Kindred

Chapter Nine

Note: Regular readers of my work will know that my health is in a constant state of tanking and recuperating, and right now it's tanking again. So that means extended bed rest, which means more writing time. Every cloud, silver lining etc.

Since I'm already playing fast and loose with history because the source does likewise, it's likely I will make some mistakes when it comes to Algonquin (specifically I'm drawing from Ojibwe, as that's the one I'm most familiar with) culture. I've done my research to the best of my ability but if there's a chance I've misrepresented something, I apologize sincerely.

…..

Pocahontas

She felt a little pang of guilt for using the name 'Pocahontas' when on retreat with the others. They were so unabashedly open with each other, and she did her best to fit in, but sometimes it seemed like she came from a world so different to the other girls that she would always be set apart, and perhaps it was because she had not told them her true name.

Names were powerful, and even beyond the nickname given to the coltish child too fond of turning cartwheels in the dirt she had different names from different mouths. They had their own inflection, and some names were only to be spoken by one person. 'Pocahontas' was the throwaway, tossed in the direction of the pale-faced strangers and accepted without question.

The first few weeks had been hard. She struggled to adapt to her new home, and it made interacting with the other girls awkward. Tiana humored her mumbling over the stove (the closest thing the castle had to a sacred fire) but she had caught Pocahontas visibly wincing as she added chopped sage to a cooking pot, and even though Tiana's questions were in good humor Pocahontas couldn't quite explain herself properly.

She refused Cinderella's offer of mending her clothes and did her own laundry down by the river, unable to trust their soap and scrubbing with her traditional buckskin. When one of the wampum around her wrist snapped, she panicked and barked at Snow to stay back when she tried to help her gather the beads. Snow, thinking she had done something terribly wrong, burst into tears and fled at the sight of Pocahontas for nearly a week before Aurora put things right between them.

It was odd that Ariel, who was barely even the same species as the other girls, had managed to fit in so perfectly when Pocahontas was scraping along the sidelines. After a time it did become easier, but it was never comfortable. The walls of the castle seemed to close in on her, and she felt like it was trying to trap her. The living stones and the vines wrapped around the turrets whispered at night, keeping her awake.

Strange to think she had been the one to insist on leaving her home in the first place.

…..

"It is not needed," Powhatan had told her, when she brought the subject up with him. "You are needed here."

She bristled, but kept her anger to herself. She was only needed because, since the death of Kocoum, other potential husbands had been offering gifts for her hand and there was tension in the tribes because of it. Choosing one man over another could cause serious ruptures and even lead to war, and Powhatan wanted her close at hand so she couldn't make rash decisions on her own.

There were far bigger things at stake than her hand.

"This opportunity will only come to us once," she warned. "It would be best for all of us if I go."

"You speak as if you were chief," Powhatan chuckled fondly. "I decide what is best..."

"The visitor will be leaving for her own lands soon and she will not come back," Pocahontas hissed. "But the others will."

The tribes had kept their distance from the settlers as a rule, but the arrival of the 'walking flower' had piqued their curiosity. Pocahontas was already one of the few natives that attempted to communicate with the settlers, and so she had gathered her courage and journeyed to the little township.

The 'walking flower' was ghostly white, even for a pale-faced stranger. The clothes she wore were enormous, covered in a strange frothy stuff that looked like sea foam on an upturned flower, and she carried another upturned flower to shield herself from the sun. Her hair was corn-yellow, hanging in fat little spirals like a sprouting fern. The other settler women were bare-faced, ruddy of cheek and heavyset, she was so markedly different from them she hardly looked real.

She had come from a distant land, she told Pocahontas (drinking some strange pungent liquid from miniature pots in a ramshackle log building) and she had come to find a girl among the natives who could be considered their 'princess.' It was to build strong alliances and friendships between nations, and many nations had already sent their own girls and successfully forged alliances.

"It would be good for your people," the visitor said, flipping one of those perfect coils over her shoulder. "Good for you, too."

But her father had refused to listen, demurring every time she brought it up, right up until the day before the 'walking flower' was due to board a ship back to her homeland.

"I can go once," she offered, as a compromise. "I will not be too old to marry when I return. And if it is beneficial..."

"What man would want to marry you then?" Powhatan scoffed. "You will return wearing these upturned flowers with white powder all over your face..."

"Don't be ridiculous," she snapped. "I go in place of my people. I will show them what we are."

"No. We will stay away from them, as we have done all this time."

"The strangers will not stop coming, Father," she said, though she was no longer trying to convince him. She would go, with or without his blessing. "When the maple trees stand against the winds of the east, they are torn up from the roots. We must bend with the wind, or likewise be torn up from our roots."

…..

She had made that long journey fully prepared to talk seriously with the leaders of other nations, of resources and war and alliances and land. She wasn't prepared to merely make small talk with these girls, who only talked of war and resources in passing. Their strange customs alarmed her, and in response she shrank back to what she knew.

In the end, she spent most of her time in the forest. She came back for meals and did her share of the chores (although they never asked her to do much, knowing she preferred being outside) and as much as she liked the other girls (and she did, she truly did) they just felt too different. Even back home she had mostly been alone; Nakoma had been just as much a minder sent by her father as she was a friend.

The forest was very different; old and dense, and the trees grew into each other in a way she had never seen before. It was full of life, deer and wolves and bears as well as creatures she had never seen before; odd colourful birds that nested in the mountains' natural shelves, long snakelike dogs that lived in the river, fish with long sharp teeth and an evil glint in their eye. It was fascinating.

Every year a new girl or girls would enter the retreat, and after a second term Pocahontas finally found a sort of kindred spirit.

Merida seemed just as out-of-place as Pocahontas herself, although she seemed to care about it less than Pocahontas did. She got on well with the other girls and they were fond of her in turn, but the castle seemed to close in on her as much as it did on Pocahontas, and she too fled for the wilderness.

Their camaraderie was strange, nearly completely wordless. It started with them coming across each other randomly; Pocahontas would be taking a small raft she built herself down the river and drop in on Merida catching fish near the waterfall. Merida would be trying to scale the cliff-side to look in on the nesting birds and find Pocahontas sitting in a nearby tree. Occasionally their paths crossed while they were trying to lose a bear or a pack of wolves and they ended up running in the same direction.

A nod, a shrug, and the other would be gone.

Then after a time the dismissive nod turned into a nod in the direction of the campfire, with the fish grilling over the flames, and the answering nod was one of acceptance. The shrug was a question and an answer.

What are you doing?

Nothing. Want to do nothing with me?

Okay.

Before they had come back for lunch and dinner; and then they spent hours out of the castle, in each others company or not, listening to the noise of the forest. The wolves howling to each other, the rush of the river after rainstorms, the rustling in the undergrowth of those strange little animals that only came out at night, the crackle of the campfire.

Pocahontas' wandering was aimless, migratory. She followed a scent on the breeze or the flow of the mountain streams, or tracked a particularly interesting bird but never really minded if she lost it. Merida's wandering seemed to have some sort of purpose; she deliberately took herself off to the most inhospitable places in the forest, the sheer cliff-sides and the rapids where the water was most dangerous, the sunken marshes and the most thorn-riddled thickets. That was why Pocahontas usually returned to the castle tired but tidy, and Merida returned covered in mud with her dress torn to bits.

They never arranged to meet, but it happened naturally. Pocahontas could always track Merida to wherever she was, and Merida made no attempt to cover her tracks. Often as the sun was going down they would end up together on opposite sides of a campfire, or sitting in a tree together watching the sunset while braiding vines into rope and carving arrows.

When they did speak, they felt comfortable enough to slip into their own native languages, until they each had a rudimentary understanding of the others speech.

Aaniin bineshii?*

Nil a fhios agam. Gainead, dealraimh.*

Aa. Nimbakade. *

Agus mise. Rachaidh me abhaile. *

From time to time, Snow White would make her often disastrous journeys into the forest and find herself in some sort of trouble. It became almost a competition between them who could come to her rescue first. On even rarer occasions, one of the other girls (Anna, or Rapunzel or sometimes both) would get the urge to explore and quickly find themselves in over their heads. The two of them watched from a distance, making guesses as to what the other princess was trying to do and offering a helping hand if needed (but usually having a laugh at their expense either way.)

Eventually they were comfortable enough in each others company to relay stories over the fire. Merida's people held their storytellers in high regard, as did Pocahontas' people. They had both told stories to Belle, but had held back some of the more frightening or graphic details.

Pocahontas had a subversive love for hearing about the creatures that stole children from their cradles and replaced them with their own supernatural offspring, leaving hapless mortals to raise a child that was a pure destructive malevolent force. The creatures were so feared that nobody would call a baby beautiful in case the creatures heard and took them away. She had an equal fondness for hearing about the amadan, who escaped from the lands of the undying in the summer and turned every mortal he touched insane, and the dullahan, a headless spirit that galloped through the night on a headless horse, only stopping to cause death.

Likewise, Merida loved hearing about the mishipeshu, a catlike beast that lived in deep water that tried to drown mortals that strayed too close to the dark places in the lakes and rivers, and the wiindigoo, the emaciated giant that stalked the forests in winter endlessly craving human flesh. She sat through all of Pocahontas' explanations of her people's rituals, even the ones Pocahontas had kept to herself for fear of the other princesses' reactions. She was never put off or disgusted, just deeply fascinated.

Whenever Pocahontas returned home, only Nakoma wanted to know the things she had seen and learned. Her father would not listen, and the other members of her tribe were too concerned with harvest and hunting, preparing for winter and keeping the pale-faced settlers from their borders.

Eventually, they would thank her. For however hard Pocahontas had found it trying to adapt to her new life with new people, her people would find it much, much more difficult.

…..

*Ojibwe: What was that bird?

*Gaelic: I have no idea. A gannet, probably.

*Ojibwe: Ah. I'm hungry.

*Gaelic: Me too. I'm going home.