“No,” said Elinor. “You are a princess, Merida. You will not be going in costume like a jester. Also, that’s only four days from now, which isn’t nearly enough time to get a letter out announcing your visit, explaining why you’re there, telling them why they should take you on. It must be a lovely, cordial letter. There are ways these things are done. Boys, get out of here, you’re driving me mad. Go find your father.”
The triplets sprang from the room, shouting oodley-oodley-oodley (except for Harris, who never shouted if he could help it). Merida hadn’t thought they were making much noise, but it was true that the common room felt absolutely silent in comparison to just a few seconds before.
“It’s enough time if it goes out by pigeon,” Merida insisted. “If we go now, it’ll be more likely to be dry. You know it’ll start to be wet and snowy again in a few weeks. And after that’s the thaws. Sooner’s better, surely.”
“Ah, Merida, these trips don’t come together quickly!” Elinor said, as Ila stole into the room and cleared away her plate. “Thank you, Ila.”
“Of course, ma’am,” Ila replied. “Your handwriting’s beautiful, ma’am.”
“Oh, this is just a little list,” Elinor said, but she looked pleased with the compliment. “Just to put my thoughts together. I can help you practice sometime, if you like.”
“Ma’am, I’d be very grateful, if it’s not out of place.”
Merida was feeling quite cross. She could tell that her mother was trying to get ahold of the plan. Elinor and a plan was like a dog discovering a well-seasoned carcass. Elinor picked it up and put it down and worried at its joints and dug a little hole and sort of nudged it in like she was going to bury it and then she picked it back up again because maybe she would toss it around in the sun for a little longer, no, Merida, don’t touch it, it’s mine, mine—
“Mum,” Merida broke in. “I’ve been traveling all over. I know how long things take.”
“Not as a royal! You’re representing DunBroch. Which means you can’t do things hastily! They should be done properly!”
Ila was still admiring Elinor’s handwriting, which gave Merida an idea. She said cunningly, “You can make us one of your lists. Everything we need to do and bring before we set out. We’ll make sure we do the whole thing, beginning to end. I’ll be hasty, and you’ll be proper, and together, we’ll be proper hasty.”
Elinor sighed. “Fine, Merida, you’re impossible. But I’ll need your father to dictate the letter for me—he’s the one who knows the lord there. You’ll have to have a handmaiden if you’re going out as a princess; Leezie will have to do. And you’re not going as a mummer. And stop hovering. I’m finishing my breakfast before I do anything. If your mind needs something to keep it busy, perhaps you should go practice that embroidery you’ve left for the better part of a year.”
Slim chance of that. Merida would sooner stitch her own fingers than the blasted embroidery up in the tapestry room. Instead, she took her bow and went out to the high field to shoot at targets. Her mind was wheeling. It was truly sinking in that these trips were happening, and moreover, that they weren’t just adventures. Yes, her mother had said they’d find a solution to the Madman before it came to that, but Merida wasn’t naive. She knew she had to expect the worst. Was she serious about moving to another kingdom? She had to be. Some storms move no rooftops.
Ugh. How was it that Feradach’s words kept finding her long after he’d said them? She was moving rooftops. She was moving herself.
Partway through her shooting session, Fergus came out to shoot with her. He was far more hopeless at it than she was, because his strength was with the sword and the spear, but she was touched by his presence. For quite a while they practiced alongside each other in silence, as the short winter day hurried on toward night.
“So, Ardbarrach for Hogmanay,” Fergus boomed finally, in a casual sort of way, like they were just talking about the weather.
“That’s the plan,” Merida answered back, just as casual. She wanted to ask why Elinor had gotten so quiet after he’d mentioned Eilean Glan, but she knew this would drive her father right back to the castle. She and her father didn’t really have meaningful conversations these days; the closer they got to real feelings, the more uncomfortable both of them became. So instead, she said, “Did you send off the letter?”
“I dictated it to your mother,” he said. “I asked them to take you because you were a handful and you were also eating us out of house and home.”
“Dad.”
“I said ‘please,’ too.”
“That’s better.”
Merida felt quite desperate for him to say something else, although she didn’t know what, exactly, that something else was. What she wanted was to talk with him about the intense combined weight of the bargain with gods and this new bargain with the Madman, but the first subject wasn’t allowed because of magical rules, and the second one wasn’t allowed because of father-daughter rules. So she just asked, “Will I like Ardbarrach?”
Fergus shot a few more arrows off into the darkening brush. None of them were anywhere near the target. Finally, instead of answering directly, he said, “It’s no DunBroch. But what is, really? Hubert will be wild for it, I’m sure. This bow is useless. Look how it does whatever it wants. I think it’s bent. It’s broken in some way, obviously.”
Merida reached for the bow and he handed it over with a rueful smile. It was a lovely bow, in much better shape than Merida’s, because it was used less. Unlike hers, with all its carvings worn to smooth invisibility, his bow was still etched up and down with a beautiful stylized pattern of flowers and bears. It was sized for her tall father and not for her, so she stepped up on a stump so that its height had somewhere to go. Then she nocked an arrow.
“Would you like to place a wager where you think this arrow’s gonna go, then, Dad?” she asked, with a wicked smile, testing the tension of the string.
“I’m no fool,” Fergus said. “I know where it’s gonna go.”
“With this wind, you can’t know anything for sure,” Merida said. She nearly said With this breath of the Cailleach instead of with this wind, and then she realized that this casual phrase she’d said a hundred times before felt dangerously close to talking about the bargain.
Her smile had slipped. She put it back up again, but she knew Fergus had seen it.
“When it’s you, I’m sure you hit your target,” he said. “Wind or no wind. Poor target. I shed a tear.”
Merida felt the breeze on her cheek and against the arrow’s tip, watched the way it shook the empty branches at the end of the field, and waited until it stilled just a bit. Then she loosed the arrow.
Thwuck!
“Bull’s-eye,” Fergus observed. Then he paused. “It’s a brave thing you’re doing, Merida. All this.”
Merida looked over at him, her heart pattering. It was what she wanted. Well, it was part of what she wanted. She wanted him to talk about how she was the one to stand up and make a counterproposal instead of him. She wanted him to talk about how Elinor had gone quiet at the mention of Eilean Glan. She wanted to hear him promise that she wouldn’t have to move anywhere if she didn’t want to. She wanted him to ask Did you make a bargain with a death god? so that even though she couldn’t answer, she could just look at him heavily and he’d know all the things she had to bear for the year to come.
But Fergus just blustered, “Now give me back my bow before it forgets everything it just learned from you.”
And just like that, their meaningful conversation was over. But Merida tucked away the tenderness of his expression in her memory for easy access later.