My name is Alice. My last name…it does not matter. Last names hardly matter around here. As a child my last name was Munro. I say as a child, because I became a woman only days before my marriage. Instead of maturing slowly and steadily, my childhood was taken away from me in one day…
I am old now. My hair has blanched to white, my skin wrinkly like a dried apple. I must look like a fright, though my grandchildren love me. Or are they my great-grandchildren? Moments of clarity, instead of the status quo, are now rare jewels in my weary days. My children sense this. My daughters (or are they my granddaughters?) sit at my feet and beg me to tell them the story of my life, as they know as well as I that there won't be many more opportunities. "If I am to tell you my life story, I must tell all of it, the beauty and the ugliness, the honorary and the scandalous. You children will not want to hear it from my lips" I say to them, to which they protest wildly. They know little about me, their own mother and grandmother. I can hardly begin to explain to them the world to which I once belonged. I have given them little glimpses throughout their childhood. When we saw fancy people in town or in Detroit when we used to go once a year, I would sometimes say, "I used to wear dresses like that, with gloves like that. I used to ride in carriages like that. My father used to wear a wig like that" and they would stare at me wide eyed, only momentarily seeing their mother in a different light.
The truth is my kind of story is not fit for the ears of one's children, not even if they are grown. But yet it must be told. So it is you, my dear Agnes, my sister's daughter, my flesh that I did not bear, in whom I choose to invest the last clear moments of my life. The relationship between aunt and niece is a special one, not quite like mother and daughter, but close enough. Once I breathe my last (and I sense it won't be long) it is up to you to tell my children and grandchildren as much or as little as you perceive each of them can handle. I would rather it be you than anyone else.
I live in a house in a land they now call Michigan. The house is in the woods, not far from the shore of a lake. It is made of crude logs, for my man is not a carpenter, try as he might. It keeps us warm in the harsh winter, and for that I love him and the house. We milk our own cow, churn our own butter, grow and hunt and catch our own food. We make our own clothes, mostly out of animal skins, with some exceptions. We have even learned to make soap. Did I grow up knowing how to do these things, you may ask? At this I can only laugh.
This is how I grew up. I had no mother, for she died giving birth to me. I had an older sister. We lived in a house so big you would not believe it if I tried to explain it to you, bigger than anything you've seen in Detroit or any trading post. It had more rooms than I could count. Not only did we have the house, we also had a summer cottage in which the fondest memories of my childhood were formed. Our father was almost always away, for he was a military man. We were raised by strange women, called governesses. They taught us how to read and dress and recite poetry and sing songs, but not much else. Our clothes were made from satin and silk and the finest of fabrics. That sounds heavenly, you may say, but you'd be wrong, for our garments were designed to keep us helpless. The many layers of skirts made it nearly impossible to run without instantly ruining them, and as that time approached for us girls to become women our dress was changed accordingly. We were made to wear corsets crafted from whalebone that kept our torsos painfully rigid, a torturing device, really. I can't believe I ever put up with it. We were raised to be dolls, pretty playthings for future husbands but of no other use. Such is the life of the rich.
Our father came home only sometimes, and at the news of his arrival Cora and I became giddily happy for it always brought lavish gifts and wonderful attention. As Cora grew older our father would sometimes take her along on his trips and I was left home, utterly miserable until her return. I was frail and young looking, and nothing much was ever expected of me. I was like my mother, I'm told, and perhaps my father was afraid for me, of losing me as well. Cora was like him, strong and loud.
The first trip I was ever invited to go on was to the America's where my father already was stationed. I was sixteen years old. He summoned Cora and I to travel across the Atlantic to a town called Albany and from there to Fort William Henry where we would meet him. England was in a war against France in that place. Our father had been gone for over a year and he missed us greatly, and felt it was now safe enough for us to be with him. How excited I was, how envious were my friends! I promised to write to them and return to them with grand tales of the red man and wild beasts and such. So off we went.
Why am I still here, you may ask? 'Tis true, I never left this place again for England. It cast a spell on me, that is the best way I can word it. The land itself cast this spell, but the land also appeared to me in the flesh, in the form of a man that embodied everything it had to offer. And so I must tell you about Uncas.