The Bracken Woods blood thorns [m]

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red leaf pleased cen. her youthful body and fantastic loveliness delighted his eyes, his desires. her submission to his word, to his want, to his will incited the man, driving him to possess her often. she was a dutiful woman, and he was not ignorant of how hard she tried to be a good wife to him.

but ghaden lived behind his eyes. ghaden, who he and his uncle tsaani had pulled from the rapids of the treacherous, swift brother river. he remembered his desperation, his grief, his horror. ghaden lived in his dreams.

for a moment cen stood and saw nothing before him, not the twisted icewound barbs upon the earth, not the gentle snowfall, not the split boulder which marked the icy pool.

belatedly cen heard red leaf's voice speaking sharadoii; it seemed to blur with the memory of that day, that night, her voice crying out in both dialects, in her valley words and the broken plains tongue she barely knew. inside his mind, he had shoved aside all earlier recollection of their glacier crossing; how ghaden had taught her lanzadoii, how red leaf had spoken back in sharadoii, how his new wife and young son had made a game of the exchange. how they had turned their faces to him when he returned from hunting, radiant with delight, and at last cen felt the coldness in his spirit loosen its hold. 

almost they had been a family.

almost, until the sharadoii woman he had brought over the glacier showed a tongue twisted with lies and half-truths.

sharadoii; cen turned on red leaf, his face a bleak mask of fury, and he had crossed back to their skins in two steps, and fallen upon the woman until she cried out. "lanzadoii. lanzadoii! do not fill my ears with your foolish forest babble! think! you anger me. you shame me."

cen shoved her away, their earlier pleasures forgotten. "start. now. i want to be gone." 

he did not look at her again. the caribou hunter returned in a hard stalk to the shadows of the forest, to watch the herds, to hear their voices.

to remember ghaden.