New Worlds

The world has changed. Once the sea had frightened her with its immensity, but now it makes her feel heroic, predestined. No wave or drenching wind can snatch her soul away. She is on her own mission now. Her vision quest is real. It is not the stuff of dreams.

She clutches the tobacco pouch at her hip and for a moment longs for the bitter taste.

She smiles.

Let the sea and wind carry her.

She opens the pouch and tosses a few crumbs of the dried leaves to the wind.

It was not that she hadn’t known water, growing up as a child; indeed her skills with a paddle were renowned in her family, and shamed many of her brothers. And she had swum in rivers and creeks and lakes, and even once at the edge of the big water, but never had she considered crossing it. The idea had seemed ridiculous to a young girl, though she had stood once or twice on the bluffs as a child and pondered what lay on the other side.

If indeed there were another side.

Rumours of the strangers had circulated for years and there was little surprise when the rumours became fact and the Englanders reached her people. Their strange habits, language, dress and smell had intrigued her.

What has happened after that is all but a dream, an illuminated vision quest, a fable in which two worlds collide.

Pocahontas has left the playwright back in Jamestown, assuring him she will return one day. But she has chosen not to tell the playwright that is unlikely, nor tell him of the life growing inside her. A life planted of his seed. At her encouragement and insistence, though, Jonson has become a prime investor in the Orinonco Tobacco enterprise, but in truth, she is the owner, albeit in secret.

And now she is returning across the big waters, not on her own but with a fleet of protective frigates in tow and cargoes laden with her tobacco and, most dear to her, the cargo stirring in her belly.

It has been a choppy and stormy two weeks, and most of the court, returning to London after the masque, are pitching their guts into the Atlantic or lying below in bunks, moaning and crying.

But not she.

She is on the deck, head strong into the breeze.

She is returning to London with a new life and a world to explore and share with her girl.

Pocahontas knows, without a doubt, it is a girl.

A girl born on the cusp of a new, glorious age.

A girl born with the blood of two worlds in her.

She stands on the bow, face drenched by the waves, peering toward the white cliffs that must appear someday.

The heartiest of sailors are taken by her fortitude, her sea-worthiness, to the extent they dub her ‘Red Persephone’.

Pocahontas simply laughs, rubs her protruded belly and peers eastward, toward the eastern horizon and the faint trace of distant shores.

The young woman carries the wolf cub up the hill. It is hot and humid and a million black flies buzz angrily around her but she is oblivious to their bites. The cub mews and she stops, sits, uncovers her breast and guides a nipple into the baby’s tiny mouth.

The cub sucks greedily of her milk.

She hears branches crack and looks up. At the edge of the clearing Bear Woman appears, sniffs the air and then snorts approvingly. Pawing the ground, Bear Woman bellows for the young woman to come.

The young woman pulls the wolf from her breast and, holding it in her arms, walks toward her.

Bear Woman snorts approvingly.

And, though bears don’t, smiles.