A/N

Song this time for those that would like it. HAEVN - The Sea

/

Erin returned to the camp only a short time later. Chingachgook was there, it seemed he had been by Uncas' side for a while.

Nathaniel sat nearby, elbows on knees, his hands in a steeple before him, forehead pressed to fingers. She knew that the start of this conversation had not gone well. Erin hesitated in discomfort, she'd heard a hint of raised voices as she'd approached, but at her appearance both men had fallen silent, leaving a dour atmosphere.

Chingachgook had a slightly curled piece of bark in his palm and some kind of tarry substance within swirled thin streaks of smoke into the air. He was lightly guiding it over Uncas' form with a deft hand. Erin's eyes lingered upon Uncas' face, it was slack, peaceful; he slept. She became slowly aware that this was no natural sleep, he'd been given something to temper his consciousness for a while. She also noticed, with a flickering feeling of trepidation, that the rose gold hue of dawn was straining against the darkness of the sky, day was fast approaching.

"He sleeps?" Erin already knew the answer but didn't know what else to ask to break the tension.

"Now he sleeps," Chingachgook said, giving one last sway with his hand over the smoke before returning his full focus back to his older son and Erin.

"Uncas told me many days ago, at William Henry, a little of what you think, that you believe you can see the future. That you saw the doom of one of the Munro sisters, and that you believed you could change what would come." He paused, his gaze going to Nathaniel for a brief moment before settling back heavily upon Erin. "You did; the girl lives and yet my son is dying. Did you exchange my son's life for the girl?"

Erin shifted under the weight of that gaze, anxious that he would somehow see the things Uncas had obviously not disclosed about his own potential doom, and the fact that Uncas' life had been as much in peril as Alice's upon those cliff tops. Slowly Erin shook her head. There seemed no way to avoid the truth now. "No, I don't think there has been any exchange, but..."

He didn't let her finish, having already gathered the answer he sought. "My white son tells me you want to save Uncas, that you can." He paused, keen eyes traveling over her, a hint of something that could have been wry amusement or full dislike threatening at the corner of his mouth. "You will tell me how you will do this. You will tell me everything and I will know if you lie." His eyes narrowed with a flash of something dark, a solemn warning.

Erin came to sit by the fire, knowing this part was not going to be easy to explain. She glanced over at Nathaniel who gave her a subtle nod of encouragement. Trying to convince Chingachgook of what needed to be done was a task that made her mouth feel dry. The unspoken risks still hung like weights upon the whole plan, one wrong move on her part and it may all come crashing down.

"If he comes home with me, my people may be able to help him." Erin decided starting with simplicity was her best bet.

"Who are your people?" he asked, very soberly, his gaze flicking to his older son with a look that angrily demanded of him not to speak one single word.

"My people aren't here, at least not in this time. I am from a place far in the future. Hundreds of years." It felt good to finally to be honest and open with all those around her. "I came to this place through the triple falls, I did not ask for it or desire it. It just... happened."

Chingachgook looked fleetingly startled, as if he had expected this answer but not the truth behind her words. He gave a small nod that he accepted this statement as fact, but a wariness still held his expression. "My own people, and my late wife's people, tell such stories." He glanced at the fire, seeing something in his memories before speaking in his own language. "People that walk through and behind time." His eyes were upon her again in a quick movement, brow furrowed. "They had reasons to walk such paths. What is yours? The girl?"

"Yes, Alice Munro, and also... Uncas. I think I came to stop them from dying. In my time, they died on those cliffs, Magua brought about both their deaths," Erin said, her face pale and serious.

Something flared within Chingachgook's gaze and Erin knew, he now understood so much had been kept from him, his own son had not told him the extent of this entire situation. Then his expression softened, his eyes briefly closing as if in silent heartache for his son's tender heart, for not wanting to cause his father pain and worry with knowledge that would only bring both those things. He opened his eyes and looked down at Uncas, his hand coming to stroke his child's face in fond lament.

"I thought it had worked, I thought... everything was going to be fine," Erin continued.

"Life always requires a debt be paid," he said, glancing once again at his son's sleeping form. "It seems a price is still due."

To Erin that sounded ominous and despairing. "No, I can save him, or at least I can try. If you'll give me your blessing?" she ended, with a hopeful half question.

"The debt isn't always a life for a life," Chingachgook said, and Erin was reminded vividly of Uncas' own cryptic way of saying exactly what he meant while he kept so much hidden.

"If he stays, father-" Nathaniel unleashed the words in his own tongue, as if he could no longer contain the urge to speak up.

Chingachgook held up a hand in an abrupt request for silence. "So, you would take my son through those falls into a different time?"

Erin nodded. "I feel I can go back."

"How do you know this?" It felt like he was constantly testing this plan with nimble fingers, seeking all the flaws and holes that would make this impossible. Erin tried not to show how frustrated she felt.

"I don't know," she shrugged, "I just know. It pulls at me, like a rope tethered somewhere inside my chest, or maybe to my spine. It's hard to explain. Like the answer is buried in my-"

"Bones," Chingachgook finished, with a steely look and nod. "And my son? Do you feel this about him going with you?"

Erin felt her posture deflate, those nimble fingers were coming closer and closer to ripping all these ideas apart. "I don't know. Uncas... I don't know if he can travel with me, and if he can't, he'll die here with you." Erin didn't want to dive into the whole extra prospect that he could die on the journey, in between times, she didn't want to think about that at all.

"So it would be a gamble?" Chingachgook gave a sceptical raise of his brow.

"I... I don't know." Erin felt her heart suddenly speed up at the prospect of all of this being a hopeless folly her thoughts beginning to fragment, and the panic must have rippled across her face, because Chingachgook gave a sound of impatient comfort, his words similar in feel to when Uncas had hushed her in the infirmary of Fort William Henry as she had tried to fight past the pain of stitches pulling through skin.

"Be calm," he said. "Close your eyes, girl." He spoke so plainly to her in Mohican, his words stern yet somehow full of warmth and empathy, and she wanted to do as they asked, her eyes closing in medicative thought, that inner rope tugging at her. "Search. Listen."

It was a command of only two words and yet, as she focused upon the question that mattered, the answer came back as if brought upon some intrinsic breeze. She felt it like a bright shining string she could not see with eyes alone and yet there it was there as clear as any photograph within her mind. It trailed from somewhere within her, floating like a thread of glimmering silken web, out towards the man sleeping his dreamless sleep nearby. She could see... no, feel... the thread going into his chest, attached to some part deep within.

Erin didn't know if it was all wishful thinking or the truth, but it felt like it was something to believe in.

"What did you hear?" Chingachgook asked, with a disarming frankness.

"Yes," her eyes flew open, breaking the connection, shock upon her face, "I heard... felt... Yes." Erin could still feel that strange tugging in her chest, it thrummed for a moment as if excited about its discovery, but with each passing second it settled to a mellow hum in the background of her consciousness.

Chingachgook looked at her silently for a long time before he spoke again. "How certain are you that your people can save my son?" He gave her no chance to answer. "An injury like this is a certain death sentence. There is no way to cure it. In this future, how can they heal him?"

"We developed strong medicine, surgery, ways to help." Erin's eyes flicked to Uncas. "I can only tell you I believe he has a chance, but it's not a certainty. It depends how far the poison has gone."

Chingachgook considered her words with a few deliberate nods. "Do you know what the payment for this is?"

"Payment?" Erin frowned. "I don't want any payment. I care about your son, deeply, I only want-"

He raised his hand again.

"He means what is the price for Uncas' life, what are the consequences," Nathaniel put in softly.

"Oh. The... price." Erin didn't know if they meant spiritually or materially, but she did know they had a good point. If Uncas came with her now, he may never come back to his own time. She didn't know what the rules were, she had no handy guidebook to answer all her questions. All she had was hope, hope that this path would lead to life instead of death.

"The price, would be Uncas." She nodded, disliking those words even though she was the one speaking them. "Uncas knew some of this, about where I'm from. Although I didn't tell him that much about my doctors, I did tell him they could bring some people back from death." She took a deep breath and paused, unsure if any of this was helping or hindering the cause, but knowing there was no way back now. "I don't know if he understood what that meant or if it was just too far-fetched for him to comprehend." She hesitated briefly again before making herself continue. "But he chose not to tell any of us he was sick. He made a choice. If he comes with me, it may be against his wishes. It may be against your own too, for you will not like what I have to say."

Nathaniel's head jerked up, eyes angrily connecting with hers as he realized Erin understood a little more than he'd anticipated, and had said far more than he would have liked.

"If he can go with me and I get him to my doctors, he may still not survive, even in my world, and you would not be with him." Erin pushed forward, knowing she couldn't stop now, Chingachgook had to understand everything. "Like I said, it depends how bad the poison is..." She sighed again, understanding this was a hurtful thing for them to face, but there was more she had to address.

"If he does make it." Her mouth felt dry, lips clinging together as she tried to force the words out. "He may not be able to come back. I don't know how the..." She searched for the right word, but could only find one that made sense to her, and hopefully to them too. "How the magic works."

Chingachgook again nodded. "So, if my son goes with you, he may never return to me, either in body or spirit?"

"No, I can't promise you that he can," Erin said, her eyes going to Nathaniel who looked distressed by this news, but still resolute in his beliefs.

"You said, the answer you heard before was yes?" Chingachgook said.

Erin nodded, a little unsure as to what exactly he would ask next.

"Can I travel with my son?"

Erin felt jolted by this question and somehow deeply ashamed of herself for never finding that connection in her own mind. She'd become so focused on getting Uncas to her time, on him living, she hadn't given his own family much thought at all. She'd begun to shake her head, signaling she did not know the answer. "You could try, I don't-"

Chingachgook held up his hand in request for silence before she could finish. "Listen," he insisted.

Erin felt a little foolish doing this exercise again, but she did as he asked and closed her eyes, shifting her body a little as she tried to relax. She rolled her shoulders and let out a slow long breath, requesting an answer again, searching for that shining thread. No whisper came, no breath of wind in her ear, no sharp little tug within her chest, and when she reopened her eyes her face gave away the truth. Chingachgook's expression paled and his jaw clenched.

Nathaniel stood from his seat with a brusque movement. "What of me?"

This time Erin didn't need to close her eyes to be able to shake her head, the cord did not pull towards either man, the whispers within remained silent.

"But... you could still try. I really don't know," Erin offered up, trying to rally any hope back into their faces. "It's only a feeling, we could try."

"Whether it can be done or not, will have to wait." Erin knew from Chingachgook's tone, that he was going to approach this now as if Uncas went on his way alone, without brother or father by his side.

He eyed her with a measuring look. "Uncas is the last of us. The best of us. Although I hoped, prayed a day would not come that I would see the end of my son, I was prepared for it since he was brought into this world. A good death, a death with honour, means much to our people. As do our rites after death, the words that must be spoken by one of our own to see their spirit safely to the other side. If he goes with you, where I cannot follow, if he dies in some faraway land, he may not have a place by the council fire if no one speaks for him. His spirit lost to memory, lost to me, lost to our world."

"I don't have any answers for you. I don't know what comes after. My time doesn't have those answers anymore than you do," Erin said, fully unguarded, knowing this could not be her choice, no matter how much she wished it was. "I know that he has a chance in my time, a chance to live. I can only promise you that he won't be lost from my memory, not ever. I am not one of you, but I do care for him, I do care what becomes of him. If the worst happens, I can try and do and say what you think is right. It's not much, but it's all I can offer. That is the price."

Chingachgook made a terse gesture with his hand that he understood all he had been told, and turned to Nathaniel. "So, this why you were acting so vague about this all, Long Rifle? Why you said so little about what this meant, that he may never come back. That it may be the end of all things." His eyes were full of unspoken accusations towards the man before him. "You have your own secrets to hide. You would make your brother's choices for him, for me." His gaze gleamed with canny disapproval.

Nathaniel gritted his teeth, and then the words came like a torrent of water breaking through a dam. "You did things you thought were for his own benefit, for honour, for tradition, when you knew he felt stifled! What difference is this, other than the stakes are his very life! You taught him to value only what will come next, his line, his death, over who he is! To die uselessly when he has a chance to live is a way I cannot accept. My brother's life is worth the risk!"

Erin sat in stunned astonishment as Nathaniel spoke, had the way she'd thought about Uncas held some truth after all? Had he felt trapped?

Chingachgook shifted in discomfort, his eyes narrowing and holding his oldest son's in what seemed to Erin like a silent battle of wills, and suddenly Nathaniel's face twisted in anger.

"Would you feign care of his fate now, over what you think your forefathers would want, a good death?" Nathaniel shockingly spat on the ground. "For his life, I spit on the old ways. I would burn it all down to save him, even if it meant he would resent me forever! Even if I had no place by the council fire with you. His life means more to me than people long dead, than any line, than being the last! You've asked us to balance a way between two worlds all our lives, that balance now asks, will we step onto new solid ground or will we fall? There must be a choice, to cling and die with the past, or run to the future, his future. It is all I care about! A chance!"

Chingachgook looked startled and his brow furrowed into a deep frown.

Erin could only stare wide-eyed at the confrontation going on around her, trying to understand the words spoken but knowing, without comprehension of their past, she was lost in a sea of years she had no experience of.

Nathaniel wasn't done with his barrage. "Will you choose what is best for our tradition, for our legacy, for honor, or will you choose the life of your son over all else? Will you let him go?!" Nathaniel looked both furious and on the verge of tears.

Chingachgook too looked overwhelmed with emotion, his eyes holding a look that was both angry and full of the deepest grief.

Nathaniel took in a quick deep breath, not giving his father chance to begin a rebuttal, but he looked calmer, more composed, and when he spoke his voice was firm but gentle. "I know this is how you were taught too, I know you wanted only the best for him, for me. I know this has been the way of thinking for so long that it seems right, and with the death of our village, our people, it seems like the only way. But should we not trust in the bounty the world puts before us? To save him above all else, is this not the nobler path? To choose family over all, would our forefathers not look at us and smile in pride that we forged a new way?"

The elder was silent for a long moment, his gaze drifting to his youngest son. Uncas' ashen pallor was revealing itself more as sunlight began to flood into the woodland, golden life turning slowly to ghostly silver as seconds skittered by, telling them all they were steadily running out of time.

There would come a moment where choices would not matter, where nothing more could be done, decisions had to be made now.

Erin held her breath.

A hardness came over the elder's face and he closed his eyes briefly in silent anguish, his expression sagging into a strange mixture of relief and bone deep sorrow.

"If there is a chance he will live, I will ask for no more. It is a price I will pay with contentment in my heart, even if he is lost to us." Chingachgook looked down at his hands, spreading open his fingers before he curled them both into loose fists and closed his eyes once again tightly, saying what sounded like a mournful prayer under his breath. When he finished, his eyes opened, and his gaze was full of strong determination. He got to his feet effortlessly and began to gather up the blankets. He gestured to Nathaniel. "Fetch the rope, we will tie him onto the mule. Leave everything we can't carry behind."

Nathaniel had been holding his whole body as if tensed to run a great sprint, but at his father's words he visibly flagged in tribulation but his expression was one of crushing defeat, for he too had accepted the loss of his brother.

He did not need to be asked twice, he was up and upon his feet in seconds, scooping up everything that was needed as if rushing against the ticking of a clock.

Erin was directed to put away only what was strictly necessary into one of the cloth bags. They would have to leave everything behind that was not essential, the plan was they move fast and light, she would have to carry her own share.

Uncas was gently redressed and placed upon the mule's back and secured in place with ropes and blankets, it wasn't a perfect or comfortable arrangement but it would have to do.

Chingachgook slung his own musket and then Uncas' weapon over his shoulder, and with no more words being spoken they set off into the forest before the sun had fully risen.

Whatever Chingachgook had given Uncas was strong, so strong that Erin doubted it was just something gathered from the forest. He had not fully stirred from his languid stupor, only ever barely conscious in all the jostling and movement. She watched as he now leaned over in his seat, brow brushing against the mule's neck, kept in place by ropes as its bumpy movements jerked him to and fro.

Erin could confidently assume the elder warrior had quite the knowledge of strong medicines for dire occasions. Wasn't it better to fade away in sleep than burn in pain if a musket shot found you? But she could not think of any herb or potion that could have been gathered out here in the woods that would surround Uncas in such a deep stupor.

Erin studied the older warrior's lined face, her eyes lingering upon the slightly faded outline of his serpentine tattoo, that curled across his cheek and brow. He must have gotten his lines when he was a young man. Every wrinkle upon his skin was a story, a day, a week, a month, a year lived and survived in this place. He was no fool.

Erin's mind pricked and she fumbled a moment in her bag, pulling out the small brown glass bottle. She held it up to the light and swished the liquid, it was not as full as it had been when Cora had given it to her.

So, this was his secret?

For a split second of time Erin felt a little indignant waver of emotion that he had rummaged in her own pack without permission, but she quickly discarded the thought as nonsense. If she had been in his shoes she would have emptied out every traveller's wares in search of something to help. Erin had at least been correct in her assumption that he knew his way around even the strongest medicine. He'd seen the bottle and known exactly what it was, which meant he knew what it could do too. She wondered distractedly if he had intended to use more before this new plan had been revealed? Had he been of the same mind as Cora? Letting his son fall into a deep unwaking slumber amongst the wilds he so loved...

She shook herself inwardly. None of that mattered now, because they were going to save Uncas.

Erin could already feel the sweat gathering at the small of her back, the breaths straining her lungs with effort. She glanced ahead to where Nathaniel walked guiding the mule and insuring his brother's safety, he looked beyond weary already too, no one had really slept much the night before.

"How long?" she asked.

"If we make good time," Nathaniel glanced about them, eyes following the direction the sun would take as the day went on, gathering the knowledge he needed from his surroundings, their own pace, her breaths, "be there before nightfall."

Erin nodded and looked up, keeping her tired, sore eyes on the image of the three men ahead, knowing the sooner they arrived at the triple falls, the greater Uncas' chance of survival was.

/

A/N

Hello. Friday is here and so am I.

I hope you enjoyed todays chapter. The plan seems to be set and our characters are moving forward, but one person has yet to have his say. Will Uncas agree? Will the plan fail? Will they make it to the falls in time?

You'll have to come back and see next week.

A big thank you to anyone stopping by, my biggest warm thanks to Flowangelic and MohawkWoman.

Thank you for spending your time with me.