Alice woke a little before dawn, as the dark curl of the sky yielded to the delicate gray haze filling the eastern horizon. A chilled mist hung in the air and she held her arms more tightly against her body, rubbing them with tightly-fisted hands. Along with the cold, she felt faintly nauseous, or perhaps it was hunger; she couldn't tell.
They would reach Albany today, Nathaniel had said the night before, by the late afternoon or early evening, depending on their pace. It had been determined that Chingachgook and Uncas would remain behind just outside the city while Nathaniel accompanied Alice and Cora into town; they thought, then, to find sanctuary with the patroon's widow, who might, in turn, be willing to intervene with garrison commander and help Alice petition for passage back to England. She hoped that she would not see General Webb. She had not liked him from the first – in particular his sneering, piggy eyes and his clammy grip as he seized her hand to kiss it – and she did not think she could look at him without having visions of her father being set upon by blood-thirsty Hurons.
She turned onto her side and burrowed towards the ground, hoping to conserve some warmth. Her stomach continued to gnaw.
The light soon began to change, a slow flame building upon itself, casting the sky with lilac and the faintest gossamer pink she could imagine. She realized that in all her weeks and days on this continent, she had never seen the sun rise or set in exactly the same way, never the same shades or patterns, never the same shadowed diffusion of light.
The others were awake before long, sitting up and then sharing in a light breakfast of dried meat and a pair of apples Cora had found the day before. Alice took a slice of the fruit, but just the smell of it caused her tender stomach to rise up in protest. Stealthily, she handed it back to Cora, hoping nobody had noticed. She didn't understand why she felt so poorly. More than likely, it had been something she ate the day before, although they had all eaten the same thing, and no one else seemed the worse for it.
They walked all morning, through empty meadows and pinched valleys, until they came across the broad floodplain of the Hudson, whose path they would parallel until they reached their destination. Alice said little as they traveled and even as they stopped at mid-day to rest, her mind occupied with trying to fight off the intensifying waves of nausea. Willing it away, however, seemed to do very little.
She found that her physical distress had even begun to dampen her spirits: she was struck by an overwhelming wash of sadness, originating from somewhere deep and unknown within her.
As they continued in the afternoon, Alice realized that perhaps she had made a mistake in not eating. With each step, she felt more lightheaded, and she found it harder to keep up as she could not fully keep her balance. Her hands and arms began to tremble slightly, although she tried to hide it by sinking her hands deep into her pockets, pressing one set of fingers flat against her thigh and curving the other around the softly-shaped edges of the wooden carving.
Emerging from the forest's red-gold spray of foliage, they found themselves before the expanse of a shallow river which at one point dropped rather precipitously, resulting in a rocky, jagged edge of waterfalls.
Nathaniel turned to look back at the two sisters.
"We have to cross here, above the falls." He had to raise his voice a little to be heard over the sound of the rushing water.
"Cross it? Here?" asked Cora.
"It's not so deep, maybe a foot or so." He stopped while he spoke, his rifle held compactly under his arm. "From the other side, it's only three leagues to Albany. We'll be there by nightfall."
The party began to move closer towards the river's edge. Alice took one step and then another, but she found it increasingly hard to keep breathing. Her body seemed in outright revolt, covered as it was in a thin layer of cold sweat, her legs no longer responding to her mind's demands that she keep moving.
Nathaniel's words echoed in her head…three leagues to Albany…by nightfall. This was it, then: the promise of civilization, of returning to everything she had known, and yet now that it was within reach, she could not make herself move towards it.
It was difficult for her to comprehend what was happening, as it overwhelmed her so quickly; her throat choked with stifled sobs, hot tears flooding over her cheeks, all the while hearing only the echoes of a small voice from her heart. Over and over it said the same word, with an impassioned resolve that shook her deeply: no. This voice held her, surrounded her, until her legs could no longer bear her weight and she collapsed into a billowing heap on the ground, palms held tightly over her face as tears seeped between her fingers.
Her conscious mind had lost the battle. It had ceased to form fully realized thoughts and succumbed to the intensity of emotion: fear, anger, embarrassment, loneliness, and the overwhelming rawness of sorrow in her comprehension that the only thing she wanted in the world was the one thing the world seemed to insist she could never have.
She could feel Cora's arms around her, yet she hung there passively, continuing to shake and cry because, she began to realize, she didn't know how to stop. The dam within her had broken, unleashing a flood of such violence and power, she thought it might be possible to drown within it. Cora's hand smoothed the hair on the back of her head as she made small wordless sounds of reassurance.
"What's wrong, Alice?" she asked. There was no response.
"Come, it's not so far to Albany. We can find help. You can get some rest."
Alice shook her head violently against her sister's body. She took large gulps of breath, trying to steady herself, so that she could finally say what she needed to.
"I do not wish to go," she whispered. "Please do not make me."
She looked up over Cora's shoulder, her vision still thick and blurry, to see Uncas just beyond, looking intently at them with his arms lightly crossed over one another. How shameful it was to have him see her like this! But she could see, even through her tears, that there was no scorn or even pity written within his gaze. She buried her face deep against Cora before she could read anything else there.
"Why don't you want to go?" Cora asked quietly. "Has something happened?"
Alice did not answer, not because she didn't care to, but because she couldn't. She did not know what had happened to her. And even as her ability to form rational thoughts returned, she gained no clarity. How could it be, that after all her insistence that she be taken back, all the planning and considerations involved to simply get her this far, she would choose, at this moment, to change her mind?
Eventually the crying slowed, and she lay in Cora's lap, still and spent, until the men realized that they would be going no further that day. She must have slept a little, for after a time, Alice began to hear the sounds of a campfire being made; she tilted her head towards the darkening sky, the first stars now beginning to appear along the eastern horizon.