Serendipity is a Happy Accident?

She awakes in darkness. She looks to the night sky to search out the Great Bear constellation. It always leads her home, but it is not there; there are no stars. No trees. There is a canopy above her much like the roof of her Father's bark longhouse in Werowocomoco. That is her Father's capitol. He is Wahunsunacock, a weroance of her people, a chief, most powerful leader of the entire land. So she is, in fact, an 'Indian Princess'.

A man stands before her. She guesses he is the age of the man she is prepared to marry. He smiles to her. His skin is pale, and a thick mustache and (what he would call a VAN DYKE) beard covers his chin. He wears a blue cape (or should that be LAB COAT?) the color of bay water. She tentatively whispers, "Winkápew, nitáp."

A loud voice fills the other's longhouse. It is powerful. Crisp. Like her Father speaking as chief. Authority incarnate. Commands unquestioned.

TEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT FACTOR: 500.624.
SUBJECT: FEMALE.
AGE: TWELVE YEARS, APPROXIMATELY.
CLOTHING: ANIMAL HIDE, TANNED CERIVIDAE.
ANALYZING SPEECH PATTERNS.
INITIALIZING TRANSLATOR PROGRAM: ALGONQUIN LANGUAGE SUB-SET.

"Hello, my friend," the man says in words she knows. His voice is sweeter, kinder she thinks. "Your being here is an accident. Or at least we call it an accident. I'm sure the reason is buried in the cold equations of the physics. Beneath a Sigma 9X-squared or a trinomial expression (the translator hesitates, UKNOWN)."

He stumbles a moment speaking with her. In his culture, she is a year less of a teenager; in hers, she is a young women. Both are just barely adults to their peers. He is a graduate student intern. His acne is worse than hers, which he uncomfortably notices.

"Wasn't planed at any rate. We can't plan it. It's random. We sent someone back in time, so someone or something has to balance it out by coming here. Not always a person, sometimes a plant or animal. It's like a lottery. You should have seen the pterodactyl (the translator hiccups before stating: LEATHERY WINGED CREATURE) we got once. Well, maybe better you shouldn't've.

"Oh yeah, my name's Joss." He holds out one hand. She jumps back, but he is not truly threatening.

"I am Matoak," she says.

"We have some time to kill. Oh, no pun! I am allowed to show you around. To show you the wonders tomorrow brings. Come on."

The solid flap of the room hisses open, sounding like a angry, slithering snake. They walk out into the corridor. "We can use the glass tram, but not travel in it," he says. Another flap cycles open with the sound of a loud Summer wind. The panorama of his city spreads out before her. Tall, long buildings crowd the view. These are so like her Father's longhouse stood upon one end. Strange giant birds fly about. Their wings do not flap or beat. Towering stone pipes billow out white smoke, like a winter fire of burning chicory or palmetto. Ants – what must be ants – walk upon two legs only.

"Sorry," he says, "it's not the best side of the laboratory. We have the fuel cell factories and their smokestacks. The cells may be pretty green, but the hydrogen extraction process is powered by some ungreen sources. Even with the Clean Coal, they wreak havoc with the shell-fish beds, I'm told."

She knocks upon the clear surface. "It's steelglass." (The translator brain-farts again. TRANSPARENT IRON.)

"Is this my Tenakomakah?" she asks. (THE TIDEWATER, the computer translates.)

"Yeah, water's the main ingredient going in and going out of a fuel cell." He laughs at a joke she cannot understand even with the aid of the translator.

"Where are the four-legged people?" Matoak asks.

"Oh, we've got zoos. Even big preserves. The (ANIMALS) are fine. I wish I could bring you to the Washington Zoo. You'd love it!"

"Where is my home? Where is Werowocomoco?"

"There," he says, "it's there."

She awoke into the brightness of Spring daylight. It was just a dream, she told herself. Thank the Great Spirit! She gazed up to the sun, but a shadow fell upon her. She turned her head to see the old woman who had raised her. Her people had no queen, and her mother had been sent far away upon her birth. This aged one sufficed. Mostly.

"Matoak, your father needs you. Do you know what he requires?"

"Yes," she said. "My Uncle Opechancanough has captured one of the the newcomers. I am to throw myself across the stranger to protect his life."

"Very good. It will be his death and his birth to our people."

The stranger was thrust upon a large rock. He lay across it. His coat fell open, and his soiled white shirt stood out. His eyes grew wide as he scanned about the capitol of the Powhatan, and wider still as he focused upon Kocoum, her future husband. In his hands, he carried the foot long hickory shaft of his tumahák. One end had a stone axehead that she had seen him chip himself. The other end was hollow to allow the drinking of tobacco. It was a peace pipe and tomahawk together: the two sides of a relationship, friend or adversary.

The newcomer looked like Joss, the pale man of her visions, but with a heavier beard. The man who had shown her the wonders of the day after tomorrow's tomorrow's sunrise. Matoak ran between her betrothed and the newcomer. Kocoum raised his weapon as if to club her.

"Pocahantas," the Powhatan said, calling his daughter by her childhood nickname for her wanton nature. "What do you do?" It was all for his staged plan for the stranger from the island across the water. She thought of her vision before answering.

"We cannot let this man live. His people cannot despoil our land. Chief Powhatan, my father. Kill John Smith!"

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