, a boulder, the moon.
It had taken Merida a bit of time to realize that they never intended to catch the stag. It was possible the stag didn’t even exist, as men had been holding the Hunt for the Unnamed ever since she was small, and surely the stag would be old and feeble by now, eating gruel and complaining about the days of its youth rather than leaping over moons. But it didn’t matter. The point was the hunt. The finding. Not the catching.
This year, Fergus had organized the Hunt for the Unnamed once again, to take place while Merida was on her own pursuit in search of her own unspeakable task.
This autumn season felt weightier than the others that had come before it, Merida thought. The gift of time the Cailleach had given her was running out; she’d been pouring and pouring that syrup onto her cake and now there was only a very little left.
In the castle’s newly renovated chapel, Merida prayed to Leezie’s little saint statue. Please let there be no disasters.
But she knew that wasn’t what she needed. That was just what she wanted.
She sighed and prayed for what she really needed out of the trip.
Please let this change them.
They set off into the wild.
Traveling with her mother was nothing like traveling with her father. Traveling with Fergus had been rough and ready, no expectations, no promises. No comforts, no delays.
Traveling with her mother was like traveling from one floor of DunBroch to another, like they had packed every bit of their lives back home to take with them. Courtly rules still applied. Merida’s hair still had to be up. Meals were taken on schedule. Prayers were performed as before. Harris had to spend part of the day in a cart in order to continue his schooling, even while on the move. Every village and croft they passed by was greeted and questioned as Elinor nodded and made little notes in her ledgers.
No wonder her mother had wanted to put it off. This was no lark. This was work like Merida had never seen before.
But, oh, the nights were wondrous. At night, the company pitched massive tents and lit huge fires to keep the animals away. Guards stood at the ready. Musicians rolled out their instruments. Bards began to recite. Elinor, queen of DunBroch, held court.
Even better than that, though, were the quiet hours that happened after the festivities, because that was when Elinor, Leezie, Harris, and Ila retreated into the large royal tent for drowsy, intimate conversation around candlelight. The subject matter ranged far and wide, unhindered by logic or duty because of the dwindling of the candle and the proximity to sleep.
It was several days into this journey that the topic of the Sight came up once more.
“As I said,” Elinor said, “there are two kinds of people. There are people who seek the magic, and people the magic seeks. Which are you?”
“The first, ma’am,” Ila said.
“The second,” Merida added.
“Me as well,” said Elinor.
“Neither,” Harris retorted. “I’m the kind of person who thinks this is a stupid conversation. I’m going to sit with the guards. I wish I’d stayed home.”
He stormed out, as much as one could storm out of a tent.
“Boys,” Elinor said, unbothered. “Leezie, surely you’re the first kind.”
“I wish I was the second,” Leezie said wistfully.
“Why?” Merida asked. “It seems much more fun to be a knight of magic than the rabbit the magic springs upon in the night.”
Leezie didn’t elaborate, though.
“You have to believe in yourself to be the first kind of person, ma’am,” Ila said. “You have to be powerful in the Sight, or you will just chase nonsense your whole life and it will ruin you and people will make fun of you and you will believe them. You have to decide for yourself what matters and what doesn’t, because there aren’t enough people like that to compare yourself to or talk to. The second type of person, the type the magic comes to, they aren’t necessarily powerful. They are just the recipients of power. They haven’t chosen anything. It’s chosen them.”
This was the longest speech Merida had ever heard Ila make. She delivered it in a very matter-of-fact way, with no self-consciousness, as self-possessed and elegant a little girl in a candlelit tent as she was in the castle. For the first time, Merida truly believed that Leezie was right: Ila did have the Sight.
“When you say it that way,” Elinor said, with a gentle laugh. “I wish I was the first type of person! Leezie, why are you wishing you were something else, that’s Merida’s job.”
“Hey!” said Merida.
“It’s easy for you to say you wish you were the first kind of person, the person who has to be powerful,” Leezie said. “Look at all you do. All this tent, these people, this travel, that’s what you do when you do a thing. You’re always powerful. I’m just, just Leezie. I chase nonsense all the time.”
Merida leaned on Leezie’s shoulder. “Nonsense and cabbage.”
“Merida,” chided Elinor, but Leezie gave a watery giggle and punched Merida gently in the arm.
The candle was guttering down. The conversation was running out in the way it does when it gets too late or too serious.
“You know you have it,” Ila said eventually. “You know you do, Leezie Muireall. You told me your mum had it and you know you have it, too. Aren’t we all a lot like our mums here in this room?”
There was a deep silence. Merida was not sure this was at all true. Elinor didn’t sound like she thought so either when she said briskly, “All right, girls, that’s time for sleep, I think. If we go on like this we’ll be up all night, and we have an early morning. Off to your tents.”
Merida and Leezie nipped off to theirs, pattering quickly around the dying embers of the fire that had cooked their dinner, lifting the heavy flap of their tent, and getting into their bedrolls after checking to make sure no other creatures of Scotland had gotten into them first. They were far more comfortable than any bedrolls Merida ever traveled with because of the heather mattress Elinor had packed to go beneath each. It would have never occurred to Merida to make room for such a thing during her travels.
In the dark, Merida said, “Do you think it’s true, what Ila said, that you’re like your mum?”
Leezie didn’t answer right away, and Merida wasn’t sure if this was because she had fallen asleep, or because she didn’t know, or because if it was too difficult to talk about. Leezie’s mother had been dead only five years, which felt like both a long and a short time. Merida had never known her; they came from different worlds. Leezie had lived an entire childhood down in the blackhouse village before coming to work and live at DunBroch and managing to somehow become an honorary member of the family DunBroch along the way.
“I don’t know,” Leezie said at last. “People said she was a silly person. They say I’m a silly person, too, I think.”
“You are a little silly,” Merida said. “But in a Leezie way.”
“It’s the only way I am, so I don’t know any other way to be.”