Pocahontas's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Pocahontas ran before she chose a path, because the warriors had already chosen theirs. She had argued all season for peace with the newcomers settling on the shore. Now a scouting party of those strangers had wandered onto the hunting grounds, and the hunters would answer strangers with spears. She knew their faces. She knew they would not wait for her. She climbed a rise and looked down. Four pale men stooped among the trees, testing the soft ground, stealing deer sign that was not theirs to read. They carried no weapons drawn. They did not know how close death stood. Behind her, far off, she heard the low calls of hunters spreading wide to surround them. She could not reach both groups. If she ran to the strangers, the hunters would close before she could explain. If she ran to the hunters, the strangers might bolt and seem to flee like thieves. Either way, someone would bleed, and the peace she wanted would die in the grass. A deer pressed against her leg. The tame doe had followed her up the rise, white tail twitching, calm where everything else was not. The sight gave Pocahontas her answer. The hunters knew her signals. They watched the sky out of long habit. She needed to speak to them without words. She gathered green pine boughs, heavy with needles, and struck a spark into the dry tinder beneath. The fire caught and choked on the wet green, and thick smoke rolled upward in a slow gray column. It was the sign for hold. Any hunter who saw it would stop and look for her word before striking. The smoke climbed. An eagle crossed above it, wings wide, drifting on the heat of the fire. The hunters would see the bird over the smoke and know a watcher stood below. Pocahontas held her breath and watched the tree line. The low calls stopped. She left the fire burning and ran down to the strangers. They turned at the sound of her and reached for knives. She raised empty hands and stepped between them and the trees, where the hunters now waited, silent, spears lowered but ready. She stood in the gap and spoke to her own people first, fast, naming the strangers as lost, not raiders. She told the pale men to drop their hands. One understood her gesture, if not her words, and obeyed. The others followed. No one died. The hunters let the strangers walk back toward the shore, and Pocahontas walked with them to be sure. But at the water's edge, the strangers did not simply thank her and go. Their leader studied her, then pointed inland toward their fort and spoke a name she did not know, pressing her to come. He wanted her to meet the man who ruled them. She had stopped one killing. Now the newcomers knew her face, and they would not let her stay a stranger.