Jean Genie
Copyright© 2026 by Rachael Jane
Chapter 29: New Purpose
Trois‑Rivières and the Interior. 1667
Four years pass. Trois‑Rivières grows into something unrecognisable. New houses. More soldiers. More laws. And new expectations. The Royal Colony has taken root, and its roots dig deep.
Agnès walks through the settlement with her mantle pulled tight, her braids wrapped close, her eyes steady but distant. People still greet her ... some warmly, others warily ... but she no longer belongs to this place, if she ever really did. She feels it in every step. The French see her as a reminder of the old, fragile days before order was created with their muskets and fortifications. The Algonquian families see her as someone who stood too close to the French when the soldiers arrived. Both sides watch her with a kind of polite distance. She is no longer willing to be their interpreter ... nor their mediator ... and she is no longer their tool.
One morning, she walks to the riverbank, where the mist curls low over the water. I appear beside her in my familiar form as an Abenaki young woman. The wind tugs at my mantle. Agnès doesn’t speak at first ... she only watches the river.
Finally, she says, “I cannot stay here.”
Her voice is quiet, but certain. I wait for her to explain her thoughts, although I can sense some of her reasoning,
She continues. “If I remain in the French colony, I will always be suspect. They will never trust me. Not truly.”
She looks toward the forest, where the path leads towards Algonquian lands.
“But if I return to my mother’s people, I will always be slightly foreign. I speak their language, but not perfectly. I know their ways, but not fully. I am theirs ... but not entirely.”
Her breath trembles.
“I am tired of choosing between two sides when neither really accepts me.”
I step closer, the bracelet reinforcing the soothing effect of my presence. She closes her eyes.
“I want a life that is mine,” she whispers. “Not one decided by either world.”
She turns to the river, watching the current flow west from the interior and east toward Quebec.
“I will not choose,” she says. “I will walk between. The river is my true home.”
Her voice strengthens.
“I shall trade between settlements. Carry messages. Carry goods. Carry news. I will be a bridge, not because they demand it, but because I choose it.”
Her decision settles over her like a mantle. Her smile is small but real.
“I shall live on the river,” she says. “And in the places between. In the spaces no one claims.”
I feel a sense of satisfaction swell through me. Agnès has found her identity. Not in the French colony. Not among her mother’s people. But in the movement between them, be it a trader, a messenger, or simply a bridge between two cultures. A woman who belongs to herself.
Agnès spends the next few weeks preparing. She repairs her canoe, and gathers supplies. She speaks with families on both sides of the cultural divide. Some wish her well. Some don’t understand. Some envy her freedom while others fear for her safety. But none can deny her resolve.
One morning, she stands at the river’s edge, ready to depart. The sun rises in the east, turning the water gold. She touches the bracelet lightly and summons my ethereal being.
“I know who I am now,” she says.
I nod. “Yes.”
She looks at me, eyes warm. “Thank you.”
I smile. “You did this yourself. I merely gave you support.”
She steps into the canoe, pushes off, and glides into the current; toward a life shaped by her own choosing.
The river narrows as Agnès paddles west, leaving behind the last thin ribbon of French farms. The evidence of French colonial expansion fade, the palisades vanish, and the sound of European axes disappears entirely. The stone mission and muddy streets of Montréal are already far behind her. It’s garrison of soldiers are the westernmost extent of French power. Now the St. Lawrence becomes something older, wilder, and far less forgiving. This is the true frontier.
The canoe cuts through water darkened by overhanging pines. The banks rise steeply, thick with cedar and birch. The current grows unpredictable; eddies swirling like hidden hands, sudden shallows scraping the hull. Agnès reads the river instinctively, shifting her weight, adjusting her paddle, moving with the water rather than against it. She belongs here more than she ever belonged in the colony. But the journey is dangerous.
Twice she must steer away from fallen trees lodged like spears beneath the surface. Once she hears distant movement in the forest ... too heavy for deer, too quiet for bear ... and she paddles harder, breath tight, until the sound fades.
As has been her habit on this journey, she has summoned me in my ethereal form. I hover beside her, visible only to her, my form flickering in the shifting light.
“You’re far from the safety of the settlements,” I murmur.
She doesn’t look at me. “Safety was never mine to expect.”
Her voice is steady, but her pulse trembles through the bracelet. By dusk she reaches a narrow bend where the river splits around a cluster of rocks. The canoe shudders as the current grabs it. Agnès digs her paddle deep, muscles straining, guiding the canoe through the gap with a sharp, practised turn. When she reaches calm water again, she exhales shakily.
“That was close,” she whispers.
I nod. “But you handled it.”
She smiles faintly. “My mother said the river tests you before it lets you pass.”
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