Rebecca has been dreaming about when she had another name. It's always the same dream- of rivers and a willow and throwing herself into the air, laying down her head upon his head, so her father, who is dead, will have to kill them both.
She woke to the tune of a half remembered song. But it's stopped now, dream music.
All the same. It's unsettled her. Tilted the world.
John is sound asleep beside her. She takes a moment to look at his face – clean shaven, with a patina of lines spread across his skin. He loves her so much. He let her keep her mother's necklace. He wanted her to save her people, when the man who never wrote just wanted her to save herself. He understands her. He does. And if he could not stand the forest, insisted upon the house, called it dirty when she let creatures in, called her mad with only half affection, brought her dresses and helped her lace her stays and said how lovely she looked when she tucked her hair away – well. This is all because he loves her so.
Yes, he does love her, she thinks, as she gets up from the bed and goes to the kitchen. He loves her so much that the thought she is not entirely his threatens, sometimes, to break his heart. So she made herself entirely his.
And there are no fights with the Indians, now, her marriage has seen to that, once and for all.
There is nothing with the Indians.
No. She is being unfair to him. He has not made her do anything – it was just the sadness in his eyes, the smile that was not quite full, the angry tightening in his jaw that made her change herself for him.
He taught her to read the bible, smiled with so much joy when she could that she kissed him. He works all day to provide for her, brings her gifts – a fan of lace, a dress of silk, a brightly coloured bird in a cage (that died within three days, unused to gilded walls). So she scrubs the floors and turns the pages of the holy book, and kisses her husband and holds him and if sometimes she has dreams…well… that is only sometimes.
And she loves her son. Loves her son more than she has ever loved anything in this world. John has given her her son, and for that she will love him until she dies.
She goes to the bucket of water to wash her face – but it is empty. She looks through the windows. The moonlight has washed the world silver, and the well stands just outside the door. Rebecca Rolfe picks up the bucket, goes outside.
It is so cold it chokes her, for a moment. Then she shakes it off, realizing her hair has unwound from it's plait, that the ground bites beneath her feet, and that the moonlight – the moonlight…
She drops the bucket.
There, there, off with the stockings, off with the awful tight clung cotton, leave them on the ground, they hardly matter, not when the moon is singing as it is. The wind – she can hear the wind! It's racing, it's turning through the trees, she wants to jump into it – she can breathe! All this time she's been suffocating – but now, now she can breathe!
The woman lifts her head to the sky. Tears run unbidden, frantic on her cheeks.
Slowly, slowly, at first, in her long white nightgown, she steps into the garden. Walks down the path. Shuts the gate behind her.
The path in front of her leads to the town. It is smooth. It is steady. Steady as a drum.
With something half between a laugh and a sob, Pocahontas leaps away from the path, and runs, muscles burning, heart leaping, eyes wide open (because she's been asleep, she's been dreaming all this time, surely, surely) into the trees. Her mother's necklace, and the cross John gave her at her baptism clink together. The cross is heavy, the necklace delicate – it will be damaged, so she rips away the wooden icon, hurls the crucifix to the ground, and runs until she thinks her lungs will bleed.
When she stops, she clutches a tree, and she laughs.
She laughs.
And there! That song – from her dream. Only it's not, it's real, unless this is a dream, but it doesn't feel like one. Slowly, she follows the sound.
She remembers. It twists her heart – brutalizes it. The force of the memory winds her, makes her eyes water again, she has to clutch her heart, it hurts so much.
The song is ripping it apart.
The native woman in the white dress walks slowly through the trees, trapped in a dream, pulled onwards by the winds. She climbs over rocks. She cuts the soft skin of her feet, her hands graze against the ground. She cannot stop the silent trickle of tears, and the overwhelming fear of freedom.
She knows this place. She knows this river. She's dreamed this path a thousand times.
The moonlight bathes the world, whispers to her, weeps. It sings alongside the melody.
Pocahontas stumbles towards the willow tree. Between the branches, she sees a figure. A head of blond hair, and she shouts John.
'John!' But it's a girl. A girl wearing a man's large white shirt and an old brown skirt. In the moonlight her hair gleams, and she stops the melody, turns to face the stranger, pushes back the fall of the willow tree's branches to look at the older woman.
They stare, for a moment.
'Are you a dream?' the young woman answers. For a moment, Pocahontas cannot speak. Then, she begins to laugh.
'Yes. Yes, I am, child, I'm a dream. I'm a dream.' I'm the dream of the white man, who wants an exotic, docile woman to save him. I'm the dream of a foreign nation, who wants a savage tamed. I'm the dream of a church, who wants all other gods subdued, forgotten, who wants all to embrace their monosyllabic God.
I'm the nightmare of a nation raped and beaten to the ground. I'm the fear of a father, who lost his child to his enemy. I'm the lingering, awful, shaking hallucination of my own mind, the woman who gave up who she was to prove she loved a man, that she had made the right choice, that she had not given up her heart.
I am nothing.
No. I am Rebecca.
The girl child steps down from the willow, and Rebecca sees a face momentarily surface from its knotted bark. But the white men killed that, too. Whether with gunshots or with love, they have killed it.
'Do you need help?'
'Who taught you that song?' Rebecca moves towards the child, clutches her arms, almost digs her nails in in her insistence.
'My father- who are you?'
'What is your fathers name? Tell me!'
'John. John Smith.' The girl whispers it, confused, but Rebecca lets her go, turns away, puts a hand over her mouth to stop the whimper.
Then she runs into the trees.
When she gets back to her house it is morning, and John is standing by the gate.
'Rebecca?'
He opens his arms and she lets him embrace her, kiss her hair, and when he doesn't ask her where she's been she knows how much he loves her, for all he needs her tamed.
Her husband leads her inside. Her feet make bloody prints upon the ground.