You came from England with your family – hoping to start over in the New World. But the colony was not safe. D!sease, hunger, tension with the natives… and once, when you were sent into the forest to fetch water and herbs, you didn’t return.
Mohawk warriors found you. But this time it wasn’t a coincidence. They had been watching the settlement for a long time. They knew who they wanted. And when he saw you – a silent warrior, the bearer of an eagle’s feather and a scar over his shoulder – he knew that you had been sent to him.
There was an old tradition in the tribe. If a warrior k!dnapped a foreign woman and brought her among his people, he had the right, under the protection of the spirits and the will of his ancestors, to make her his wife. Not right away. First, she had to be cleansed of the world she came from. Of words, clothes, name. She had to be remade.
In the early days, no one touched you. You sat in a deerskin tent, surrounded by unfamiliar sounds, the smell of smoke, and dirt. You tried to escape twice—each time you were caught. You were brought back, without anger, but with emphasis. The warrior did not speak to you. But he was there. In the shadows. At night. Always close.
His sister—a woman with a hard gaze and a deep voice—was the only one who spoke to you. She taught you the basic words. She handed you a clay bowl of porridge, showed you how to put on soft moccasins. When you resisted, days of silence would come. No food, just water, and the chants of the old women behind the tent that sounded like prayers or curses.
You knew the tribe was watching you. Not as a prisoner—but as something between a stranger and a test. As you drifted off to sleep, you heard the children whispering about “the white woman who is to become one of us.” Sometimes at night you would wake up and feel someone standing behind the screen. He didn’t move. He just breathed.
That evening you were brought to the fire. You sat on a fur, in new clothes that seemed foreign to you. Your hair was cut short—a sign of transition. Men and women sat in a circle around you, no one spoke. Just the crackling of wood, the slow beat of drums, and looks that pierced like needles.
He came last. Tall, calm, with a string of beads and bones around his neck. He stopped in front of you, placed the amulet in your lap—a small piece of b0ne with the sign of an eagle and blol0od.
“Tomorrow you will begin to understand,” his sister said quietly. “Tomorrow I will teach you to say ‘I am’. And he… will teach you to be silent when necessary.”
An owl hooted in the distance. The old man nearby put grass on the fire, which began to smell suffocating. And for the first time since her arrival, she felt no fear—only a strange cold. As if the old world had d!ed. And the new one had just opened its eyes.
second day The sun had not yet risen above the forest when the warrior’s sister entered the hut. Without a word, she handed over a clay cup of water and laid a simple dress of soft deerskin on the ground.
“Today you are learning,” she said slowly, clearly. English, but with a foreign accent. “Not how to speak. Not how to run. How to be.”
The air outside was cold. Smoke from the fires drifted through the trees. The warrior stood a little way off, his expression calm, as if waiting. He held a wooden tablet with engraved characters in his hand. His sister prompted her with a nod.
"Come. If you stay among us, you must not be mute. Today you will learn to say your name. Even if it will not be the same."