I do not own The Last of the Mohicans.
It is a gift for us all. :)
The Dragonfly Woman and The Turtleman
The Apples of Cora Munroe
Cora Louise Munroe, elder daughter of Colonel George Edmund Munroe, born and raised for the well-to-do Portland Square bourgeois, stands tucked away in a tiny cabin beyond the outskirts of the Colonial Americas.
The French and the British fight to the north and the east of them, dividing native forces among them in their self-interested manipulations.
They fight and they kill and they plot and they scheme.
And it is not for her to concern herself.
For she is here, away from it all, the death, the bloodshed.
Her and hers are safe for now and power-hungry, self-righteous men may fight and die needlessly as they have always done and will always do.
And Cora Munroe is attending her apples.
It is hot in here, the cooking fire puts a sweltering heat at her aching back and she wipes moisture from her brow with the back of one hand, heeding not the escaped tendrils of hair having escaped her judiciously secured bun.
Her attentions may be singular, Nathaniel having kissed her cheek, taken their little son, and lifted him onto his shoulders.
Venturing out with happy step into the autumn glen beyond.
The child growing within her still, sleeping she imagines.
Safe and secure in the warm, dark cradle of her womb.
She is to herself here now and that is good.
Her surroundings can not be more humble than this, their rough-hewn cabin built by the strength of the back and the sweat of her dear Nathaniel.
The man once a stranger.
Unlike any she had ever known.
Stirred her very blood with the intensity of his soul.
Him and herself and those they have gathered unto them.
Two days they have abided, their guests.
Two days of reunion, of family and breaking bread and working side by side.
Two days and it has been good.
She picks up an apple from the surface of the rough wooden table, one of half a dozen awaiting her knife.
And she is put into a remembrance of the day, so long ago now it seems, that Duncan had come to escort her to her father's fort.
Though the memory is not of dear departed Duncan, no.
But rather before him.
In the quiet moments before he had called her name and she had turned, responded in kind, and lightly embraced him, the mannerly British soldier who had been so taken with her and not taken heed of her gentle rebuffs, Cora had been otherwise engaged.
So not Duncan, no.
But rather the cider press.
A large, wooden, circular mill set in the courtyard of the small colonial settlement.
Trough full of freshly picked, deliciously ripe apples.
Apples.
And the wheel that pressed them down.
'Round and 'round and 'round it had gone, with weighted and determined persistence.
Pulled by a stocky workhorse, an innocent, lovely, white-maned, palomino creature that had plodded and plodded and plodded, 'round and 'round and 'round.
Wheeling over and over and over the apples.
Taking their bright, juicy, firm shapes.
And pressing them, ever so slowly, and with each passing turn just a little further, down, until they were crushed, flattened.
Oozing forth, she knew, sticky, viscous fluid diluted with river water.
The first of many steps in the process to make cider for adults, juice for children.
From the crushed, vanquished flesh of the once firm and bright and lively fruit.
No one ever queried the apples as to their preferences.
No, only plucked them from their sturdy tree branches, upended them from baskets into the press.
And set the wheel rolling.
Beautiful skins of these yellow and rouge apples slowly split and torn apart.
Infusing the air with the the heavenly, thick, sickly-sweet smell of their deaths.
Too deep a ponderance for a simple wood and stone cider press, she supposes.
But the relentlessness of it, the insistent press, the crush.
'Round and 'round and 'round and 'round.
There was no escape for them, no, these apples.
They were seeded for this, planted for this, grown and ripened and harvested just for this purpose.
Bushels and bushels and bushels of them.
That was all they were and would ever be, nothing to change or venture otherwise about them.
Were that one would fall from the basket, roll away under some settling or other.
Would it be found too, returned with its brethren, pressed and crushed and diminished amongst them as well?
What other life was there for an apple but that?
In the solitude and peace of the West Virginian cabin years later, a much changed Cora Munroe brushes a delicate hand across her forehead, attempts to dismiss her once sentimental rumination on the life of the simple apple.
She must to work now, there is much to do.
She has decided to bake a pie for their guests tonight, a special treat.
It takes extra time and extra resources she might otherwise hold back if it were just the three of them alone.
But her sister has come.
Her sister and her child and the man she has bound herself to.
His father as well, the same father who took her Nathaniel out from under the cruel tutelage of harsh trappers as a young boy.
Her heart is full with love for them all and she is glad to do what she can for them.
And so Cora Munroe steadies the apple she has held in her hand.
And cuts it clean through.
With her paring knife.
"Cora? Are you alright?"
Alice has returned, dear Alice.
Child upon her back, secured in the carrier Cora is sure Uncas carefully constructed for her.
Alice and her baby girl.
Dear Alice, once so timid and fearful.
Alice, her younger sister, how much has she grown and matured.
"You are crying."
Their father would be so proud of her, of Alice.
It mayn't be the life they had been raised to, as was expected.
But nevertheless her sister has thrived and become strong in herself.
And their father . . .
"Oh. Yes. A bit."
. . . would be so proud.
"The smoke, I suppose. It gets in the eyes."
I was never able to figure out why we first meet Cora staring at a cider press and looking the way she did.
And I was watching it again (yes, again, what) and this entire chapter showed up in my brain and I had to write down.
Hope you enjoyed. :)
Thanks to bcawriter86, BlueSaffire, chiarab87, MohawkWoman, and blanparbe for reviewing the previous chapter! :D
