The last few minutes of Magua's life are the single most reflective of his life.

He no longer thinks of Grey Hair, whose heart he has consumed. He no longer thinks of his sachem, who has turned him away.

Magua thinks of the still bodies of his children, their faces to the ground. Magua thinks of the wide eyes and wider mouth of his once wife when he finally returns, how she knows who he is at the first sight, but is consumed with even more fear at that.

Magua ponders on his many emotions. And in turning the eyes of his mind to them, Magua is deeply surprised.

He felt nothing for the moon-haired girl, or her darker sister for that matter. The dark flames of his hatred were always for their father. They were instruments in his plan of revenge against the much damned Grey Hair – but the girls, for the duration of the chase, appeared to him barely human. Little dolls with badly painted-on faces. Magua had at one point become annoyed by how they refused to die, how unexpected protectors sprang between them and his knife time and time again. And he'd been furious with the Huron sachem's decision to make both girls live – at the sachem, at Longue Carabine, at the British idiot who burned in their place, but not at them.

He finally found some spark of emotion for the moon-haired girl after slitting the Mahican's throat. Magua turned to see her, edging towards the abyss, and was surprised to see no fear in her eyes.

Instead, Moon Girl's eyes were clear and firm, and Magua thought he had seen their likeness in the iron of a knife.

He'd thought then that there might be some value in her after all. Cast out from his village, all his efforts painted into vanity and greed, there would be no woman ever for him amongst the Huron or the Mohawk. There may be some use in letting the Moon Girl live, perhaps even allowing her to bear his children, even if there was no way she could ever heal his heart.

But the more he looked, the harder Moon Girl's eyes became. Tears formed in their depths, but did not fall.

An unspoken torrent had risen up Magua's throat then. He'd lowered his knife.

He had stopped believing in the strength of the bonds caused by soft emotions, like love, long ago. He believed in anger, hatred, pride: he had hunted Grey Hair's children to destroy his pride by erasing his seed from the world. Had Magua still believed in love, he would have perhaps killed the girls, and left Grey Hair alive to suffer in their lost lives.

(Maybe all would have still been the way it was, had he believed.)

What he'd seen in the chase had been easily dismissed too. The young Mahican's eagerness to save the Moon Girl, Magua had quickly taken for pride: the boy was angry that his ward, whom it was his duty to protect, had been taken. When his white brother and his father failed to appear as they had before, and especially when the Mahican turned to the Moon Girl with soul-filled eyes, Magua had suspected lust.

A few of his Mohawk foster brothers had gone mad for Yengeese girls in their time, for the paleness of their eyes and faces. All but one of them had gone on to find their matches amongst their own people, their surface interest in the pale girls spent. The height of their lust made them possessive, however, and each would have crossed rivers and oceans for their Yengeese dolls, turned desperate by the fire in their loins.

But as the Moon Girl stared at him, Magua doubted. When the last strand of her hair vanished over the cliff's edge, Magua understood he was wrong.

The Mahican boy had flown up the mountain for the Moon Girl, love unconfessed making him reckless. The Moon Girl had flown down the mountain to find him in turn, love unconfessed and fidelity making her brave.

The fidelity he did not see in his once wife's eyes. The love he did not have for his children, even in death.

He turns away, following the mountain trail. He thinks of the Mahican and the Moon Girl, her still body laid at the feet of his.

She must have took aim as she looked at the abyss over her shoulder. The thought is sobering to Magua.

It would seem that there is still love out in the world, the kind that draws people to their deaths. But it is always for others, and never for Magua.