1745

Two small boys sat on a backless, rough wooden bench. The younger one was quiet, his solemn black gaze focused as he concentrated on the piece of birchbark in his lap, tracing the charcoal-drawn letters with a small dirty finger. The older one, though he held a worn copybook, was fidgeting, his gaze shooting around the cabin with the intensity of a trapped bird. The boys were dressed alike, in buckskins and moccasins, with winter shirts to ward off the chill outdoors. Both listened to their father as he dictated from a passage in an old reader.

"Nathaniel," the Mohegan addressed his adoptive son suddenly, in English, without looking up. "What was the last sentence?"

The lad's eyes flew back to the book, but he hesitated for a moment. "For if truth be at all within the reach of human capacity..." he ventured, and then faltered.

"Uncas."

His younger son continued, with childish precision if with a lack of natural rhythm, "'Tis certain it must lie very deep and a-b-s-t-r-u-s-e: and to hope we shall arrive at it without pains, while the greatest geniuses have failed with the utmost pains, must certainly be esteemed sufficiently vain and pre--presumptuous."

"Good. What does that mean, Fox?"

Uncas stared at him with big, unblinking eyes. "I don't know, Father."

Chingachgook looked for a moment as if he intended to chastise him, then his face wrinkled slightly and the boys knew he was not angry. "Perhaps you are too young for this, but I have nothing else. Well, it is late and that is enough for today. Go on." He gestured towards the door. Nathaniel leaped up at once, casting his copybook aside, but a glance from his father and he stopped to put it away properly. Uncas fingered his scratched birchbark and the tiny bit of shaved burnt wood that worked as a pencil. He murmured in Mohegan, "I want to do more."

"You said you did not understand it," Chingachgook reminded.

"Nathaniel speaks better than I do. I want to learn it all."

"You must not be jealous of your brother. He was born to it." Chingachgook rose and put the book back on a low shelf, along with Uncas's writing supplies. "When you are grown, you will have both languages. Maybe more. But I am glad you are so eager to communicate, my son. It is a valuable skill, just as important as hunting or waging an honorable battle." He dropped his hand to the boy's head for just a moment, in a rare gesture of affection.

Nathaniel, just outside the cabin, was listening to this exchange. When it fell silent inside, he moved away from the house and went to stand at the edge of the clearing near a cluster of pines. It was nearly night, and the sky was littered with a dusting of stars. The nine-year-old was sensitive enough to be thrilled by its beauty, while at the same time taking it for a matter of fact that everyone must have such a view as this right outside their home. The air was cool and fresh. He inhaled deeply, letting it sweeten his lungs.

Nathaniel knew that Chingachgook thought he didn't remember. He thought the boy had been too young when it happened. But Nathaniel did remember. Wished he could forget, sometimes, though at other times he clung fiercely to the memory of his birth parents, desperately afraid for the day when the memories, dulled by time, would fade altogether. Even bad memories were better than no memory. He had a few things left of them, some books of his father's, a few personal possessions of his mother's...but the things themselves, if he looked at them or touched them long enough, could cause him to invent memories he couldn't be sure were real and not created by his imagination, so he preferred to keep them tucked away.

Sometimes he felt he had plenty in common with Uncas, his little brother. Uncas' mother had died in childbirth and though Chingachgook had had other wives since then, they had stayed away from the cabin. Instead Chingachgook would visit them, sometimes gone for a day or a night at a time, finding them wherever their people had made camp. Nathaniel was too young to realize it fully but he instinctively felt that at least part of the reason that Chingachgook didn't bring women home was because of him, the adopted white child. So Uncas too was motherless, although this had not stopped the child from flourishing. Uncas at seven could run as fast as Nathaniel and climb higher trees. Their father said that Nathaniel's eyes were sharp and Uncas' limbs were strong, but instead of setting them against each other, the Mohegan warrior was always careful to show them how, if they worked together, they could be a formidable pair, ameliorating each other's weaknesses.

The fire crackled from within the cabin, and Nathaniel turned to see the light glowing through small gaps between the logs. Home. He loved it, loved his family deeply, and he could live for days at a time without being reminded of the past, of where he came from. His father and brother did nothing, said nothing, looked nothing to set him apart. It was only now and again that Nathaniel realized it himself. When he caught a glimpse of his face as he knelt over a stream to take a drink, and saw, behind the tangled dark hair and grimy skin, his turquoise eyes. When he picked up one of Chingachgook's English books and felt himself drawn to the language, to the patterns of speech, as if he had heard them all, even the most fanciful turns of phrases, in some other world. He disliked study time not because it was hard for him, but because it was easy. It reminded him too much of his past.