A/N

Song this time, fittingly I suppose, is Spark by Tori Amos.

/

The force finally relented and Erin felt herself bob back into the world.

She couldn't understand if she was still holding her breath or if she just wasn't breathing anymore. She felt numb, like her body was no longer part of her own identity.

Erin was suddenly being dragged by her upper arms and it hurt, straining at her muscles, pulling at her joints. For a brief moment she truly thought her body had died right there, enclosed within the water, and her mind was somehow continuing, seeing the aftermath of her own death play out around her.

She was forced onto her side by rough hands and then came several firm and measured pats upon her back that rattled through all her bones, jarring her body. The rhythmic thumping was comparable to a drum beat, a beat that seemed to grasp her heart, forcing it to continue and keep pace.

It was like breaking the surface all over again as her body convulsed with raw primal instinct. A breath stutteringly pulled passed lips, a cough bubbling from her throat, and saliva suddenly rushing into her mouth. She turned, gagged breathlessly for a moment, lungs straining, eyes stinging, as her whole body came back into itself in a painful ripple of living. Then, without ceremony, she vomited up a good deal of water onto the ground. She shook and gasped for a moment, her body adjusting to what it had just been through. When she had regained herself a little, she looked up, back towards the stream, her soaking wet hair sticking to her cheeks and lips, trembling shivers of cold and shock making her teeth chatter.

A little distance away from her, Nathaniel had his arms around Uncas, pulling him roughly to the ground, holding him in place with the full weight of his body as Uncas thrashed out with fists, trying to gain an advantage.

"Let me go! I must... I must..." Uncas rasped out, sounding so very unlike himself.

Uncas landed a few good blows and Nathaniel's nose gushed blood, but he did not let go of his brother. Erin could hear Nathaniel's voice breaking through the still night, words of comfort that were hoarsely shouted.

"Hush, little brother. I am with you, hush!"

Erin stared in horror, unmoving, eyes wide as she waited to see if Nathaniel would win this fight. A long amount of time seemed to pass, although in reality Erin knew it must have been only a few minutes, maybe even seconds. Nathaniel refused to give in, his voice a calming balm of repetition, and finally Uncas was the one to relent. His strength seemingly spent, he collapsed to the floor, breathing hard and ragged, and his eyes closed in sheer exhaustion, allowing his brother to be the victor.

"What is wrong with my son?" Chingachgook asked in his own tongue, and Erin was shocked back into the moment, her gaze flying to the man beside her. He was holding her by her shoulders and she realized he had been the one to save her from the water. His eyes and words were not directed at her, but Nathaniel, who seemed to be gasping for air himself, unable to answer the question.

For a moment Erin's lips quivered, trying to compose any shape that would allow words to form. "I think he has a bad fever," Erin answered with a rasp, using the men's own language, not seeing the point in hiding it now. The elder's eyes widened in surprise and his grip on Erin's shoulders loosened.

"How do you know our words?" he asked, and Erin saw an uneasy look flash through his gaze. It was the same look Uncas had held when he'd suspected she was a witch on their travels to Fort William Henry. The same look he'd given her after she'd begun to tell him the truth in the fire lit, stuffy infirmary. The look he'd given her tonight, when he had no longer been Uncas.

"Uncas taught me," Erin said without a beat, "I am a very fast learner."

"This I can hear," Chingachgook said, still looking a little unnerved.

Erin got shakily to her feet and was heartened when Chingachgook offered a hand to steady her even though his actions seemed to be fuelled by politeness, and once she was standing upon her own two feet, he rose and nodded to where Nathaniel still cradled Uncas in his arms.

"You say you know what ails my son?"

"I am not certain, but I think it's a fever from his wound..." Erin hesitated, knowing she had promised Uncas not to reveal the truth of his injury. In that moment it felt like all her pushed-upon promises had led to nothing but trouble. Her shoulders sagged as she gave up on any pretences. "Magua's blade was poisoned."

"Poisoned?!" Nathaniel spat out the word, his teeth gritting together, before he returned to soothing his brother's limp form.

Something changed in Chingachgook's eyes, something dimmed. "You knew this?" He stared at her with a wary look, his mouth a disapproving tight line.

"I promised I wouldn't say anything." Erin brushed the back of her hand carelessly across her mouth, wiping away any remaining bile and water.

"My son made you promise this?"

Erin gave an uncertain nod, but her answer seemed to confirm something in the older warrior's mind.

"He knew, then." His voice was strained, and colour seemed to drain from his cheeks, making him suddenly look almost waxen.

"Knew?" Erin glanced over to where the two brothers were still upon the ground, Nathaniel now checking Uncas over with a careful hand and eye for any visible signs of new injury.

"That his time is done." Chingachgook didn't look at her again, but began to make his way over to his sons.

Erin's nerves pricked. "Wait! What?" She trotted behind him. "No, no! What do you mean 'done'? Uncas said he would be fine."

"Then he lied." Chingachgook's reply was so matter of fact, so like Nathaniel's frank way of speaking, that it stunned Erin's steps and it took her a second to regain herself and continue after him.

"No!" Erin argued. "He said he saw many men survive such a wound."

"Then he lied." He was dismissing everything so easily, how could he be so goddamn certain?

Erin felt suddenly angry and startlingly annoyed at this man she had admired so much in her book. "How do you know any of that? That's bullshit! You're wrong!"

He glanced at her, a soft ripple of compassion moving through his dark eyes, which was quickly replaced by unsentimental surety. "I am not."

He was so blunt about it, so flippant, so uncaring, and Erin floundered for a moment, unsure how to respond.

"We have medicine!" Erin continued with her argument. "Cora gave us medicine to treat him if anything happened." Chingachgook made no reply to Erin's words. "I'm not saying it's not serious, he is sick, but we can help him, he just needs help. He'll be okay if we just-"

Realizing that he was no longer listening to a single word she said, Erin's bravado began to fade as she watched Chingachgook go to his sons. He began to untangle Uncas' limbs from Nathaniel's, who still held his brother as if the world itself still depended upon his strength of holding Uncas steady, and he had to be coaxed by a fatherly hand to finally let go.

Chingachgook bent, and with one swift shrug of powerful muscles, he moved Uncas' limp form onto his shoulders. He turned back, making his way to where they had made camp, a sharp unseeing look in his eyes, dark earth and frigid water, and Erin suddenly understood his demeanour wasn't because he didn't love his son, it was because his son was his everything and he truly believed this was serious enough to conclude the worst.

But he was wrong, Uncas had been fine just a few hours ago, Cora had tended him that morning. Why was he leaping to such far fetched conclusions? It didn't make any sense!

Whatever Chingachgook's misguided thoughts were, Erin suddenly felt an intense overwhelming of desperate emotion, for what had just happened to her, and the real fact that Uncas was clearly now ill. He did have a fever and that wasn't good news, no amount of denial was going to make those facts any less true.

The tears came hot and wet, coating her cheeks and making her gasp for air all over again. Chingachgook's own certainty worming its way into her heart, the sensation making her feel as if she was being eaten away from the inside out, the hollowness it all left behind making her want to run away.

A warm weight was suddenly upon her shoulder and Erin flinched harshly at the contact, shying away from the man now stood beside her. She glanced up and saw Nathaniel looking at her with an unsettled expression, his hand still in mid-air from her violent recoil. She hadn't even heard his footfalls. His look wasn't unfriendly, but it was stern, guarded, and slightly reproachful.

"Are you alright?" he asked lowly, and his voice was concerned despite the severe look he still wore. He wiped a sleeve carelessly across his nose, mopping up some of the blood that still trickled in the wake of Uncas' blows.

Erin shook her head, not knowing how to respond. "I don't know. I think so." She wrapped her arms about herself. "I'm in shock... I think." It felt like that could be true, she felt slightly detached from herself and the coldest she'd ever felt in her life, her skin not feeling like it was even her own.

"I have some molasses oat cake that the cook made fresh this morning. You should eat some. Might make you feel better." He began to rummage around in one of the many small pouches at his belt.

Erin glanced up at him, it seemed she was not the only one to link sweetness with helping a shocked mind. Her thoughts buzzed and she distractedly remembered Ada saying something about shock causing blood sugar to drop and that someone could pass out from it. She supposed that must have been at the back of her mind when she had suggested a candy for Alice back at the waterfall.

"I'm sorry." Erin pushed out the words in a hoarse whisper. "He told me not to worry... he said..." Erin felt her words wavering, the shiver creeping into her very voice. "I'm sorry, I should have made him say something. He didn't want your father to worry, he said he didn't like sweat huts, he said-"

Nathaniel held up a hand, stilling her fumbling over words.

"You've gone white," he said, "sit a moment."

Erin didn't need to be asked twice and crumpled down to the ground. She watched him retrieve a small package, wrapped in coarse cloth, from one of the bags, which he quickly unwrapped and pushed into her hands, urging it to her mouth.

Erin didn't feel hungry, in fact she felt a wave of nausea at the prospect of food, but did as she was bidden, taking a bite of the oatcake, the sugar hitting her tongue like a sweet elixir. Before she had time to register her actions, she had crammed the rest of it into her mouth within a moment, chewing open mouthed with sheer relief at how it seemed to prop all her senses back into alignment. She swallowed the last piece and took in a deep shaky breath, closing her eyes, she suddenly felt exhausted, but herself once again.

"Better?" Nathaniel sensed the change and extended his hand out to her.

Erin nodded, brushing crumbs from her face and bodice before letting him aid her to stand again. "Yes, I think so," she replied, uncertain if that was even true. "Thank you."

"Other than being soaked through, you don't look hurt."

Erin held back the urge to tell him that she was hurt, in so many ways, but knew it would only sound childish. "If you and your father hadn't come... he didn't seem to know me..." Her words were an unpleasant truth, Uncas had not known her. If Nathaniel and Chingachgook had not heard the disturbance and come to investigate... "He was fine only a few hours ago. He didn't look ill at all." She hesitated. "Can a fever really drive someone to that level of... of madness?" Erin thought this sounded blatantly far fetched, but the truth had been resolutely pushing her into the water only moments before.

Nathaniel shook his head. "No. Not just fever."

Erin's eyes widened in horror, her vague fears confirmed that there was more to this. "What do you mean? What else is there?"

Nathaniel paused, his eyes going to their surroundings as if looking for clues. "Don't know yet," he stated flatly. "But my guess is he's been taking something, some kind of medicine."

"Medicine?" Erin's mind flashed back to Fort Edward, the journey here, tonight, the bitter sweet taste of honey and green tea upon his lips. "What kind of medicine?"

Nathaniel suddenly turned away, making Erin flinch with the unexpected movement. He went towards the stream bank, to where Uncas' discarded clothes still lay. He bent upon his haunches and searched amongst the shirt and then the pouches that were still tied to Uncas' belt for a moment. Erin drew closer, watching him sort through a few until he pulled out some semi-round balls, they looked like green leaves and herbs rolled into something slightly sticky. It reminded Erin of all the protein balls she'd seen sold at local gyms and health food stores in her own time.

"If he's this sick now, I'm guessing he's been some kind of sick for a while. Just good at hiding it." He studied the objects and brought one up to his nose and sniffed carefully, then popped a little into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. "Aya," he said, as if this explained something.

"What is... aya?" Erin asked.

"I thought it was just willow bark he was chewing. Damn him." Nathaniel spat the concoction onto the ground.

"Why? What is it?" Erin tried to control her growing panic.

"Strong medicine from far down South, gives you energy, speed, concentration." Nathaniel passed the round things between his fingers and brought them again to his nose. "Ground coffee too, I think. Must have cost him a good coin or two." He paused as if considering more. "I thought he was one less brass ring after Fort Edward, thought he just got more food." He glanced up at Erin, frowning now. "Or something pretty for you."

"He said he traded it for bear grease, some beads, and leather." Erin's hand instinctively went to the little pouch nestled safely in her pocket.

Nathaniel scoffed. "No bear grease and beads would cost that much."

"Is it... dangerous?"

"Don't know." Nathaniel was pushing the objects back into the pouch and his hands were searching again. "Not enough to make him lose who he is."

"Lose who he is, you think he took something more..." Erin's voice trailed off.

"Takes powerful medicine to keep you up and moving when you are that sick. So you can ignore the pain, ignore what your body needs, the need to rest." He paused and glanced at her before resuming his search. "After a while, if you take too much, too often, the body can't cope, something has to give. I think he pushed it too far, until he was dead on his feet but still tried to keep going." Nathaniel's whole body went stiff as his fingers found purchase on something, and he closed his eyes very slowly. When he re-opened them he drew out a little brown glass bottle, almost the exact twin of the one Erin knew was nestled at the bottom of her pack. "Well, the medicine balls and this explains a lot," he said dryly, and Erin felt all the fine hairs upon her forearms stand up in realization.

"One to keep the pain at bay, the other to keep him moving. Guess he took too much tonight, and both of them combined..." He held the bottle up and, despite the night sky, the moon let them both see the contents were half gone at least. "Led to this."

"Is he going to be okay? You're father is wrong, right?" Erin hurried out each question, not giving him time to answer.

"We must return," he said, with a sudden reverting to his severe air. He scooped up the clothing and began to walk away.

Erin wanted to say more but relented, wiping brashly at her tear streaked face. Nathaniel was right, all their attention had to be on Uncas now, they had to work out how they could help him.

The fire was burning brightly in the camp, Chingachgook had wrapped Uncas in a soft woollen blanket and had already re-stoked the flames, the small pot of water hung above it beginning to steam.

"Cora gave us some medicine to help." Erin searched through her belongings, pulling out the small bundle of herbs and roots, skilfully ignoring her own little brown bottle. She passed it over to Chingachgook who she assumed would know exactly what to do with it. He crushed some of it quickly between two rocks, mashing it into a pulp before tipping it into the water, allowing it to steep. "She said it would help his fever."

"Can you speak in English?" Nathaniel demanded sharply behind her.

"Yes, sorry," Erin said, unaware for a moment that she had still been talking away in their own language.

"Your use of some words is gibberish," he snapped, and Erin felt cowed. She shrank back as the men worked, brewing the willow bark tea and mopping Uncas' brow with a damp cloth.

Erin's palms were clammy with sweat as she stood nearby, her hair and clothes still dripping with water. The wind had picked up and every time a breeze brushed by it caused her skin to break out in goose flesh and a shudder to run through her body, she tried to restrain the shakes but the more she tried, the more they seemed determined to be felt.

Once Chingachgook had tended to Uncas' immediate needs, he looked back and gestured impatiently for her to come forward and sit by the fire, it was a fatherly action of exasperation.

Erin slowly allowed her body to relax, her legs folded into a uncertain kneel as she settled onto the ground by the warmth and watched with baleful eyes as the scene played out, feeling truly helpless and unwilling to speak as the men worked. When the tea was ready Nathaniel gently sat Uncas up into his arms and carefully brought his brother around into a semi-conscious state with soft coaxing. He then poured the brewed mixture into his slightly parted lips, the actions painfully slow and deliberate, waiting for a small gulp as Uncas swallowed, and then again he poured, waited and poured.

When the concoction had been drained to the last dregs, Nathaniel settled Uncas back upon his bed, pulling the blanket tenderly around him.

"We must look." Nathaniel's voice was plain and directed to Chingachgook in Mohican, but whispered, as if even speaking of this was admitting the chance of true defeat.

The words made Chingachgook balk a little in disagreement. "I do not need to see!"

Nathaniel shook his head stubbornly, his dark hair ruffled by another stiff breeze through the trees. "We have to know if there is a way."

"There is no way. I do not wish to see my son's doom," Chingachgook replied doggedly.

Erin turned her gaze down to the ground, knowing this conversation was not meant for her ears, even if they now knew she understood them well.

"Father!" Nathaniel urged, his voice full of a desperate plea to be heard. "We must! You know as well as I, that we cannot say there is nothing to be done if there is a chance, even a chance!"

The tension of the moment built and although Erin dared not look up and intrude on the private scene, she knew just from the heavy air, the look the elder warrior would be wearing. A look that spoke of a complex mixture of hatred and sorrow. Knowing his older son was right and hating him for it at the same time.

"Then look!" The words were a bitten out attack. "See the fate of your brother!"

Nathaniel let out a frustrated breath and then he moved and pulled back the blanket, with a careful hand he removed the now soggy bandage that was still wrapped around Uncas' middle. The air once again stilled, not in tension, but in a shell-shocked silence. Erin glanced up and saw the look upon Nathaniel's face was a mass of consternation, he shook his head as if refusing to believe what his eyes told him was the harsh reality.

"May the great spirit hear my words." Chingachgook had begun to speak a slow low chant. "A warrior will come to you, straight as an arrow-"

"No!" Nathaniel bluntly interrupted, the words said through gritted teeth. "It is not his time!"

"My son, we never choose our times, you cannot choose your brother's." To Erin's ears it sounded like Chingachgook had accepted defeat already, despondency wrapping him in its gloomy grasp.

"It is not his time!"

Chingachgook shook his head, suddenly annoyed at his child's obstinate nature. "Look, see with your eyes." He gestured with a terse hand movement. "Climbing doom."

Erin couldn't sit there and pretend she wasn't part of all this any longer and raised herself to her feet, she took a few reluctant steps forward, towards where Uncas lay, before Nathaniel turned, venting all his scorn down upon her for even daring to venture any closer, with a cruel cold look that stopped her in her tracks.

She put up her palms in a sign of surrender. "What is it... that your father sees? What does 'climbing doom' mean?" Erin asked breathlessly in English, knowing Nathaniel did not need to be given any more reasons to hate her in this moment.

"What I knew I would see the moment my son kept this truth from us," Chingachgook said casually, as if discussing what they'd had for dinner. "He is dying." Chingachgook briskly stood and turned away, walking swiftly, disappearing into the forest, his shoulders hunched in what could be mistaken for hostility, but Erin knew in that moment to be deep, bone weary grief.

"Let me see?" she asked, turning her attention back to Nathaniel who eyed her like she hid nefarious intentions. "Please?"

He relented just a little and pulled back the blanket once again, revealing Uncas' side. It was a red swollen lump of flesh that clung to his upper abdomen, a thing that should not be there, straining against the sutures in ugly contortion. Curling across angry inflamed skin was a tendril, a wisp of bruised colour, dark and faded, a spiderweb of lines that travelled upwards, and Erin felt that sight suddenly stoke a blazing fear into her. She took a step back, a gasp of desperation escaping her lips in distress.

"Then you too have seen this kind of wound before?" Nathaniel asked, truly defeated.

Erin shook her head violently for a moment, tears blooming, but finally had to relent and nodded. "No. But I know. Infection." She gasped out each word as if she could barely catch any air.

Nathaniel frowned a little at her, understanding her meaning but not quite grasping her intention of words.

"The wound has gone bad, it's poisoning his blood," she corrected, forming it into something he would understand.

The truth hit her like a punch to the stomach. She and Nathaniel had needed to see reality with their own eyes, but Chingachgook knew the implications before he had even seen the wound, before he had heard the whys or explanations, the excuses... and the reason for that was simple, it was because he knew Uncas.

Uncas had kept this from the two people he cared for the most, his family. He had been sparing them the hopelessness of the situation, just as he had tried to spare Erin.

The realization felt like ice water pooling within her gut.

The only reason he'd admitted some truth to her was because Cora had pushed and discovered part of his secret. Erin suddenly knew with an unexplainable certainty he would not have mentioned a thing to her if he hadn't been made to, because Uncas knew!

Still, none of this made sense, and Erin stood stock still trying to understand all of it, as seconds ticked by. Erin's mind cried that Cora had only seen to him that very morning, it couldn't have spread that fast, it couldn't!

'She knew.' Her mind pushed the words through all the panic and Erin felt them swipe away her ability to draw in breath. 'Cora gave you that brown bottle because she knew!'

Nathaniel covered the wound with a tender flick of the blanket, drawing Erin back from her crowded thoughts, and he finally gave a small nod in agreement to what she had said. "When I've seen this before, the man, he-" He cut off his own words, unable to bring forth the vocalization fully for a moment. "He has two days, a day, hours maybe. Not long." He gently lay Uncas fully down, pressed a hand to his brother's chest and closed his eyes, mumbling something low under his breath. Then his intense green eyes were suddenly upon Erin like she was an enemy, a targeted prey he had to take down. Nathaniel stood, his movements fast and his strides certain, long and threatening. He'd grasped her upper arm in an iron grip before Erin could move away or protest his intense actions.

"You know the future! What will happen? Will he survive?!" He shook her with determined anger.

"I don't know, I can't see his future! He survived the cliffs, now I don't know what will happen!" Erin cried, wanting to wrench herself away from him but not daring to.

"So, you warned him, gave him knowledge of his own death and helped save him, why? To bring his death another way?"

"That's not fair! I tried, I wanted to... I wanted to save him."

"All you bring is ill luck, Uncas was right on that first night out in the open, you are a witch!" He snapped out the words and let her go with an unkind push.

Erin stared after him as he returned to his brother, and knelt before his now slightly shivering form. Erin allowed her body again to tumble down to the earth, stopping only when the ground juddered against her bones, feeling the need of the violent impact, for she knew Nathaniel could be right.

This did feel like it was all her fault.

/

A/N

Well, hello there any readers stopping by.

I was nervous about the last chapter, but I'm happy to see it has been received pretty well and no one is picking up their pitchforks and torches to come burn me for making Uncas nearly drown Erin.

I based Uncas delirium on a few stories I've heard from people I know who have experienced someone going through something similar (aka serious fever while taking some form of hard drugs.) For Uncas' state I cobbled together the idea of him pretty much taking a speedball for days on end which ended up sending him into a fever/drug induced episode. I'm no historian but I do know cocaine as we know it did not exist until around the 1850s, but cocoa leaves were used far before that and are mentioned as a strong drug as far back as 1451. I believe I read somewhere that some Peruvian mummies from over 3000 years ago were found with cocoa leaves. They were also found in the mouths of sacrificed children and were suspected to have been a drug to calm them along with alcohol. Uncas also had some kind of opiate in that bottle, so pretty much coke and heroine, but I guess less strong and processed :))) So, that's how I came up with this whole plot line. I'm using some artistic license because, I don't know what strength those two drugs in the 1750s would have been. That was probably way too much info for the story :)))

Did Cora really know? Did Uncas know? Is Chingachgook right? Is Erin at fault? More importantly, can Uncas survive?

Some secrets have been revealed, some questions still remain and some have yet to be addressed. I'm afraid I will have to keep you all in suspense for a little while longer as I am away for over a week and I won't be here to put out the next chapter. I will be back on 31st May when hopefully all those questions will have answers. I hope you'll re-join me then.

A massive thank you to MohawkWoman and Flowangelic, without your support I feel this story would not be where it currently is and I may have given up, thank you again for being here.