“She’s just in a poor mood, Ila,” Elinor told Ila. “Give her some anyway.”
Ila did, pouring extra syrup from the drowsy pears over the slice while Elinor nodded approvingly. Merida just stared crossly at the Brandubh board. It was dusty. Hubert was usually the one who played with Harris. Everything felt dusty.
“I know you miss Hubert,” Elinor said. “I do, too. But it’s not for long, and heaven knows I’ve tried to teach him discipline, so more power to their arm.”
“Personally, I’m proud of the wee crumb taking some initiative!” Fergus declared. He appeared in the doorway, bracing his hands on either side of him so it appeared he was holding the entire castle up himself. “I heard there was cake!”
This broad, cheery acceptance was how Merida’s parents always were about change they couldn’t control—they talked themselves into thinking it was for the best, no matter if it was or not. The thing was, Merida used to appreciate this plucky, can-do attitude. It meant they were never knocked down for long, because they always turned everything into a positive in the end. But now she could see how this way of thinking could also be used to talk yourself into not pushing back.
“You have a knack for hearing a cake getting sliced,” Elinor told the king of DunBroch. “This is turning into quite a little ceilidh. Where’s Leezie at, then?”
“She was peeling apples in the kitchen,” Fergus said. “Make it as drowsy as you like, Ila, if you will.”
“Peeling apples?” Merida demanded with disbelief. “Leezie was?”
“Peel, peeling away,” Fergus said, easing himself into a chair and stretching his wooden leg out. “She’s using the peels for one of her things. Throwing ’em over her shoulder and seeing if they’ll spell out the initials of the young man she’ll marry. Leezie magic.”
“Ah, that makes more sense,” Elinor said complacently. “Already looking for her next wedding and the Cabbage barely done leading his cows out of the castle!”
“That’s just Leezie,” agreed Fergus. To Ila, who was still pouring copious amounts of drowsy pear sauce over his cake, he said, “That’s enough there. Save the last bit of that for yourself, now.”
“Oh, thank you, sir,” murmured Ila, although it was hard to imagine her smacking her lips over drowsy pears or, really, doing anything remotely gluttonous. “Also, sir, you told me to remind you to speak to the queen. About Kinlochy.”
“I did?” boomed Fergus.
“Sounds like you,” Elinor murmured. “I don’t want any talk of going there until the spring rains are over, though. Do you remember that washed-out bridge near there? What a time that was.”
Kinlochy. Ordinarily, Merida would have been quite happy to plan a future adventure, but not in her current stormy mood. Who was to say that the trip to Kinlochy wouldn’t somehow go awry just like her trip to Ardbarrach?
“It’s going to be glorious.” Fergus spoke through a mouthful of cake. “Merida, you’re going to love it. The times your mother and I had there when we were young! The stories we have of Kinlochy! The stories Kinlochy has of us! Perhaps with your mapmaking know-how, Merida, you can help us find the best route.”
Merida knew her father was just trying to improve her temper with a bit of flattery, but it only made her feel contrary and more likely to be sour.
She stood. “I’m going to go.”
“Don’t go shoot your bow in the rain,” Elinor said mildly. “You know it will take ages for your dress to dry and you’ll be miserable. Why don’t you go work on your new dress so you’ll have a spare?”
Merida’s new dress, a project Elinor had suggested, had been languishing in the tapestry room for ages. It was exactly the kind of sewing project Elinor liked (intricate, technical, time-consuming) and exactly the kind of sewing project Merida hated (intricate, technical, time-consuming).
“I’m not going shooting,” Merida snapped, although it was exactly what she had intended to do. Instead she went to the triplets’ bedroom, where she found Harris squinting into a book.
“Harris,” she said.
“What,” he replied. It was not a question.
His tone didn’t make Merida feel kindly toward him, but she forced herself to be the bigger person. “Get up. I’m going to show you the castle’s secret passages.”
He didn’t look up from his book. “I’ve already seen them.”
“I don’t believe you. Tell me where the closest one is.”
Harris blinked up long enough to give her a condescending look. He didn’t bother to even answer. Merida fought the urge to give him an old-fashioned sibling pummeling, but before she did, Leezie floofed in.
“Merida,” she said, pinching Merida’s elbow. “Have you seen Ila?”
“Ow. She’s in the common room with the cake,” Merida said. “Also, ow.”
Leezie continued absently pinching, unconcerned. “Did you know Ila has the Sight? She’s been teaching me Signs and Portents.”
Unlike Hubert, Leezie seemed unchanged by the trip to Ardbarrach; it had only made her even more Leezie-like. She was leaning into yet another new religion. Now she kept track of how many cows she’d seen huddled out her window and if she saw a dead bird on the snow when she emptied the chamber pots and what shape she found her fireplace embers in after they’d died down in the morning. And apparently used apple peels to find her next husband. She seemed as untroubled by the disastrous trip to Ardbarrach as she had about the canceled wedding. Merida once again wished she could just toss off mixed feelings as effortlessly.
“Ila has the Sight?” Merida echoed. She didn’t know why this seemed so surprising. Possibly because magic felt wild and unpredictable, and every time she saw Ila, she seemed just as she had when Merida had first seen her on Christmas Day: tidy, diligent, put together. She seemed quite unlikely to find herself following will o’ the wisps into the woods and getting herself into trouble. It would be like imagining Elinor having the Sight. “How do you know?”
“I sensed it deep within her and asked her,” Leezie said rapturously. “It was the first Sign. I think I’m learning.”
“Learning to be gullible,” Harris said. His tone had reached new levels of condescending judgment. “Only children believe in the Sight, and you’re old, Leezie. Old. Old enough to be married. Old. Do they have a religion for old people? That’s the one you’re after.”
Without any further warning, Leezie burst into tears. She fled the room. Her wails were audible as she proceeded down the hall.
Merida allowed this to be the excuse she needed to throttle Harris.
“You jam-handed scab!” she roared, and threw herself at him.
Really, she’d been wanting to throttle him for days. His attitude had already been terrible by the time she returned for the wedding, but now it was simply unbearable. Neither Harris nor Hamish had said anything about Hubert’s absence, but they’d been quarreling constantly. The triplets had fought before, but with Hubert involved, it usually ultimately exploded back into hilarity. But without him, it just went on and on. Hamish got more fraught. And Harris got more superior.
“Merida, that’s not princess-like!” Elinor called from deeper in the castle, managing, as she often did, to somehow sense that Merida was doing something she found disagreeable.
It was for naught, anyway. Even though Harris sounded snotty as a middle-aged lord, in the end, he was still a younger brother, and he had that secret talent of younger brothers to scramble and skitter away after only a few seconds of ear twisting.
After the commotion died down, she noticed that Hamish had been snuggled in his bed all along, his blanket around his shoulders as he drew on some already marked-up parchment.
“He had an ear-twisting coming,” she told Hamish.
“Yes,” Hamish agreed.
“Do you want to go see the passages?” she asked.
He shuddered. “No, they sound dark.”
Merida sighed noisily.