"Warm enough?" Uncas asked from the other side of the fire.
Alice bobbed her head, feeling shyness strike again. She was embarrassed over her reproachable performance in getting into the cave, but she had been genuinely terrified that she was going to fall, especially after having seen Cora slip a few times. Nathaniel had been right there to pull her sister up, but it had been an unnerving experience. As had the trek across the river been...but Uncas, bless him, had never let go of her hand the slightest bit, not until they were safe on the shore and then, well, that had been a bit awkward for a moment as she had remembered proper manners, and clinging to an Indian brave was not something that well-brought-up young ladies of her acquaintance did...
But it had still been infinitely preferable to attempting it on her own. She wished she knew what to say to Uncas, to somehow thank him, but she sensed that thanks at this point would be either meaningless--because they were not yet at the end of the journey--or he would misunderstand them.
She would be so glad when they were back at the fort.
And yet...and yet...
She looked through the flames at the men who were bringing them there. Uncas's thoughtful brown eyes. She had never seen such interesting brown eyes. Nathaniel's rough ways with her sister, but she had seen him, too, in his own way, providing as much help as was needed. He had built the fire for them. What would become of them? Would they go back to their cabin, to their Indian father? She supposed so. As much as she couldn't wait to see her own father and regain that part of her, that civilized part of her that was lost in this wild, maddening country, she knew, suddenly, with perfect clarity, that she did not want to say goodbye to these new acquaintances of theirs, either.
Alice rested her chin on her knees and leaned forward. Her hair was escaping its braids, and wisps of it tumbled forward, gleaming by the firelight. She gazed at the leaping flames, blue and orange and purple. Heat. Life.
She was always cold, always. Even now her hands were cold. She tried to remember the last time she had felt completely warm. Had it been back in England? It must have been. The summers were warm enough in England. The weather had been warm enough here when they first landed on these shores. But she was still always cold.
She looked sideways at her sister's profile. Though Cora was right beside her, though she could feel her sister's body warmth radiating through their thin dresses, she felt far away from her, for the first time. Cora had always been her benchmark. Since their mother died. Alice was almost too young to have remembered her, though Cora always told her that she had been much like Alice. Pretty, wistful...weak. Alice realized now that that was what Cora had meant. Cora would never have called her weak, but she was. She had none of the vitality that seemed to run in her sister's veins and, in these men of this new world, overmuch in their blood.
Cora...felt like a stranger to her, almost, as she looked at her. Dark, springing hair. A jaw a little too determined for true beauty, although her loyal little sister's heart had always thought Cora beautiful. Eyes that spoke volumes when she was angry, that said the angry words a lady was not permitted to say. Alice wished she had some of Cora's temper.
She looked back through the flames at Uncas, who was poking the fire with a long green stick, and wondered if he had a temper. If he did, she hadn't seen it yet. She sensed in him a vague frustration with Nathaniel, pity for Cora, a seemingly endless supply of patience for her. She wondered if she wanted to see him angry and decided not. Or, if he were to get angry, she didn't want it to be because of her. She didn't want to disappoint him, she realized.
"Alice." She became aware that Cora had said her name several times. "Alice, are you falling asleep?"
"No." Alice dug her feet in the rocky grooves under her. "No..."
Nathaniel had re-entered the cave bearing more wood for the night's burn.
"Dark out yet?" Uncas wanted to know.
"Not yet, won't be long though."
"Mhm." Uncas rose, passed his brother the poke stick and disappeared out of sight.
Alice had just been settling back into her thoughts and was mesmerized once again by the flames so that she barely noticed when Uncas re-appeared, until he was suddenly crouching by her. "Hold out your hands."
She did, a little fearfully, hoping he wasn't going to put anything alive into them...she resisted the urge to squeal in protest. He tipped his hands into hers and out rolled a pile of glossy dark purple berries, of a kind she'd never seen before.
"Sôhtásh," Uncas said. "Blue berry."
Alice looked in wonder at the tiny jewels. "For me?"
"And your sister," Uncas said, inclining his head towards Cora.
Nathaniel, glancing over from his attendance of the fire, said, "They're at their peak just now. Saw them coming up."
Alice put a few in her mouth, tentatively, but upon the first sun-sweetened taste she smiled, passing a handful over to Cora.
Despite their fatigue, the girls finished the fruit in less than a minute. It was a perfect change from the tough jerky that had been their meal for the past thirty hours. Thus fortified, and with more fresh water from the flask, Alice settled down by the fire, a couple of large rocks at her back, to wait for the coming and passage of night.
***
"Miss Munro, wake up." Nathaniel, rather ungently, gripped Cora's shoulder, jerking her out of a half-sleep. The fire had shrunk to a dim glow of embers, but continued to throw off a bone-warming heat.
Cora struggled to clear her senses. Alice was curled near, softly sleeping, a curtain of pale hair covering her face. Uncas was in the shadows beyond Nathaniel, his face serious.
"What is it?" She blinked, longing for a drink of water. "What...?"
"Sh. We're going outside. You have to stay here, no matter what, do you understand me?"
She was bewildered by his insistence. "All right..."
"And don't wake Alice. I don't know when we'll be back, but stay here, both of you. Don't come out to look, even if you hear anything."
"Nathaniel--"
"It's fine." He gave her shoulder a shake for emphasis. "Do you understand?"
"Yes.."
Uncas moved towards the exit, and Cora, straining to see, realized that both men were shirtless and had soot-smudged faces.
"Right." Nathaniel held her gaze for a long moment more, then he rose and moved almost soundlessly, disappearing with his brother into the shadows.
Cora tried to get herself back to the state of relaxation she had been pulled from, but it proved impossible. She dragged herself, feeling the ache of sitting on rocks in every one of her bones, over to the packs and dug out the water flask, taking a few long swallows. There was still a small pile of wood near the fire from what had been brought in last night and she added another log, to make the fire just bright enough to keep burning. She tried to listen to what might be going on outside, but could hear nothing but the same steady fall of water that had been echoing through the cave all night.
Later, she must have drifted off again, because she came to with the sharp sounds of a rifle firing. It startled her into alertness, but it was followed not very long after that by a muffled but still audible scream that echoed into the back chamber. It was an almost inhuman cry, similar to the ones they'd heard just before being ambushed, and it made Cora's back tingle from the base of her spine all the way up into the roots of her hair. The fire had gone out and it was almost pitch-black within the cave. She reached fearfully for Alice, but her sister had not stirred.
She was on her feet before she remembered Nathaniel's exhortation that they were not to go out under any circumstances, and she sank back down again, squeezing her eyes shut against her fear for a moment. In here, they were trapped. There was nowhere to run. If whatever or whoever was out there came in here...
She tried to talk herself through it. Nathaniel and Uncas had not left them, surely, nor would Nathaniel have told her to stay if he thought she wouldn't be safe. But that yell...it brought back all the memories of the terror she'd felt when they were riding through the seemingly peaceful wilderness and everything had been shattered.
It was not long after that she heard movement by the mouth of the cave. Not wanting to leave Alice, but unable to remain in ignorance any more, she darted out to the curtain of waterfall.
Cora was not prepared for the sight of Nathaniel and Uncas as they were then revealed. Uncas knelt at the rock's edge, washing his hands and arms in the water that came shooting over top of them, while Nathaniel held aloft a torch in one hand. In his other he bore a tomahawk--Cora had seen the handle of it tucked into his belt but not yet seen it drawn. In the torchlight, sticky blood gleamed on the blade, on Nathaniel's arms, was even spattered across his bare chest.
Cora tried to back up, but she stood there, unable to move, held captive by the sight, by his glittering eyes that warned her to say something, to express the shock. But she could not speak.
Uncas stood up, took the torch from his brother without a word, eyed Cora almost apologetically and waited while Nathaniel took his place by the water. The older man stuck his entire head under the flow, drew it back and shook it like an animal, sending a fantastic spray of droplets flying everywhere. Still Cora stood. She sensed that they did not care if she were there or not, that they would have done what they had to do regardless.
"Alice asleep?" Nathaniel inquired curtly, turning to look back at her, dripping.
Cora nodded, then realized they probably couldn't see the slight motion and forced herself to utter a muffled "Yes."
"You have any questions?"
She said nothing, and Nathaniel, after waiting a moment, took several slow deliberate strides in her direction. She stood her ground.
"Well?"
Cora shook her head. "No. No."
"Because we're not going to be discussing this tomorrow."
She shook her head adamantly. She was rather more afraid of talking to him at that moment than of what he might actually reveal to her.
Seemingly mollified, Nathaniel relaxed. Uncas had propped the torch in a crevice in the rock wall and was quietly washing their weapons in the water now. Torchlight glinted off his copper-skinned back.
Cora realized that nothing in her life had even remotely prepared her for the past few moments, and this realization breaking over her like a wave was almost humiliating. She always met things head-on; she was not accustomed to backing down, feeling fear, or feeling diminished. In England she had thrived, despite the occasionally oppressive social climate. But here--in the new world, in the colonies, she realized that she had been naive to think it would work out the same way. This was not a foreigner's world, and certainly not a foreign woman's world. It was a world that was much farther from being civilized than she had thought. If men could appear in the middle of the night covered in someone else's blood without a word of explanation...
Well, to be fair, Nathaniel had just offered her a chance at explanation. She simply hadn't been brave enough to take it.
She took a long, slow breath, drawing in as much oxygen to her body as her lungs would allow, then expelled it, hoping the mere action would bring her calmness. It only served to make her rather light-headed.
Uncas murmured something in Mohegan as he rose, wiping the wet blades of the tomahawks on the thigh of his leggings. Nathaniel responded with two short sharp syllables.
The young Indian said then, "You should go back to your sister," not unkindly, and added, "and get some sleep."
Sleep. As if she would be able to do that any time in the near future. And if she did, it would be nothing but dreams of glittering eyes and blood-stained tomahawks. Cora felt a little sick. But her body, finally, allowed her to move and she made her way to the end of the curved chamber, back to Alice's side. She curled up beside her and wrapped an arm around the younger girl's blanketed body, hoping to share her warmth. Pressing her face into the rough fabric of the handmade quilt, she wondered when things would ever return to something approximating normal.
She really, really wanted it to be soon.
***
By the time he had disposed of the bodies of the three French soldiers and one Huron scout, dawn's grey light was creeping up on the horizon, signaling the start of a new day. Normally, Uncas would have left the bodies where they fell and not given them another thought, but there were two reasons in this case for not doing so. The first was that he didn't want the women to see the bodies on their way out, and they would have been unable to avoid passing them; the second was that if there were more, and there were always more, the evidence should be hidden for a reasonable amount of time while they got away.
Uncas was a little weary when it was finished. He had only gotten a couple of hours' sleep earlier in the evening, when Nathaniel had been on watch. Nathaniel would have gone with him, but he had wanted one of them to stay in the cave with the women. Sleep could always be caught up on later.
Upon his return, he spent a moment, torn, considering what he should do with the one scalp he'd taken a few hours earlier. It was his due as a warrior not only to keep it but to display it proudly from his belt. But he had a fairly good idea of how Cora and Alice would feel about that. The act itself had been quite simple for him--the existence of the men tracking them had presented a threat to something that was under his protection, and by his own people's code he'd been fully justified in dispatching them. And while he had no compunctions about that, something in him still told him that when it came to displaying the scalp, it might, perhaps, be wiser to wait. Chingachgook had always taught him never to cause any undue grief to any living being. Whether that meant putting an animal out of its misery quickly, or granting a quick death to a suffering man, or simply refraining from teasing something smaller and weaker than him--the rules had never been hard for him to understand. He had no desire to make life any more difficult for the two white women he was guiding to the fort than it already presently was. And he knew it was only a contrariness in Nathaniel's spirit that caused him to behave, now and again, as if he felt the opposite. A desire, perhaps, not to be competitive in the same arena but rather to change the rules of the game. While Uncas didn't really understand this, he knew it was part of his white brother's quirkiness and could not feel any rancor towards him for it, either.
At last, he tucked the scalp--which would have to dry properly later--into a piece of buckskin, wrapped it and put it in his bag with his other supplies. Then he returned to the cave.
Cora and Alice were both up. Alice looked well enough, innocent as before, her hair completely loose now, falling almost to her waist. Under Cora's eyes the dark streaks were testament to the little sleep she must have gotten. They were breakfasting on some of the jerky, but neither looked as if it held much interest for them. Uncas would have gone out and gone in search of something fresh for them as he had last night with the berries, but Cora was probably not in the mood for such overtures.
A still bare-chested Nathaniel yawned, rolled over and sat up, shaking back his long, unruly hair.
"Good morning," Alice said politely.
For a moment none of them knew what to do, brought back to the world of manners with an odd jolt, and then Nathaniel said, giving her an indulgent, older-brotherly once-over, "Morning, Alice."
This minor social interaction lent an odd feeling of domesticity to the air, and they disbanded rather rapidly, the men getting properly dressed while the sisters went to the rock's edge to wash soot off hands and sleep out of faces, and doubtless attend to other personal needs. When the women came back, Cora had Alice sit down in front of her while she produced the comb Nathaniel had given her--with some defiance--and went to work on her hair. Alice winced, gripping the edge of her dress.
Uncas watched them for a moment. They were so picturesque sometimes. Cora, with tension evident in every line of her body, pulling the comb through Alice's almost white locks, while the latter made faces whenever the comb hit a snag. "Ow," Alice murmured.
"Sorry." Cora attacked the snag with a little less vigor but no more gentleness. When Alice's hair was finally smooth, she rebraided it into a single long thick braid and re-tied it. "There," she said, and then, looking at the men, added with a touch of defiance, "We're ready to go."