When gunshots rend the empty silence of the mountain, Alice Munro's mind is abruptly thrust back into her body. In a flash, she is aware of her aching feet, of the rope still dangling from her left wrist, the one they'd bound her to Cora with. Of the fact that she is surrounded by the people of the man who's hell bent on killing them. Of a scream, fading into the abyss.

Then the beast called Magua rushes forward and his tomahawk descends-

- onto the tomahawk of Uncas, and suddenly Alice Munro's heart is thrust back into her chest, numbness giving way to a wild vertigo of joy and fear.

Her first impulse is to rush towards Uncas.

It isn't another of the idiotic, childlike impulses she's had since landing here, driven by a desperate need for protection. Oh no, it's far more idiotic than that. So much that, even as her designated jailer moves to pull her back, Alice herself checks the impulse and concedes to the jerk, because she cannot protect Uncas.

Her small, weak hands would barely stop Magua's knife or his tomahawk for a fraction of a second, and she knows without needing to wonder overmuch that Uncas will immediately shift his focus to her and her welfare, if she dares come between them.

He will shift his focus and die.

The first slash that finds its target renders her breathless. There is blood on the green calico that sopped up her tears behind the waterfall, Magua looks so much stronger, unscathed as he is, and there is no sign of Mr. Poe or Uncas' father anywhere.

Then Uncas' eyes find hers.

Alice's heart, in free fall ever since the first clash of metal with metal, pivots and lurches, falling in a spiral dance now. They've exchanged so few words over the course of their catastrophic acquaintance, she and this silent Mohican with his heart in his eyes, but what she sees in the rigid line of his mouth and the shadow of tension in his brow is so clear, she thinks every last man assembled behind her can read it as well.

Uncas will leave the narrow mountain pass with her, or never leave at all.

He lunges for Magua a second later.

The protective impulse comes again, and this time Alice's hand comes free of her jailer's, but the overwhelming certainty of her helplessness and her uselessness overcome her.

Alice knows it is her fault. She has turned to Uncas time and again for brief moments of solace. Allowed him to protect her, branding him her protector in the process.

Singling him out for death.

When Alice turns her head, it isn't disgust at the blood or fear of the fight – she can hear every slash meeting the flesh behind the friendly green calico, feel the knife as if her own heart is there, being cut to pieces. It is shame and self-loathing, augmented by the gentle touch of the braid – Uncas' braid, she thinks madly – against her brow.

(Gentle as his hands)

But she is looking when the killing blow comes. Looking when Magua turns the struggling young man to clasp him against his chest, looking as he draws the knife across Uncas' throat.

Looking, when Uncas' unresisting body vanishes past the edge of the ravine.

Alice's fear and panic are gone in a fraction of a second.

(Her heart must have met the ground at last.)

There is nothing but calm in her as she stumbles to that very same edge. Nothing but calm as she looks into the abyss (where is he) before turning back.

She makes a choice.

Soberly, Alice wonders what must be on her face at that moment, to make Magua swallow so. To make him lower his knife and extend his other hand, beckoning her back to the malignant safety of the rock wall.

A hand that is ruby red with Uncas' blood.

Damn you, Alice thinks at him, her calm parting for a moment to let the vitriol through.

But as she steps off the edge, Alice's thought aren't on Magua, who she is abandoning on those cliffs. There is a rush of fierce joy at the freedom of the fall, a knife-sharp jab of sadness for Cora, who will nevertheless find her way.

And then there is a frantic, giddy litany of thoughts as she begs Jesus, Saint Patrick, God or whatever pass for deities in these wild, bloody lands that they help her find her way into Uncas' arms.