12I do not own Brave, nor the characters. I do own the writing, story, and the young man. I hope you all enjoy. I also own the pathetic song about the moon. I don't know how people will feel about Callum. It's not that I dislike MacGuffin. I'll actually probably write about him and Merida. I just liked this idea.
OooOooO
"Up and over mountains high
Ringing clearly from the sky
Across the moors, across the sea
And down in valley's, gorges deep
The moon be calling, calling me…"
The first time she saw it, Merida wasn't more than ten years old, and already well acquainted with the ways of the wood. Quiet, but lethal, an ancient forest that would remain long after Merida had already departed this world. She loved it for it's wild, untamable beauty, and though she should have, she did not fear it.
Which explained why when the wolf appeared, white and grey, with eyes like the moon, she did not fear it either. Rather, she was fascinated by the way it moved, graceful and dangerous.
It paused, staring at her, and their eyes met. It was young, she thought, younger than she had first took it for. It was not yet full grown, but power radiated from it. Still, despite this, it made no aggressive move towards her.
She put forth a hand, stepping closer, as though to touch it. It put it's ears back and loped away, melting into the wood, leaving her behind. She backed away, a sense of loss flooding her soul.
Years passed, and Merida forgot about the wolf. But the wolf did not forget about her.
OooOooO
Merida often had a reoccurring nightmare that she was going to be killed by a wild beast. The creature did not always remain the same, often it changed, but the place - her woods - and the ending - death - never altered.
The night before she met him for the (unbeknownst to her) second time, the dream came once more. It whirled in her head, a hurricane of snarls, teeth, and a wolf slamming into her shoulders, and then the black.
She woke up panting and clammy, reaching for her bow. But the dream had vanished now, revealing that it could not harm her any more than a mischievous phantom. With a sigh she closed her eyes once more.
OooOooO
"You stepped on me," The man said, looking at her like she was supposed to do something about it.
"Sorry," she answered in a voice that implied she wasn't all that sorry. "But really, you shouldn't have been laying on the ground like that, if you didn't want a foot on yer back."
"That wasn't much of an apology," he replied, rising from the ground. He stood taller than her, though Merida was not short. His light brown hair was unkempt, as though he didn't much care for how it looked, and his eyes were green, like the forest. Merida had a passing thought that he might be handsome, but she shoved it away.
"You're awful cheeky for someone who just got stepped on by a Princess," Merida said, without exactly thinking about it. Why not use it against him? It should wipe the smug look off of his face.
"And you're awful cheeky for a girl who just stepped on a Prince," he quipped back, still smug. Merida raised a red eyebrow.
"You? A prince?" She gave an unladylike snort that would have made her mother cringe.
"I could say the same thing about you, lass," The man said, giving her unruly hair and bow a look. Merida smiled. Something inside of her instinctively liked this strange man who had been laying on the forest floor, and whom she had so unceremoniously stepped on. Who made such an outlandish claim to royal lineage, and seemed to care absolutely nothing about her own station.
"Aw, well, I mean no harm," Merida replied at last, breaking the silence between them. She offered a hand, and rather than taking it, he stared a moment. Realization dawned on him, and he took it, shaking it strangely.
"Merida, Princess of DunBroch," she pointed a thumb behind her to the black horse who stood a few feet back. "And that there's Angus. You're lucky I wasn't riding him when I stepped on you."
The man smiled. "And I'm glad for it. I'm Callum."
Merida couldn't help but note that his accent was a little foreign, strangely off. It was still the same lilting Scottish of the land, but something about it was more pronounced, as though he had to think about his words more.
"Good to meet you, Callum. Not to go rushing off or anything, but I've got stuff to do, and precious little time to do it. Princessly duties calling, and all." She doubted he believed her, but it was the truth, and Merida was never a very good liar.
"Take care of yourself, now." She tossed this over her shoulder as she led Angus away, and after that she didn't look back,
He looks after her, a memory surfacing in those forest eyes, and then he turned away. She did not see their despair.
OooOooO
"Are you ever going to get married, Merida?" Elinore lamented, sighing as she put the tapestry away. Mother and daughter still enjoyed making tapestries together, ever since three years ago after the unfortunate bear incident.
"Oh, Mum," Merida sighed. She left it at that. Best not to talk about how there never seemed to be a man just right - oh, sure, they were all fine - but to settle down with them? Forever? No, even just thinking of it nearly gave her a panic attack.
"Oh, Mum," She said again. Elinore smiled, shook her head, and pressed no more. She had learned to let it be, but whether she liked it or not, Merida would one day have to choose a man.
Just try and make it a Prince, dear, and we'll go from there. Elinore crosses her fingers behind her back with the thought.
OooOooO
He's been in the forest every day that Merida has been there. Not always with her, though. Sometimes she's only caught glimpses of him sleeping against a tree, unconcerned with his surroundings. Other times he approaches her and they talk, joking and sparring with their words. Only once did he approach and just watch her practice her archery, and then when she was done she noticed he was gone.
It was the most uncanny thing about him. The way he walked with feet like death, so silent that she could not hear him. And she had trained herself for such, too, so that meant he was skilled beyond most.
Sometimes, when she was feeling a bit spooky, it bothered her that he could come up so quietly. After all, it wouldn't take much for him to kill her with feet like that. But she always tossed that thought away. She was not afraid. She would be courageous.
There were other things too. He always went barefoot, the cold never seeming to bother him. His clothes were simple, his shirt loose. She assumed he lived somewhere on the outskirts of the nearby village, but she never asked, and he never told.
"Prince Callum. How are you today?" Merida's voice was light, joking. She still liked to tease him by calling him a prince, and he her by calling her a princess. Ironically, he seemed to still subscribe to the belief that she was not a princess. Merida never addressed this. Rather, she enjoyed having the upper hand.
Callum stared at her a moment, his gaze seemingly reading her.
"What's wrong?" He asked, after a moment. And then more awkwardly "You just seem different today, is all."
"Oh…it's…nothing."
"Ah. Well. Seems like it, with you moping and all. No cheery grin, and no witty comeback. I'd say you're sick, lass."
"Aw, give it a rest, Callum."
He shot his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "I didn't mean nothing by it. I'm just concerned."
Merida rolled her ocean blue eyes, and plopped down on the ground. Archery did not entice her today. Nothing did.
She heard a thud, and looked over to see Callum sitting down beside her, his legs crossed. He shot her an infectious grin, which really only served to annoy her, but she let him be.
"How 'bout a story?" She didn't reply to his comment, merely sulked in moody silence.
"Good then," Callum pressed on. "Let's see now, have you ever heard the legend of the brother who acted selfishly and brought down a kingdom?"
A small smile played at Merida's lips. "Aye. You could say that I have. And besides, not a story meant for cheering one up, is it?"
Callum ignored this, and searched for another tale. "I got one I know you haven't heard before. The one about a Queen who bargained with a fairy, and ended up giving away her first born son?"
"…No."
An all too satisfied smile lit Callum's face. "Right then. Once, there was a Queen, who in desiring to be more beautiful, made a deal with a fairy. That she would give her first born son in exchange for beauty unspeakable.
"But something went wrong with the magic - I'm a bit spotty on the details - and the fairy was forced to instead cast a spell on the lad instead. It stipulated that the boy would turn into a wolf at random, for varying lengths of time. He had until his twenty first year to find a princess to break the spell, or he would otherwise remain a wolf for the rest of his days, a pet of the fairy. Poor lad, he searched and searched, and he came close once. He fell in love with a princess who tried, but alas! It was not meant to be. She did not succeed, and now you can hear him stalking the woods at night. And if you ever hear a Birch bird sing, they say it's the whistle of the fairy to get him to do her bidding."
"That's horribly depressing," Merida muttered, staring at the grass. "I don't know why you told me that."
"Just a legend, mind."
"Legends are lessons. They ring with truths," Merida said, reminded altogether too much of her own collision with legend and lesson. Callum gave her a sideways glance.
"Aye. I suppose so."
Silence surrounded them for a few minutes before Merida asked "So how could the curse be broken? You never said."
"Oh, that. A selfless act."
"Seems easy enough."
"It's a little more difficult than you think. When you're doing selfless acts in order to break a curse, it's not exactly selfless. Sort of an unselfish act for the means of selfishness."
"I suppose so," Merida agreed. But she couldn't stop thinking about it.
OooOooO
She dreamed that night that Callum was bound by rope, tied between two trees. And the beast was coming for him, not Merida, though she tried her best to divert it. In the end, though, it went straight for Callum, and the last thing she saw was his beautiful eyes, afraid but determined, staring at the beast.
OooOooO
She saw the change for the first time six months after she stepped on him. It had turned to fall then, the forest even more spooky and beautiful then it usually was. Colors bright as Merida's hair filled the trees in a glorious display that never failed to capture Merida's breath.
She had been sitting down, staring at the sky for a moment, tracing the lines of clouds with her eyes. Callum had been whittling on some wood with a knife (it was a talent of his, he could make anything out of wood). When she had looked over and something was different.
His eyes, she first realized. She had seen eyes like that once before, when her mother had turned into a bear, and not recognized her own daughter. Empty. Expressionless. The eyes of an animal.
And not green. The eyes of the moon.
"Callum?" Her voice barely rose above a whisper.
"Merida," he said, and feeling returned to his eyes, though not their color. Fur seemed to be growing over his arms, and up his neck.
"Merida, get out of here. Now. I mean it…" his voice trailed off as a hiss of pain shot out from his mouth. "Go, Merida. Go."
He was a wolf. It happened quickly after that with some sickening crunches that Merida could only guess to be his bones. He stared at her with sad eyes that did not belong to Callum, but were his all the same.
"Oh, Callum," Merida whispered. "You're cursed."
The wolf did not answer. He could not speak.
OooOooO
He stayed that way for two weeks. When Merida went to the woods she always brought some kind of food for him, though she suspected that he hunted and that it was silly for her to do so. And she still spoke to him, even though he never spoke back.
Once, she'd seen his eyes go dim again, and he'd backed away from her in fear. He didn't know her in complete wolf form, and she posed a threat. She'd almost reached for her bow, but then felt ashamed. Even if he attacked her, she could not kill Callum anymore than she could have killed her mother as a bear. Wound him, perhaps, to give herself a chance for escape, but to permanently damage him was out of the question.
Then one day he was a man again. She'd been huddled up in her cloak because the wind was nippy and her throat felt a little scratchy, when she saw him leaning against a tree, eyes closed. He was in the same loose shirt and still barefoot.
For a horrible moment, Merida thought he was dead. She leapt off of Angus, but then hesitated, unsure of what to do. If he was dead then what would be the procedure? She couldn't just leave him there, and yet, she felt the entire castle would pose some objections to her dragging a corpse inside.
Luckily there was no need to ponder such morbid thoughts. His eyes fluttered open.
"Oh. You're here."
"That's all you can say?" Merida sputtered, marching towards him. She was awful fiery when she was angry. "After turning into a wolf, and roaming around these woods like that for two whole weeks, that's it?"
"What am I supposed to say?" He asked, some traces of amusement lining his voice.
"Not…not that."
"Ah, well, my apologies. I'm cursed as you've seen." Something flickered in his eyes, and if she hadn't known better, she would have called it despair.
"Well, you've got to your twenty first birthday, haven't you? If that legend be describing yourself, I mean."
Callum shot her a peculiar look. "I sort of made it up. Based on me that is."
"Lucky for you, I'm a princess. And I'm going to break the curse for you, Callum. Honest, I'm going to do it, and then you won't have to turn into a wolf anymore, and you can be free to live your life and follow your dreams."
Callum said nothing.
"When's your birthday?"
He let out a sigh. "I don't know."
OooOooO
One day, he wasn't there anymore. Merida searched everywhere, scouring the forest for any trace of him. She told herself that he maybe just didn't come today, but that seemed a hollow excuse. In six months he'd never missed a day, why now?
She cried on the way home, because she thought that maybe she knew, and she didn't want to know. She cried because she was the sort of person who laughed when she was happy and cried when she was sad. She cried because the thought of never seeing him again stuck something in her heart that made it hurt like it never had before.
And she can't stop dreaming of him tied between two trees, the beast pounding forward.
OooOooO
Sometimes she imagines that the moon is calling her. Or she wants to imagine it. Either way, it's something she heard from a song long ago, and she hums the tune although the words have been long forgotten. It reminds her of him, and she copes somehow by singing it.
"You broke me," she whispers. "And me mum. How am I suppose to get married now?"
OooOooO
The dream goes away. And Merida can't figure out if she is relieved or saddened. Relieved, because she can sleep now. Saddened, because it feels wrong not to remember him, so she decides to remember him as he was. Free. In the forest, without ropes chafing his wrists.
When the suitors come, she rolls her eyes. They are not going to impress her. They're going to make fools of themselves, though she likes them all well enough. But they are not for her.
But then she sees one of them, and her heart stops. She's gone crazy. And if she's not, she's going to kill him for putting her through this.
"Let me explain," he whispers in her ear, but not soon enough, because he gets punched in the face anyway.
OooOooO
As it turned out, he broke his own curse. With Merida's help.
He left because the fairy (she looks like a beast, he explains) did not want the curse broken, and felt all too threatened by Merida. The closer Merida got, the more uncomfortable the fairy became, and more violent. So Callum made a deal.
"Go ahead and take me. But leave Merida alone."
It took weeks for the curse to ware off, and he didn't realize until later what it was. That his act of bondage and sacrifice had turned into his freedom.
OooOooO
Even long after they're married, Merida doubts that he'll ever be fully human. And she loves that about him. Despite the fact that sometimes the maids find him sleeping outside, or that he never learns to handle a fork well. That his clothes will never look polished on him, because he can't wear things that confine him.
Sometimes she can hear the snarls of the beast echo in her dreams, but when she wakes up Callum is beside her, and there's no reason to be afraid. Together they can be brave.
"The song of the sun
The roar of the sea
Be nothing like the moon
Calling for me."
OooOooO
Please leave a review. I'd really like to know your thoughts on this story. Thanks for reading.