North Riding

An Overheard Conversation

Hello dear readers! I've been hoping to continue my other story but I seemed to need something different first to get back into the habit. This is a one-shot, so it's complete. I've missed you all and look forward to posting the other soon. Enjoy!

She leaned restless against the cool glass, knees drawn up to her chest, black eyes locked on the darkling moor, an ocean of purple and gray sweeping around the tavern at Mickle Fell, back and forth, back and forth. How silent the night was—silent as the womb, silent as the grave.

Two shadows stood flickering in the courtyard below the window, two shadows fraught with sparking heat, the distance between them grating. Nell could feel their words like a drought of old wine that brought fever to the head.

Cutting a sharp silhouette against the haunted night was her lover, the one she’d been waiting for impatiently since the sun set. She could make out the revolver on his belt, the tapered braids creeping from beneath his familiar hat. A pirate he was and a pirate he’d be; older than he looked and younger than he seemed. His skin was inked and scrabbled, so unlike the pale paper-blank skin of the village boys. Nell remembered the first day she’d seen him on the port dock of the North Riding. She’d felt a quiver inside then, a quiver of destiny or desire… either way she’d found him after nightfall and made the moor their bed. She didn’t cry out when he took her, and afterward he laughed and called her a willful doxy and a sweet thing, and said he didn’t know what she wanted with him. She replied she wasn’t certain herself, but it was worth her maidenhead. So the weeks had passed and he always came, though Nell secretly dreaded the night he wouldn’t. Perhaps this was that night.

For even as Nell watched, Jack moved closer to the other—it was a woman—and seized her hands with fervor. An old lover then, one of many. Was she beautiful? Was she a wanderer, a pirate like himself? Or a paid whore with whom he’d fathered a child? Nell pushed the frame of the window open an inch, another inch, not daring to breath. Their voices came into focus:

“Ship’s loitering at Whitby, ‘Lizbeth, until I sail again.”

“I don’t believe you’ve settled, Jack Sparrow. It’s only a matter of time before you leave her… as you left me.”

Jack twisted his head to one side, grim. He had been expecting that, steeling for that blow. “Be honest, Beth-o-mine, you fair ran me out.”

Elizabeth’s hand shot upward as if to slap his dark face, but at the last second she seemed to change her mind and her hand just stayed there in the space between them. Her voice was sharp with bitterness: “You’ve no right to call me yours, Jack. You left because you were afraid, because you’re a selfish child of a man who couldn’t stay…”

He laughed, but his humor was forced. “I was afraid, love… quite afraid.”

“You’re a coward.” Her accusation fell flat now, and her hand impulsively drifted to his face, caressed his cheek with an agony of desire. He stepped closer, his eyes half-lidded. He moved into her touch. “Why couldn’t you have stayed, Jack?” her voice had become very soft now. “I didn’t ask much… I didn’t hold you back, did I?”

“Oh, Beth-o-mine, you’ve no idea…” She was beautiful, unbearably beautiful as she always had been, full of restrained energy that stirred his imagination and drove his senses wild. Every tempestuous day and every intoxicating night he’d spent with her had been too perfect, too full of passion and thrill… he’d forgotten about the sea, left his ship in another’s hands, and been driven forward instead by her, only her. Love was a gale no ship could overcome, a maelstrom to be lost in and drown in.

Her wide warm eyes flickered. “You never even said goodbye.”

Oh, that shameful hour he had left her asleep in the moonlight… the hour he had crept away, inch by inch away, the image of her graceful body curled beneath the window encased in his memory as the impossible treasure he’d never find again.

“Why did you leave, Jack?”

He felt old all through. But he must be gentle now, soft. He had done enough damage to her for one lifetime. “I never pretended to be anything other than what I am, Beth.”

“You weren’t always a coward, Jack.”

“But I always was a pirate.” He wanted so much to kiss her, one kiss to break his own heart again even if it meant nothing to her. The moon strengthened and Jack could see her now—see her clear as day and bright as his dreams had ever been.

“Beth, Beth, don’t cry,” he said. The weight of guilt hung over his shoulders but Jack had never been a helpless man, never a pleading man. His soft words were a command somehow. “Tears like that’ll break whatever heart I’ve got left.”

“You could’ve told me you needed to return to the sea for a time,” Elizabeth rejoined, unsure why that was cause to hate him. But hate like this was the worst kind—the kind that was cased exquisite, mad love. “I would have understood, Jack, with all my heart!”

Unable to stop himself, he burst out “Aye, aye, Beth! You would have… you’d have come and I’d have been glad of it, but the years would have gone along and then he would have come back to an empty beach, love… an empty beach.” There was no need to say who he was, nor what doom the empty beach meant for him. That simple reality shaded all their desires, colored all their actions, haunted their dreams.

She seemed to diminish against him, the breath and the fight went out of her. Jack had never thought her one to weep but she must be, for the silent way her body shook.

“Speak true, Beth, you’d never have gone back.”

“Why was that your decision to make?”

He was quiet a minute. The wind was colder now and it swept Elizabeth’s loose hair around her face, ruffled Jack’s cloak against him. Finally he said, “A man doesn’t like to always be a thief in his own house, Beth. Never to be comfortable, never to really be sure of the thing he loves most… You’d never really have been mine, Beth! I knew I’d lose you, knew it’d be harder with every day to do it. I thought I would kill him if I had to, lock you up somewhere, not allow it…” He sighed, rubbed his forehead. “I did what I did. I’m sorry but it was for the best.”

“Because you’re a good man,” she whispered. “Much too good, and I’d rather you were wicked through and through!”

He folded her into his arms, a sorrowful smile on his face. “So do I… You’ve no idea how much.”

“Where did you go when you left?” She spoke into his shoulder, and the heat of her breath lit Jack’s body. He pulled away.

“Well I thought I’d find someone like you,” he explained. “Surely there’d be another lass with the salt, y’ know, the metal.” The soul to temper his. “But there’s no one like you, Beth, no one. Not a woman on earth could stand next to you.”

She nodded toward the tavern wearily. “Yet you took one for yourself?”

The iron-sheeting of his eyes pulled back a little, a canon ready to fire. “I’m a man. Never tried to make ye think otherwise. Don’t tell me ye haven’t had a run or two since I last saw you.”

“Or three,” Elizabeth muttered. Jack didn’t say anything, but she went on. “Two I needed—I needed a place to live, and passage. It was the easiest way, it was…” she narrowed her gaze, uncompromising and unapologetic. “The third used me I suppose… and very ill.”

“Some do,” Jack said quietly. “I’ll strangle him if ye want, Beth-love.”

“Already done.”

“You’re a dangerous enemy, to be sure. Always were.”

She shook her head, trying to ignore the glow that accompanied his words. “Ah Jack, what becomes of us now?”

Nell caught her breath and her candle flickered. She was close enough to hear the blood pounding in their veins—Jack and this woman, this Elizabeth—the rival she’d always imagined when Jack was despondent in the night or thoughtful at dawn. There was more than a remnant of old love between them, more even than obvious desire. This woman would take Jack away, Nell thought dully, she would take him into her world as she once must have. Compared to this woman Nell was a child, an impulsive waif with no past and little thought for the future. How could she possibly compete, how could she stand next to this person Jack had built up and idealized, loved for so long, given up with so much pain? Nell’s black eyes darted away from the scene below and she stood, careful lest her shadow be seen below. Her hair she had perfumed, her bed straightened. On a table sat a few things… gifts from her lover, from Jack. A red ribbon for her hair, a thimble box, a necklace of frail silver. A broken compass.

The day had been long, waiting for him. And this night was long already, the half-moon high over the moor. Nell threw back her blanket and climbed into bed, fully clothed. She pushed her face against the pillow and hoped she would be free of their talk, hear no more of “Beth-o-mine” and “Beth-love”, but their voices had grown loud again and she couldn’t block them out, couldn’t escape them.

“Jack, it isn’t enough to do the right thing anymore! It isn’t enough…”

“Never was,” he replied, infuriatingly practical for a moment. “Why d’you think I ever started in this business?”

“The world’s a small place… we’ll find each other again, and then what? Every time shake hands and part?”

“Oh Beth, Beth,” he wrapped himself around her again until they were nose to nose—she had always been tall, nearly as tall as him—and forehead to forehead, eyes locked but too close to really see much. “You know I never believed in wrong or right, much, love, or I’d have stayed my course and never come back to that beach.”

The memories of that day, Elizabeth running through the surf in the twilight to greet him, their stilted conversation, the kiss that broke the silence and then everything that followed that kiss… those memories flashed quick in his mind. Neither had tried to stop it then, nor would they have been able to, it seemed. Months had followed, each more dangerously perfect than the last, what with their arguments and their languid conversations late into the night, their lovemaking and their wandering to the Cove for news. The simplest of things became precious: the shells she collected on the beach when the tide trickled out, the pillows he brought back for their bed, the tea cups (Chinese porcelain) on their makeshift table. It had healed whatever madness remained in him from the locker.

“So that’s it, then.”

“No,” Jack said, unable to let her vanish from his life again so quickly, “You had something to tell me.”

“Did I?”

“Isn’t that why you found me, love?”

“I found you quite by accident, Jack. Or rather, I found your ship on purpose but when you weren’t on it, I figured I’d have a drink.”

“Or two,” he smirked, referring to past days. “What did you find my ship for, then?”

“I…” she broke off, thinking. Jack knew all of her looks, still… the way she bit her lip when she was deciding something, the way she blinked three times fast when she was uncertain. “It doesn’t seem important, anymore.”

“Must have been, to bring you so far.”

“I don’t want to tell you now, Jack. It doesn’t matter. It won’t change anything.”

“Won’t it?” His curiosity was aroused, among other things.

“Maybe if we say goodbye now, we can remember the way things were back on the beach and it will be enough. There’s no sense… no sense in making this harder, really.” Her hands were twined together in front of her, her head slightly bowed.

“I don’t want you to go,” Jack said woodenly.

“Well, then we’re even.” Elizabeth hated the look on his face, the passion in his eyes against the resigned heaviness on his stature. “You’ve got someone waiting for you, Jack.”

“Well let her wait,” Jack hissed. “Let them all wait forever, if they must. Surely there must be a way for us to—”

“And yet there’s not,” she smiled a little. “Or you would have found it long before.” She gave in to herself now, reached for his face and laid her mouth on his. He tasted exactly as she remembered. They kissed deeply, for a lingering slow moment, thinking perhaps enough magic would be borne of the kiss that circumstances would vanish and only they would remain on a forgotten beach somewhere. Every time Elizabeth pulled back, certain she must run away, he would seize her arm or her hand and draw her back to his mouth. They were against the stone gate now, about to drown. Another moment and it would be too late, they’d vanish into each other, never to be free again. A sudden movement came at just the right time—a candle was blown out somewhere above them. The lighting changed and they paused for a second, glancing up, aware of the world again. Their hands unclasped. Their pulses began to steady.

“I’m sorry, Beth.”

“Don’t be,” she laughed shakily. “Don’t ever be sorry for that, Jack. Perhaps that’s all I came here for.”

His face blazed with light again, blazed with that curious certainty only he seemed capable of, of all the people on earth. “I swear I’ll love you till I die, Beth-o-mine. Never another but you.”

“And you know I’ll always, only, be yours. No matter what I did before, Jack, no matter what happens next… I’ll be wishing I was with you.”

They were whispering now. Jack thought surely life ought to stop here, for what could come to any good after this? He said, “Take the Pearl.”

“I couldn’t Jack, don’t be absurd.”

“Take her! She’s yours, Beth. She’s worth nothing without you anyway.”

“How will you travel?”

He tilted his head thoughtfully at the waning moon. “Maybe I won’t. Doesn’t seem to matter much anymore.”

“You won’t be you if you aren’t on the sea,” she said matter-of-factly. They were the same. They needed the ocean to live.

“I’ll manage,” he said firmly. “Take her and Godspeed. And perhaps in a few years…”

“When the beach is empty again…?” Anticipation coursed through her voice.

He nodded, and life had meaning once more.

Upstairs, Nell remained perfectly motionless beneath her blanket. Stillness had fallen outside and even the moor seemed at peace. She heard the billowing cloak of someone running fast away and then, the gate unfastened, the tavern stairs broached. The hinges of her door whined as it swung open. She lowered the blanket an inch, another inch. Jack stood in the doorway, the leftover moonlight repelled by his shuttered face.

The wind on the North Riding picked up again. Clouds obscured the light. Jack came into the room, shutting the door behind him. Nell pushed back her blanket and stood. “What kept you so long?”

The End

Second to last chapter here… just one more to go! A lot of hugs and sweets to my dear readers. picture is just for fun! muah!! :)

Grind me into the road

Make me a part of a journey

Paint me into your nearest dreams

Your onerous load

Or your dusk-bent road

With all the shattered sparks of beauty

Soiling, sinking, slithering down

And growing up

In myriad salvatious songs

The gun fired twice and then was silent. Death looked around the room indifferently, and thumbed his nose at Calypso. He did not dare claim prey without her consent.

If ever there were a moment of regret, a moment of steaming, breath-catching regret, Calypso knew it well. It came in the form of decision—sharp and irreversible, the rock face of her own uncertainty. So it had been with the man Davy Jones, for whom her regret sang loudest.

But this regret was filled with malice and guilt because she knew she should not have shot Jack—should not have made it so obvious whether he would live or die. She should have put forth the old magic and woven nets about him, nets of desire or nets of wisdom, riddles and hints and whispers of immortality, threaded silver over his coffee brown skin until he was buried there with her, unable to leave…

Too late. The wild animal would never be tamed now.

Calypso caught him as he crumpled forward, thinking of the weeks she had spent healing the body she had now broken. A year and a day it would take this time, exactly as it should.

The compass fell open in his lap and Calypso watched the needle waver and then point directly toward her. Yes, he wanted her, needed her most of all. “Glad to see ye’ve forgiven me so quickly, Jack,” she said with an out of place grin.

He forced a little laugh, his face rigid. “I’ll never forgive ye for this, Dalma. Never, never, never. But I love ye, all right?”

“Fair ‘nuf,” she replied, noticing the way his teeth set and a breath whistled through. Love… such a strange word to come from his sinful mouth. “Is de pain bad?”

“Not at all,” he grunted, taking his defeat with uncanny ease. “Can barely feel it, actually.”

The blood had soaked the front of his shirt before Calypso managed to press her palm against the two wounds. His skin was drained of color and his eyes became glassy. “I’ll heal ye,” she whispered into his ear.

“It’d be safer for ye if ye let me die,” Jack remarked, his voice beginning to slur. “Or have ye forgotten Odysseus?”

Calypso bit down on her tongue and her bile. How cruel he was! “I forgot ye read so much,” she managed to say, deftly tearing fabric from her skirt to bind him. She would carry him to the bed now (the bed that had gained new purpose) and the long rolling days would continue as she had wanted, bitterness sliding its way between them as he exacted his revenge, inch by inch.

He said faintly, “I’ll not read anymore,” and the smile was gone from his face, trickling away with too much lifeblood. “A dangerous pastime.”

“Be still now, Jack,” she said calmly, gathering his body up and finding him cool. Every stretch of invective she’d ever heard flew through her mind, every curse in every language screamed at her inside. “Be still, close yer eyes. I take care of ye.”

“Course ye will,” he said, barely audible. “Ye’d never kill me. See? I still win.”

He always won.

There was a slightly bemused look on her face as Calypso snaked her way through Tortuga’s narrow streets, which were more somber than she remembered them. A disaffected air hung over the port town; grime had gathered with mistrust and it wasn’t until well after dark the merry mood Tortuga was so famous for made an appearance. By then Calypso had found her way back to the Faithful Bride, drawn by the smell of smoke and the noise. Rather than a Lioness on the hunt, she felt like a lost child. She was preoccupied, thinking of Jack alone in her hut, wondering if he had suddenly gained strength and made his escape despite her careful concoctions. But no, it was impossible—the wounds of the bullet were still seeping and his mind was still wandering in uninduced hallucinations. Had it been a week, she wondered, or many?

“Goddess,” a hiss was at her ear, stirring her skin. Barbossa.

“I trust ye wit my secrets, Captain, jus’ keep yer voice down.”

“I’ve been waiting a long time,” he said, his voice amiable and relaxed. But upon closer consideration, Calypso noted an ashen tinge about his face and eyes, a restrained tension in his hands. “What kept ye?”

A sliver of a smile, like a half moon, showed. “Never come between a goddess and her faitful worshipper.”

Barbossa narrowed his eyes, but ventured no other question. His hands, which had rested on her shoulders at first, slid down her arms. He laced his fingers through hers, and she felt his desperation. Tauntingly, she stood on her tiptoes to meet his mouth and then trailed her lips down his neck. His skin was papery, flecked with sun and age, and it didn’t warm at her touch.

“Ye feel nothing, still?”

As though she herself had caused the curse, Barbossa thrust her back and didn’t respond. His was a big man, broad and noisy, with extremities sized to make him desirable to women well past his prime. But tonight he was quiet, withdrawn. Calypso was surprised by how much she enjoyed his suffering.

“I know de way out, Hector.” She had never called him by that name before, and it caught his attention. He seized her narrow brown wrist and dragged her into a corner, making a show of intimidation.

“Tell me.”

She laughed, knowing how it irked him. “Oh, what a price I’ll demand first!”

He shook her a bit, licked the spittle off his upper lip, then changed his mind and wiped it with his sleeve. He was damp with sweat. “What price?”

“No more den ye’re worth, Captain.” She made the word “Captain” slow, mocking. She had to restrain herself from exploding, as humans often did, against one who had hurt their favorite lover. She wrapped her thumbs around her fingers. She oughtn’t to have left Jack, even for a few hours.

Barbossa’s tension was more pronounced now. “Please tell me,” he said, forcing his voice to be steady.

Her eyebrow curved, drawing up the henna marks on her face and the smell of sage from her neck. The moment had come. “Ye’re heir to de Brethren Court,” she murmured, her voice almost a kiss on his cheek. “Ye have de power to free me… just as I have de power to free you.”

A crash from a nearby brawl suddenly drowned out the torches, and moonlight swept in on a wind off the coast. In the darkest corner of the room, Calypso felt Barbossa’s skin against her shrink back and vanish, felt the grip of his hand harden like a fragile gem. His eyes hollowed until the whites showed wider and more prominent than the black pupils inside. Calypso, who had seen death a thousand times and too well knew the fragility of man, shuddered in horror. His lips (gone for the moment) might have pressed closer to her as he said, “Ye’d make me a traitor, destine me for the deepest circle of hell?” and his jaw bones clicked as they shut.

Calypso felt her way to his skull, cold and dusted with the smell of deep wet earth. “Ye are in hell,” she said. “I’ll make yer life one worth living, Hector, I swear… and all dat I require of ye, de only small ting I ask, is dat ye reverse a decision made a hundred years ago by men too afraid to trust me.” The moonlight fled from a few new-lit torches, and Barbossa’s body reformed before her eyes. “For ye can trust me, Hector Barbossa… to bestow my favor where I will. Free me, and ye’ll have nothing to fear.”

With those last words she dashed herself against him and he could feel—feel as he hadn’t felt in months, every line of her body, every scent… the texture of her skin and the heat within. Like a man starving he buried himself in her and her loud laughter might have been the most delicate symphony. He was suddenly terrified she would pull away—pull away and leave him alone in the dark, as he’d been… isolated and disembodied there with his guilt and his malice. And he realized he would sell anyone—anything—be it his soul or the lives of every other man in existence in order to be alive again. The musk of the bayou was thick around them both, intoxicating, burrowing into his lungs and re-teaching him what desire was. The old delicious ache formed in his middle and stung through every limb; he was alive, his heart beat strong and fast as a newborn’s might. “I’ll do it…” he said dimly. “Whatever ye ask, goddess, I’ll do.”

“Swear it.”

“The day this spell is broken be the day I gather the Brethren and not rest ‘till ye’re free. On my life and my soul, I swear it.”

They broke apart, her still laughing, him panting and all at once cold. His senses shut off as quickly and as completely as the slam of a door. Rage, cold and thorough, enveloped him now—rage and the tormenting memory of her touch.

“Tell me now,” he said gruffly, waiting for his eyes to adjust to his own darkness, “how do I end this curse?”

“It be easy… or perhaps, not so easy. De gods, dey require der own back. Every piece of gold ye took, return to de island wit de lifeblood of de one who took it.”

“Speak plainer. Are we all to die for this freedom?”

“Ye’ll find ye can’t die, not now,” she said, borrowing one of Jack’s catlike smiles. “But it only take a drop. Once de coins are returned and de blood offered, ye’ll be human again.”

“Like you.”

Her face clouded with a hurricane’s sudden chill, “Jus’ remember, Hector, ye swore me an oath. Once ye free of de curse, ye won’t rest ‘till I’m free.”

“It might take some doing,” Barbossa muttered, thinking out loud, musing on the hundreds of coins scattered throughout the Caribbean.

“I can wait,” she purred. “I waited dis long already.” She snaked out of his grip, leaving a warm, lingering breath and a biting kiss on his mouth before she vanished out into the street. She’d been gone long enough… the bayou awaited, and so did Jack.

“Calypso!”

She turned and saw he had followed her, his boots clunking on the packed earth of the street. Fiercely she said, “Dat is not my name yet… anymore… And not a name to shout to de wind.”

“I need to confess.” He did not look in the least sorry, but rather proud. As though he wanted to share some daring feat he had accomplished.

“Do I look like a priest, Hector Barbossa?” Even from here she could imagine the Black Pearl—Jack’s dear-bought treasure—waiting silently in the harbor for its new master.

“I think I may have killed yer old friend, Sparrow.”

“My old lover, ye mean,” she said with a wicked laugh. “Him ship wort his life to ye?”

Barbossa shrugged, a rumbling volcano. “Me own life was, at any rate. A naïve boy.”

“Ye envy him, den?”

The question hung on the heavy wet breeze a moment. Barbossa spit into the dirt, rearranged his arms across his chest. “He escaped this hell.”

Yes, for a different hell, Calypso thought privately. “Life is cheap to ye. Mind it don’t become worthless altogether.”

Barbossa shrunk the space between them. “When we’re both free, will ye forget me?”

To hear such a question coming from him—a man big and powerful and reeking with egoistic assurance—nearly made Calypso laugh. But she hid it this time, finding strange pity for Barbossa. He had limits too, then. “I won’t forget ye,” she said, tilting her head back so moonlight spilled across it as the clouds receded. He ventured closer and his body changed again, melting away into old tired bones half-hidden in ragged cloth. “Go to yer task, Hector.”

His ghostly eyes snapped to attention. “And you to yers.”

“Thought ye’d gone.”

Jack’s voice, a languid hum in the deep gold dawn, was not quite what Calypso had expected. “I did. I came back.”

“So I see.” He stretched his arms up over his head, a grimace retreating from her perusal.

“Ye’re awake…”

“Evidently.”

“And yerself.”

“No thanks to ye.”

Calypso saw coffee at a boil near her fire and it pained her to think of him crawling out of that bed, hurting but determined, to complete such a simple chore. “I’m sorry I hurt ye, Jack,” she sighed, hoping he wouldn’t hear.

“Ye never were sorry for anything ye did,” he returned, quite softly. “But ye can’t help it now, can ye?”

Calypso felt around in the gathering light for a clay mug. She filled it and meandered toward Jack, wondering if he would smell Barbossa on her clothes, the way one dog could smell another. “Why does it sound like ye pity me?”

“I been thinking.”

“Ye should have been sleeping.”

“A fine nurse ye are,” he said, only a little annoyed. He cringed when he took the mug, feeling the weight in his chest. Even speaking was a battle with his body. “I was thinking, it’s always the ones as love as best that can hurt us most, aye?” Very deliberately, he took a sip of coffee and then set the mug down, exhausted and triumphant. “The ones we love most—we put ourselves in danger with them, and then they can hurt us, see?” His forehead creased when he frowned like that—boyish and thoughtful at the same time. His eyes were so very dark! They seemed to draw in any shadow nearby and swallow it as they had swallowed betrayal… even the brightest light no longer reflected from them.

And his words were salt in her wounds. “So, how will ye punish me?”

“Well, I’ve got plenty of time to think of that, Dalma. Plenty of time.”

Last chapter coming soon...

Thank you so my dear readers... thanks for the comments and encouragement, and thanks for being such lovely friends in the process. :) Enjoy!

“Sure as ye want to try this route, lad?”

Jack looked up at his first mate, irritated afresh by how Barbossa still called him ‘lad’ as though he were still a child. “Captain’s orders.”

“Aye, aye,” Barbossa nodded, stroking his jaw thoughtfully and with the restrained energy that marked him among the stunted and brutish sailors they had gathered for their venture. “Ye’ve got the bearings and me to thank for it. Half and half, see?”

“One oughtn’t to divide treasure one hasn’t got one’s hands on yet,” Jack muttered, thinking back to the days Teague brought him books to read. Life without Teague was noticeably flat.

“Just hear me out,” Barbossa said with an effort at patience. “I’ve been sailin’ these waters fifteen years longer than ye, boy. My advice is disinterested. You try those straights, you risk losing the wind and breaking on the shoals, and the ship’s still in sight of the English from there.”

“This is the course I’ve chosen,” Jack said, biting down the insult to his pride. Deep down, he knew Barbossa was right. Skirting the coast of Cuba and taking the trade winds South would save time as well as ensure relative anonymity for the treasure-seekers. But Jack couldn’t resist taking the longer route through Nassau in the hopes of seeing Teague, whose cargo runs frequently took him past that port. How Teague would cringe and falter when he saw Jack’s crew, newly outfitted and ready for adventure! How proud he would be… and how sorry for his last damning words.

Barbossa still stood in the shadows, glaring out at him from beady eyes. “Lad, ye’re treading dangerous waters, ignoring well-given advice from an old sailor.”

“And ye’re treading them yerself, mate, by questioning me a third time.” Jack thrust down the map he had been studying and paced his legs apart, wishing he were a bit taller. “I’ve got my reasons.”

“Reasons ye won’t share with yer nearest and dearest?” Barbossa asked, raising an eyebrow. He was a master of intimidation, he was, and Jack knew it.

“Ye’re the nearest I’ve got,” Jack returned with a winsome smile, changing his tone. “And while I respect yer professional opinion, it’s my ship and my venture, and you’d do well to remember that.”

Barbossa hesitated, and then leaned in again, removing his hat in a gesture of equality. “Listen Jack, some of the men—myself included—have got warrants out. Sailing past the English fort with a jolly roger is not only foolish, it’s risking a lot of lives. Ye understand?”

Jack spun on his heel, facing the bleak brown glass of the window. Understand? Jack smiled slightly. Barbossa arguments only made him more determined to have his way.

“Afraid of them, are ye?” he taunted mildly. “Afraid of death?”

“Avoiding death ain’t fear, whatever ye say,” Barbossa growled. “Ye’ll find a ship full of deserters—or worse— if ye don’t rethink yer course.”

Nothing worse? Nothing worse than that, he had said, and he had been wrong. He was so often wrong, and yet he was himself, and that was much too right for the world. Calypso almost laughed at him before she changed her mind. The laughter would speak nothing but envy, and he already knew her envy.

“We have an accord.”

His hand was still strong as she shook it. She was somewhat perturbed by that, by his contradictory strength. For the thousandth time, Calypso found herself wondering where he had come from, who had born him, where he had engendered the magic that clung to him.

“Do ye think me a fool for giving in to ye so easy?”

A fool? Jack Sparrow? Calypso licked her lips, thinking that might be his saving grace. If he weren’t a trifle naïve, he would be Poseidon himself. “I tink ye everyting dat is wild and free, Jack de Sparrow. And dis compass is yers now, as promised.” She slid it into his hands, catching her breath a little. Why was she suddenly afraid?

Jack turned the object over languidly in his hands, a little sweat grasping at his neck and chest, evidence of long fever. He smelled of the lye she had bathed him with. It was strange to see him clean.

“Open it,” she said at last, surprised by her own impatience.

He did. The needle flung itself back and forth a bit, as it was used to, and then began to slow. It came to an indecisive stop as Calypso looked down. Dead South. And too far left to be pointing to her.

“The Pearl, I expect,” Jack muttered, snapping it shut. Casually, he set the compass down beside his bed and closed his eyes, insulated from everything, drowning in ideas. Calypso remained still for a moment, trying to grasp what had happened. Trying to bring herself forward into the moment Jack now inhabited. The compass had not pointed to her. The compass had pointed back to the sea. The compass had betrayed her.

“The last time I left here, Dalma, I hurt you.”

Calypso rose abruptly, curling her nails into her fists, feeling them break through the skin of her hand in disquiet. A dim feathered sunset laced through the window, which she had covered in wax paper to keep out the mosquitoes. The swamp was very, very loud tonight, and Calypso found herself wishing it would hush, just this once. The swamp did not obey her, and she did not really expect it to. It was not the ocean.

“I told meself over and over that I wasn’t sorry, that it was all right for a pirate to act that way.” He hadn’t opened his eyes. “Fact is, I was sorry. More sorry than I could say. I didn’t want to cheat you, and I didn’t want to leave you.”

The hairs on Calypso’s neck stood straight up and she plunked her feet into the floor like weights, overcome. Was she gratified or infuriated afresh? She couldn’t quite tell.

“I thought maybe you’d admire me for being… ye know… able to gain my point. But now I see that was foolish. I got my desserts, I did.”

“I forgive ye, Jack,” she whispered suddenly, rejoining him.

“Why?” he asked.

In response, she pressed her body against his and let her hands wander across his face with more gentleness than she had ever felt before. “To err is human, Jack.”

“To forgive…” Divine. He didn’t finish his sentence. She found herself inexplicably mesmerized by the uneven coarse texture of his skin, the desperate look that came into his eyes now and then, the way he ignored his pain and wound his fingers into her snarled hair. Like a bracing autumn wind he shook at her clothes, undressing her, flinging her leaves to the ground with careless and delicious abandon. But he was different this time… guiding her hands, licking away a tear from her cheek (where had the tear come from? Surely she had not gone soft…), measured and older, the expression of unvoiced experience in the face of survival. And she found with a shock that he was using her. Using her body, using her nearness to salve his own hurts. She, a goddess, being used like a common whore.

Calypso laughed, and Jack smothered it with his mouth. She fought him, and he pinned her arms over her head. But she did not struggle long… in all his fascinating youth he had been hers, and now in his dark dangerous manhood she was his. She had been waiting for this day. She had been waiting for him to take her like the bayou itself would—inevitable and pounding, black as the soil and almost ruined with hedonism. The sea itself could not have caused her to writhe so. She had slaves a plenty: men who crawled back up the river if she so much as whispered a plea to the moon. And she had more than that in power over hearts and minds even from her exile. But she herself was a slave of passion, wasn’t she? Giving up revenge, giving up her much-deserved triumph at the whim of the pretty black eyes that had lately caught her fancy?

Their clothing had marked their separation; their naked skin met in a frenzied fast way, tired of the fabric. He was doing things to her she hadn’t known he was capable of… he was challenging her, taunting her on to retaliate. And his body was still stronger than hers.

“Ye be a candle, Jack de Sparrow,” she breathed incoherently, needing to open her mouth and feeling the surge of blood sweep through her head. “And ye’ll burn out if ye go on much longer like dis.”

“Don’t speak,” he ordered, his forehead at her naval, “Don’t say another word.”

Silenced by his forcible touch rather than his command, Calypso realized they were still on the bed. There was no sharp prickling wood beneath her and no cloying sap. There was him, only him, sating himself in her.

She was what the humans would have called brazen—it must be so. For she let him again and again, long after her desire had cooled. Touch was really all she knew in the way of healing.

I move and sigh with the breezes, with the pine fragrance and the warm wet grass; I ache and shiver with the dark noise and the new knowledge, the evil. All is bleak, all is changed. All is mystery. And the sun has changed, and begun to hide. I flit up and am thrown back against the earth, which weathers in clime of haggard blue, jagged through the rich black water around us.

Fear has caused us to shrink.

We are smaller, minute by minute, drawing into ourselves, blending into each other, desperate to be surrounded.

We are tamer, hour by hour, complacent as we wait, knowing we have had our strength removed. Drink deep the water, sink into the soil and forget, forget… Stretch the arms away, cover the new skin with tougher bark, search out the minerals with supple facetious fingers. There was a thing called beauty, but it has shattered. Now there are tiny fragments of it, all about, too small to notice much. A shard came and pierced me, poisoned me, penetrated me. Sweet for an instant, tragic for eternity.

How can I ask him to go on? Can I not draw the curtain on him, put him away, gently break him in two and wipe him clean?

Pink feathered dawn swept across the sky, breaking through the bare black arms of the trees with jagged irregularity. Frost clung to the bark and the wax-paper window of Calypso’s house. Quiet she stood in the corner with a few matches, gathering her pile of coals together. She could hear the rhythmic sound of Jack’s breathing from here, though the sight of him stretched across the bed was hidden.

She was inconsistent to the highest degree. She knew this. Knew not to trust herself or the invariant emotions that ruled her as human. Knew what it might cost her to give in now. Knew, and couldn’t find it in herself to care this morning.

Freedom had suddenly retreated from importance. Maybe it was fear that drove its glimmer away, maybe it was long understanding and acceptance of her fate. But what was freedom—what would it mean to her now, after all this time, if she destroyed all she loved in the process? Maybe she had hung away that skin forever… maybe, maybe, she could learn to be human, fully human. Maybe Jack could teach her.

She found her eyes watered with hot tears, thinking on her long dream. The dream had been ever entwined with the man—Davy Jones was his name—who in a century past swore an oath of love before her. And (why deny it now?) she had loved him back. Weakened and humbled herself for his sake. Made him into a god worthy of her. Lost him in the heat of indecision. Soon after her binding she had sought for him in eagerness to explain and be forgiven, and not finding him, set her heart against him. Giving up the dream of her freedom meant at long last giving up the dream of him as well…

She felt like Aladdin, who had caught the jinn and then realized the one thing he’d been wanting for so long couldn’t be accomplished with a wish. Jack made it seem easy to change her mind— just looking at him brought to mind his tangled thread of a life, the bridges he burned and the disasters he had come into. Asking him to betray the very brand on his skin would destroy him. And if all her reasoning didn’t measure up, the bleached crab bones spoke clear that her time had not come yet.

“Mornin’, love,” Jack said, surprising her with half a smile. Wrapped in a blanket, he sank onto a chair and sat hunched over the table, toying with the shells absently. Over the fire, Calypso shifted her pot of water and sprinkled a few herbs over it. The steam was soothing on her skin, the smell fragrant and peaceful.

She liked being human in these moments.

“Ye’re up,” she finally observed, sliding a mug of tea towards him. She poured another for herself and sat down. “Swagger back in yer step, even.”

“A fellow can’t lie abed forever.”

He meant he couldn’t stay here forever. “Restless already?”

His face was soft, paler than usual. “Always restless. Ye’re the same. How you’ve managed here this long…”

“A miracle?” She sipped her tea. “Where will ye go now, Jack?”

He pulled up the compass. “To reclaim me own.”

“Jack, we all tried to warn ye ‘bout dat treasure. If de men won it, der will be no reclaiming yer ship from dem.”

Jack swung his finger around the rim of his mug, and his action seemed almost menacing to Calypso. “Ye’re the one who gave me the compass to begin with, Dalma. Now ye’re saying I shouldn’t follow it?”

“Ye still owe me for it, witty Jack.”

“Ah yes… my latest bargain. What’s it to be then?” Jack steeled himself for the fate of the Brethren Court. On the outside he could not have appeared cooler, more indifferent. Timing was everything in Calypso’s world.

Calypso found betraying all her plans easy in the end. She would regret it later, undoubtedly. But for now it was easy. “Stay with me. A year and a day, Jack. Dat’s all I ask of ye.”

A long silence occurred during which Calypso realized three things very quickly. The first was that no matter how long or how fervently she tried, she would never be fully human. The second was how terribly lonely and angry that knowledge made her. And the third was that, for all she had thought her request a gift that spared the Court, it sounded to Jack like an interminable prison sentence. He was so wild.

Congenially, Jack took a drink of his tea, holding his mug as though it were ale. He chuckled a little. “Ye can’t be serious, darlin’.”

Don’t call me darlin’, as though I were one of yer half-crown strumpets. “I’m quite serious.”

Jack tossed the compass across the table. “Then the bargain is off. I don’t want it after all.”

“We already shook on it, Jack de Sparrow. Ye have no choice now.”

He had tensed imperceptibly, ready for flight. She could feel his racing heartbeat through the beams of the floor. “Ye can’t ask this of me, Dalma… you wouldn’t… I can’t stay here.”

“Ye can and ye will.”

“It’d kill me!” he burst out, unaware of how his words hurt her and the bayou itself in timeless ways. He had neared the door. “I’m sorry, Dalma, I really am. I can’t stay.”

“Jack.” One year and one day—was it so much to ask? So terrible a price for his heart’s desire?

He paused in front of the door, feeling the walls close in even now, aching for the smell of the sea. He saw she was holding a pistol—his pistol—and aiming at him. “I have to leave,” he whispered desperately.

“Den I’m going to make ye keep yer bargain de only way I can figure how.”

He turned the handle of the door. She fired the pistol.

More soon...

When I said before there were going to be 8 chapters, that was a lie. There are going to be ten. Ten chapters. So, three more to go from here. Hugs and kisses to my faithful readers whom I adore and dedicate this to… thanks for sharing your thoughts with me, I love the conversations I’ve had with you all! It’s delightful to connect in so many ways. Cheers, and enjoy!

“The treasure of Isle de Muerta?”

Jack had never seen Teague so impressed. But rather than make him feel proud, Teague’s reaction made him feel fearful and wicked. Like a grave robber. A half-smoked cigar hung out of Teague’s mouth, the smell familiar and comforting, like the room they stood in. A thousand candles hung overhead, and every now and then Jack felt a sting of pain as hot wax dripped down. He had known all this before. His restlessness bred and grew fast here.

“Boy, I know ye’re daft and fearless and out drink me to boot, but ye’ve crossed the line this time, thinking about that place.”

Jack didn’t believe in lines anymore. He had read Dante.

“It’s not what ye think and not what ye want. Haven’t ye learned anything in all yer blunders, Jack?”

His blunders? Of course there had been one or two unplanned lapses… but on the whole, he had done well for himself. Teague ought to be proud. Without him, Teague would still be a common drunk on a forgotten coast, chatting with beggar boys. Nothing ventured, nothing gained—wasn’t that what Teague had always told him?

“I don’t care if Calypso herself made ye a promise, boy. Isle de Muerta is cursed. Forbidden. There are some things ye just don’t question.”

Were there? Jack questioned everything. And Teague was dishonoring his god, freedom. He had a map and a ship and a crew. His own cleverness had won those. He would go where he bloody pleased. He would love whom he chose and live as he liked. He was a pirate, and he had the brand to prove it.

“I know what yer thinking, boy. Why listen to a dried up old sailor like me? What could I possibly know about it?” Teague shifted in the chair he had grown into since settling at the Cove. “There were a time ye wanted nothing but bread to fill your stomach, lad. Maybe ye were right all along. Wild treasures and risks like this…risks that can’t be calculated… that ain’t living. Listen to me now, if ye feel an ounce of gratitude.”

“This isn’t about gratitude.” He had already drawn on Calypso’s wrath for this treasure. There really was no going back, no matter how Teague might chide him.

Teague was still for a moment, realizing how serious Jack was. There was so little he could say. He had never played this card with Jack before, and he did not want to now.

This was a card played with partners and subordinates, not Jack. And yet, this was his last defense. “If ye go after the treasure, you and I are done. No more runs, no more cargo, no more voyages. Ye understand? I wash me hands of ye, if that be yer choice.” Jack would surely recant now. No treasure could be worth that loss, could it? Jack’s life had been built out of Teague’s hand.

Jack straightened his jacket and adjusted his hat—the hat that named him Captain. “Are ye saying ye want me to bow to ye—obey ye without question—or ye’ll toss me back in the gutter where I came from?” Jack’s eyes gleamed like a cornered animal’s. Teague didn’t know how to explain that error of Jack’s deduction. He had never known Jack to resent his background before.

“I’m trying to save ye, boy,” Teague said at last, quietly.

“Ye were the one who made me believe in freedom!” Jack exploded, overturning the table before them, dispersing its contents to the floor. A candle sputtered and went out. “Ye were the one who told me bread wasn’t enough. So it’s all right for you but not me, eh, Teague? Too much that the boy’s become a man and has plans of his own?” Jack shook his head slowly, and then turned his back on Teague, heading for the door.

“Jack!” Teague brayed after him, imperious and foreboding, “Don’t ye dare go!”

Jack kept walking. The last Teague saw was the flickering shadow of the door as it slammed behind him. He was gone. Just like that.

Teague found himself slumped forward, his face tickled by alien wetness. His throat was so tight he could barely make out the few words left to utter, words that were an echo of his failure: “Don’t go.”

Winter had come to the bayou, winter more determined than any Calypso had known since making this place her home. The serpentine arms of the trees waved naked and feeble above, black against the white drear sky. Wrapped in a blanket, Calypso sat on the porch and paid homage to the sky for matching her mood. Blank linen clouds skittered by every so often, eager to vanish beyond the horizon. Calypso was grimly satisfied, watching them. They would pass over his head. They would shade his inhuman eyes and disrupt his endeavors. Abruptly, Calypso stood and went to her fire inside, scraping coals out under a pot for coffee. She licked one finger and laid it against an ember, listening for the wisping shriek of her skin. Ah, there it was. Too faint to get proper news from. Sucking her burn, she retreated to the marked table, upon which a basket of bleached crab shells sat. They looked forlorn, silent. No voice left in them, probably. She hadn’t touched them since returning to the bayou months before… but now, as a cold wind shivered through the wide cracks of the walls and the coffee smell grew stronger around her, she was interested.

First she laid them out in proper shapes, claws to bodies. Then she scattered them on the wood. She liked the noise they made striking her table. She liked the smell they carried. Again she cast them, like dice this time. Her lips formed the word ‘Jack’ unconsciously. Dice and cards, coffee and ale, the swamp on a warm day or the laughter of her people: all of these things reminded her of Jack.

The pot began to shake and she made her slow way to it, swirling the liquid. She was so thirsty. A pile of culled Salvia stood near the door; it had kept her trapped in hallucinations and visions for days without respite. Her teeth were stained from beetle nuts and tobacco; her hair was matted and unkempt. She had begun to crave human death. Too few hours of freedom had been followed by weeks of dizzying despair; she had never known before how wretched it was to be trapped here, she had forgotten both ocean and land once, and the forgetting had been her savior. Now she remembered, and suffered.

She reached for the shells again, reverent as though they were the coins of betrayal, and scattered them. Looked at them. Bit her lip, unsure. Pondered them. Sipped her coffee, too hot. Too much to hope for, too much to believe it was. A few seconds ago the shells had meant nothing to her. Now they meant everything—now they told her a secret she couldn’t quite grasp. Coincidence? Mistake? Trick?

The moments ticked by, bringing clarity. Her existence hinged on belief, and believe she would. The shells had spoken true.

He was coming back.

He came alone, no boat, barefoot, a careworn, cast-aside doll of a man. Her eyes alone would not have recognized him. Triumph died on her lips, the bitterness she had been chewing as cud vanished from her mouth. She was mother, aunt, she was Tia Dalma. He was her child and he had returned. Almost dead, he fell against the ladder and stayed there, immobile. The swamp was very quiet, and Calypso thought it right, though the swamp had never, never been quiet before.

She tripped down her own ladder, training her heart to be steady and her hands to be gentle as she pulled him into her lap, afraid he would fall to pieces in her arms. Yes, he still breathed. Gods above, he was broken. She held him blindly, feeling his warmth too faint and his soul too still. His face and shoulders were blistered with deep burns; his back, a smattering of whip-lashes and other, more gruesome injuries; bits of glass and wood still clung there in the mess. Around both eyes, blue-green marks showed from a beating and his face was tinged yellow. “Oh Jack,” she whispered without thinking. “Oh…”

“Dalma?” he was awake, in some sense or another. “I lost it. They took me ship.”

“Shh… Jack, hush chil’, hush dear one.”

“They took me treasure… left me…”

“Don’ think about dat now, Jack, jus’ rest…”

“A ship came… saved me.”

“Aye, Jack de Sparrow, a ship always come.”

“I made a deal… for passage.” His mouth was parched, his voice, a grim shadow of itself. And his chest heaved as he spoke those last words, he began to shake deeply, weeping, though his face remained dry.

“It’s all right, Jack,” Calypso said again, wanting to envelope him, wanting to surround him completely like the velvet black soil of the bayou. “What be da bargain dis time?”

He didn’t answer now, just continued to shudder, drawing his knees up toward his chest like a tortured child might. He flinched when she caressed his face. And Calypso thought, there were some bargains no man should have to make. Some bargains that eclipsed even the loss of one’s soul.

Calypso lifted him easily in her arms with the strength of the sea. With only her toes she gripped the ladder and carried Jack up, up to the wooden floor, up to her house where burnt coffee sat on old coals and bleached crab bones adorned the aging table.

He survived.

Another countdown to departure. Another hourglass running out of sand too quickly for Calypso. He would live; thus, he would leave. He would leave her again. She should not have tended his wounds with such diligence—should not have employed those spells and herbs and charms with such fervor. She should not have put forth the old strength or given up the carefully staved magic for him. She did not want to watch him leave again.

There was a bed in the hut now.

Lovemaking did not teach you a person’s body the way tending them in long illness did. Calypso thought, that was the real consummation of love. She knew his body like her own now, and the places on it that still gave him pain. The places that had been the longest to heal. Even his mind was laid open to her briefly.

“Ye’ve wandered a long time, witty Jack,” she said to his blank stare.

In all his time in her care, he had remained more or less silent. Now he spoke, his voice human again, though deeper, huskier than it had been once. “And now I’ve decided to forget it all.”

“Not even I have de power to grant ye dat request.”

He smiled. The smile was brittle and enigmatic, unforgiving. Calypso felt herself shiver a little. “I don’t need magic to leave the past in its place.”

She couldn’t resist. She wanted him to need her. “Maybe ye need magic to remedy de past, aye?”

“Remedy the past?” his tone turned unsteady. “Nothing to be done, I expect… except to start over.” And she saw, for all the marks across his skin, he was still smooth. Clouding fear and regret, shame and perhaps despair; none of these destroyed him as they should have. It wasn’t quite fair… wasn’t quite right. He had mingled too much with magic and legends, with things best left in the storybooks. She wanted to pull him further into her world, keep him there. He had come so far already.

“Der is a way…” she was whispering, sliding against him on the bed she had made for him. “A way for revenge, a way to get back dat which belong to ye…”

“How?” he asked curiously. His head was tilted to one side, and the entrancing grace of his movements had changed, stiffened slightly with his wounds, made him awkward and almost comical.

“Wit magic of course,” she said, leaning closer. She wanted to kiss him now, though he seemed afraid of her lips. Pride stung, she brushed his mouth lightly before pulling away. “De men dat betrayed ye—how will ye pay dem back? Should dey get away wit what dey did? De marks dey left on ye?”

Jack’s eyes sank to the floor.

“De legendary Jack Sparrow always triumphs, aye? Ye’re not afraid, are ye, Jack?”

“No,” he said, almost a question.

She reached into the folds of her skirt for the object she trusted to draw them back together. The object that would remind Jack all she had done for him, all she had made him. The object that might make him stay. Another gamble, but magic was her strength and would be on her side.

“A compass?” he looked disappointed. “I’ve got one, or did have, thanks.”

“Not jus’ any compass, Jack,” she said sharply. Oh the bitterness of faded belief! “Dis compass is magic.” Unable to resist, she neared his mouth again. He did not flinch this time, but bent toward her slightly.

“Magic?”

They were sharing a breath. There was only a sliver between them… golden and irreversible, the sliver of enchantment and the turning wheel of destiny, the third risk. Calypso felt the fine slender hairs on her neck rise; he was new, reborn on her lips, tentative and inexperienced as a youth. He was desperate to believe, desperate to repaint the past, erase the pain. Such it was to be human. Calypso forgot sometimes that they couldn’t appreciate the bad the same way they did the good. Just as well, for her anyway. “Magic. What secrets lie in yer heart, Jack de Sparrow… what yearnings are der?”

He swallowed deep, swallowing back an ocean of answers.

“Can ye sort de tangle and pursue it clear, Jack? Dis compass give ye what no man has—de truth. What ye want most, what yer heart believes. Points de way, de path before yer feet.”

“It sounds too grand a thing for me…”

“Calypso gives gifts to that whom she chooses.”

“And what would ye ask in return?”

“Does it matter? I offer ye de world! Yer heart’s desire, Jack…”

He laid his head back against the loose cotton that her people had woven for him, unaware of the hours they had gathered round the hut, mournful and waiting, crying out to their gods in strange tongues, begging for his life. He ran his hand along the threaded texture of the blanket, dyed indigo by the swamp’s harvest. “I’ve bargained away me body and me soul,” he finally whispered. “Nothing could be worse than that, could it?”

More to come soon...

I was going to post this last night, but got distracted by the midnight showing of Narnia... :) This story will have 8 chapters total, so 2 more to go! Thank you all for the beautiful comments and for reading, you are lovely. Enjoy!

Tortuga was a disappointment.

The smells, the noise, the torrid clinging heat of late afternoon—all of these things were ancient history to Calypso, from the stench of the docks to the lethargic predictability of hung over men. She was repulsed by her own worshippers—repulsed that this was the world she had been dreaming of since her captivity began.

“It’s only Tortuga,” Jack reminded her, slant-eyed and comforting, one arm about her waist to guide her through the narrow winding streets. “This ain’t the world, Dalma. Just the shoe-scrappin’s of it.”

She smiled, feeling the dried henna on her cheekbones tighten. Her scalp shone with sweat beneath the braids and she missed the cool shade of her bayou. It was only Jack’s unquenchable spirit that held her here. Only her fascination with his marked brown skin. Only her knowledge that he could be the one to set her free. “Where ye be takin’ me, witty Jack?”

“To the world’s end, darlin’,” he chimed, his eye caught by a passing vendor. “Oy! Mate!” The vendor stopped and displayed a basket of bleached crab shells. “Care for a souvenir?”

Calypso looked at the shells with pity, aching for the power to revive them. Her fingers skated over the edge of the basket. “Ain’t no ordinary shells, these,” the vendor said at once. “These are magic. Tell the future, they do.”

“Do dey?” Calypso smiled, furtive and derisive. “Well den, Jack, we’ll have to take dem. I know how ye love magic.”

“Money,” the vendor muttered hungrily. “Money first. These are worth more than a drink, they are.”

“Ah,” Jack said, widening his eyes and broadening his shadow around the graying man. He leaned in as if hatching a conspiracy. “I knew ye’d say that, mate. Thing is, first I laid eyes on ye, I knew ye were a clever man. A man with an eye for a bargain. Am I right?”

A muscle tightened in the vendor’s jaw, but he remained silent.

“Ye see, mate, I’m in possession (or near enough) of the bearings to a fabulous treasure,” Jack lowered his voice, glanced around. “Just imagine the gold, the jewels… all practically mine for the taking. And if ye show kindness to me now, well, I’d be prepared to share this all with ye.”

“Treasure, ye say?” The vendor studied Jack’s irregular dark face, and the woman at his side. “And how do I know ye’ll keep yer word?”

“Mate, don’t ye recognize me?”

The vendor’s forehead wrinkled slightly, awkwardly. “Should I?”

Jack leaned back in exasperation, shaking his head. “He don’t recognize me, Dalma.”

“Shame it is, witty Jack.”

“Jack?” The vendor repeated, as though he had suddenly remembered. “Of course! Jack! Jack…?”

“Captain Jack.”

“Captain Jack what?”

“Captain Jack Sparrow,” Calypso put in suddenly. “One of de more feared and respected privateers in all de colonies. Ye’d be wise to heed him—he never yet failed to find a treasure he sought.”

The vendor, momentarily under the spell of Calypso’s words, handed over the basket with a bemused look. “Well bless me, but I beg yer pardon sir and lady. Captain Jack Sparrow. Won’t forget that name easy, no sir. I’ll expect a reward…”

“And ye’ll get one, mate. After all, I’m Captain Jack Sparrow.” Jack stumbled over the new title a bit, but matched it with a wicked grin. He quite liked it.

“Did I hear something about a treasure?”

Jack turned to see the vendor scuttling off and another man approaching. A big, powerful tree of a man, skin burnished with sun and age, eyes shadowed under a wide felt hat.

“Hector Barbossa,” Calypso said with mischievous recognition.

“Calypso,” the man said, but the word was almost a question, half-whispered and in awe.

Jack didn’t know why, but he felt cold in this man’s presence, doubtful and intimidated. Why did his Dalma look at the man that way, as though remembering old pleasures? Why did she touch him that way, beneath his chin and down his chest, too familiar for comfort?

“Dalma?” he murmured.

“A former lover, Jack de Sparrow,” she said with sinful candor. “One of de men who come to my door after ye told all my secrets de last time.”

“Ah,” Jack said with a painful smirk. “Barbossa, ye said?”

“Aye,” came the man’s voice, harrowing as bones scraping each other. “Never would have expected to see ye here, goddess, in such a dung hill as this.” His smile was twice as sinister as his voice, and Jack thought he would like to kill him and then get the hell away from his body.

“Jack bring me here,” Calypso explained, aware of the tension gathering in the narrow street. “A wager he set, and we come to settle it.”

“Then allow me to be of service to ye, make sure he plays fair and all that.”

“Of course, of course,” Calypso replied, burying her mirth deep as in soil.

“She’s playing ye, lad,” The man called Barbossa slurred. Night had come to Tortuga, and with night, drink.

Jack narrowed his eyes, wishing he could hide their expression better. Wishing he, like those painted whores, could disguise their honesty behind powder and kohl. “Actually, I’m playin’ her, mate. But thanks for the warning.”

“Ye playin’ the goddess herself?” Barbossa scoffed, downing another swallow and focusing on Calypso, across the room entangled in conversation. “She’s always got a card up her sleeve. Always got some hidden plan. Mark me words.”

“Marked and dually dismissed, thanks,” Jack muttered. “I reckon I’ve known her longer than ye.”

“Longer?” the words held a thinly veiled suggestion and a noticeable glance beneath Jack’s naval. “Doubtful.”

Jack closed his eyes, aching to be aboard his ship, alone, with the wind in his face and the horizon out before him. He ached for solitude, freedom from this smoky closed room and its company.

“So, yer a Pirate?”

Jack’s head snapped up, and too late he tugged his shirtsleeve down over that hateful mark. Gods above, would he never be free of it? “Aye, when the mood takes me,” he covered his irritation in bravado. “I been many things in me short life.”

“Ye got a ship to go with that brand, lad?” Barbossa’s voice was dripping with arrogance. “Many a young sailor would fancy himself a pirate, yet is naught but a common thief.”

Jack swallowed. “I have a ship. And I’m no thief.” His eyes glinted. “Though I do a speck of murder now and again.”

To his surprise and dismay, Barbossa clapped him on the back much as Teague might have. “Good boy. Just what I wanted to hear.” He drained his mug silently and called for another, his eyes bleary and yet, alert. Not to be gainsaid, Jack did the same. “What be this wager ye have with her?”

“It’s personal.”

“So I suspected. But I can help ye win.”

“And why would ye do that?”

“Me own sense of fair play. Men have to help each other against the fairer sex, aye?”

Odd, Jack thought, I don’t exactly think of me Dalma as a woman. Rather a force of nature. “It may come as somethin’ of a surprise to you, Mr. Barbossa, but I’m fair capable of winning a wager on me own.”

“And it may come as something of a surprise to you, Captain Sparrow, but no one wins a wager in this inn without my consent.”

So she was playing him. Even before they settled in for supper she’d chosen her gambits… selecting those who owed her a favor to cushion her success. Jack could imagine the task she would require of him, and like cold water down his back, thought of Teague. He’d surely be dead if Teague knew how fast and loose he played with the fate of the Brethren Court. “What’s in it for ye, mate?”

“I heard something about treasure,” Barbossa reminded him, and Jack saw he had emptied his newly filled mug yet again. Impressed despite himself, he struggled to catch up.

“It’s a fool’s hope of a treasure,” Jack said finally, his head swimming. “Very few men who’d even believe it exists.”

“And yer one of them, aren’t ye?”

Jack turned out a sloppy grin. “Mate, I’m Captain Jack Sparrow. I bed goddesses and betray their secrets. I believe in far too much for me own good.”

Barbossa nursed yet another drink. “So do I, Jack. So do I.” He swirled the liquid moodily before downing it. “Ye want my help or not? All I want is a share of the treasure, if indeed it exists.”

Everyone wanted their share. Everyone wanted to believe. Jack’s head ached. “It’s a deal then,” he said dimly, thinking with guilt he’d rather the treasure didn’t exist, after all.

“Good lad,” Barbossa said as he sauntered toward Calypso, his gait remarkably steady. He placed a hand on her, caressing her shadowy skin, and whispered something in her ear. She turned and her gaze fell on Jack, piercing, questioning. Did she suspect? No, no, Barbossa was playing her now, fawning over her, assuring her of his loyalty. A deck of cards appeared in his hand and he gestured back towards Jack. Calypso closed her eyes briefly and then nodded. She looked so strange here, Jack thought. Diminished, vulnerable. He should never have brought her out of the Bayou. He should never have broken that spell.

They sat. Cards were shuffled, dealt.

“Thought ye said cards were for dividin’ wealth and not telling destinies,” Jack said, forming the words with difficulty.

“We are dividing wealth,” came her fleet reply.

Barbossa smiled, and one of his teeth was blue-black, rotten.

Three cards were laid. A jack of diamonds, nine of spades, and four of clubs. The jack had a bent corner and the nine, a smudge of grease.

Jack studied his hand through a blur, gathered them up, and took a drink. Calypso traced hers as though reforming their numbers. Jack rolled up his sleeves, noticing her bare arms. All’s fair in love and war, he thought, taking another swallow, relishing the bitterness of the drink. All’s fair in piracy.

Calypso dropped two cards on the table, and Barbossa handed her another pair. Whether it were a tell or a ruse, Jack didn’t know, but the corner of her mouth curved up slightly. Under the table, Jack felt her foot snake past his and caress Barbossa’s leg. He felt sick.

For himself, he dropped no cards. He couldn’t remember what was in his hand.

“This is it, then,” Barbossa said. Jack thought it strange a wager of this import could be settled so easily, so quickly. He didn’t even know if he believed in fate. Casually, Barbossa laid the fourth card. Queen of hearts.

“Ah!” Calypso cried, splaying her hand on the table. “Care to beat dat, Jack de Sparrow?”

Jack flipped his cards over one by one, scarcely able to make out their marks. Calypso’s face fell, Barbossa’s grin deepened. He had won. He had both queen of diamonds and king of hearts.

“There it is, Dalma,” he said thickly, unable to pull his eyes off the queen of hearts, the card that had marked his winning. “Fate’s decided. Give up the bearings.”

Calypso looked between Barbossa and Jack, an unfathomable emotion settling in her eyes and forehead. Barbossa began to laugh. “Cards are a man’s game, see,” he said, leaning forward. “And more than that, a mortal’s game.”

Calypso swept her garment back and stood. “De bearin’s will be yers, witty Jack.” But her fury was roused. She knew he had cheated. Somehow she knew.

Jack struggled to stand, swaying slightly, watching as she vanished into the night. She was in his power, she needed him still. He would find her at the Pearl, and the journey back to the bayou would be stony and hellish. And he would never forget that look in her eyes—the look of betrayal.

“I’ll expect ye to keep yer word,” Barbossa remarked beside him, sober as a rail.

“Aye,” Jack muttered, heading for the door. Barbossa placed a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Ye won’t get off so easy. I’m comin’ with ye.”

More to come soon...

I just finished my last final… YAY! :) So no more long delays for this story, I promise. Thank you so much for sticking with me!

“I wouldn’t have imprisoned her,” Jack said at last, spinning the coin around his pick-pocket fingers.

“Always knew ye were daft,” Teague said, notably displeased. “It were the only way, boy. When yer dealin’ with power of that magnitude…” Teague trailed off, shaking his head. “They done right.”

“Marvelously uncreative, that,” Jack said, comfortably drunk and thereby incautious. “Seems a very European thing to do, if ye ask me.”

“Well, I didn’t,” he growled back, somewhat mollified by the insult to Europe. He hated them, the English most of all.

“I’d have charmed her like a snake,” Jack mused, incoherent ideas mixing with the Arabian folklore he’d been lost in of late.

“Then ye’d have died like Cleopatra.” Teague waved a barmaid over and pulled her close, using the merry clatter of the room as a reason to whisper in her ear. His rough old hand skimmed her cheek and she blushed. Jack smiled to himself. He was the handsome one now, the one the girls looked at from behind their whispering hands. Yet Teague had a tongue smooth as honey and delighted in parading his famed abilities for seduction under Jack’s nose, as if to remind him of his place. As if Jack could forget.

“Listen darlin’, how about another pint, eh?” Jack interposed at last, tweaking her nose and drawing an annoyed glare from Teague. The girl turned to Jack and caught her breath, admiring him. She was sure something—bare, bronzed shoulders and irregular wide eyes, too young to be cynical.

She muttered something in patois, and Jack let a smile play on his lips, enjoying her nervousness. Jack slid his mug into her hand, their fingers meeting briefly. Teague rolled his eyes as she walked away. “Couldn’t resist, could ye?”

“Resist what? She’s a native.”

“And ye go for English girls, is that it?” Teague asked waspishly.

“No,” Jack replied. “Only one reason ye’d go for an English girl… and that’s to ruin her father’s name.”

“Or her husband’s!” Teague let out a thick laugh, slapping Jack’s thigh. “Aye, that’s my boy.”

Jack commended himself privately for the return of good humor at the table. He decided not to explain why he generally left native girls alone, unless they sought him out of course—(which they often did)—it was proper to treat your own kind better than others. The Spanish girls he liked for dancing and languid loving, the Irish for their passion, and the Dutch girls for their golden hair. And Asians, when they came through, were magnificent conversationalists. But he had never been with an English girl.

The barmaid returned, mug filled. She smiled shyly as she set it in front of Jack, but he kept his eyes on the table.

“Listen lad, ye can have her,” Teague said grandly. He stood and gave the girl a shove into Jack’s lap. She jumped up, and Jack quickly apologized, keeping a gentle grip on her wrist.

“Sorry love, ye know how these old pirates can be,” he flashed his most winning smile. “No harm done, eh?” he tilted her chin up encouragingly. Teague had shifted his attention to a redhead in one corner, and stalked toward her.

“None at all,” the girl said in broken English, stepping a bit closer.

Jack bent so he could smell her hair, her breath. One hand snaked around her waist, steady, reassuring. He could tell by the way she tensed that she wanted him. He could already envision her soft curves, her dark skin against the inn’s bed sheets. He pulled her toward the door.

“Do ye have a price, love?” he asked softly. They neared Teague, and Jack paused.

“Five dubrao for da night… but ye needn’t worry…”

Jack opened her hand and dropped the coins in, closing her fingers around them. “There now. One night and we’ll be square.” And then, without warning, he pushed her into Teague’s arms. With a malicious wink at the older man, Jack said, “I’m not one for another man’s cast-offs, ye understand.”

Teague shook his head at the disrespect. “Aye, maybe not today, Jackie. But mark me words, one day ye’ll meet a girl and not care who’s been in first, so long as ye can have her last.”

.

All that she was and all that she wanted to be, all she yearned for, all she desired, tied up in him. Freedom. In a man. The irony choked her for a moment. The very same that had wrought her slavery provided the glimmer of an escape. She must not fail—she would not fail! A faint trailing thread had appeared and she would hold on to it with all her might, if a thousand men had to die and a thousand more brought back from Davy Jones’ Locker.

“What be the wager, Dalma?” The coin glimmered back against his coffee brown skin.

Everything between them had changed—when he called her name, she felt the thrill of his power over her. All her limitations had been exposed, all her desperation. She must gain back the upper hand. “We ask my subjects, yes? We ask de ones ye brought to me. Dem be da fair judge between us.”

The ease of his smile, the flagrant, physical assurance in his eyes—when had these things become threatening? When had he become her enemy? She was suddenly intensely aware of her own isolation. “What, the very ones as call you Aunt? The ones as worship ye?” He had put distance between them, stood cautiously on the other side of the table. “I think not, Dalma. Downriver is a right fair town, not more than a day on, Tortuga. A proper wager is always accompanied by a good brew, aye?”

Oh, he was clever! So effortlessly seductive… the way he made it sound so easy to leave the bayou, so easy to go about life a free woman. “Done.” Her own voice startled her. She hadn’t lost that acuity for barter, gained a lifetime ago amongst another tribe, far away, where she had been what humans might call a child. And later, the man with the blue eyes, the one who played pianoforte… she closed her eyes, imagined him behind her, indicating which card she ought to play, the smoke from his pipe a comforting heat against her neck. Never play yer own hand, my love, he would whisper. That was before he had known who she was—before he had realized her penchant for cards was a more mysterious talent of far sight. Her own divinity had spelled the beginning of the end, as it always did.

“Ye’ll come along, then?”

“Aye. Whyever wouldn’t I, Jack de Sparrow?”

He moved out from behind the safety of the table, increased their nearness. “Must be hard to leave yer kingdom…”

“De whole ocean’s my kingdom,” she returned without thinking. But he was right. She knew now, if ever she escaped this prison, she would miss the bayou. Ache for it, long for it, never be perfectly happy on the water. That had been the true curse of her imprisonment. Here she continually thirsted for the sea; there, she would regret the earth she would leave behind. But Jack understood that. He was a sailor. On the water he thought about making port, rum and women, and sometimes in his better moments, her. And yet when he was with her, his eyes strayed out open windows and down the river, his thoughts bent unintentionally to the sea.

“Then ye’ll finally see my ship,” he said, eager and excited, boyish as she had first known him.

“Yes, dat dear-bought ship,” she said, relaxing after too many moments of fear. She wouldn’t tell him that she’d seen the ship already, in many a dream and many a vision. She wouldn’t tell him the pictures that had taken shape in her mind, a ship with black sails, torn apart and claimed by the waves… no sense in telling him now.

The water stirred at their approach, salt rose to crest the ripples and the longboat snatched free of its rope, eager. Jack barely slid the oar into the water and it sprang away, away through dark dripping vines and curling roots all contrived to make their path smooth. Black eyes glowed yellow in the shadowy depths of the bayou, and Calypso kept her own eyes fixed on Jack. She did not want the bayou to judge her for leaving, however short her absence would be. She did not want to risk a look behind.

The current had picked up knowingly, and Jack thrust his oar out, using it only to steer away from a few swirling cesspools and hidden rocks. He knew the river well, and Calypso was proud, watching him maneuver the spreading black depths. Proud of his lithe calloused fingers and otherworldly ability to charm the very earth. Everything made way for him, everything bent to aid him. Even her. Yes, even her.

She spread her hands out on the bench, the texture of the wood old and tired, its color sweet, ripe, almost ready to fall from the tree. The air was cold, the sky some feathered velvet train, the wind stripping her naked in her own mind. She could smell the ocean. She could feel it coming.

“Almost there now,” Jack said, his voice swallowed and ages away. Did he know? Did he know how many decades she had dreamed of this moment… dreamed of the sea… dreamed of this taste of freedom? He couldn’t know. He couldn’t possibly understand.

He turned to face her, alive as she had never seen him, drinking in the brusque wildness of the escaping night, immortal in his own way. Black eyes rampant, perilous with pleasure, native lips curled behind a thousand smiles. She was more afraid of him than ever but in rather a different way, in almost a lustful way. Yes, she found exhilaration in this fear. He knew. This was all part of the wager, rushing her on without giving her time to reflect, to look ahead, to prepare herself. If she were her real self, she would gather the North wind and the eastern current, she would bring ice from Patagonia and thunder from Olympus and heap them upon him until he repented in helpless rapture, until he cried her name to the skies in adoration.

“There’s the Pearl,” he called back. It was almost indistinguishable, sunk low in grease-black horizon, and it seemed small.

Calypso did not care for the ship or any other ever built. Before her was the sea. The river spilled out of its bounds, tumbling over the uneven surface below and verily shouting its reunion in a thousand rhythms. She dove from the longboat into the waves without taking a breath, and at once was cast rough against a sandbar. Water filled her mouth, salt water. It burned down her throat more potent than any liquor ever had, made her at once invincible, delirious. Jack had caught her arm and yanked her back toward the boat and she fought him, clutched at the water, the foam and the mess of the silted inlet.

“Dalma! Ye want to drown? It’s high tide, have some sense,” he had managed to drag her panting back into the boat along with a few inches of dirty seawater. He was laughing at her. “Thirsty, eh?”

“Ye’ve no idea,” she choked.

The boat thumped against the Pearl and Jack stood, casting a line above and knotting it deftly to the bow. Calypso saw him run his hand down the line of the ship as he climbed the ladder, caressing it hello as one might a lover, soothing it as one might a tamed stallion.

“It’s only a ship, Jack.”

“Aye, but she’s my ship,” Jack said. “All mine.”

He loved her because he had paid for her with his life, Calypso thought. With his soul.

He reached a hand to help her onto the deck. “Make yerself comfortable. I’ll just have a word with me crew.”

“Jack!”

He swung around on one foot and the look he gave her made her feel like the only person alive. “Aye?”

“Before nightfall of da second day,” she said through clenched teeth. “I have to be back.”

He came closer, serious, sorry for her. “I’ll have ye back. Don’t worry.” And then he flipped his best paper-blank smile on the way to the helm.

More to come soon... and I really do mean soon this time! :)

A/N: Has it really been almost 2 weeks? I’m embarrassed. Time has really gotten away from me lately. Thank you so much for all the comments... I can’t tell you how glad I am to read them, and I’m having a wonderful time with this story. Cheers, and I hope you enjoy!

“So ye’ve known her, eh lad?”

Jack was on the last page of Il Principe. “Beg pardon?”

“The goddess,” Teague growled. “The swamp witch.” He combed through his moustache with long fingers, better suited to a Spanish guitar than tying ropes.

Jack couldn’t read his expression. “Are we talkin’ known like biblically known or what?”

“Biblically?” Teague chuckled deep in his throat. “Now there’s one book I never learned ye.” He swatted the slim volume out of Jack’s hand and leaned back, whiskey and smoke thick across his form, arms too strong for making music. “What did ye think I meant, boy?”

“Just tryin’ to gauge whether it were a good thing or a bad thing, to have known her…”

Teague smiled, eyes old embers, hotter than you’d expect. “Tryin’ to gauge? Fool lad, it’s a wonder I even bother. Ye never base yer actions on other folk’s morality, Jacky. I think I’ve taught ye that at least, haven’t I?”

More or less… or less… “Aye, then, I’ve known her. Biblically, metaphorically, literally, and any other way you can imagine.” Jack didn’t expect and therefore couldn’t steel himself for the blow that hit him across the face, landing him square athwart the cove dock with triple vision and a ring in his ears. But no, it wasn’t ringing in his ears… it was laughter. The laughter of a pirate, the laughter of a good man. He hated that laughter right now.

“Jack, Jack…” Teague had been drinking, not a few gulps after meat but really drinking, steadily for a few days. Jack curved his head back, eyeing him like a wary cat. It paid to be skittish when Teague was drunk. His boots squeaking, Teague lowered himself level with Jack and pulled his head in close, close enough to kiss him. “That makes two of us, Jacky. We’re peas in a pod, eh?”

“Not quite so green, sir.” And what a very strange pod that would be. “So all the pirates have known her, is that it?”

“Hardly!” Teague fumbled through one pocket, and then another. Felt around his neck, down the linked chains strung there. Into his greasy braids. Ah, there it was. “Honesty is worth somethin’, anyway, Jacky.” He handed him the coin. “Worth yer soul, maybe.”

“That’d be nice but I’ve already sold it, ta,” Jack said with a practiced smirk. Oh, how well he had learned the delicate art of fearlessness. Or the appearance thereof, anyway.

“Daft, completely daft.” When Teague said that, there was pride in his gaze, in the way he cuffed Jack’s ear like when he was younger. And somehow Jack knew he would always be a little boy around Teague. Teague wouldn’t ever let him grow up. “That’s why I like ye, boy. Ye make me feel sane by comparison… a good solid chap, as it were. But I’ll tell ye, ye can only sell yer soul once, but ye can trade it and barter it and bank on it forever. It ain’t over till they pull the lever, Jacky. It ain’t over till yer dangling in yer last dance.”

Jack realized the docks were completely empty, deserted. His very own ship sat before them, as it ever had. Yes, meetings with Teague meant docks and drinks and riddles, always riddles. And the Devil’s Throat wasn’t something any sailor took lightly during winter. Any sailor, that was, except him.

“This coin can buy yer soul back, Jacky.”

Magic. That was the word for it. A very funny word, Calypso had always thought… meant to encompass too much, always used for suggesting too little. But Jack was magic. Had magic inside… perhaps more than any other human she’d met. Restlessness and passion… or was it merely the unearthly obscurity of his eyes?

“Don’t judge a book by its cover, Dalma,” Jack said, catching the way she studied him from across the room.

“Ye are a pirate,” she said plainly. “And ye look like a castaway.”

Jack swirled the contents of his mug moodily. “Maybe I’m more of a castaway.”

She laughed. “Don’t be that way wid me, Jack de Sparrow. Come over here and tell me about dis treasure of yers.”

He slumped as though defeated and sat down on the floor, leaning against her. She knelt and wound her fingers through his loose hair, applying pressure to his temples, enjoying the sigh of relaxation he emitted. “Ye can make me look like a pirate, can’t ye, Dalma?”

“Of course,” she said softly, as though humoring a child. The way he felt against her, the way he leaned into her and surrendered himself to her touch—it was magic. Like giving birth; mysterious and almost erotic, violent with emotion. “I can make ye into whatever ye have a mind to be.” Absently she wound a few strands of his hair in her brown fingers and began braiding.

“That feels so…” he didn’t complete the sentence, and he didn’t have to. He had practically melted into her. “Don’t stop,” he murmured.

“Have ye slept lately?” she asked in amusement.

“Had to take the cargo in… couldn’t stop reading…” Calypso knotted the end of the braid and gathered another strand. “Do ye really think I’m a bad man?”

“I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t care what kind of man ye are.”

“Even if I were very bad… really wicked… ye still wouldn’t care, eh?”

“Not a pinch,” she returned, licking her fingers and concentrating. “I’d have care, though, if ye were too good. Good men come to bad ends, don’t dey?”

Jack grunted. “I never met a good man.”

Calypso wet her lips, closed her eyes. “Neither have I.”

“The treasure,” Jack said, drawing himself away from sleep. “Aztec treasure. Treasure like that could make a man safe… make him free, Dalma.”

“And how did ye hear ‘bout dis Aztec treasure?” she said, her voice lilting on a breeze, warm as a blanket.

“My nahual told me, obviously.” He was grinning. He wasn’t going to tell her.

Her weaving fingers quickened ever so slightly. “It ain’t what you tink, Jack.”

“So the stars tell me.”

“Don’t play with yer mortality, Jack. It be a precious gift, de only gift given yer kind. Don’t ever give up yer ability to die.”

“Spoken like a true immortal.”

She pressed her lips against his forehead, her skin sensitive in a thousand ways, achingly responsive. He loved her skin… the color of it, the flawed sketched history. It made her glad for a moment, glad of her captivity, glad of her caged form—to know that he loved it, wanted it despite its singularity, despite its imperfection. Or perhaps because of its imperfection. Some bit of wisdom flitted behind her eyelids—something about the captive coming to care for its captors? But he was not her captor. “I don want ye to stop believing,” she finally muttered. A half-finished braid dropped from her fingers; they were on the floor together, knotted together, growing into one another. “I’ll tell ye.”

“Aye?” he seemed to have forgotten the treasure. Too soon, too late he realized she had removed the flax string around his wrist—the bit of thread that kept an old coin. Too late he jerked his arm away. She had it in her hand.

“Curious…” she muttered, closeting her look. But she recognized it. Oh yes, she recognized it. “A curious trinket for a sparrow to own…”

“The only money to me name,” Jack said, his fingers trailing down her arm and reaching, with the most calculated innocence, for the coin. Just as deftly, she eluded their grasp.

“Surely ye haven’t read Chaucer yet… surely dat Teague weren’t so foolish…”

She knew.

Jack snapped to his feet, his hand flexing for a weapon, though he could not have guessed why. And she was up too—up with her prize, her face twisted into some feral shadow of itself.

“Nkome kakinda: teka vútula mbusa,” Calypso said in warning. To strike with a strong fist, you must turn over your hand.

“Ukipepeta nafaka, inabaki iliyo safi,” Jack replied, voice subdued. Had she forgotten who had brought her subjects to her, from halfway around the world? Had she forgotten her own name?

A moment passed. And then another. All was blistered pitch in the bayou where Jack faced Calypso, his eyes three shades darker than hers.

“Give me back the coin.”

“No.”

“Dalma,” he took a step towards her, his heart a thundering gypsy trail hidden under raked coffee brown skin.

“It ain’t yer guilt.” She was frightened, too. But her fear was so vastly different. She did not want him to be her enemy. She did not want him to bear her fury when… if…

“I took it freely.”

The fury lit across her face, one part kerosene and four parts ire… one part corn husk fuel and all the rest heartbreak. “No ye didn’t.”

He was behind her, entombing his face in the curve of her neck, one arm tight about her waist. His hands were stronger than hers. Unyielding he pried open her fingers, one by one, until the coin fell out of her hand. It lay on the floor in the dark, and Jack didn’t let go of Calypso.

“A wager,” she said abruptly.

“Stakes?”

“I win, ye make me a vow of my own choosin’. Ye win, I give ye de bearings for de Isle de Muerta.”

More to come soon...