Elphame's Choice

Cuchulainn had no idea how it had happened. Everything had been going so well. There were times when Brenna seemed almost as relaxed around him as she was around his sister. And he'd worked hard to make it so. He rubbed at the stiffness in his neck and took another long drink from the half-empty wineskin. Then he fiddled restlessly with the little pots of herbs and tea leaves that sat on the desk.

Brenna had left them there. She must have forgotten them in the haste with which they'd moved Elphame's things from this tent to her new chambers within the castle walls. Cuchulainn had tried to get Brenna to take the tent as her own, but she had insisted that he have it. "She likes her own tent," he growled. "She likes it because it's on the fringe of the others - well away from everyone else. Alone."

In his opinion she spent too much time on the fringes of life. Unless someone was sick or injured, of course. Then she strode into the middle of the fray, metamorphosing from shy, unsure maiden to someone who could command an army with a single look.

Or at least the heart of a warrior.

Cuchulainn breathed out his frustration in a noisy burst of air. It had never been this difficult before. If he'

d wanted a woman, she'd come to him. He only had to smile, flirt, perhaps tease and cajole. They came willingly. But not Brenna. He'd known it would be different with her. First of all, she was so inexperienced. He didn't usually prefer virgins, unless it was during a festival of the Goddess when the spirit of Epona walked freely, inhabiting maidens, guiding their bodies and soothing their nerves. But again Brenna was different. Her innocence captivated him. He thought about her ceaselessly.

He took another long pull from the wineskin.

So he'd been careful with her, coaxing gently as if she were a timid bird he was trying to entice into his hand. Her response had been confusing and frustrating. The more attention he lavished on her, the farther from him she flew, but when he wasn't trying to charm her - like when they were working together to make ready Elphame's chamber, or when he had to fetch her because of an accident with a worker -

she spoke easily with him. It was as if during those times she forgot who he was, which seemed the only way she could be relaxed around him.

The thought was not flattering.

He tried to understand her. He knew her reticence around others, especially men, was caused by her injury. As Elphame had said, her scars were extensive, and they had wounded her soul as well as her body. But he was finding it increasingly difficult to remember that.

"I've stopped seeing the damned scars." His words were slurring, but he didn't care. He was alone. Just like she was alone. "How can I tell her that if she won't let me close to her?" How could he tell her that her face was just a part of her to him? That the scars were like her eyes and hair and the rest of her body. They were her.

The irony of the situation was not lost on him. Words usually came so easily to him. He'd always thought that his ability to talk to women charmed them more than his body or his face. He knew that the easiest path to a woman's body was to seduce her mind first. Women wanted undivided attention; they wanted to be treated with respect, which translated into a man who could focus and really listen to their individual needs and desires. He had become a master at that game. Now he found himself obsessed with a woman who shied away from his words and was only easy in his presence when his focus was distracted from her and they were not talking.

"By the Goddess! I don't know what to do."

He wanted to get up and pace, but the floor of the tent had unexpectedly become a little unsteady, so he contented himself with drumming his fingers on the tabletop.

That night had been a perfect example of his ineptitude. He'd thought all was well. Brenna had surprised him by agreeing to sit at the head table with the rest of them, and he had thought that that was a definite move in the right direction. Hindsight told him that she had agreed to the public placement so that she could keep a close eye on her prominent patient, and that it had had nothing to do with him, but Elphame's swearing in of their new clan and the exuberance of the evening had filled him with a sense of blind optimism.

It had also, he admitted blearily to himself, filled him with too much wine.

After his sister had retired, as directed by her attentive Healer, the music had begun. One of the workers produced a drum, and when he joined the other musicians, the clan roared its approval. They pushed aside tables and began pairing off and moving in time to the beat of the music. Cuchulainn had felt flushed and ebullient - all he could think of was how much he would like to dance with Brenna. She'd been laughing easily at something the Huntress had just said when he'd approached her and with a gallant bow begged her indulgence in allowing him a dance.

He'd watched as all of the color drained from the unscarred side of her face, leaving the other side even more livid in contrast. In a gesture that Cuchulainn was learning to hate, she'd ducked her head forward and hid behind the wall of her dark hair.

"No, I cannot dance."

Her voice had drifted back to that tremulous whisper with which she used to address him. For some reason hearing it again had made him feel suddenly very angry.

"Cannot dance? The woman who can stitch up a wound, set a broken arm and birth a babe cannot dance?"

He hadn't intended his voice to sound sarcastic -  truthfully he hadn't.

Brenna's dark eyes had lifted and through the veil of hair he thought he had caught a flash of anger within them. He remembered being glad, thinking that any emotion was better than her withdrawal.

"The skills you mention are ones I have had the opportunity to learn. I have not had the opportunity to learn to dance."

"Now you do."

He cringed, remembering the arrogant way he had held out his hand, certain that she would take it. So certain that he had not noticed that the people closest to them had gone silent to watch their exchange.

Brenna's eyes had darted around like a small bird looking for an escape, and he ground his teeth at the memory. His arrogance had caused her to be the center of attention.

"No. 1 - no," she said.

"It's just a dance, Brenna. I'm not asking you to be my lifemate." He'd chuckled, hating himself even as he heard the flippant words escape from his own mouth.

"I did not...I would not ever think..."

"I know what the problem is," Brighid broke in, covering Brenna's soft, stumbling words. "Cuchulainn has never heard the word 'no' uttered from a woman's mouth. He obviously is unaware of its meaning."

Laughter traveled through the listening group. Cuchulainn just had time to catch a flash of color out of the side of his eye, and then Wynne stepped jauntily from the circle surrounding them. She walked with a rolling, teasing gate that was an open invitation, tossed her flaming hair, and placed her hand firmly within the one he still held out to Brenna.

"The Healer is right, Cuchulainn. Perhaps ye should choose a lass who has learned the skills ye require and willna tell ye no." She rolled her words seductively.

The crowd erupted into raucous shouts of encouragement as she pulled Cuchulainn onto the makeshift dance floor and she began to move around him in a slow, seductive circle. Cu easily caught the rhythm, mirroring her movements with the same sensuous, earthy grace he brought to the battlefield. Wynne teased and promised, all in time to the pulsing beat of the drum. She brushed her lush body against his and through the fog of wine he caught her scent. She smelled of fresh baked bread and spice and woman, but instead of enticing him as it should have, her scent only reminded him of what she was lacking. She did not smell of newly cut grass and spring rain. She was not Brenna.

Still dancing, he turned and looked back at the table. Brighid was still there, and for a moment their eyes met. Then hers slid away from his in disgust and she turned her back to him. The seat next to her was vacant.

That was when the sick feeling in his stomach had begun. He'd made hasty excuses to a disappointed Wynne, and left the dancers. He needed to find Brenna -  that much he knew. He didn't know what he would say to her. She wasn't in the Great Hall, nor was she in the Main Courtyard. He interrupted a couple who were embracing in the shadow of the central column, and they told him rather gruffly that the Healer had hurried from the castle a little before him.

He'd tried to catch her before she made it to her lone tent, but he had been too late. He remembered standing outside her tent, watching her small shadow pass in front of the single candle she had lit. If she had been any other woman he would have entered the tent, begged her apology and called himself a fool, drunk on wine and desire. Then he would have made love to her.

But Brenna was not any other woman.

Instead he had retreated unsteadily to his own tent to drink himself quietly and thoroughly into oblivion.

"I was right about one thing. I am a drunken fool." His last thought before blessed unconsciousness claimed him was that tomorrow he'd have to make it right with her, and that he had no idea how he was going to do that.

Before she slept Brenna always talked to Epona. She didn't call it praying; she didn't make requests of the Goddess, instead she just spoke to her as if she were an old friend. And, truthfully, Brenna had been speaking to her for so long that that was how she thought of the Goddess. Her conversations with Epona began after the accident. She had known that there was nothing that could be done about her wounds -

actually the ten-year-old Brenna had believed with absolute, single-minded certainty that she was dying.

Her pain had been so intense for so long that she had not thought to ask Epona to save her; she had not wanted salvation, she had simply wanted relief. Instead of sending up prayers begging Epona to heal her, Brenna had spent long hours talking to the Goddess who she believed she would soon meet in the spirit realm. Even after she surprised everyone, including herself, by failing to die, she could not give up her conversations with Epona. It became a lifetime habit that calmed her mind and soothed her body.

That night she needed to be calmed and soothed.

Her hand shook with the remnants of suppressed anger as she lit the small bundle of dried herb and breathed in the familiar smoky scent of lavender. She sat in front of her little makeshift altar and fingered each item, trying to clear her mind and ready herself to speak to Epona. But that evening she found no solace in the lovingly chosen items - the turquoise stone that was the color of sea foam, the small likeness of a mare's head that she'd meticulously carved from soft wood, the single, perfect drop-shaped pearl and the feather, which glistened the same unique blue-green as her stone...

...The same color as his eyes.

Brenna closed her own eyes in disgust. Stop thinking about it, she ordered herself. But her thoughts, which were usually well-disciplined and logical, failed to obey her.

Anger surged through her again and she relished the coldness of the emotion; it was so much easier to bear than despair and loneliness.

How could she have been so naive? She had thought that she had found peace within herself, that years before she had accepted her life. She was a Healer. She would never know the joy of having a husband and children of her own, but her life - the life that should have ended a decade before - had meaning.

She had dedicated herself to fighting her two old acquaintances, pain and suffering.

What had happened to her recently? How had her placid core become a turbulent ocean?

Absently, Brenna touched her right cheek, feeling the slick, uneven surface of her scars. When was the last time she'd thought about love? It had been years ago, right after she'd begun her monthly flux. During that transition into womanhood she'd thought about what her life might have become if she'd been just one step farther from the hearth - or if her mother had known the bucket contained oil instead of water

- or if her mother had waited to see if she would live - or if her father had been able to go on with his life___

It had been more than a decade, but tonight the memories felt suddenly fresh. It had been such a long time since she had allowed herself to dwell on "ors." She was usually more logical than that, and there was no logic in yearning for the impossible, or in wishing the done, undone.

Then why now? Why had desires, which had been cremated in another life, been reborn within turquoise eyes and a boyish smile?

Brenna reached to touch the stone, but her hands still shook, so she clasped them together in her lap. She looked away from the altar. That night she didn't see the Goddess reflected there, instead she saw shades and shadows of Cuchulainn.

She breathed in the lavender incense and forced her thoughts to focus on Epona. Thankfully, her mind cleared and the tension in her shoulders eased. She took another deep breath of incense. As was her wont, she didn't pray, she simply talked to the Goddess, although that evening her voice had an uncharacteristic hardness about it.

"It felt so right today to swear my oath to become a part of a clan which has always been close to you.

The sense of belonging is..." She paused and squeezed her hands together so tightly that her knuckles whitened. "It is something I haven't known in so many years that I'd forgotten the joy of it. Thank you for that, for allowing me this new home."

Spoken aloud, her words became the lost pieces of a troubling puzzle. Her eyes widened in sudden understanding, and she felt some of the anger within her begin to thaw.

"Perhaps the lure of belonging caused my errant thoughts." Her smile was grim. "Like a child, I have allowed pretty fantasies to sway my common sense. Pretty fantasies that centered around a handsome face." Brenna sighed. She couldn't avoid the subject any longer, not when she was speaking to the Goddess who knew her so well. Deliberately, she unclasped her hands and stroked her finger down the side of the turquoise-colored feather.

"It wasn't just his face, Epona. It was the kindness I saw in his eyes. It made me forget that all he can feel for me is pity, and not true caring." She gave a slight shake of her head and her voice hardened again.

"They think pity is caring. Not true. Pity is a foul sweetmeat - something meant to cover what is better kept hidden. But life eventually washes away layers, exposing even buried truth." She steeled herself before she continued speaking her most secret thoughts. "Truth was exposed tonight. He thought he would take pity on the scarred Healer and dance with her. As usual, handsome men - " Brenna blew out a breath through terse lips " - think of very little except their own desires. I knew better. I should never have believed..."

Her voice faded. How could she have believed that he was beginning to care for her? But she already knew the answer to her silent question. It had been in his eyes -  in those amazing eyes, which were the same color as turquoise and exotic birds. He had looked at her with -

"No!" The word burst from her mouth. "I'm finished with vain longings that only open old wounds."

Brenna welcomed the return of the anger that had suddenly broken though her grief that night. With a hard-edged sense of finality she rose to her knees so that her body was positioned over the burning lavender. Resolutely, she wafted her hands through the sweet smoke, bathing her body in the scent of the herb. She repeated the ritualistic action three times. Then she picked up the carved mare's head, closed her hand around it, and pressed her fist against her breast.

"Great Goddess Epona, for the first time in all our many years together I wish to beseech you with my own orison. I ask that you help me to find my calm center again so that peace may return to my heart and soul. I seal this prayer by calling upon the four elements. Air, which holds the breath of life. Fire, which burns with the pureness of loyalty. Water, which washes and restores. And Earth, which comforts and nurtures."

Brenna's words caused no magical stirring in the air around her, but she thought she detected a new warmth in the smooth wooden figure she clenched, and with that warmth the remaining coldness of the anger that had blossomed within her melted and died. Brenna closed her eyes and sighed sadly. Anger

was not the way - it was only a temporary balm that dealt only with the symptoms and not with the problem itself.

She would find peace within herself again. She would avoid Cuchulainn, which shouldn't be difficult.

Brenna had stayed in the Great Hall long enough to see his body react to Wynne's seduction. The beautiful cook would be keeping him very busy.

As she fell asleep she ignored the pain thinking of Cuchulainn with another woman caused her.