Merida scoffed. “You just wanted to kill me! Now you’re giving advice?”
“I didn’t want to kill you,” he said stiffly. “It’s my duty.”
“My duty was to marry young and meek and bear lots of princes for my husband, and I didn’t do that.”
“And now look where you’re at!”
Quick-witted Merida became hot-tempered Merida in an instant. “Are you saying that if I’d taken a husband you wouldn’t be here?”
“That’s not at all what I meant—”
“It certainly sounded like it!”
“If you had thought about other options a little harder, then perhaps—” Feradach said, at the same time that Merida snapped back, “You didn’t seem willing to consider other possibilities—”
Silence!
The entire surface of the water shimmered with the Cailleach’s order.
Propose your bargain, Merida of DunBroch.
Merida didn’t want to take Feradach’s advice, but it was true that she’d nearly stuffed it all with her last magical bargain because she hadn’t thought about all the ways her own words and desires might be used against her. What did she really need?
“Time,” Merida said. “That’s all I ask. I can change them. Give me a chance to fix the balance without his ruin.”
“They have had many years,” Feradach interjected. “The world keeps changing around them and they do everything they can to keep from changing with it. No matter what has come to them, they have stayed essentially the same instead of using it to grow. They must be destroyed. They—”
“You’ve made your stance very clear!” Merida replied.
The Cailleach’s voice cut through their quarrel. Feradach by his right could destroy the Clan DunBroch tonight, but Merida may not be wrong, either. I am willing to allow a bargain.
“I have never made a bargain,” Feradach said. After a pensive pause, he rephrased: “There has never needed to be a bargain.”
And so perhaps it is time for a change, the Cailleach noted. The bargain is this: Merida will try to prove her case: change doesn’t require ruin. Feradach will try to prove his: ruin is required.
“Who will decide?” Feradach asked. “You?”
I will only tolerate so much of your impudence, Young Man.
Feradach bowed.
During the course of the bargain, Feradach will show Merida examples of the ruin he brings about in the name of change. Merida will show Feradach the changes she brings about to avoid ruin. At the end of the bargain, I will decide who has proven their win, and nature will assert its course. You may speak of this bargain only to each other.
Merida and Feradach did not look at each other, but it was clear both intended to spend as little time speaking to each other as possible.
“How long do I have?” Merida asked.
A year.
A year! The whole world could change in a year, much less one family. She said, “Oh, thank you.”
Do not thank me yet. Everyone in your family must change for you to win the bargain. Elinor and Fergus and Harris and Hamish and Hubert, and even Leezie Muireall. All or none.
Feradach made a clucking sound and Merida expected him to object, but all he added was, “And no more cheating. No more knocks.” This was directed not at Merida, however, but at the Cailleach. It seemed quite a cheeky reply, but the Cailleach just looked mildly chastened.
I will not cheat. Do you accept this bargain?
“Yes,” Merida said at once.
Feradach didn’t look happy, but he said, “If this is what I must do, I will do it.”
A little change won’t hurt you, the Cailleach said, her voice again a little amused. Now—
She held her blackened staff up, pointing it straight at the green light twisting through the stars. Her starry eye twinkled and glimmered to match.
Magic began to move once more.
The feeling of dread trickled away from Merida’s heart. The orbs began to descend back into the pools. The green light twisting through the stars faded. Feradach sighed and turned away from Merida and from DunBroch.
The Cailleach’s withered mouth smiled cunningly as she began to fade away right before Merida’s eyes, like the stars disappearing at dawn. Right before the gods took their leave entirely, Merida heard the Cailleach’s proclamation:
Then the bargain is made.
MERIDA was woken on Christmas Day by a pack of wolves.
Christmas! It seemed ridiculous for Christmas to come as ordinarily scheduled when Merida had only just been conferencing with supernatural entities the night before. Doubly ridiculous that it should arrive as it always did, with some ridiculous prank pulled by the triplets at the very crack of dawn.
Wolves!
They were not really wolves, of course. As soon as she fully woke, she knew they were dogs. A veritable pack of them, all eager to leap on her stomach and press tongues into her ear. Merida’s father had three favored hunting dogs allowed to live inside the house, her mother had two, and then the castle itself had one that no one wanted to claim, as all she did was vomit and then eat what she had just vomited. Merida had never understood why the last dog was allowed in the castle, but both parents were adamant about her privileges.
“Get off!” howled Merida, which did nothing but get a dog tongue in her mouth and provoke some boyish sniggers from somewhere within her bedroom. The triplets. Merida’s younger brothers were often little devils, particularly together. Hubert was the unthinking feet of most operations. Hamish was the uncertain hands. And Harris was the brains.
I hate those little monsters! she’d told her father once, knowing it was untrue the moment she said it.
You’re thistlekin, her father had replied, with amusement. You’ve all got wee spines all over you, so you stick together even if you prickle each other sometimes, too. Me and my brothers were like that too as lads.
Thistlekin indeed! Why couldn’t the triplets come up with a nicer Christmas tradition? Last year it had been a bucket of flour dumped on her head—who knew how they’d stolen it from under Aileen’s watch. The year before that, three geese, all mad as Merida—who knew how they’d gotten up the stairs. And next year—who knew what it would be next year.
If there was a next year.
But it was hard to hold the truth of last night in her thoughts as she heard the vomity dog making some experimental vomity noises from somewhere on her bed. A clatter sounded as a whipping tail knocked something off her bedside table. Her blanket twisted as they jumped up and down. She gripped it tightly. If the dogs pulled it free, the triplets would really have it coming, since she’d hung her snow-damp dress before the fireplace to dry last night, and underneath the covers, she was currently clothed in just Merida.
One of the dogs stepped hard enough on her hair that her head turned along with it, just in time to see the three ginger brats standing in her doorway, wearing matching grins.
This was the final straw.
She yelled. It began as a wordless howl and resolved into: “AyyyyyyyyyyyyyyIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii hope you got swan turds for your gifts, you wee maggots!”
The boyish sniggers turned into proper howling laughter as the triplets took to their heels. One called “Happy Christmas!” That had to be Hamish, because surely Hubert was still laughing, and Harris would never say something as sentimental as Happy Christmas!
With a grumble, Merida climbed out of bed, wrapping her blanket around herself and wading through dogs. She realized there was a new member of the pack since she’d gone: A lanky, wiry hound puppy with a friendly-looking sparse beard, brindly stripes, and little, intense eyes that never focused on any one thing in particular. Unlike the rest of the dogs, he wasn’t trying to lick her, but only because he already had ahold of something small in his mouth.
She asked, “Who are you now? And what have you got?”