AN: This is an idea that has been floating around in my head for some time. Not beta'd, but I wanted to post it now.
I used to dance in rainstorms; every once in a while, I still do.
DISCLAIMER: *Jolly Roger waves in the wind*
On storm-wracked nights like these, when the darkness and the wind turned the sea into an endless, many-faceted mirror, Jack looked into the lantern flames and thought of Ghislaine.
He remembered a house, more a shack, really, with dark, unlit windows, the pounding of his heart as he'd ventured around the back to see her, illuminated in a flash of moonlight, wet black hair and dusky skin, dancing with the storm. He remembered her wild laughter in the wind.
Witch. Whore. Dream-child.
When they met, she'd had seventeen years to his fourteen. He remembered her crooked smile, her merry laugh, the dewy, cinnamon perfection of her skin. She had been his first lover, and a playmate as much as a lover, for there was no guilt or awkwardness in their pleasure, only joy. She was supple as a young birch and shameless as Eve before the fall, and she'd taught him of pleasure.
She'd been the daughter of some nameless rapist and a mad Frenchwoman named Marielle who told fortunes in the marketplace. Ghislaine's richly colored skin whispered of a father who was not European, but none knew whether he had been an escaped slave, a native of the islands, or the devil himself. Raised as she was by a madwoman, Ghislaine was the sanest person he'd ever met. Marielle knew no magic, but all the second-sight and spells and curses that she pretended at for the meager coins it brought her, her daughter possessed in truth. She'd taken to prophecy as naturally as a she-wolf to the hunt, but like the she-wolf, she was ruthless. Her simple, often unpleasant predictions did not find favor among the villagers as did her mother's vague, romantic, mystical pronouncements, so Ghislaine had earned her way in the world not with her sight but with her touch.
Jack had been her secret sweetheart, her dear friend, the one from whom she asked no price. She was no innocent. She'd been whoring herself since she was scarcely into her teens, she'd told him unselfconsciously, so that she and her mother could eat. Her mother had passed when Ghislaine was fifteen. She still spoke to her mother, or her mother's ghost- the mad ghost of a mad woman. Jack had found that frightening; Ghislaine saw no strangeness in it. She had loved her mother.
She also loved the storms that came to the islands in the autumn, streaking fire through the sky and leaving the air wet and heavy like a blanket over the land. She would dance with them, and on the nights he found her doing so, he would let himself be drawn into the dance himself. They had been children, and euphoric with the carelessness of youth. He'd come and gone from the island as his adventures took him, returning to her with the tides. He would have taken her with him, had she wanted to come, but she was a creature of the earth and wind as he was a creature of the sea; she loved her home, and was content there.
He'd been unable to imagine anyone ever wanting to hurt her. The fire in the lanterns wavered, tracing pictures in the air.
He remembered coming up to a shack with dark, unlit windows, heart pounding as he'd ventured around the back, expecting to find her dancing there in the rush of wind and the deluge of rain, dancing for the joy of it, beautiful in the darkness.
Behind the shack, there had been nothing but ashes.
Thunder cracked. Lightning bloomed. The rain fell and the flames in the lantern moved.
They'd burned her alive, she who had no need of fire, for she'd never been cold. He'd not dreamed that such a thing could be possible. He could almost hear her laughter on the wind, even today. Burned, as a witch. Oh, but she had been a witch… wanton, beguiling, the elixir of hell and the ambrosia of paradise flowing through her veins, not a witch of potions and cantrips but one of breathless moonlit wonder, a dream-child dancing with the storm.
Ghislaine. Oh, Ghislaine.
One could not mourn such a creature, only stare into the fire, stare into the storm, and search for her image reflected there, fey and challenging. She would never truly be gone, to him. Somewhere on some rain-swept beach, she twirled barefoot in the sand, her white shift soaked and clinging to her dark skin, her eyes sparkling as she held out a strong, slender hand, beckoning him to her.
Catch me if you can, she seemed to laugh to him in his memory before she disappeared in the curl of the smoke, the spray of the storm-tossed sea.
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