Chapter Text
The Atlantic Ocean, that vast and merciless expanse, rolled beneath the keels of the Virginia Company's fleet like the labored breaths of a slumbering leviathan. It was the sweltering cusp of summer in 1607, when the sun hung low and brazen in the heavens, gilding the waves with a deceptive shimmer that masked the brine's bitter bite. The three vessels—Susan Constant, proud flagship with her towering masts like the spines of ancient beasts; Godspeed, nimble and swift as a falcon's dive; and Discovery, the sturdy scout burdened with the weight of untested hopes—plowed forward in ragged formation. Their sails, patched and straining against the relentless wind, snapped like the banners of forgotten crusades, carrying aboard them a cargo far heavier than the crates of iron tools, flour sacks, and coiled ropes: the fevered dreams of men fleeing the gray drudgery of England for the siren call of untold riches.
Aboard the Susan Constant, the air was a thick, cloying miasma—a pungent cocktail of sweat-soaked wool, the sour reek of bilge water seeping from the hold, and the ever-present ghost of salted codfish rations that clung to every tongue and timber. The decks creaked underfoot like the joints of weary elders, slick with spray that foamed white against the hull's tarred sides. The settlers, some two hundred souls in all, were a ragged tapestry of humanity: grizzled veterans of the Low Countries' wars, their faces scarred by pike and powder; wide-eyed apprentices lured by posters promising "a fortune in the Virgin soil"; and the occasional gentleman-adventurer, powdered and perfumed, already wilting in the humidity. They clustered in knots along the rails, some retching over the side into the abyss, others squinting eastward toward the faint, teasing smudge of land that had haunted their charts for weeks. Whispers of mutiny flickered like will-o'-the-wisps—What if there's no gold? What if the savages feast on our bones?—but they were drowned out by the ceaseless roar of the sea and the barked orders of bosuns cracking whips over idle hands.
At the prow, where the figurehead—a carved mermaid with eyes of painted defiance—gazed longingly back toward England, stood Governor John Ratcliffe. He cut a figure of ostentatious authority, his magenta-purple doublet slashed with gold braid that caught the light like fool's pyrite, its high collar framing a face as sharp and avaricious as a miser's ledger. The blue ostrich feather in his wide-brimmed colonial hat fluttered erratically, as if mocking the rigid set of his jaw. Ratcliffe's lavender-shadowed eyelids drooped in that perpetual squint of suspicion, his thin lips pursed around a meerschaum pipe from which curled lazy tendrils of sweet Virginia tobacco—ironic, that, for a man who had never set foot on its soil. He leaned against the rail, gloved fingers tracing the worn wood as if it were the edge of his destiny, his mind a whirlwind of grandiose visions. Gold, he thought, the word a talisman against doubt. Mountains of it, veins thick as a king's ransom, waiting to be pried from the earth's jealous fist. The savages—lazy, painted brutes—trample it underfoot, blind to its glory. But I shall see. I shall claim. And King James himself will knight me in Westminster's halls, while those sniveling courtiers who dubbed me a 'grasping parvenu' choke on their envy.
"By Jove, Governor," came a voice from behind, oily with forced joviality, "you've the look of Neptune himself, surveying his domain! That shoreline yonder—why, it's positively winking at us, all green and gold and ripe for the plucking!" It was Wiggins, Ratcliffe's hapless valet, bustling up with his usual flurry of ill-timed cheer. Wiggins was a man built for comedy, not conquest: round-faced and rosy-cheeked, with a mop of sandy hair perpetually askew and eyes that bulged like a startled frog's. His livery, a mismatched ensemble of blue breeches and a waistcoat straining at the buttons, was dusted with flour from the galley where he'd botched the morning's porridge. In his arms, he cradled a silver tray laden with perils—a half-spilled inkpot, a crumpled map, and, most precariously, the porcelain tub for Percy's ablutions. "Shall I fetch the spyglass, sir? Or perhaps a tot of rum to toast our triumph? The men are fair panting for your wisdom!"
Ratcliffe exhaled a plume of smoke, not deigning to turn. "Wisdom, Wiggins? These louts need no wisdom—only the lash of certainty. Gold awaits, man. Gold. Not your paltry rums and maps." His voice, a cultured drawl laced with Midlands bite, carried over the deck, drawing nods from the nearest cluster of settlers. Thomas, the fresh-faced sharpshooter with freckles like scattered buckshot and a mop of auburn hair that defied every comb, straightened from his musket-cleaning with boyish eagerness. "Aye, Governor! Gold enough to pave the Thames, eh? Me da always said the New World's a land of milk and honey—well, mostly honey, if the gold's the sweet bit!" Beside him, Ben and Lon paused in their rope-coiling, the Scotsman Ben with his black beard braided like a Highland warrior's and eyes sharp as flint, while Lon, the timid Englishman with a red beard that hid a perpetual blush, mumbled agreement. "Reckon so, Thomas. Though if it's all honey, I'll take the bees' share—none o' that stingin' work."
Laughter rippled, thin and forced, but Ratcliffe seized it like a reins. He pivoted with theatrical flair, pipe clenched between teeth, and swept an arm toward the horizon. "Hear that, you lot? The boy speaks true! Virginia—our Virginia—lies there, a virgin bride heavy with treasure! Mountains of gold, rivers choked with nuggets the size of your fists! The savages? Pah! They'll hand it over for beads and baubles, grateful for our civilized touch. Dig, men! Dig deep, and England shall sing your names from the rafters!" Cheers erupted, ragged but fervent—Thomas whooping loudest, Ben muttering "Ach, if only" under his breath, Lon hefting a shovel with newfound vigor. Even John Smith, the expedition's captain, glanced up from his quadrant, his sun-bronzed face creased in a half-smile. Smith was the fleet's beating heart: tall and lithe, with golden hair tied back in a queue and eyes blue as a nor'wester's promise, his goatskin jerkin scarred from skirmishes in the Levant. He was no gold-seeker at heart—adventure's fire burned in him, tempered by a code that chafed against Ratcliffe's greed—but he clapped Thomas on the back, voice warm as hearthfire. "Steady your powder, lad. Gold or no, this land's got teeth. Keep those eyes sharp, eh?"
Yet amid the swell of rhetoric, a shadow stirred from the companionway—a figure cloaked in the somber hues of midnight mass, his presence slithering across the deck like incense smoke gone sour. Claude Frollo, the self-proclaimed French missionary, ascended the steps with the deliberate grace of a spider claiming its web. He was a relic of Europe's shadowed cloisters: tall and gaunt, his black robe edged in frayed purple like the hem of a judge's gavel, cinched at the waist by a rosary of iron beads that clinked softly with each step. A tricorn hat of battered felt shadowed his brow, beneath which gleamed eyes like polished onyx—deep-set, unblinking, holding the cold fire of one who had long since bartered his soul for certainty. Thinning white hair, cropped close as a tonsure, framed a face etched with the fine lines of perpetual disapproval, his thin lips twisted in a perpetual moue of disdain. Frollo's hands, pale and veined like marble, were ringed with ecclesiastical gold—remnants of his days as Paris' Minister of Justice, before the pyres of the Romani "witchcraft" trials had driven him across the Channel, rebranded as a holy warrior for the New World.
He had not joined this motley armada for Ratcliffe's glittering delusions. No, Frollo's crusade was of a sterner alloy: souls to be scourged, heathens to be bent beneath the cross's yoke. The Virginia Company's missive had intrigued him—a "missionary" to tame the "savage demons" of the Americas, far from the Archdeacon's sanctimonious gaze and the bells of Notre Dame that tolled accusations in his dreams. And with him, like a chained relic, came Quasimodo—his "son," his penance, his proof of God's capricious jest. The boy must be shielded, Frollo brooded, his gaze flicking to the main deck where the hunchback toiled. Paris swarmed with temptations—gypsy wiles, festival filth. Here, in this wilderness, purity may yet be forged. Or broken, if he strays.
But first, the governor's prattle must be curbed. Ratcliffe's voice rose again, crescendoing into bombast: "And when the coffers overflow, lads—when we sail home laden like Caesars—I'll see every man of you ennobled! Feasts in your honor, lands deeded in your names! Gold, I say—gold enough to drown a dragon!" The settlers leaned in, hypnotized, even Smith pausing his calculations to arch a brow.
Frollo halted mere paces away, his aura unfurling like a pall over a grave—a tangible pallor of sanctity laced with menace, the air growing thick as if the sun itself recoiled. It was no mere posture; it was the distilled essence of inquisitorial dread: the echo of confessionals where screams masqueraded as sobs, the scent of charred flesh sanctified as divine justice. Whispers faltered; Thomas's whoop died in his throat; Ben crossed himself furtively, muttering a Gaelic ward. Ratcliffe, mid-flourish, felt it first—a prickle along his spine, like fingers of frost in the tropic heat. He turned, pipe drooping, and met Frollo's stare. Those eyes... they stripped him bare, flaying greed from sinew, laying vanity's corpse at the altar of judgment.
"Governor," Frollo intoned, his voice a sepulchral murmur that carried like a vesper bell, laced with the clipped precision of a Parisian jurist. "Your eloquence on mammon is... illuminating. As illuminating as the flames of Gomorrah. But let us not forget the true compact with His Majesty's court. We are not brigands chasing shadows of ore, but emissaries of the Eternal. Conversion first—these benighted souls must kneel before they yield their dirt. Or do you propose we build Babel upon pagan bones?"
Ratcliffe's flush crept upward, staining his ruff like spilled claret. His fingers spasmed around the rail, the pipe's ember flaring as he sucked in a breath. "Father—Monsieur Frollo—I assure you, the material paves the spiritual path! Gold funds the chapels, buys the crosses! The savages will thank us for both, mark my words." But the words rang hollow, sabotaged by the missionary's unyielding proximity. Frollo's aura pressed like a confessor's hand on a trembling shoulder—disturbing, invasive, a vortex that sucked light from color, joy from jest. The governor, for all his bluster, was a creature of surfaces: silks and schemes, mirrors and maps. Frollo was depthless abyss, a mirror to the soul's rot. "Y-yes, of course," Ratcliffe conceded, stepping back, his boot scraping wood like a retreat from the scaffold. "Souls paramount. Paramount. Carry on with your... prayers, by all means." He waved dismissively, but his eyes darted away, the grand vision fracturing like flawed crystal.
The settlers dispersed with uneasy murmurs—Thomas whispering to Smith, "Blimey, that Froggy's got a stare like the devil's own bailiff," and Smith replying with a low chuckle, "Aye, but keep your powder dry, Tom. Zeal's a sharper blade than greed, some days." Ben and Lon resumed their labors, the Scotsman grumbling, "Pass the tar, Lonnie. This heat's meltin' me bones faster than yon preacher's sermons." Wiggins, forgotten in the fray, had retreated to a coil of rope near the foremast, where the porcelain tub teetered perilously. Percy, the governor's pampered pug—a rotund wheeze of fawn curls and black-masked eyes, more courtier than cur—yipped from within, his bathwater sloshing in protest. "Oh, drat and dash it all!" Wiggins wailed, his voice a high-pitched keen that pierced the aftermath. "Percy, you wicked fluff-mop, hold your squirms! I've half the Atlantic in me boots already, and now you're floodin' the deck like a leaky ewer! Governor'll have me keel-hauled if you end up lookin' like a drowned stoat!"
It was then that Quasimodo emerged from the gloom of the lower decks, summoned by Wiggins' earlier frantic holler down the hatch—"Quasi, old bean! A spot of help for a chap in distress?" The young man moved with the halting rhythm of one forged in isolation, his twisted left leg dragging a half-step behind, propped by a gnarled staff he'd whittled from driftwood during the crossing. At twenty, Quasimodo was a paradox of strength and fragility: shoulders broad as a blacksmith's anvil, yet bowed under an invisible yoke; arms corded from hauling Notre Dame's massive bells, now limned with the rope-burns of ship's rigging. His face was nature's cruel caricature—one side noble in its aquiline lines, the other slumped into asymmetry, the left eye hooded in shadow while the right burned with a quiet, wounded luminosity. Dark hair, thick and untamed, cascaded over his brow like a raven's wing, and his skin held the milky pallor of cathedral crypts, unmarked by the sun's kiss. He wore a simple osnaburg shirt, sleeves rolled to elbows scarred by years of solitary toil, and breeches patched at the knees—humble garb that did little to conceal the hunch that named him.
Paris had been his prison, the bell tower his aerie of echoes, where Esmeralda's phantom laughter and Frollo's litanies had warred in his dreams. Why bring me here? he wondered, not for the first time, as the open sky pressed down like an unbarred gate. The 'lack of better guardians'? Master's words twist like smoke. Is this exile, or... salvation? Frollo's decree had been iron: "The city's vices encroach, my boy. Romany spells, festival debauchery—they corrupt even stone. In this New World, under God's raw gaze, you shall serve untainted. A missionary's aide, ringing not bells of bronze, but bells of the soul." Quasimodo had packed without protest—his few treasures a worn Psalter, a carved wooden saint, the memory of Phoebus' fleeting kindness—boarding this creaking ark with the resignation of one long schooled in obedience.
He spotted Wiggins amid the puddle, the valet's plight mirroring his own: adrift in a world of stares and stumbles. "Wiggins," Quasimodo rumbled, his voice a deep, resonant timbre like the after-chime of vespers, softened by a hesitance born of mockery's lash. He knelt with care, the staff planted firm, and extended a large, callused hand. "Here—pass the cloth. Percy's not one for tempests, is he?" The pug, sensing sanctuary, ceased his yips and regarded the newcomer with a tilt of his squashy head, black eyes gleaming with imperious curiosity.
Wiggins' relief flooded out in a torrent. "Quasi! Bless you, lad— you're a godsend wrapped in homespun! See here, the little tyrant's turned the tub into the Spanish Main—waves crashin', salt spray flyin'! If only I had your knack for calmin' tempests. Hold him steady, would you? I'll fetch fresh water from the cask." As Quasimodo took the damp rag, his touch was feather-light, tracing Percy's sodden curls with the reverence of one anointing a relic. The dog sighed—a comical wheeze—and leaned into it, paws paddling lazily. "There, now," Quasimodo murmured, almost to himself, "the sea's no kinder to kings than to bells. But a gentle hand mends both." He hummed then, unbidden—a snatch of Dies Irae, the melody's somber rise and fall weaving through the wind like a counterpoint to the waves. Percy, lulled, splashed once more, but playfully, droplets catching the sun in prismatic arcs.
Wiggins returned, bucket sloshing, and plopped down cross-legged, wiping his brow with a sleeve. "You're a wonder, Quasi. Back in London, I'd pay a penny to see you at the fairs—'The Bell-Ringer's Bathhouse: Tame the Tide with a Tune!' Ha! Though truth be told, the crowds'd faint dead away at the sight. Not that you're... well, you know. It's just..." He trailed off, flushing, and busied himself wringing another cloth. Quasimodo's smile was small, shadowed—a flicker of the boy who'd once dreamed of the Feast of Fools' embrace. "Monstrous, you mean? It's kind of you to skirt it, Wiggins. In Paris, they crowned me Lord of Fools for the jest. Here... perhaps I'll be Lord of Pugs." They shared a chuckle, tentative as first light, the moment a fragile bubble amid the ship's clamor. Smith, passing with a coil of line, paused to nod approval. "Good work there, Quasimodo. Beast or man, a steady hand's worth a dozen storms. Carry on." Thomas trailed him, piping up, "Aye! Percy's luckier'n me— I near drowned me kit when we shipped out. Say, Quasi, you ever ring bells big as this mast? Bet they shake the heavens!"
Before Quasimodo could reply—his heart lifting at the casual camaraderie—Frollo's shadow fell long across the deck, the missionary materializing like judgment incarnate. "Enough frivolity," he said, voice slicing the air, though his eyes fixed not on the valet but his charge. "The hour draws near for labor divine, not this... menagerie." Wiggins scrambled up, bowing low. "F-Father Frollo! Just finishin' up, sir—Percy's shipshape and Bristol fashion!" The pug yipped agreement, shaking off droplets that speckled Frollo's robe. The priest's lip curled faintly, but he waved dismissal. "See to your master, then. And you, my son—" His hand descended on Quasimodo's shoulder, heavy as manacle, fingers digging with proprietary zeal. "Rise. The shore beckons, and with it, our sacred charge. Remember: the light we bear is flame. It illuminates the worthy... incinerates the dross."
Quasimodo stood, staff creaking, the warmth of the moment evaporating like mist. "Yes, Master. I remember." His voice was steady, but inwardly, the bells tolled discord—Frollo's "love" a cage of thorns, Paris' shadows chasing him across oceans. As Wiggins scurried off with tub and tray—"Tally-ho, Percy! Adventure awaits, you pampered prince!"—the fleet neared landfall. The coastline sharpened: a lush palisade of ancient forest, where oaks and hickories intertwined like lovers' limbs, their canopies a riot of emerald and amber under the sun's slant. The James River's estuary gleamed like molten silver, fringed with marshes where herons stalked on stilt-legs, and the air shifted—brine yielding to the verdant tang of leaf-mold, wild honeysuckle, and the faint, earthy musk of untrodden soil. Calls of unfamiliar birds pierced the air: trills sharp as flutes, caws like mocking laughter.
"Land ho!" Smith's cry rang out, and the decks erupted—cheers, prayers, curses blending in exultant cacophony. Longboats were swung out, oars flashing; crates thudded to the rails. Ratcliffe, composure regained, barked orders: "Smith, take the vanguard—scout for hostiles, but mind the gold signs! Ben, Lon—arm the picks and pans! Thomas, cover 'em with that lead of yours!" The settlers swarmed, faces alight with fever: Ben growling, "Right ye are, Guv—though if it's turnips I find, I'll sup on 'em meself," Lon piping, "J-Just no snakes, lads. I hate the slithery beggars." Smith leaped into the lead boat, musket primed, calling back, "Follow smart, Governor. This land's got a pulse—best not tread too heavy at first step."
Quasimodo, hefting a chest of Frollo's tomes—leather-bound tracts on demonology and baptism—limped to the rail, the forest's symphony washing over him: wind sighing through boughs like choral vespers, insects humming a bass counterpoint, the river's lap a rhythmic paternoster. So vast, he thought, breath catching. No walls, no stares... only green eternity. A vine dangled from a low branch, brushing the water; he reached, fingers grazing its leaf, rough as hope's first bloom. Frollo noted it, his grip tightening. "Beware the snares of Eden, boy. Beauty masks the serpent."
Across the broadening river, in the bosom of Werowocomoco—the Powhatan heartland, where longhouses of woven reed and bark huddled like watchful elders around central fires—vigilance stirred. The village was a living mosaic: women in fringed deerskin aprons pounding corn into meal with pestles that thudded like heartbeats, their laughter mingling with the sizzle of venison haunches over embers; children, bare-limbed and fleet, darting between legs in games of stick-ball, their whoops echoing the woodpeckers' rat-a-tat; elders seated in circles, pipes passing as stories unfurled—of Great Hare shaping the world from clay, of Monacans to the west with their thunderous drums. The air hummed with life: smoke laced with sassafras, the sweet rot of ripening persimmons, the distant low of deer in hidden glades.
Kocoum, the tribe's peerless warrior, had ventured to the river's edge on a solitary hunt, his lithe form melding with the understory like a shadow cast by oak. At twenty-five, he was the embodiment of Powhatan prowess: tall and sinewy, skin bronzed by sun and strife, his black hair woven with quills from the great horned owl—tokens of visions granted in sweat lodges. A necklace of bear claws clattered softly at his chest, earned in raids against the Massawomeck, and his eyes, dark as river pebbles, missed nothing: the twitch of a squirrel's ear, the ripple of a trout's fin. Betrothed to Pocahontas by the chief's decree, Kocoum carried duty like a second bow—fierce, unyielding, his heart a shielded flame. She is wind and willow, he mused, nocking an arrow to his yew longbow, untamed. I shall be her oak, steadfast. But the hunt yielded to alarm: a anomaly on the water's mirror, distant yet inexorable.
At first, mirage—a white cloud adrift, too structured. Then form: vast canoes with wings of bleached hide, prows like the snouts of sea monsters, trailing wakes that frothed like rage. Three of them, hulking against the horizon, borne by an unnatural wind. Pale ghosts, Kocoum's mind flashed to the old tales—floaters from the dawn sea, come to devour the land's bounty. His breath steadied, muscles coiling like a panther's; he crouched low, feathers brushing moss, and tracked their path: straight to the James' maw, the sacred vein that fed their fields and spirits.
He ghosted through the thicket, feet silent on needle-duff and fern, leaping fallen logs with the grace of one born to the wild's rhythm. Branches parted like courtiers before him; thorns snagged but did not tear. The village hove into view, smoke plumes rising like signal fires, and Kocoum burst from the treeline—not with panic, but precision—skidding to a halt before the grand longhouse. Its entrance yawned like a councilor's mouth, flanked by totems: carved wolves with eyes of abalone, owls with outstretched wings invoking night wisdom. "Chief Powhatan!" he hailed, voice resonant yet restrained, dropping to one knee on the packed-earth yard. Dust motes danced in the sun-shafts; a nearby dog lifted its head, ears pricked.
From within emerged the chief—Wahunsenacawh, known to his people as the Great Chief, a colossus of tempered authority at near fifty winters. His frame was broad and unbowed, muscled from decades of wielding war club and corn hoe alike; deerskin mantle draped his shoulders, embroidered with quillwork serpents symbolizing the river's coil. A headdress of turkey feathers and deer's tail fanned behind, and at his throat hung a copper gorget, hammered in patterns of the sun's path. His face was a map of leadership: high cheekbones scarred faintly from a long-ago skirmish, eyes deep and unhurried as the Potomac's flow, fringed with wisdom's crow's-feet. Widower since the fever claimed his beloved, Powhatan ruled with a balance of ferocity and foresight—fierce against threats, yet open to the Great Spirit's whispers of harmony. He had just concluded a feast honoring Kocoum's return from the north, where the warrior had turned the Massawomeck tide with arrow and cunning, earning a necklace of wampum beads from the chief's own hand.
"Rise, my swift shadow," Powhatan commanded, his timbre a rumble like thunder over meadows, extending a hand callused as the earth's own. Kocoum obeyed, standing tall, but his posture thrummed with urgency. The chief's gaze pierced him, reading the taut lines of jaw and brow. "Your hunt bears ill fruit. Speak—the river weeps?"
Kocoum's words spilled measured, vivid: "Three great canoes, Father-Chief, larger than longhouses lashed end to end. Wings of white thunder they bear, swelling with the east wind's fury. They carve the waves like knives through hide, heading for the James' throat—our throat. Men swarm their decks: pale as fish-bellies, clad in colors like poisoned flowers, bearing sticks that spit fire and death. I saw flashes of metal, glints like the heron's beak in sun. They come not as friends, but as wolves in false pelts."
Gasps rippled through the gathering crowd—women pausing mortars, a child clutching a doll woven of corn husks, warriors like Namontack and Kekata rising from dice games, hands drifting to tomahawks. Powhatan's expression hardened, a storm cloud over still waters; his prejudice against such intruders ran deep, rooted in tales of coastal raids where pale men had stolen maize and maidens, leaving blight in their wake. Yet he was no rash warlord—councils weighed every arrow. "The floating islands of legend," he murmured, stroking his chin, the gesture evoking endless deliberations under starlit skies. "They seek our corn, our women... or worse, the land's hidden heart. Kocoum, you have served as my eyes before. What say the winds? Do they come in peace, or with the storm's roar?"
The warrior's fist clenched, bear claws biting palm—a spark of the betrothed's fire, protective of Pocahontas and the clan's weave. "Peace? Their path is straight as an enemy's arrow, Great One. No signals of trade, only the hunger of eyes on our shores. Let me take the bluffs with ten bows—watch, warn, strike if they trespass the cornfields."
Powhatan nodded slowly, mind turning like the millstone of seasons: alliances with the Nanticoke to the north, bountiful hunts to sustain the winter. "Wise as the owl you wear, Kocoum. Gather Namontack, Kekata, and the young falcons—Rawhunt, Uttamatomakkin. Shadow from the high reeds; no steel touches our earth unbidden. But hold your fire till my word flies like the eagle's cry. Warriors, sharpen your edges; women, secure the stores; let the children learn the old songs of vigilance." His voice swelled, commanding the yard: "We are Powhatan—not reeds to bend, nor stones to shatter. If these pale ones bring gifts, we weigh them. If blades, we answer in kind. The Great Spirit watches; let us be his worthy hands."
As Kocoum turned to rally his band—barks of assent, the clatter of quivers filling the air—a soft footfall sounded from the longhouse's flank. "Father?" It was Pocahontas, her voice a brook's ripple, wild tresses unbound like willow switches, eyes alight with the curiosity that chafed her father's edicts. But Powhatan raised a palm, gentle yet firm. "Not yet, daughter of the dawn. Shadows lengthen; stay the hearth-fire." She paused, spirit bridled but unquenched, as Kocoum cast her a glance—tender, possessive—before vanishing into the green veil.
On the river, the longboats kissed shore: Ratcliffe's boots squelching into mud, his proclamation ringing absurdly against the wild hush—"Claim it, men! Jamestown rises!" Smith waded deeper, sword half-drawn, murmuring to Thomas, "Easy now—listen to the land's breath." Ben hacked at vines, cursing "Devil's briars!", while Lon unearthed a clam, blanching at its squirm. Wiggins tethered Percy to a stump, cooing, "Mind the beasties, love— no chasin' squirrels into sorcery!" Quasimodo, chest at his feet, inhaled the loam-deep perfume, a tear pricking unbidden. God’s first garden? Or the serpent's lair? Frollo's prayer rose behind him, Latin barbs against the "demonic verdure."
The worlds brushed—axes biting bark like first words in a tongue of blood, Powhatan's scouts melting into bluff-shadows, Kocoum's bowstring humming taut. Gold gleamed in Ratcliffe's dreams; salvation scorched Frollo's tongue; the forest held its breath, ancient as sin, waiting for the spark. The New World, that vast, unforgiving canvas, began its tale in whispers and warnings, threads of fate knotting tight in the humid dusk.