The Bracken Woods blood thorns [m]

but cen had married one of his own.

gheli.

radiant and cloaked in fur that carried the touch of the very sun, she had received cen's courtship with ardent response. he had not traveled so far for her, only across the plains to where another group of lanzadoii followed a certain herd of caribou. he had watched her dance, had courted her with blossoms of coneflower and primrose. she had been one of five daughters, all beautiful, but it was gheli with her sunflower skin and dark, dancing eyes who had captured cen entirely. he had seen her as they grew, their families mingling between camps for many years upon the hunt, but this was the first time they had come together at a marriageable age. love was quick, striking, fierce.

he had gladly paid the high price demanded by her hunting chief father. it was strange to think that they had been together so short a time. cen had helped those lanzadoii to bring down a red-furred caribou, sacred to their people. he had offered the first taste of its blood to gheli, and they had been married that evening.

she had conceived quickly, a fault of red leaf that counted against her. the hunter crouched in the slanting darkness and thought of gheli. though she had only given him one child, he had been a boy, and cen's pride was tenfold. ghaden was doted upon, praised, near spoiled. and it was just as well that he was so embraced by the lanzadoii kin, for gheli weakened. ghaden had been born the end of summer, and before fall truly embraced the land, she was dead.

cen's grief was fierce and vengeful. he did not allow it voice; he buried it far inside himself. quite soon after her death, he sought another wife. this time he took his young son across the glacier, as if to escape the pain that shown in every part of the plains now that gheli had died. he stayed with the sharadoii from the end of that fall almost into spring, and it was where he had met red leaf. cen had poured all of the broken love for gheli into the shardoii girl; it was as if he lived again, held by her scarlet eyes and laughing mouth. she had even come to love ghaden, a fact that had been endearing to cen.

but she was not gheli. no lanzadoii woman would have ever sufficed, and that was why cen had gone to the valley. but it came to pass that no sharadoii woman could ever compare either.

when cen returned, it was in silence. he did as red leaf indicated, helping wordlessly. and when they rolled into their skins for the night, cen lay awake a long while, listening to the never-ending trudge of caribou in the darkness.

gheli danced in his dreams.