the caribou waited for springthaw amid a forest of mingled trees and many thorns.

it was here he called a halt for himself and @Red Leaf. the lands of the lanzadoii had fallen away long ago and now they had come to this cut of ragged, ugly forest.

but in this place, the caribou breathed and moved, and cen's nostrils flared to catch their familiar scent. his people took all they needed from these milling bodies. and he was no less than they.

without warning he cuffed red leaf, hoping to send her down into the snow. "stupid woman. if you had been faster to cross the cousin, we would not have been late! make camp!" cen ordered, turning his hard eyes upon the tiny clearing into which they had come. "i saw ptarmigan nesting just outside the treeline. i will be back."

but before he left, cen thrust his face close to her, leering; "remember what will happen if i come back and you are not here."

with that, he gave her another small shove and stalked off among the shadows, assured that red leaf would remain while he hunted. he owned an amulet of her body. her fear had been tangible. cen, son of shamans, held all control.

he used to love her.

within the forest the caribou waited and cen stalked among them. he could tell from a cursory sniff of dungheap the general age, sex, health, and direction of any herd member. the caribou had belonged to the caribou hunters long before he had been born.

cen was fully in his element. he had tired of bird meat and so abandoned that hunt almost immediately, favoring the paths which led into the darker bracken. here in these woodlands, old caribou came to die, to give themselves to the earth so that new calves might be born beside the sea.

and it was for one of these downed bodies that cen searched, thinking of how he had felt so warm within his heart the first day he had seen red leaf among her sharadoii people, how he had known their tongue as a trader but how he had truly become one of them for a time, calling her beautiful in lanzadoii, allowing the loveliness of her response to him to carry away his grief over gheli's death and then ghaden's own.

but that had been the end of his love. when he found a downed elder, cen dispatched the beast with a guttural thanks to its spirit, then carried as much meat back to the first camp as he could, dumping it in the snow for red leaf to prepare while he went back for more, saying nothing to his wife.

had someone asked cen outright if he believed red leaf had killed ghaden, he would deny it.

but those hours of torment after the death of his son had blackened his mind. it did not matter that the young wife he had married from the sharadoii had come to love the boy as her own on their crossing. it did not matter that she too had grieved. that she had pleaded for her life had been enough for the lanzadoii.

but not enough for cen. he wanted to know for himself if she had done it.

her words went unanswered save for a lingering look when he had come back, and wiped blood from himself, going out a third time to retrieve the carcass and the pelt he had skinned in three long pieces. "we will stay. two days," he told her in lanzadoii, biting into the prepared meat. "dry meat. dry pelts. i will clean the teeth." and then all they could carry would be her burden through the next day. cen might even make her travel two to make up for the time they would lose drying meat.

she loved him. 

when cen had finished eating, he settled against the skins and reached for her, perfunctory and distant though without roughness as desire for his pretty wife rose. she was indeed a prize, and he had suffered twice to have her. for this, red leaf would never be marked upon flawless face by his anger. you did not bruise a rosehip before you had a chance to taste it. "do you know why the sharadoii gave you to me, red leaf?" cen asked, tracing her jawline. "it is because you are not real. you are a shadow. they gave you to the shaman of the lanzadoii so that we might all find out what you are." 

he was not a shaman. red leaf did not need to know this.

cen grunted, his lips twisting, but said nothing, only pulled her against the beat of his heart and held her there possessively for a moment. 

a good man. 

he had stopped being that. in fact, only red leaf had ever accused him of it. 

the curl of her own fur and blood sat just beneath his chin, pinned with a sliver of wolf's ivory that he swore he had gotten in trade from a seal hunter, who had in turn gotten it from one of the muradoii. and why would red leaf not believe him? he knew she believed in the amulet. he did not hide it from her, and flaunted it even now.

but the time for words was past for cen; her red eyes brought fire to his own and his silent command was that she please her husband.


if she slept or was awake still beside him in the skins, cen did not know. he took the first watch, moving away from her warmth and womanness to stand guard in the cold, listening to the wind and the sound of the caribou moving unseen in the surrounding undergrowth, all around their camp.