the air smelled of smoke and tasted of slaughter. perhaps a herd had been driven over a bluff. perhaps heaps of carcasses spawned maggots and flies and this was the source of the dreadful, incessant buzzing sound. or was this something sweeter? had the world won the argument? was she now a ghost returned to mock the rightful failure of her kind? would she find somewhere nearby the last putrid remnants of her people? she dearly hoped so.

she was named bitterspring in the language of the brold clan, lera epar, a name she had well earned for the terrible crimes she had committed. she had been the one flower among all the field's flowers whose scent had been deadly. men had cast away their own women to clutch her as their own. each time, she had permitted herself to be plucked-seeing in his eyes what she had wanted to see, that he valued her above all others-even and especially the mate he had abandoned-and so their love would be unassailable. before it went wrong, before it proved the weakest binding of all. and then another man would appear, with that same hungry fire in his eyes, and she would think, this time, it is different. this time, i am certain, our love is a thing of great power.

everyone had agreed that she was the cleverest person in all the clans of the brold gathering. she was not a thing of the shallows, no, her mind plunged unlit depths. she was the delver into life's perils, who spoke of the curse that was the alighting of reason's spark. she found divination not in the fire-cracked shoulder-blades of caribou, but in the watery reflections of faces in pools, springs and gourd bowls-faces she knew well as kin. as kin, yes, and more. such details as made one distinct from all others, she knew these to be illusions, serving for quick recognition but little else. beneath those details, she understood, they were all the same. their needs. their wants, their fears.

she had been regarded as a formidable seer, a possessor of spirit-gifted power. but the truth was, and this she knew with absolute certainty, there was no magic in her percipience. reason's spark did not arise spontaneously amidst the dark waters of base emotion. no, and nor was each spark isolated from the others. bitterspring understood all too well that the sparks were born of hidden fires-the soul's own array of hearth-fires, each one devoted to simple, immutable truths. one for every need. one for every want. one for every fear.

once this revelation found her, reading the futures of her kin was an easy task. reason delivered the illusion of complexity, but behind it all, we are as simple as bhederin, simple as ay, as ranag. we rut and bare our teeth and expose our throats. behind our eyes our thoughts can burn bright with love or blacken with jealous rot. we seek company to find our place in it, and unless that place is at the top, all we find dissatisfies us, poisons our hearts.

in company, we are capable of anything. murder, betrayal. in company, we invent rituals to quench every spark, to ride the murky tide of emotion, to be once again as unseeing and uncaring as the beasts.

i was hated. i was worshipped. and, in the end, i am sure, i was murdered.

lera epar, why are you awake once more? why have you returned?

i was the dust in the hollows, i was the memories lost.

i did terrible things, once. now i stand here, ready to do them all again.

she was bitterspring, of the brold imass, and her world of ice and white-furred creatures was gone. she set out, a chert and jawbone mace dangling from one hand, the yellowed skin of the white-furred bear trailing down from her shoulders.

she had been too beautiful, once. but history was never kind.

he rose from the mud ringing the waterhole, shedding black roots, fish scales and misshapen cakes of clay and coarse sand. mouth open, jaws stretched wide, he howled without sound. he had been running straight for them. three k'ell hunters, whose heads turned to regard him. they had been standing over the corpses of his wife, his two children. the bodies would join the gutted carcasses of other beasts brought down on their hunt. an antelope, a mule deer. the mates of the felled beasts had not challenged the slayers. no, they had fled. but this one, this male imass roaring out his battle-cry and rushing them with spear readied, he was clearly mad. he would give his life for nothing.

the k'ell hunters did not understand.

they had met his charge with the flat of their blades. they had broken the spear and had then beaten him unconscious. they didn't want his meat, tainted as it was with madness.

thus ended his first life. in rebirth, he was a man emptied of love. and he had been among the first to step into the embrace of the ritual of tellann. to expunge the memories of past lives. such was the gift, so precious, so perfect.

he had lifted himself from the mud, summoned once more-but this time was different. this time, he remembered everything.