Light and color danced across Uncas' eyes. His awareness felt brittle, his body barely there. He had known he was dead the minute he woke in the winter-withered forest, but now he wouldn't have been able to say.

Perhaps he existed.

Perhaps he didn't.

Perhaps there was another death, a more final one, and he was slipping into the abyss of nonbeing. If he was, he'd lost too much of himself to feel anything but dull regret.

He was...someplace, suddenly. He existed. There was darkness around him, and he could not see his own body (but it was there, to his relief). This darkness didn't feel quite as real as life and as the first world after death had, Uncas realized after a moment. It had the bright, fuzzy texture of a dream.

Why?

"Why?" Uncas repeated. He was beyond the need to know who or what or where. There was a voice, and it asked, but even though the question seemed important, he had no answer.

Why do you continue to fight, Uncas?

"Because I have to. Nothing in life comes without a fight." That was the law he had known since he first became aware of the world, and the words spilled from his mouth without a second thought.

"And so you choose this? To perform this useless task into eternity?"

Confusion filled Uncas as the voice changed from a whisper in his mind to a real voice, somewhere in the darkness close to him. It was the voice of the robed creature. He hadn't drowned then. Was he lost again?

"I have to." The exhaustion that weighed in his chest at the thought made his words sound very, very tired.

"Why put up a fight now? All is lost. Time is infinite," the voice said, gently rather than seductively. "You can stop now. You can rest." The soothing tones of a mother, persuading a sick child to take his medicine.

Something in Uncas recoiled all the same. There was a brief, pregnant silence. And then the darkness came alive with sound and color.

There was a blanket. Uncas was warm, but his heart was cold.

Across an empty firepit, two bright blue eyes stared sightlessly up into the canopy of trees in some quiet corner of the New York forest. The eyes were set into a pale, sallow-cheeked face, young and unlined despite the haunted gaze. The rest of the small figure was wrapped into his father's second best matchcoat blanket.

They had picked up the boy a week ago at a trading post - well, close to it. A Frenchman had been yelling at a small boy as Uncas and his father had hauled their pelts up to the small wooden structure, and something in the scene had struck his father oddly.

Uncas had agreed. No uncle, cousin, and certainly no father would treat the boy with such anger. Uncas didn't understand a single world of the trapper's guttural, pinch-mouthed tirade, but he had come to understand that cruelty had its own language – and that, if an uncle, cousin or father had it in him to try and hit a boy with such hollow cheeks (for the tiny fault of not hauling a large bundle of furs with the speed and strength of a grown man no less!), he was not fit to be anything of his.

His father had intervened. Though their own village had burned and its remaining people had scattered to the winds, Chingachgook still carried the mantle of imposing wisdom that had made him one of its respected leaders. Sending a lesser man off with a flea in his ear was perhaps the least of his accomplishments. So was sending the man's fouler, angrier companion (a marginally larger and angrier French trapper who'd used one word over and over, a single word that Uncas had begun to grasp as a very bad word) off with a limp. Convincing these lesser men that their captive was now Chingachgook's ward without uttering a single word, though…that would have been a story to be passed on from father to son for many generations.

Uncas had been relieved about the rescue. He'd felt a mixture of sadness and kinship when the boy had revealed, three days of hearty meals and silence later, that his mother, father and sisters were dead ("buried" was what he'd said, and he could not remember where, or even when). His memories of wandering and hunger were sharper than those of his departed family. That he would be dead if not for the very Frenchmen who drove him like a slave filled Uncas with compassion and indignation. Without a single word exchanged, Uncas and Chingachgook had set about

And yet, despite their clear understanding between them, his father's gentleness with the boy had put a whole different emotion in Uncas' heart.

Uncas knew his father loved him. He knew his father was only spending more time with the boy – Nathaniel – because, while he clearly knew how to scrape by, he didn't know how to thrive. The way Nathaniel cringed like a downtrodden pet if they moved too quickly or made loud sounds as his back was turned constantly reminded Uncas that Nathanie'ls halting words hid a world of pain that he, thankfully, had not had the misfortune of experiencing. But Uncas was also a boy of six who'd had his father to himself all his life; with only one of Chingachgook to spare, anger and jealousy had made their gradual, inevitable appearance.

What is this, Uncas?

At the words, he woke: part of him was still six and staring balefully at eight-year-old Nathaniel, but he was mostly himself, his older self, standing just behind the smaller Uncas' shoulder and watching on.

"I do not know…" But suddenly, he did. It was a few weeks since Nathaniel's liberation. Chingachgook was late returning from checking snares, leaving the children to watch their camp and firepit. But dusk had come on quick that day, and with it, Nathaniel's fears.

Though he'd one day grow to speak more, and more loudly, than the rest of his small family combined, infant Nathaniel's tongue had been frozen from scant human contact. Scant contact – and fear. He was afraid of the dark, of small, cramped spaces, and most especially of fire. He understood the need for its warmth and light, but he would not get near enough to kick a fallen log back in, and while he'd proven a quick study of things like tripwires and fishing lines, small Nathaniel could not keep a single shred of information about lighting fires in his head.

"I stay close long enough t'grab a pot and run," he'd say, eyes wide, "but no more."

This particular day had been hard for Uncas, he recalled. Nathaniel had caught his own fish first at midday, had remembered how to clean it when Uncas had not, and was getting so good at hitting distant trees with rocks that Uncas was slowly losing at this game more than he was winning. But the most terrible thing about that day was when Nathaniel had called Chingachgook "father" when calling his attention.

He had said the word in English, thoughtlessly, as he was calling for the older man over something trivial (perhaps a misplaced item, perhaps a curious animal). Chingachgook's English was very good, so Uncas had known his father's shock was not confusion, and that the smile that had briefly lifted his cheeks meant something. Uncas had felt his heart break, and while unable to be unkind to Nathaniel, he had kept to himself for the rest of the day.

But now his father – their father now – was nowhere to be found, and his absence, along with the darkness, had sent Nathaniel scuttling into the oversized safety of the spare blanket, and both of them were waiting.

What is this, Uncas?

Uncas didn't answer. He didn't need to – the scene answered for him.

He watched, heart raw with nostalgia, joy and shame as the younger Nathaniel started at some imaginary sound. He didn't scream (he barely gasped, in fact), but it was enough to call the attention of young Uncas. It had not been the first time he saw Nathaniel's terror, but it was the first time he was its sole witness.

Suddenly young Uncas felt like he was teetering on the edge of a tall cliff, with the silent wilderness at his back and a pair of terrified blue eyes before him. To pretend he hadn't seen, hadn't understood, would have been easy. Who would know? The trees? The birds? His father – their father – would return eventually, and he could deal with Nathaniel's nameless terrors and nobody would ever know that Uncas had decided to…to not do…least of all the boy too hemmed in by his fears to even remember Uncas was there. It wasn't his burden to bear, as he was not the father. He was but a small boy, and Nathaniel's junior to boot. It was the natural order of things, to let his seniors care for themselves.

It was natural. It was normal. It would be easy, comfortable even. He could feel his face sting at the cooling air, could imagine the fleeting disappointment of feeling the warmth rush away if he undertook the unpleasant road in front of him. He would be freezing.

Uncas was on his feet, casting the blanket aside almost before he was done sketching the scene.

A prickle of shame, like burrs in his moccasins, needled at him as he knelt before the pile of wood they had gathered while Nathaniel's courage had still held. Through his embarrassment, Uncas remembered, albeit a little dimly, that there had been other families in his village, where four five six children shared a mother and father. His own father had been raised in the middle of a mess of cousins. I have had a feast, he admitted ruefully. And when one had a feast, Uncas knew, one could hoard…or share.

Uncas took special care with the fire that evening, bundling the dry grass and bark into a bird's nest shape where Nathaniel could see, striking the flint and steel a few more times after the sparks had taken to the kindling and willing the skittish boy to understand (maybe you miss it because we go too fast, but see how we can't go slow? Too slow and there are no sparks – and no fire!). When he had tucked the flaming nest into the dry wood, Uncas did not return to his side of the fire. He sat next to Nathaniel instead.

He had waited in the cold, each moment of nothing making him more frantic, more afraid that he'd let some precious opportunity slip by. And then the blanket-covered shape edged close to Uncas, as close to leaning on him as the pride of an eight-year-old boy could take.

"Mehr-see," came a cloth-muffled voice.

Merci – gratefulness. Such a funny word, Uncas thought, another one of the few he could capture from French (if he paid a lot of attention and the Frenchman talked slowly- and they rarely did that, of course). Where the British, the French and the richer settlers seemed to say thank you and merci twenty times a day, the Lenape's wanishi was a special word. It's what you said to the gods after they saved your mother from death or lifted the sickness from your father. It's what you said to your fellow warrior when he dragged you out of a lake right before you drowned.

Nathaniel didn't know that, of course. His English was tentative, peppered with French and long silences as he strove to remember how to speak with his mouth rather than his face. But he was also a boy who'd known nothing but unkindness and begrudging charity. Uncas's heart swelled, full and painful. He leaned a little into Nathaniel too, watching the fire take to the wood in front of them and begin to bathe them in warmth. Though his cheeks were fast growing numb, Uncas felt his chest warm.

Netohcon, Uncas thought at the bundle beside him. Netohcon. Older brother. I will protect you until you can protect me too.

"What was that, Uncas?" questioned the voice gently, "what was that?"

As the sharp claws of joy and longing hooked into the older Uncas' heart, the scene dissolved, and Uncas could not tell if it had faded, a reflection in the water, or if his own tears had blurred the image away.

"What was that, Uncas? Was that duty?"

They were back in the place that was not quite a place, only darkness, himself and the voice now. Uncas almost recoiled physically at the very thought. Duty? "It wasn't," he said, the slightest tinge of anger in his voice, "I saw a boy lost and alone, afraid of a world that had been cruel to him. I could have – but I chose not to be his enemy. I couldn't."

There was no answer, but with a lurch and a bang, Uncas suddenly found himself standing atop a ridge, watching a Huron war party swiftly gain the upper hand over a British company. The scent of gunpowder filled his nose as he took in the scene (a familiar, fateful scene) from a completely different vantage point.

In life, his first sight of the massacre on the George Road had been a young, slow Huron that had met a swift end on the blade of his tomahawk. In death, his first sight was Alice.

Uncas' heart felt pierced by a blade as he gazed at her, clinging desperately to Cora as both sisters huddled together, felled flowers abandoned at the very edge of the bloodbath. Every musket blast caused her shaking arms to scrabble at her sister's dress, half seeking protection, half striving to make sure the chaos didn't rip Cora away.

"What of the Colonel's daughters, then? Was that duty?"

The voice was loud and clear in his ears despite the din, but Uncas ignored it. Though nobody told him, he knew that all he saw were mere shadows, images of things that had already passed. Even if they weren't, the Munro sisters were moments away from rescue – the number of British infantrymen on the ground was fast approaching the one in Uncas's memories, and subtle movements deeper in the woods that heralded his father's arrival.

But when a small, terrified shriek somehow made it to his ears above the blasts and the shouts, Uncas' body let loose like an arrow - towards Alice.

The scene vanished abruptly, like a room gone dark once the single candle lighting it died. In the dreamlike darkness again, Uncas fought against the rush of unspent determination that made his heart race.

"Was it, Uncas? Duty?"

Uncas let out a breath through his nose. "It was, once." Now, it was instinct – except instinct was unthinking, and his mind was anything but empty whenever Alice Munro crossed through it.

"Then why, Uncas? Why do you deny it, when you are so close? Why do you fight yourself?"

A long silence stretched between them.

"I…I fear her," he admitted finally, breathless. Her anger at his failure, at whatever she had suffered at Magua's hand before leaving the world. Terrible also was the thought of some polite reception, a lost young woman welcoming her protector as if he were her father or Heyward - or worse still, that he were someone of vague importance, just a trapper sent to fetch her, easily replaced by a redcoat or a colonial militiaman or any other man. Forgettable. But that was less likely, wasn't it? She knew, she must know, after how he behaved at the promontory, after how close she had come to tears when he turned his blade against Magua one final time. Uncas had seen it in her eyes – he was someone to her.

Then came a fear of Alice being frightened or only half-understanding his emotions. Of rejection. If anything of his could still be vulnerable to some form of death or destruction, Uncas realized with some humor, it was not his soul: it was his heart, dangling as it was in the small hands of Alice Munro.

I fear her hold over me, he admitted to himself with a secret smile. Even as I run towards her, battling anything that stands in my way, I fear her.

"Then what do you choose, Uncas?" Said the voice, like a caress in his ears. "Do you wish to stay safe from your choices?" It was soft as silk now. Soft as lies.

His answer was vehement. "No."

"Then…what is the next step?"

The question took Uncas aback. He had expected more cajoling, perhaps anger. Once again he was confused by the creature – was it a friend or was it an enemy? Had it been trying to mislead him and John in the forest, scare him away from the path, or had it been a trickster guide, showing him the way with its subterfuge?

Was it the creature that held him back, or…was it something else?

A niggling thought made its way into Uncas' mind. How does a rock sink, but a person float? Or better yet, how does one man drown when another lingers on the surface? Am I thrashing? Not with my body, but with my mind?

Yes, he had accepted that he loved Alice Munro, but that too had been a fight – a fight he had not won, but rather one that he had lost. And…to be here, in confrontation with his mind was still a fight.

What is the next step?

A man who thrashed sank. But a man who laid back and trusted the waters to hold his weight, even if they rushed to his face at first…there is no step. I float.

Uncas let the fear and the doubt and the confusion flood him. He let his heart be battered by the yearning for his brother and his father, for the life he might have had. He embraced the burn of anger at Magua, even though the fire of it fizzled almost as fast as it came - he could not resent a man propelled forward not by his legs but by his anger and heartbreak, for such men were like sheets carried off from laundry lines. Lost, lonely things, swept on by the whims of the wind.

He let himself be flooded by the warm confusion brought on by the memory of Alice's looks of wonder, by his own self-deprecating humor that only a handful of days had taken him one state of the heart to another. He let himself wonder if it was a passing fancy, then allowed himself a chuckle at his own cheek - I who died for this feeling doubt its depth. How fitting that he was lost at the bottom of a dark lake.

"You float?" The voice was serene now, almost polite in its enquiry.

"Yes," responded Uncas firmly, with his voice now instead of his mind.

"So...?"

"So I choose. I choose to hunt. I choose to find Alice. And I choose to...to accept the storm in my heart that comes with it."

Though he couldn't see her, not-Mamethakemu's presence changed. It felt...as if she had stopped. As if an argument had abruptly ended, or been resolved by a sudden hug or handshake, and Uncas were now basking in the peaceful silence that came after it. He wondered if the being was capable of shock or if, like the elegant pocket watches of the rich and idle, some fundamental mechanism had finally failed in her at his honesty.

Then, all at once, his senses dampened again. And then Uncas woke to a solid world once again, just in time to feel himself propelled upwards though the water of in a great cloud of froth.

Uncas rose from the water, spluttering and gasping for air he no longer needed to live. For an instant he didn't know which way was up – and then a great rumble filled his ears. Like the roar of a great beast it rose from the water, and though Uncas knew the earth could rumble and shake, he felt as if he were standing on the stomach of a giant, vast and empty.

Standing…?

Shocked, Uncas settled his feet more firmly upon solid, gently vibrating ground. He felt rather than saw the waters grow disturbed again and lifted his gaze just in time to see another wonder unfold: like a canoe led to home port, the entire bit of land that supported Fort William Henry drifted towards him, lifting the ground around it as it went. The waters and the earth raged in its wake, but Uncas found no trouble keeping his balance despite it. When Uncas' feet finally rose out of the last rapidly draining pool, the shifting building slowed to a stop.

Uncas looked around to find the robed figure behind him again. He was not surprised to find her dry – his own clothes were dry too. Her face was again Mamethakemu's, calm and detached.

"Behold," it said, sounding glad, " a man of faith." And then it seemed as if the small figure were standing in the middle of a storm: the shroud began to whip wildly in nonexistent winds. One by one, a multitude of small threads came loose from the robes until the entire shroud was writhing into the fibers that had once made it. As the fraying shroud reached Mamethakemu's face, the skin too seemed to come loose at the edges. Uncas was not surprised, until the face broke into a serene smile, and he had to take a step back in wonder.

With a final shudder, the creature that had worn Mamethakemu's face collapsed into an armful of fine thread. As one, the loose threads coiled and, like a great snake springing forcefully towards its prey, danced towards the sky in a spiral. The threads shone a pure white against the overcast skies and seemed to rise higher and higher, never away but rather upwards. Uncas followed the spectacle with his eyes until it grew too small, losing itself in the clouds above.

He offered it a nod of gratitude, but did not waste another minute wondering after it - he had to get to Fort William Henry. His heart beat and his throat closed with emotion, overwhelmed by the certainty. She was there.

Uncas ran towards the fort walls, stifling a now useless urge to look out for armed sentries. There was no longer a westward ramp. A pinprick of cold, then another: it had started to snow. Uncas wondered briefly if he had somehow pushed time forward in resolution, but he granted the snow less than a moment's consideration as he ran to the next wall, searching for an entrance. If there was none, he would climb the walls, and if the walls happened to grow as he scaled, or grow thorns, then he would hack through them with his hands and his knife.

There was a near imperceptible sound of wood breaking. And then there came another sound, a human sound. A voice.

"Uncas!"

Uncas stopped dead in his tracks. He did not recognize the voice, at first - or rather he did, but couldn't believe his ears. He had rarely heard that voice raised beyond a whisper. He had never heard it say his name.

But the shock lasted little, and for the first time since waking, Uncas ran with joy, the same joy of life that had propelled his feet in the many summers he had spent as a mortal man.

Her back was to him when he finally found her, standing before a small doorway. Uncas was glad he was alone when his eyes first caught sight of her – he froze, wrong-footed in a way that would have given Nathaniel a lifetime's worth of witty remarks.

Her head whipped wildly from side to side, intent on the bare trees opposite her. So like her, to expect a frontal attack when all the rest of her sides were vulnerable. A man with a knife could be on you in a second, little moon child, he thought, but could not begrudge Alice her inexperience. He could not begrudge her anything.

Uncas had to think hard as he brought one foot in front of the other, taking care to make noise (any measure of fear in those eyes, directed at him, and perhaps he'd finally break). At the third footstep Alice froze, not tense in fear but in expectation, and Uncas could not stop himself.

"Alice…" he tried, tentative. Too low.

Against all expectations, Alice heard him. She became agitated, head whipping wildly in his direction. She did not pause, did not freeze even an instant, but picked up her skirts and ran instead, heedless of the rough terrain. It was only when he felt the soft, chilled skin of her forehead colliding against his chest that Uncas realized he too must have run and met her halfway.

"Alice," he repeated, simply for the pleasure of saying it (Alice, not Miss or that girl, Alice), well aware that she would not hear such a whisper, and threw his arms around her, pressing her tiny, shivering form to his. He was dead, and so was she, but as her beating heart tapped a rhythm into his chest, somewhere below his own, Uncas wondered if he had ever been more alive.

A/N: Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated. I thank those of you who've been concerned for me in the face of the pandemic. I do live in what you might call the third world, and it has been hard sometimes, but I am alive and well.

I admit it - this chapter has been written for roughly a year. But see, when it was done, I hated the idea of leaving everyone hanging for another hundred years, particularly when the end was so close. So I waited until the entire story was finished to post it. Expect the next chapter – the end! – tomorrow, and an epilogue after it. This is the final stretch.