A/N
Song for this week is Surrender by Natalie Taylor.
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Erin sat in the meadow, the warm summer breeze teasing gently at any loose strands that had escaped Ada's latest attempt at a historically accurate hair style, tucked neatly beneath a silk scarf.
She glanced up, taking in her surroundings as she brushed a stray piece of yellowed grass off her newest drawing. It depicted the meadow she sat in, but instead of only tall grasses, a small cabin nestled amongst wildflowers, homely and cosy. Four figures, two adults and two children, stood outside, all smiling. Erin wished with all her heart that somewhere in the past, this drawing told the truth, that the Cameron family had found a new home and happiness.
She put down her work, her stiff fingers already spasming at the positions she had forced them into for so long. She had many sketches now, all drawn from memories, all of people whose likeness she couldn't fully remember.
It had been a full year since Uncas had returned to his own time. Sometimes she thought the whole thing was a dream, or she'd had a full breakdown out there in the woods. It was perhaps easier to think of it that way when her thoughts strayed to Uncas, but she knew it wasn't true. He was still remembered in her time and not only by her. Here, at her third Big Circle Re-enactment, she still had the odd question passed her way of where was the dashing young man she'd been here with last year? Her mother and father still spoke of him often, asking if she had heard from him. Every time Erin would shake her head and shrug her shoulders, offering the sparse and unsatisfying reply that he was probably far too busy with his family to reach out.
Only Ada knew the truth of all this. Who Uncas really was and where he had gone. Erin allowed her memories to flow back to that morning a year ago, when she had stumbled back into camp alone and a mess of tears.
She'd only just begun to draw the attention of some early rising people before she heard someone calling out her name. "Erin!"
She turned and saw Ada bustling towards her, relief and annoyance sharpening her expression.
"Where have you been? I was just about to call a search... again! I came by on my way to make breakfast and saw you and Uncas weren't in your tent, after last year you can only imagine how I-."
Erin didn't allow her to finish, but rushed into her friend's arms, bear hugging her tightly, until Ada had no real choice but to hug her back. "Please don't be mad," she managed to gasp out.
"What's wrong? What's happened?"
"He's gone," Erin mumbled, refusing to let go.
"Who? Uncas? Where has he gone?"
Erin found words didn't want to come.
"'Rin?" Ada pulled herself away and studied her distraught friend with concerned eyes. "What's happened? Come back to the tent and tell me everything," Ada had soothed, leading her away from the gathering onlookers.
Erin had told Ada everything. How she'd gone through the falls and ended up in 1757, met the real Uncas from the book, as well as the real Alice Munro. How she had tried to change some of the story they knew. How Alice had saved them all. And then how Erin had brought a gravely injured Uncas back to her own time. It had been a conversation that went on for hours, but by the end, Ada was willing to believe her and offer a long consoling embrace for Erin's loss.
Erin came back out of her memories to the sunlit meadow and wiped her hands over her skirts, a new dress she had made for herself this time, with Ada's guidance of course. It had no frills or prettiness to it, it was practical and cool in the heat, but could be made warm for colder temperatures with a good woollen shawl and some heavier petticoats. A great traveling dress for days like today at the Big Circle.
Her first port of call after Uncas left last year and she had gathered her wits, was back to Ada who had helped her with the historical research. Erin had to know what became of all the people she had known, and once Uncas had returned to his own time there seemed no harm in it. At least no harm to him, Erin knew she might find out something that would haunt her for the rest of her days, if he hadn't made it.
The story hadn't changed in the novel, Alice and Uncas still died on those clifftops, but the historical accounts were a little trickier to follow, still steeped in the murky place between fact and fiction. But, if one was persistent and dedicated enough to look, there were accounts that told some ends and some beginnings.
One of the most surprising things to come up from all the research was that Erin found she was a distant relation of the Munros, her line going back to Colonel Edmund Munro's mother's older sister, Janet Bruce, who had dropped off the charts of English noble ancestry in shame after her husband had killed someone in a drunken bar brawl in Scotland and fled. Janet had sold her property and land to her brother in law and faded from historical record, until there she was, cited as owning a very respectable public house in New York. Ada guessed she had perhaps followed her husband to America, or she may have travelled to America alone and met a man there, found a new life and started all over again, and this had resulted in Erin's own line.
It made some sense, as far as time travel could ever make sense. If Erin was a distant relation to the Munros, perhaps that thread had been what allowed her to go back and try to change her own ancestor's story? It felt like as good a guess as any.
Ada had suggested that perhaps this connection was the whole reason Erin could travel at all through the Three Sisters. Ada had accompanied her back up to the falls to see this strange amulet, but when Erin pointed to it in the cave, Ada had looked at her in bafflement and stated there was nothing there but rock and water.
For a moment Erin really had thought she was losing her mind and had jabbed at the amulet with a stick until it had fallen onto the ground. It had begun to give off its low droning, thumping noise and Erin had picked it up by the chain, not daring to touch the bulk of of it, wanting to prove to herself it was real. Ada had let out a low gasp of surprise, she could now see it, but only when Erin was touching it.
The friends had puzzled and suggested many possibilities over why this could be, but the discussion had come to no more than it being something to do with Erin's family connection. Once they had brought the amulet out of the cave, the droning had stopped and the pull of it dissipated too. Carefully, Erin had held it in her palm, understanding it was harmless now, without the waterfall. Ada had wanted them to bring it back with them so they could study it and research its curious markings, but the moment Erin's foot touched the dirt path the item was gone. There was no sound, no rush of air. The amulet was just no longer within her cupped hand as if it had never been there at all.
Erin and Ada's eyes had met and they had both made their way carefully back up to the cave, and there the amulet was once again, swinging slightly in the breeze on the jutting tree branch. Erin had placed a finger on the chain so Ada could see it clearly. They'd come to the very thin guess that it could not be removed from this area. The waterfall and the surrounding pools seemed as far as it could be taken. Erin knew with a strange certainty, that was frustrating to try and explain to her friend, that it never left this place, not in her time and not in Uncas', it was always just there, waiting. It travelled back and forth through time, but it never truly left. It existed in all times, endless and constant and always.
As for Uncas' ability to travel, Erin made sense of this by giving the powers, or magic, some kind of personality in her mind, morals and sympathy, for a man that had helped the Munros survive and yet was on the verge of death anyway. Maybe that was why Erin had been allowed to save him and why he had been allowed to return home? But that didn't explain why she still felt she could travel one last time. Did Uncas have that feeling in his time too? Could he even see the amulet in his time? Erin knew he had here, but perhaps that was only because he had travelled? Did that mean he could still see it as well as she could, or was it as invisible to him as it was to Ada? All questions that Erin had to accept would never have answers, only connections her mind decided to try and invent.
As for the rest of Ada's and Erin's research for the lives passed and gone, some were happy and satisfying, some a little sad.
Colonel Edmund Munro had lived only three more months after the battle of Fort William Henry. He'd passed away suddenly in Albany, the only notes that Erin and Ada could find seemed to conclude it was a heart attack and that he was attended by family in his final moments. They couldn't find out if that was a daughter or other relation, such as the Munros' cousin Eugenie. Erin liked to assume Alice had at least been with him at the time of his passing, holding his hand and singing softly to him.
Duncan Heywood had stayed in America, serving as Sergeant Major in the British Army over many years, and then a Colonel in his own right. Once again the facts of his life were hard to follow as records had either not been kept or had been lost to time. But, there was a mention of him retiring later in life, becoming a rather wealthy and well regarded man in Boston, his wife a socialite of the time, their lives blessed with many children and sadly, some loss and grief. But just as Erin had hoped, the long of his story was a good and contented life, where he was loved by his family and his neighbours, held in high esteem by all those who knew him. A man of the community. Erin was happy for him.
Cora and Nathaniel lived out their lives on a farmstead in Kentucky and to this very day their descendants came to the Big Circle gatherings, or at least some people proudly proclaimed they were, but being a rather unremarkable family in terms of historical values, not much was known about them.
The only hint Ada had found in her research was that Cora seemed to have become a local known for giving out medical care, a rare inclusion of a woman in the historical records. She was noted there only because she'd sewn up some bigwig explorer that passed through their land who had been injured in a fall. This explorer had written a book about his life, and Cora, (known in the text as Mrs Poe), had been given a short amount of space in his tales of adventure. There was also mention of Nathaniel and his great skills as a tracker, he'd been employed as a guide by the man for some weeks on his travels. There was one paragraph that mentioned a fair haired woman this explorer had become quite enamoured with, a guest of the Poe's, but she was never given a name. Erin hoped it was indeed Alice, and knew Uncas would have made his way there with his brother after he'd returned in 1758.
Had the two once fated lovers reunited at the homestead? Did love bloom without all the restraints of society, safe on their family's farm?
Part of Erin wanted it to be true, but the other part of her was petty and jealous, and wished to find reference to Uncas living some nomadic life in the wilds, attached to no woman. A wish Erin knew to be very selfish.
As for Alice Munro, there were no records at all, she had either never married or at least those records had not survived. As was a sad truth in this time period, without a husband or at least a male guardian of some worth, most women's lives were barely noticed at all in historical documents. Erin could only hope Alice had somehow reached her own dreams and had found joy in her love of art.
Uncas and his father were almost impossible to track in any records, there were no documents about them, only the novel, myths, and the second hand accounts mentioned them in any detail. Details which Erin had pored over on many dark nights, searching for what had become of him, wanting a reason to stay and try and be happy, or to run to him in want of trying to save him all over again.
But there was nothing, and no news began to feel like good news in all respects. No reports of his death, no reports of him finding love or marriage, or having a family, nothing.
It had become quite the obsession trying to find him. All the leads took her to dead ends, and even searching for 'Todd Copper' had yielded so very little. But, there was one document, it had been partially destroyed, the name 'Todd Copper' the only thing that remained, taken from a notebook the author of The Last of the Mohicans novel, had used 69 years after the events of 1757, when gathering his information and finding historical tales. It could have been Uncas, but Erin knew wishing would not make it true.
As for Erin's own life, this last year she had lived well, and had not only returned to her love of art, but had put the lingering strange gift of knowing any spoken aloud language to good use, volunteering for various roles as a translator, aiding those that needed help, but had no money. The job was fulfilling and gave Erin a sense of not only community, but of doing real good with the remarkable talent she had been given. To make some extra money for herself she had begun to translate for big companies too and had built herself a nice little nest egg, for when she wanted to leave home. For so long, Erin didn't want to leave sight of her parents, fearing losing them again as their bond grew stronger, but they encouraged her to go out into the world, meet new people and her translating work took her on many trips around the globe, and her own world grew with new friendships and connections.
She was happy and comfortable, but Erin could not really say she was content.
It had taken Erin over six months to begin to understand why, after a while, she could find no joy in anything she did. Everything in life seemed to have a hollow ring to it. The colours of the world were faded. Even when she was surrounded by people, loved ones, she felt, somehow, still lonely. She'd blamed so much of it on her travels in 1757, on what she had done and seen and some of that was true, what she had experienced had been real and fierce and terrible and also... sometimes wonderful.
Even though she loved spending time with her parents, Ada, and her other friends, they were not there every day to distract her from the ache of emptiness she felt. Life went on, and it was always missing something, a part of herself, and no matter what she did or how many times she tried to fill the empty feeling, it was never enough.
Denial had been the worst part of it all. She hadn't regretted coming home, her choices a year ago, or the time with those she loved, but it felt like half a life. Maybe she would be making the biggest mistake of her life with her choices now, but as Uncas had once told her, it was no good lingering in a place between decisions. So, she had made hers.
She'd promised Uncas a year ago, that tomorrow at dawn she would return to the falls and remember him. She'd promised herself she'd do that every year and wherever he was, whatever life he lived, she hoped he'd take a moment to remember her too.
Erin wouldn't be keeping her promise, now or in the future, because at dawn she would journey to the Three Sisters, and she would not return home.
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A/N
Hello, good Friday to those reading. I feel the last chapter left a few feeling hopeless, I hope this one has a spark of light for those of you still with me.
Thank you for trusting me to tell whatever comes in my own time and way. I can't promise you all anything, as spoilers are a bane, but please stick with me if you can.
As always, I am thankful to any of you that decide to share your thoughts and feelings with me, your comments are so appreciated, and I hope, as these next few chapters unfold you will see the complete story I have been trying to tell. I hope I'm successful :)
A tiny titbit for you about Erin's ancestry. Janet Bruce was a real person. She was George Munro's (changed to Edmund in LOTM) mother's sister (so, his aunt) and she did indeed sell her land etc to her brother in law (her sister's husband) after her own husband disgraced them in a bar brawl where he murdered someone and ran. I couldn't find any info on Janet after this point so I thought she was a perfect link to Erin, she would have been left in disgrace. So, easy for her to be a commoner and be part of Erin's humble lineage. I never wanted to explain fully the trappings of time travel in this, I wanted to keep it rather mysterious, so it really is only connections characters can make to try and make sense of the whys.
I hope to see you all next time.