I do not own The Last of the Mohicans.

Still don't own Eric Schweig.

The Dragonfly Woman and The Turtle Man


The world is vast and broad and full of mystery and violence.

It turns evermore and shall never cease until its dying breath.

Countless people there are upon it and all of them the same and different from one another.

There are corners of the world that hundreds of years hence will still never be fully discovered, understood, tamed.

No matter how hard the explorers and wanderers that search them out may try.

Entire civilizations will rise up, thrive, and sink down once again into the mud without so much as a whisper of rememberence for them and what a pity that will be.

For no truth will ever fully be spoken nor understood about them as the eons stretch ever forward.

But to some, the precious few, these lost ones are all the world, all the import, all things great and small.

Those who loved and cared and lived and died.

For them.


Tucked away little villages dot the untamed land called Can-tuck-ee.

Similar in nature and purpose one to the other.

Home. Safety. Community.

These villages will not be shown on any map, be directed by any signposts.

They are not difficult to find nor are they particularly easy.

For the ones who dwell within them desire to be dismissed by the world at large.

And they are.

For now.

They move every so often, these little villages.

Gathering what little they have and losing themselves in another lost corner of their world as much as they will.

They, these woodland village dwellers, consist almost exclusively of dark-skinned, dark-haired indigenous tribespeople.

They, whose ancestors wandered the earth following herds of magnificent ancient beasts whose bones now rest buried deep in the loamy earth.

They live as they will, these people, mix tradition with innovation.

They cultivate the earth, organically and without waste.

Squash and corn and beans intermix in fields without fence or boundary.

They gather fruit and nut and seed and any green growing thing that they may consume for the sustenance of life.

They hunt the deer and the mighty elk.

Wisely skirt the hulking bear and the lurking bobcat.

Hefting bow and arrow and knife and tomahawk.

The long rife, first introduced to them by the falsely earnest European colonizer.

They fish, pulling out of the water only what they need to survive.

And leave the rest free and unmolested.

More rarely found within these communities are individuals of different origin.

Lighter-skinned, lighter hair.

Them of the decidedly European stock.

Faraway lands of blood and war and plague and disease and religion-born atrocity.

People that, by some series of fortunate or unfortunate events or a mixture of both, have found themselves also in the way of abiding in these hidden villages.

They enjoy varying degrees of acceptance and community by the ones whose blood runs with the ancient, thundersome mastodon and the fearsome, stalking sabertooth.

And she, the girl in the water, may not be very much different than any of the other rare interloper of the world in which they do not fully belong.

And she may.

Still young by years, near nineteen autumns.

And yet her searching eyes have witnessed much, her resilient spirit born hardship.

For it is she who crossed the ocean with her sister.

Fled amongst hunted men across raging rivers, bloodsoaked cliffs.

And, eventually, willingly, crossed the long leagues of untamed wildlands with her Mohican lover and his father.

Coming to rest here, in the deep green valleys of Can-tuck-ee.

Ripe with child and full with love and hope.

Is Alice Munroe, youngest living daughter of Colonel Edmund George Munroe.

The fallen Scotsman who fought a war of greed for power in the name of England and King George III.

Who only briefly mourned his subordinate's loss.

Before assigning another to the noble task of vanquishing the French from the land rightfully belonging to the Sovereign Crown of England.

Is Alice Munroe.

Who has not fallen, no.

But currently . . .

The sky is so blue.

. . . floating.

Has it always been so?

Floating.

Tucked away under a canopy of green below a sky so cloudless and blue that it fills her spirit with serenity and peace.

It is here that she is floating.

Unfettered blond hair fanned out around her pale, oval face.

Slender arms and legs stretched out comfortably in the gently lapping water of the the hidden lake fed by the melted mountain snows.

It is late June, though she does not know it, having forsaken any calendar save the one of the natural world.

The water is warm with cooling undercurrents.

The sun is warm and she is at peace.

Rounded belly and swollen breasts breaking the surface for gravity's demand, no one to see and no English protocol to offend.

Alice.

She has come here everyday for a nearing two weeks to float; it is the only thing that relieves the heaviness of the baby that grows inside her belly and the discomforts of the final stages of pregnancy.

This girl, not quite a full woman, with the dragonfly inked upon her chest.

Simple, clean lines, the symbol of purity, happiness, transformation.

This girl, this girl who has come so far.

And may go farther still.

She awakens every morning in the longhouse that is set aside for women of child.

Where two Honored Mothers have brought her away from the one she loves and much of the village as well in preparation for the birth.

She attends to her necessities as ably as she may.

She is given food, light and easy fare with little mercurial fish and no walnuts at all.

She is given an herbed tea, morning and night, which she dutifully imbibes to speed delivery and reduce child-bearing pain.

She washes her feet and hands with the utmost care.

She is smudged with special songs.

She is admonished not to linger in doorways as it will slow the time of the birthing process.

No necklet does she wear for fear the child will strangle upon its own cord.

She has been inundated with positive spirits and gentle reassurances from many in the village.

She has been encouraged to work when she is of mind, sleep when she grows weary.

Eat when hungry.

Walk for health.

And find the sun, the water, the air, all of the natural world that please her so in these final days of growth and preparation and resolute endurance.

And Alice Munroe has been very happy.

Content.

Hopeful.

And . . .

I would that my sister would have not had to labor over her work so in her final days with child.

Nathaniel may feed his own mouth, having been a man of the wilderness.

. . . tired.

I shall tell him when next we meet.

And wishing . . .

Though I would imagine he is well aware.

He is of intelligence.

And my sister is very stubborn in her ways.

. . . for the time of deliverance to come.


There is a hierarchy to the village.

Not as the Yengee would see it.

There is no ruler, no king.

No lord nor lady.

Nor governor of any pedestaled nature.

Only those who have lived more than others.

Witnessed more.

And learned of it.

Their lifetimes of wisdom and considerations are of great import to the village.

They are men. They are women.

Often older than the rest.

For it takes time of life to acquire such knowledge and experience.

His father, Chingachgook, is one of these.

A near constant wanderer, he has traveled far and wide for many years.

Ventured beyond the valleys and mountains of their chosen home.

Traded with the shrewd trapper, broken bread with the friendly colonial.

Watched the greed of the Yengee and the French trader grow and reach further than the grandfathers of their grandfathers ever imagined when the white man first set foot upon this land.

Stories were told of their vulnerability, the long gone first colonizers.

Their weakness, in the early days of their settling.

Their desperation, how the winters nearly killed them and their strange crops would not took root in the soil.

How the most compassionate amongst the tribes reached out their hands in human kindness one for the other.

And found, in time, that hand reaching out for more and more even unto their very lives.

And their ancestral homelands.

The earth, which held since before they were born.

And would hold long after they went back into the ground to nourish it.

The white man who spoke friendship with their mouths.

Lied with their eyes.

Took with their hands.

And gave with their hearts.

Those ill-meaning hearts.

Wampum and rifles and whiskey and wars and wounds and diseases on gifted blankets.

Gave so much that those who were left alive finally turned away from their homeland.

Moved across unfamiliar territory.

And made for themselves new homes, new families.

Far, far away from the reach of the treacherous white man.

Or so they thought.

The elders of the Delaware village have been disheartened by the reports of wars ranging farther and farther west toward the setting sun.

Concerns that it will never be enough, that these greedy men will never be satisfied in their conquest of a homeland that is not theirs.

Concerns that have been all too real.

In the not too distant past.

The village elders have sat with his father, sat with him.

Listened to their stories, considered their words.

Pulled on their pipes and gazed, unsettled, deep into flickering firelight.

Seeking wisdom for their murmured questionings.

What is the Delaware to do?

And Uncas is not certain they will ever truly find the answers to the questions they seek in their meditations.

He has sat with them, him with the turtle inked proud upon his chest, just below the hollow of his throat.

He has sat and spoken with them and listened and considered all that may be done.

And when he has stepped back from them, moved along his own path, he has inevitably sought her out.

Her.

Alice.

His Nëwicheyok.

She is not the Delaware his father had long hoped for.

Neither is she of the Shawnee, Chickasaw, or Cherokee with whom they trade.

She is not even as dark of hair as her sister.

But rather more pale, more delicate of bone and fragile of spirit, he thought.

Unable when he first laid eyes upon her, to make even so much as a fire to warm her limbs.

And yet, she has, of her own determination, survived and thrived in the world in which she has found herself plunged.

Making of herself what she chooses to be.

And he loves her.

And she loves him.

His father, her adopted father, as it were, accepts her, requests the acceptance of her, of their Delaware family.

This lost girl, this woman, who has walked with them so many leagues.

And that request has been granted by most, the strength of Chinachgook's word is enough to suffice.

Alice's affable demeanor and sincere overtures prove it to them further.

Though some of the younger women of the village find their distrust and discontent not so easily tempered.

They are displeased, the ones who so wish to catch his eye.

Their hope-dashed mothers.

But that is of no concern to him.

As is not the displeasure of the self-righteous, puffed up white man.

Uncas the Mohican knows who he is, what he chose to be.

He knows not his path of life but he knows how he will chose to walk it.

And whom . . .

Nëwicheyok.

. . . he wishes to walk it with.

For it is to her that he is beholden, it is to her that his eye will turn.

It is to her that his heart will forever belong.

Her.

His wife.

His . . .

Alice.

. . . Dragonfly Woman.


Hello, all!

Hope you are doing well here in 2021, which in the U.S. is somehow weirder and even worse than 2020.

Go figure.

My dad always used to joke that you had to create whole world and everything in it before you could tell your story.

Yeah, he was a big James A. Michener fan, back in the '80s and early '90s, ha.

Anyway, I didn't exactly do that but I know this is more than my usual amount of exposition.

So thanks for creating this world with me and now we can enjoy the beloved characters in it.

Special thanks to DinahRay and BlueSaffire for helping me get the ball rolling again.

Everybody appreciates feedback. Leave a review if you like. :)