The New Path

Chapter Six

⋖~An „Unfriendly” Intimation~⋗

13th June 1610

She pushed the oar into the waters of the Appamatuck River, the sweet and at the same time irritating sound of the liquid in motion echoed in her ears. The shining expanse of the stream appeared before them; the sun, reflecting on the waves, blinded her with its rays of fire, preventing her from seeing what there was around the bends of the river. Behind her, the presence of her sister Nakoma fell on her shoulders like the one of a famished eagle, and she could feel her penetrating gaze severing her body, frightening her more than she already was.

It had been days since Kocoum had come to Werowocomoco, and her father had done nothing but sing his praises to the point of making the other warriors extremely jealous and causing their sharp looks and contrite faces to rest on the newcomer's appearance with a newfound annoyance — and she, on her part, couldn't blame them at all.
Kocoum, though a member of the tribe of Japazaws, her uncle, was not one of them. In spite of everything, he was a stranger, a stranger to whom the daughter of the Weroance had been promised, and this gnawed at the various suitors, who, over the years — or so she had been told — had laid their eyes on her. And she had been completely unaware of it. In her innocence, she had always believed that love would have seized her at the right time, only once she would have grown up, once her beautiful hair would have turned into a soft, flowing ensemble of raven locks; she had thought that no one could look at a child and see something more, like a possible wife, or a prey to ravish — but now that she was older, she had acquired an awareness she didn't like at all. Just as she didn't like the way Kocoum looked at her during the great dinners her father threw, evidently to make the suitor integrate with the tribe, but uselessly. Even though she wished to express her discomfort, she couldn't. She knew that she needed time, and her father understood that too, luckily.

But he wasn't willing to give her that time.

«I don't know him,» she had told him once, after all the rest of the tribe had gone to rest, «I can't marry him».

She had candidly believed that it would be enough.

That it would have made her father change his mind.

How foolish she had been.

«Then you will get to know him,» Wahunsunacock had spoken in a smile. He then had put his arm around her shoulders, slowly leading her to her own yehakin.

«I'm sure that you will soon change your opinion on him».

She had tried.

She had tried to accomplish her father's wish with all of her might, but how could she learn to love a man she couldn't even look in the eye? She had often sat on the sidelines of the village, she had heard her father encourage him to approach her when she least expected it, and she had felt him crouch beside her, staring insistently at her. As if waiting for a sign. As if waiting for her to make the first move. Kocoum didn't talk much. He was clearly a man who cared more about actions rather than words, and his silence was the most explicit proof of it. But there was something unsettling in him — she couldn't tell what — that didn't allow even the singing of the birds, her favourite sound in the woods, to calm her down when he was beside her. In all honesty, she didn't even know what he looked like in the sunlight. She never looked at him, he was transparent to her eyes. She wanted him to feel unwanted, she wanted to push him away so hard that he would have gone away by himself. She, nonetheless, tried to catch a glimpse of him every now and then, but she immediately escaped that prospective as soon as she let her gaze rest on him, though annoyed by her own cowardice. She was somehow afraid of him. Afraid of that strange warmth he made her feel, and of the beating of her heart that pumped faster in her chest every single time their eyes met.
When they were together, she watched the horizon. She watched it extend to the end of the world, she watched that soft, curve line that disappeared beyond the Great Salt Waters, and her mind emptied in that silence.