(just a quick note about the characters and the seasons they represent. Alice is obviously winter--fragile, dormant--and Uncas needs to be the counterpart to that, so he is summer: dependable, heat, life at its peak. With Cora and Nathaniel they could have gone either way, but I chose spring for Cora because she represents the yearning and impatience of spring to become something more powerful than it currently is, whereas fall is more conflicted about its identity. So that was also an obvious choice for Nathaniel because he will always be caught between the white and native worlds. I'd originally had more anecdotes/flashbacks that might have made all this a little clearer but I took them out because I wanted to keep the main story moving forwards.)

In the morning, waking up to a day that was cool and overcast, with the promise of rain in the air, Cora sought out Nathaniel to see if he had fared any better in his conversation with his brother than she had with her sister. She couldn't find him in the camp, but one of the men, understanding who she wanted, directed her towards the river. She found Nathaniel there, working on one of the dugout canoes.

"Good morning," she said as she approached him.

He had a implement like a flat, curved knife in his hand, and he was scraping along the inside of the bow, carving out strips of aged wood from its sides and floor. He glanced up when he heard her speak. "How'd you sleep?"

"Well," Cora said, although she hadn't really. "What are you doing there?"

"Making this a little more river-worthy. It's not meant to hold four people and their supplies, so it needs to sit a bit lighter in the water."

"We are already making preparations, then, to go downriver?"

"Sooner is better than later, given the turn of the season." Nathaniel straightened for a moment and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, then leaned in again and guided the tool along another stretch of wood. "Our aunt is already sewing cloaks for the two of you girls; I saw her this morning."

"That is kind of her."

"Well, you'll need them. Depending on how the journey goes it might already be snowing by the time we reach Albany."

"Mmm."

Cora made a seat for herself amongst some nearby rocks and watched the American for a while, admiring the muscles in his forearms--he was wearing a shirt, but the sleeves were rolled up to his upper arms--as he worked. He did not seem to be distracted by her observation, but concentrated on the job at hand.

She was trying not to think too much about the journey itself, particularly about their destination. After all, there was nothing for them in Albany, and she suspected that Nathaniel knew that. He knew they were now parentless and had no connections. She was glad, however, that he wasn't questioning her much about what would happen when they got there, because she didn't know, and she wanted to be able to respond with something at least partly convincing when and if he asked her about her plans for herself and Alice.

Alice...

"Nathaniel, I wonder if you have had a chance to learn more about what we discussed last night." She shifted, crossing her legs under the dress and rearranging its folds more comfortably over them, scanning his face to see if his expression changed.

"I did," he said finally, after a long pause, "but I can't say that what I learned is of any great help to either of us."

"It is a delicate situation," Cora murmured. "I, myself, have little to report, except to say that Alice assures me that she intends to comport herself with the utmost propriety, and I believe that she will."

Nathaniel shot her a side glance from under dark, disbelieving eyebrows. "Words are not actions, and less still feelings."

Cora considered this enigmatic statement for a short time. "By that I take it you mean that we must agree we cannot truly know what is in someone's heart?"

"Right," he said, looking at her directly now. "We cannot."

For a moment she met his gaze uncomfortably, uncertainly. A pair of ducks whooshed by them on the river, scattering into the air, and the sound brought them back to an awareness of their surroundings. Nathaniel turned back to the canoe, clearing his throat.

"Will you come back here, after you take us to Albany?" she asked, with some diffidence.

"The camp will no longer be here. The Delaware will move before the winter, as this area is starting to become hunted out. The animals need time to regain their numbers, and the vegetation also needs time to replenish itself."

"How will you know where to find everyone?"

He smiled, as if this were a silly question. "We will find them. And the camp will not be as it was. Some families move on, according to their needs and will. New families may join. Like the river, it never stays the same."

Cora liked the sound of that. Her life up until coming to the West had been marked by stability, staleness. It was one of the reasons she had accepted Duncan's proposal of marriage. Her father had wanted it, and pushed for it, of course, but Cora had taken delight in the idea of joining her new husband in a new land, the idea of change, of new things and new people...

And she had gotten all that. In more ways than she ever could have imagined. Nothing had stayed the same.

One never really got what one wished for exactly...

She remained there for an indeterminate period of time, watching Nathaniel work. It was pleasant to sit thus, to be distracted by the ripples of the water, to feel the cool wind stirring her hair, to have an agreeable silence between them.

They spent an hour or so there, and when Nathaniel was satisfied with the appearance and condition of the canoe, he walked Cora back up the path. A light rain began to fall just as they entered the camp, spitting and sprinkling on the leaves of the trees around them, and on the hide roofs of the wikwams. Sanquen joined them, and said a few murmured words to Nathaniel as they gathered around the communal pot to have a quick lunch. Cora heard her sister's name and looked inquiringly at Nathaniel, waiting for his translation.

"Alice is not in the wikwam," Nathaniel said. "A little while ago, my cousin was going to bring her some tea, but she was not there." He gave a few quick directives to Sanquen, who darted off, and turned to look at Cora. "I'm sure she is somewhere nearby. I told Sanquen to ask the others."

"Alice was sleeping when I left earlier," Cora said, concerned. "Where would she have gone? It is beginning to rain."

"No need to be alarmed yet." Nathaniel finished his mouthful of cornbread and beans and thought for a moment. "Wait till Sanquen has a chance to talk to people. Someone surely will have seen her this morning."

Sanquen was not back for another half-hour, however, and in that time the rain had been steadily falling and Cora was beginning to get genuinely worried. She had gone back and forth to their wikwam and Chingachgook's aunt's several times, hoping to find Alice, but her sister was nowhere to be seen. Nothing else was missing, only Alice herself. She asked Nathaniel about Uncas's whereabouts, wondering if perhaps they were together, despite Alice's promise of the night before, but Nathaniel found out after talking to Chingachgook that Uncas, Machque and Nachenum had gone off on a morning hunt at dawn.

By the time Sanquen returned, Cora was more than a little convinced that something bad had happened, though she was having trouble imagining what. Sanquen's news was that one of the women had seen Alice leave the wikwam and head towards to the stream earlier that morning, but she had just assumed she was going to take care of personal needs and so had not thought anything of it. No one had seen Alice since then. From their best reckoning, that meant Alice had been gone for at least two hours.

Upon hearing this, Cora felt her stomach sink with worry. Nathaniel took her hand, gave it a quick squeeze, urged her not to worry, and told her he would check out the perimeter of the camp for any kind of sign.

He returned before long with a sober expression. Alice had indeed been to the stream, and from there her tracks were muddied and confused, leading Nathaniel to an unpleasant conclusion.

"Cora, I think we have to assume that she may not have gone of her own will."

"Not gone...Then how? Who has been here?"

He ran a hand over his face. "Possibly other tribes...Iroquois...I'm hoping it was English soldiers, but it could also have been French. I don't know. Uncas is a better tracker than I--it would be better to send him--"

"Uncas is not here!"

Sanquen whistled low and long and they turned to see the hunters back from their early morning venture into the woods. They bore rifles, a string of rabbits, and unconcerned expressions, which quickly altered when Nathaniel quietly broke the news.

"Will he go?" Cora demanded, coming into the little circle of men. "Is he not tired? Nathaniel, how can he possibly catch up---"

"I will find her," Uncas said. His voice was fierce, laced with quiet determination. He was already moving, handing over his kill to the others, disappearing into the wikwam for fresh powder and supplies, out again in moments.

Cora felt dizzy. No one said anything. Sanquen's eyes were huge, concerned.

Nathaniel looked grim, watching his brother make the necessary preparations. They conversed very briefly in their own language, and then Uncas was gone, a flash of darkness through the trees and the now driving rain.

Cora prayed. Bring my sister back from wherever she has gone to.

***

The rain was coming down hard now, rendering tracking difficult but not impossible, not to he who had been doing it as far back as he could remember. He'd started where Nathaniel had told him the scene of the struggle--if it had been that--had occurred, and immediately had been able to determine that there were at least two. European.

Alice's sign was everywhere, now that he knew who she was, what she was and how to look for her. It was not just in the more obvious presence of her footprints, often blurred by rain or obscured by the crossing of a stream. It was in the brush of the branches against her skirts, in the touch of the leaves on her arms and hands. A stray golden hair drifting in the wind...

It was in the air. Her scent was in the air. He had held her in his arms and he knew what she smelled like. It could not be hidden from him. If she had simply run away, he would have found her within minutes, perhaps. But she was being taken. And her captors, unfortunate fools that they were, were yet not altogether fools, for they were hurrying, and making some attempt to disguise their path, and it was raining, and it would take longer, but none of this mattered to Uncas. He could find them. He was finding them. He was hunting now, and it didn't matter that his quarry was man.

Man was, after all, just another animal.

So he ran through the forest, and the forest surrounded him, and opened up to him, and told him where to go. He didn't stop moving, because he couldn't, because even when he paused for an instant or two to double-check an instinct, to confirm an indication, his heart continued to pound out the rhythm that he had to follow.

I will find you. He said it to himself not because he didn't believe it, or because he had to convince himself, but because it was true. He knew it. And while he didn't know if she knew it or not, he willed her to hear him.

I have promised. I will find you.

He ran.

***

"Drink this."

Nathaniel pushed the wooden cup, from which little tendrils of steam were rising, into Cora's unwilling hands. She gazed down into it with a lack of expression. "I am not thirsty."

"Drink the damn tea," Nathaniel said forcefully, and for a moment regretted it, but then again, she had not eaten a thing the entire day, and he was not going to have her wasting away, regardless of where her sister and his brother might be this rainy night.

Cora sipped at it, as if shocked into obeying. They were sitting around Chingachgook's aunt's fire, which had been built up into a warm blaze against the cold outside. Drops of rain came through the smokehole and sputtered on the fire below, but could not discourage the flames, which leaped up eagerly towards the air.

Chingachgook and his sister were sitting, meditating, gazing into the fire. Every now and again Nathaniel's aunt would murmur a few words, words of protection and faith, as she sat, utterly still, in her cross-legged pose. They were both far away, in the world of the mind. Nathaniel knew they were not really listening and that if he chose to speak to Cora of personal things it would not matter. They might well have been elsewhere.

Waiting was a woman's game, a woman's duty, and Nathaniel thought it was rather odd that he seemed to be better at it than Cora was. Looking at her, he thought she looked tense enough that she might shatter if he touched her the wrong way.

"He has been gone for hours," she said, staring into her cup.

"I know." Soothingly, he took hold of her shoulder, but as he had suspected she would, she went rigid. "Cora, I know."

"You don't know what it is like." She spoke through her teeth. "I have no one but Alice now and she has no one but me. We can't lose each other." Her eyes glittered and her last word came out a sob.

Nathaniel glanced over at Chingachgook and his aunt, on the other side of the fire, but they were ignoring him. He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close in a sideways hug. At first, Cora resisted, but after a moment she leant against him in defeat.

"You will not lose her." He did not add that while he had every certainty that Uncas would bring Alice back to them, what state of mind or body she might be in he could not be sure about. "Now try to rest a little."

The rain continued its relentless spattering.

***

She scarcely knew what was happening anymore.

One moment she had been washing her face by the stream. The next, she had heard a murmur of voices--and she had thought for some reason that she recognized them--and then she was being hauled up, a dirty hand had covered her mouth and she was being alternately dragged and pushed through the wilderness.

Her captors did not make any impression on her any longer. Their faces, and voices when she heard them now, did not stand out. They struck her merely as grubby and pale, like a couple of earthworms that had turned up, wriggling, in the dirt.

Her primary sensation was one of wet. The world was wet. Her skirts clung together with each step she tried to take. Rain streamed down her face and batted her eyelids. Her hair hung down her back like a heavy cord, sodden.

She longed to stop, but they would not let her. One of them had a tied a rope to her hands, and walked in front of her, hurrying her along whenever she slowed. With her hands in front of her she could not balance herself and stumbled often, slipping in the mud. They pulled her on, seeming unconcerned.

Her legs ached like they had never ached on the journey to the wolf camp.

And while she told herself that she was not going to be harmed--that if they had meant to harm her they would have done it by now, whatever terrible things they had in mind for her it did not seem to include any invasion of her person--she was also afraid.

There was nothing but rain. Puddles on the ground in front of her. Streams that they traversed. Rivulets running from her head down her neck into her bodice.

Her wrists slipped a little in the knotted rope and chafed at the pressure of the fibers. She tried to bring them back closer to their body, but her captor tugged without even looking back. You are the savages, she thought suddenly, honestly. The only savages out here are you...

She was dizzy with fatigue, so much so that she thought she might faint.

She stumbled on.

He caught up with them just as the afternoon was ending. The rain had not stopped. It continued its steady falling, soaking into the earth. It was the last rain of summer, Uncas knew. When it came again, it would be bitterly cold and merciless. Now, it was not warm, but it was not cruel. He was thankful for that. He needed no further barriers in the matter of getting her back safely.

He watched them for just a few moments from an overhanging promontory, letting his heart slow to a certain degree. It was important that a hunter be calm. He could be taken advantage of if he were otherwise.

He saw their mistake instantly. One ahead, one behind. Alice faltering along in between. The second one was half-a-dozen steps behind her. They were alert, but not alert enough. The travelling, the rain, were wearing on them.

Light-footed, he made his way down and around behind them on the trail they created. He had to follow, behind the cover of trees and bushes, for another half-mile before the wilderness created a naturally advantageous spot to move on the second one.

Uncas stepped forwards, his movements silenced by the steady rain, and expertly slit the throat of the Frenchman who followed Alice. Hot blood ran over his fingers, and instantly mixing with rainwater, down to his elbows. He ignored it, and held the man, who slumped back against him, shifting his weight to prevent them both from falling. The man gurgled lightly. Uncas held him lightly. Prey was not to be disrespected and he bore this particular man no ill-will, at least not yet. As he felt the life trickle out of the other, he let him fall, slowly, to the ground. Alice's skirts were disappearing into the forest ahead of him. I have--almost--found you.

Their way is not our way. His father's words then rose unbidden in his mind. And he felt calm, because he knew it was not true, not for him, not any more. Her way was with him. There could be no other answer. He moved forwards.

Drawing his tomahawk from his belt, he felt its familiar heft, balanced it in his hand.

Alice saw, in wonderment, the man in front of and just slightly to the right of her stumble, as she herself had stumbled countless times in the past few hours. But this time was different. He sank to his knees, something buried in his back. His hand, still clutching her rope, jerked convulsively and sent her lurching forwards. She almost fell on him. She screamed. An alien sound that did not seem to belong to her. She landed, too, on her knees, scrabbling in the mud, desperate to get away from that wounded body to which she was far too close. His hand slackened. The rope came free. Alice tried to move, but she could only skitter backwards like a new foal, drowning in the rain.

Uncas moved into her line of sight then and it was only then, finally, she realized what had happened, that he was there, that he had come for her. She had never seen anything like the way he looked, focused and bloody and rather terrifying. And then, even while she thought she had seen the worst that she would have to endure that day, he stepped past her, over the body of her fallen captor and, although the creature's eyes were still open, took a knife and with a quick, precise gesture removed the scalp from the top of his head.

She moaned into her hands, still bound by the rope, and tried to look away, but when she turned away the dizziness overcame her, and then she did faint.