You have surprised me, Young Man. I misjudged what you wanted.
“I love her,” Feradach said simply. “Which is why I cannot let her family die. They are everything to her.”
Merida found that she, too, was standing with her hands balled up against her chest.
Even if you could become everything to her instead?
Feradach sighed, and in that single sound, Merida could hear how deeply miserable he was. But he said, “I have watched ever so many humans. That wouldn’t be love; it would simply be possession.”
The Cailleach gently tilted her staff away from Feradach.
This is a very human thing you are doing, Feradach, even as you choose to say goodbye to this body you’re wearing now and move on to the next and the next and the next. And I suppose some would say it is against your nature, to refuse change, to continue in your duties as before. But I think it is very fitting. You choose to ruin yourself to save the next generation of change, and that is exactly your nature. It will be done, this miracle you ask.
Feradach’s eyelashes fluttered, and then he drew himself up. “Thank you, Old Woman.”
The tide against DunBroch will turn before dawn. This is my miracle, if the land will grant it to me.
She banged her staff on the floor.
THE battle shifted, just like that.
The wall collapsed on a handful of the Dásachtach’s men. The wind kicked up to throw dirt in eyes. The stable broke apart as the Dásachtach’s army tried to burn it, but the escaping horses served only to spook the Dásachtach’s horses. Harris and the triplets launched new pane glass at the army with cutting precision. The arrows found their mark. The doors held. The rain began to pour and put out the burning trees. And then, as the Cailleach’s green fire receded in the night sky and dawn began to rise, the crofters and the townspeople suddenly appeared in a makeshift army, their weapons in hand.
There were people from outside the town, too, even people from Keithneil and, right before dawn, the men of Ardbarrach, their ranks glistening and precise and threatening. Never had Merida thought she’d be relieved to see those uniforms again. Never had she thought she’d be glad to see how disciplined and loyal they were. She fetched out more arrows from the armory and ran out with her bow to support them.
And in the breaking light, the boys of the Dásachtach’s army began to recognize the families they had been taken from, and they began to break ranks. They ran back to fight with their families, and then not to fight at all, because there were not enough men left to fight DunBroch.
There was just Wolftail and the Dásachtach standing in the glittering green light of a new winter day, strangely warm, the rain dripping from the repaired roofs of DunBroch.
Merida wondered at how splendid the castle looked in this light, old DunBroch, a castle made new. The rising sun caught each of the panes of glass and lit them like spring fire. The ivy was green and lush. The berries in the Christmas boughs were bright as battle. It was a grand and welcoming and beautiful sight, vibrant and alive. Yes, there was smoking fire in the background and walls had newly been knocked down, but it was impossible not to see that beneath that, the castle had a live and beating heart. It had changed. It had earned its freedom from Feradach’s destruction. It had become something new. Or rather, it was still DunBroch, but it was DunBroch, grown, changing, moving onward, and Merida was fiercely proud.
“Run away and never come back,” Fergus called out to the Madman. “Because you told us to make friends with the neighbors, and we did, and none of us like you.”
“If you never look our direction again,” said Elinor, “we will never look yours.”
“And perhaps one day we’ll meet again,” Harris hissed to the Dásachtach, and there was that strange old glint in his expression.
“Merida!” Leezie said, grabbing her arm, getting her attention. She was disheveled and pretty in the morning light, but for once, she didn’t look like she needed help. She said, “Feradach.”
Merida followed her gaze. Leezie was pointing to the woods. Brionn stood at the edge of them, tail up and fringey. Just behind him was a blue glowing orb, slowly fading to nothing in the morning light.
For the final time that year, Merida set off in pursuit of a god.
SHE found him at the pools. There was a good view of the castle from here, so it made sense. He stood there by the waterfall looking out at it with his mane of blond hair, his kind face.
“Feradach!” Merida shouted.
“You’re an impossible person,” Feradach said. “You’re always chasing.”
She tried to catch her breath; gave up. “I heard what you said. I heard the bargain you made. Is it true?”
“I wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t true. I have only ever said things I think are true.” When she didn’t say anything, he added quickly, “Do not mock me for what I said, Merida of DunBroch. I couldn’t bear it.”
“I wasn’t going to mock you,” Merida said. She didn’t want to mock him. She wanted to say earnest things to him, the sort of silly things Leezie talked about, things about love. She didn’t know how to, though. She couldn’t say them, only feel them. “You don’t have to go. Or rather, you could come back. I know you can’t stop doing what you do. This doesn’t have to be goodbye.”
“I would only be drawn here if there was stagnation,” Feradach said. “And you would not want that.”
“Then I could go to you,” Merida said. “I could seek out places that need it, and maybe see you there.”
“Is that what you want from your life?” Feradach asked. “To do as I do, to always be following your feet to places that are about to be swept away? That are at the ends of their lives? To ride all over this country looking for the worst of it?”
“Don’t you want to be known?”
She saw from his face that he did want it. He wanted it very much.
And she wanted to know him. She knew Feradach the god now, but she wanted to know who he was, and who he would become, if he got to be known by at least one other person in the world.
“What a life that would be for you,” Feradach said. “Chasing me forever. What a life that would be for me. Being caught again and again by a mortal. You are an impossible person.”
“I wouldn’t just be catching you,” Merida said. “I could also be ganging up on you. I think the Cailleach would be happy to use me to trick you to save a few people here and there, and I don’t think I’d mind that. If you wouldn’t mind losing some more.”
“The balance was corrected. I didn’t lose at all.”
Merida thought about what the next year would look like. Preparing for another year of journeying, adventuring far and wide on her irascible Midge. She knew she could do it, because she already had done it. And as soon as that thought crossed her mind, the uneasiness that she’d been feeling earlier congealed into an obvious and unsightly blob. She said, “Was the balance corrected? I was thinking about it, and that was the biggest cheat of them all, isn’t it? The Cailleach let you get away with it, who knows how she did, but you must have known. You just didn’t say, because you were biased, too. You were both biased. But there was one person who didn’t change at DunBroch, wasn’t there?”
Feradach didn’t answer, so she knew she was right.
“At the beginning of all this, I was so busy, all the time,” Merida said. “I traveled all over. And then I spent all my time this last year trying to get everyone else to change, and I didn’t think a bit about what I was going to do with myself when it was all over. I just lived for other people this whole year, and that’s okay, that’s what it took, but I look at myself after all the things I’ve learned and I know I’m just the same old me.”
“It doesn’t matter now, though,” Feradach said. “You have time to figure it out.”