“I’d been hoping to never come here again,” snarled Wolftail in his gravelly voice, and the rest of the pack watched him. “I have heard instead that your daughter is still here just as before, and rather than sending your remaining two sons to mac Alpin, you have kept them here.”
Merida had a good view of him, because she and the triplets all hid in the same place she’d hidden before to eavesdrop the Christmas before, on the balcony of the Great Hall. Elinor and Fergus looked very royal sat in their thrones with their guards arrayed to one side and Elinor’s neat foster girls arrayed to the other. It was pleasing, she had to admit, to see how much the Great Hall had improved. It looked much more impressive now. Much less like a place you could just come in and kick tables over and expect to get away with it. It looked like a place Mistress mac Lagan of Ardbarrach would find suitably royal.
“Then what you’ve heard is unfair,” Fergus rumbled. “My daughter visited Ardbarrach, Kinlochy, and Eilean Glan; even one of those journeys would have been impressive in the span of a year, much less three.”
“It was her proposal, not mine,” Wolftail said.
“Yes. And she fulfilled it. Moreover, you and I both know Kinlochy burned to the ground this year, so there was no way my daughter could have found a home there. One of my sons is fostering at Ardbarrach and is only home for the winter. And I’m quite sure you can see for yourself the many foster girls we have taken in from Eilean Glan.”
Elinor’s voice was very crisp. “If your master’s goal is uniting the kingdoms, we’ve more than done our duty. But if that was never his goal, now’s when we’ll find out.”
Wolftail said, “Of course that was his goal. What a thing to doubt.”
There was a heavy silence in the Great Hall, a silence Merida felt was punctuated by the memory of that burned-down town.
“Then I believe we can agree that my daughter’s work is done,” Elinor said.
“And DunBroch’s commitment is unquestioned and responsibility to your master complete,” added Fergus.
Wolftail licked his lips, and then he said, “Truly mac Alpin will be more than delighted to hear that he can rest easy this Yuletide. Will you introduce me to the fosters, and may I speak to your son about Ardbarrach, so that I can take this news back to him? And perhaps I can see all you have done to the grounds since last we came. Then I will return to him before the weather gets more poor.”
“Very well,” Elinor said. “We would be pleased to show you what we’ve accomplished.”
Up in the balcony, Hubert whispered, “That went well.”
Because it was Hubert, it was not much of a whisper at all, since even his whispers were quite loud, but it didn’t matter, as Wolftail had already been escorted from the Hall into the courtyard.
Merida was more relieved than she could say.
She didn’t know what she’d expected, but not this. She had had half a thought that the Dásachtach would have held a grudge for the way Elinor spoke to him outside the village, or been annoyed to not simply get the triplets sent to him as he asked.
But now it was over, and she could just worry about Harris.
“And now you get to show someone else your muscles,” Hamish told Hubert.
“And Mum can parade her clever girls for him, and we can get on with Christmas,” Merida said. “What a relief.”
Harris let out an irritated breath and stormed off. A few seconds later, there was a chaos of clicking and scratching as Brionn noticed that Harris had gone by and went careening down the stairs to follow him. They said that dogs became ever more like their masters the older they got, but there was no sign yet of Brionn closing the gap between his personality and Harris’s.
“What’s his problem?” Merida demanded. She couldn’t mention the bargain, but she felt safe enough asking, “Do you think he wants something he can’t say?”
“Yeah, to run away with the Dásachtach,” said Hubert.
“What?”
Hubert stood up to go. “We heard Mum tell Dad how the Dásachtach tried to get him to come with. We were eavesdropping. You remember Harris’s face, Hame?”
Hamish nodded grimly. “He was still all torn up about it. You should have seen it. He wouldn’t talk to us for the rest of the evening. I heard him throwing stuff in the room, even.”
“He thinks we’re all idiots,” Hubert said. “It’s pretty obvious. He thinks the Dásachtach has it right and Mum and Dad are just messy and old-fashioned.”
Uneasily, Merida asked, “He said that?”
“You’ve seen him,” Hubert said. “Come on.”
She didn’t like thinking about it, but it didn’t seem impossible when she did. Join the Dásachtach? Did Harris really want that? And if that was what he needed in order to change, was she willing to make that happen to save the rest of them?
She thought about the destroyed village. The salted wells. The mutilated trees. Ruin for the sake of punishment, of warning. Ruin for the sake of ruin. Nothing she stood for. She might not have liked Ardbarrach, but at least they weren’t training their boys to pillage for the sake of pillaging alone.
“There’s got to be a way to talk to him,” Merida said.
“Oh, nobody has problems talking to Harris,” Hamish said. “It’s getting him to talk back.”
SHORT days bled into long nights, which then became more short days and even longer nights.
The more Merida tried to show she wanted to talk meaningfully with Harris, the more scathing and remote he became. Often she’d make a plan to corner him individually after breakfast and find that as soon as he got up from the table, he had taken off. Literally running, surely, because by the time she got to the door, she’d see him and Brionn off in the fields, a tiny speck already.
It was difficult not to resent him when so much was hanging on his existence. He didn’t know, of course, and she couldn’t tell him. It all weighed on Merida, and no one else in the world knew except Feradach, and he was hidden away until he found out if he was to destroy them.
And then, all at once, it was the night before Christmas.
The entire castle was outfitted for the feast for the next night, and just as it had the year before, it looked splendid. There was no snow this year, only frost, and so all of the newly renovated castle was undisguised and elegant, glazed with a shimmering layer that only emphasized how far it had come in a year. Lanterns glowed in the windows. Beautiful, intricate bowers braided by Elinor and all her foster girls hung heavy around each threshold. The air was scented with exotic, sharp Christmas spices. The guest rooms were full of Cennedig and his family, lords Fergus had reconnected with after the tragedy at Kinlochy, ladies Elinor had invited to see how to teach their own children. The castle was full as it hadn’t been since Merida was a child.
But Merida couldn’t celebrate. She felt she would go mad being the only one who knew on the last day that it mattered.
She retreated to the wall as the sun went down, watching the last of the golden glow shimmer across the loch before it vanished into darkness.
Just like last year, there was an enormous moon.
As she looked out over the moonlit forest, she heard familiar barking. Brionn. His high teen bark had not changed with age, although he at least stuck firmly by Harris’s side now.
This was her last chance.
She used her vantage point on the wall to spy her brother out across the game fields, walking. It was so bright under the moon and stars with the glaze of frost that she could even pick out his familiar, stiff walk.
Hiking her skirt, she hurried to the closest guard tower, down the stairs, across the courtyard, out across the field. Thank goodness her father had ordered them cleaned out.
“Harris!” she called, catching up with him.
He didn’t alter his stride, just kept doing that chilly, austere walk of his, his hands in his pockets, posture perfectly straight. He didn’t say anything, either, but it nonetheless felt as if he found her silly and disorderly, because she was out of breath and running after him, and he was in control and walking away.