Uncas scanned the carnage and thought at one time he would have found it shocking or horrifying, but instead it only disgusted him. He wandered through the crowd of the dead who were walking and the dead who were not, feeling like an intruder on their grief. They were intruders, his entire family. No one had asked them to get involved. Now their hands were as filthy as their righteously obsessed attackers.
His eyes rested on the figure closest to him, and he recognized the short-haired girl Nathaniel had narrowly saved from a scalping. Her eyes were locked on another man lying on the grass, either a husband or a brother. There was nothing he could do, so he turned his back on her. At least she could bury him properly.
He fingered a few specks of what used to be someone's entrails clinging to the edge of his tomahawk. Something felt missing, and he was not sure what. He searched his mind for the absent entity and with a dull sense of triumph realized he had not thought of Alice Munro once in the last two days. Good. He did not want to imagine the look on her face if she saw him like this.
THE SHRIEKS HAD FADED INTO low groans and prolonged wails that seemed to rise from the earth itself by the time she left the cover of the trees. Her vision had blurred, but she stumbled forward. The direction struck her as ironic. She had spent most of her time in the Americas walking away from massacres, believing that watching them happen was the worst part. Now she had to react to a new phase. She had been oblivious in the before and useless in the during. No one had ever told her how to deal with the after.
Alice furiously rubbed the sleeve of her black shirt against her face. The smoke made her eyes water and gave the impression she was crying when she wasn't. She relished the sensation that for once no one was staring at her. At some point she knew she would have to stop walking. But she did not want to think about that.
Hinutet sat on the ground hugging her knees. She was staring at her brother with a very blank look on her face. A calloused hand grabbed her shoulder, and Alice made out a lined, feminine face peering at hers with unsmiling anxiety.
"How are you feeling, moskimutit?" Alice had to bite back a laugh. The familiar Lenape greeting suddenly sounded hilarious. She fought off the urge she knew was the first sign of hysteria and forced herself to give a sane reply.
"I-I feel well," she answered dutifully. It wasn't a lie. She was fine, more fine than she had any right to be.
"Where is Temakwe?" she asked hoarsely.
Chiskukus pressed her lips together and shook her head. Not the shake of a woman reluctant to say something unpleasant, but the shake of a woman who did not know and was too tired and hassled to care. Alice swallowed and nodded. She tried not to look too dejected when the leathery hand left her shoulder. It ought to be a compliment that the senior woman believed she could handle herself. After all, apparently she could. She had managed to do what none of her older, cleverer and vastly more experienced family had been able to do.
A sour taste flooded her mouth. She wondered for a moment if she was going to be sick. The trees made her feel claustrophobic. Gritting her teeth against the nausea, she turned away from the older woman's receding back and resolved to keep moving for as long as her body and her mind would let her.
She saw him in the open clearing, where the light of the half-moon made his black hair shimmer in fleeting streaks of blue and white. He drifted among the corpses with feet that barely touched the ground and a face that looked even more drained and exhausted than she remembered. The sight of him made her want to hide. Second chances were for other people. Liars, murderers and oath-breakers did not get to redeem themselves.
He was walking in her direction, but he did not see her. His eyes swept over the gory aftermath as though he wanted nothing but to tear his gaze from it, but a sadistic power held them there and would not let him look away. The axe by his side was dripping blood onto the grass, as was the hand that held it, some of it his, most of it probably not.
He passed in front of her. She swallowed, and her throat felt dry again a half-second later. She fought to find her voice, but when she finally did it was almost inaudible even to her.
"Uncas…"
He did not hear her, nor did he stop walking.
SOMETHING LIKE A SOFT WIND interrupted the moans of the dying, but Uncas did not give it much attention. His thoughts were otherwise occupied. They kept returning to another massacre he had not seen, where the victims built their villages in the north and spoke a language he had never learned, and where some of the attackers wore red and not blue.
Did you stay long enough to see what you had done? Or did you go back to hiding behind your walls without giving a second thought to the monster you created?
He moved to put his tomahawk back in his belt and noticed something else felt missing. His right hand shifted to the spot where his knife should have been. He was not surprised to find it gone. He closed his eyes and tried to remember at what point he had thrown it away. When he located the appropriate memory, he realized it required him to walk back across the field of mourners. Annoyed, he turned around and found himself staring at the younger Munro daughter.
Her corn silk hair was lighter. Her skin, presumably, was darker, but against the black fabric of her shirt with the tree-filtered moonbeams playing chaotically on her shoulders, it looked a shade below midwinter snow. He discovered he was not at all shocked to see her there.
His feet moved toward her without his being aware of ever telling them to. Her green eyes drank in his, glimmering with an odd mixture of astonishment, despair and joy. The joy made him feel angrier than anything else. Did she think he was a romantic prince, that he could sweep her in his arms and carry her away from the slaughter? She should know better than that. He found himself wanting to grab her arms and shake her until the misplaced happiness vanished from her eyes and he made her realize he could never be anyone's savior.
Something of his thoughts must have shown in his face, because hers withdrew. She looked down, and he silently cursed himself for not being able to better hide his emotions. It wasn't her fault she had grown up sheltered and coddled. He supposed he ought to break the silence, but he found himself mesmerized by the awkward way she bit her lip and ran her fingers through her loose blonde hair. He reluctantly remembered the cool softness of those strands between his own fingers. It came as a relief when three voices shattered his temporary lapse of judgment, all of them familiar and all of them furious.
"You had a very simple job. Is it that hard to make her shut up and wait?"
"If that's all I am to you, Nathaniel Poe-"
"We didn't have a choice. Your rendezvous point turned into a French and Ottawa shindig about an hour after you left."
"Then hide. Knock her over the head if she won't listen."
"Would you want to be around when she came to?"
"Perhaps I should have let Jack escort me to Fort Edward. At least the men there have a sense of – oh, my -"
Whatever third commandment violation was waiting on Cora's lips died unfinished. The next few minutes consisted of a jumble of fierce embraces and semi-intelligible exclamations that Uncas marveled the two of them had the breath to utter. An uncomfortable silence followed when Cora finally released her stunned sister. For a long moment the five of them stared at each other wondering how to break it.
Jack stepped forward and removed his hat. "I reckon you don't remember me-" he began.
"Captain Winthrop!" Alice's eyes lit up in surprise. "Of course I remember you. You were the first person I ever saw shout at my father."
Cora looked aghast. Alice glanced at her sister and blushed. Nathaniel burst out laughing while Jack appeared to be trying to figure out if what she had just said could in any way be construed as a compliment.
"Way to make a first impression," Nathaniel remarked. "Good thing you weren't looking to marry the girl."
"Hello, Mister Poe," Alice said politely.
"Miss Munro," his brother replied in kind. Alice looked surprised at the address. Her eyes flickered to Cora. Uncas had never bothered to learn the social intricacies of the English, but he guessed that whenever the two of them had appeared in company, her older sister had always borne that title. He could only imagine what false conclusions Alice must be drawing from his brother's mistake.
"Would you please…explain yourselves?" she asked. "How are you here?"
Nathaniel looked rather offended.
"Well, weren't you listening?" he demanded. "When I say I'll find someone, I do. Or did you think we'd just walk out of the Huron camp and ditch?"
Her cheeks flushed slightly in the dark, which was almost as good as admitting that was exactly what she had thought.
"Silly girl," Cora said in a cracked voice. Out of the corner of his eye, Uncas saw his father appear silently behind Nathaniel. He whispered into his brother's ear. Nathaniel cleared his throat.
"Normally the Delaware have pretty good hospitality, but under the present circumstances…" He let his eyes survey the spotted array of bark-covered houses, most of which had burned and collapsed or were on the verge of doing so.
"Looks like we'll be sleeping outside again," Jack said with a grimace. He tipped his hat to Alice before departing in the direction of the woods. Nathaniel tapped Cora's shoulder and followed Jack. Uncas knew the rules they were supposed to observe. All of them were leaving to give the sisters some privacy. His father paused only a moment to spare a glance at the dark-haired one who was a woman and the light-haired one who was not quite a woman. His eyes narrowed as he looked at Alice. Then he departed, and Uncas followed. He followed him for a few paces and could not explain why he turned around.
The Munro sisters spoke to each other in whispers. Cora looked concerned, and Alice looked dazed. An unbidden ache rose in his chest that he tried to repress. She would not look at him now that her rightful protector had returned. He was neither entitled nor qualified to play that role.
"It's all right," Alice said softly. "I have somewhere to go."
Cora kissed her sister lightly on the forehead, squeezed her shoulder and followed Nathaniel. Uncas knew he had no reason to stay, but his eyes lingered on her silhouette as she gazed at the moon looking rather puzzled. The awkward silence rushed back to fill the space between them. At the moment he felt farther away from her than he had during their entire separation.
"What month is it?" she asked without taking her eyes off the sky.
"Late October," he replied, too grateful to have something to say to wonder at the oddness of her inquiry.
She tore her gaze from the white orb and shook her head. "Thank you," she said quietly. "I've lost track of time out here."
A small laugh escaped her lips. It sounded beautiful, but slightly broken, as though a part of her was laughing to keep from crying. He studied her face more closely in the half-light. Her eyes were no longer filled with the dark terror that had flooded them the last time he had seen her. But it hadn't vanished. Instead it seemed to have rooted itself more deeply until it coexisted with everything else inside her.
"I'm sorry," she said abruptly. "For what happened to your friends. The Camerons. I just…wanted to tell you that." She looked down, as if embarrassed, and started to move away. He should let her go. He would let her go.
"Did he hurt you?" he asked before he could stop himself. She glanced up, surprised. Then a look of comprehension dawned on her face.
"No," she replied.