Disclaimer: I own the DVD, the soundtrack CD, a Jack costume from a
play I was in, a dagger, and a cutlass. I own nothing else. Or do
I?...no...
A/N: Although I''ve rped incessantly for a long time, read fanfic everyday, and write creatively for my own entertainment, and watch POTC compulsively....This is the first time I''ve written fanfic of any kind. Ever. So while I think it probably won't altogether suck, I'm still not 100% sure what I'm doing. So if you review, please keep that in mind and be nice ;;
Chapter One-"Of Cows And What There Once Was."
Ultimately, it was the cow's fault.
I will contend that to the end. I blame the cow. And so can anyone else who's possessions were missing after I parted company with said person. Just remember that: If it weren't for the cow, I wouldn't be Captain Jack Sparrow.
Now, don't look at me like that! There's a perfectly logical explanation. Yes, logical. I am capable of it, you know. However, I've heard the beginning is a good place to start, so let's give that approach a try, eh?
When asked if I was born and/or raised in a barn, I have reason to answer in the affirmative. Not that it was something that automatically meant I was at all good with animals. To date, I've been bitten by three rabbits, five cats, eight dogs, four horses, two pigs, a hawk, a parrot, nine donkeys, and a three-toed sloth. But sloths have no teeth, so that wasn't that bad. Interesting story, though, but since we're starting from the beginning, we'll leave that there for now.
I was an odd child, I really was. At four, my Dad brought me in for a check up and I bit the doctor. I don't mean a little snap. I mean "Chomp!" Hard. On the wrist. Which may not be so unusual, no one really likes doctors, and biting is relatively common in four year old...isn't it? I dunno. Anyways, the odd part came when I insisted that, since I bit him, he was now a werewolf. I also had it in my head to find a silver bullet and put it to good use, but my Dad's belt on my backside took that idea promptly out of my mind.
Then when I was six, I started hunting by ambush: I'd sit quietly in a tree, and wait until someone walked underneath it, then jump out of the tree and scare them silly.
By the age of seven, pretending to be things was what interested me. "Things" often included talking animals, which isn't so weird, talking objects, which is a little stranger, and things pretending to be other things. For example, a rabbit who's pretending to be a cat. I also liked to play out scenes for more than one character. Just imagine what the other people from the town must have thought, seeing a child, who, at the tender age of seven, was already considered an established looney, out in a field trying to be a cat and dog at the same time. It's so difficult to chase yourself around a cornfield, you know.
There's that look again! Now, cut it out! It's not like I do it anymore...I do not!
Yeah, I was a kid once, too. Not that it's something I'm proud of. I was quick, athletic, and clever. But I was also a scrawny little piece of work: clothes hanging loose as sails on a slow day in the doldrums, ribs sticking out like a washboard, and looking chronically half starved though I ate everything I could lay hand on. Yes, I was a severely scraggly whelp...nothing like the pinnacle of masculinity I am now.
What have I just said about looking at me like that?
Anyhow, so when I was a kid, I lived in this place called Oxbay. It was nice enough...I guess. Two towns on the island, Oxbay it's self, which had the port, and Greenbay, which was on the other side of the island, through the jungle. There may have been some odd things in that tangle of foliage, but I liked it, mostly because it made me look brave to be the kid hanging out in the jungle when no one else would go. I was an odd kid, like I said.
I remember one time when I was nine, I went out into the jungle-and it's not like I even go very far from the city gates-and went out to putter around in what I considered to be "my" pond. A pool that was up to where my waist was at the time, where nice, cool water, seeped up from an underground, freshwater stream. I used to go out there with wooden toy boats to float, buckets to get water to make mud puddles for reasons I don't remember, and so forth. On that particular day, it was excruciatingly hot, even for in the Caribbean. So, naturally, I got into my pond, and took a nice, cool, little swim. At some point during this, I fell asleep, with my head on the bank, to prevent drowning. Remember that, you, drowning is never a good thing. It started getting dark, and people started going "Where's little Jack?" and started getting worried, because the last anyone saw of me, I was heading into the jungle. About one panicked hour later, someone I don't remember found me dozing peacefully, half-submerged in a pond. I was brought home, clothes, hair and everything dripping, really soaked. Once home, was given a good talking to that I don't quite remember either. Something about taking unnecessary risks, and the possible dangers of jungles.
Another point about the young me: I seem to recall always having been easily impressed by shiny things and money...it seems some things just don't change.
The town of Oxbay was a series of scattered farms where there were valleys, and really, really green hills where there were no valleys. I do mean really, really green. Looked like an over-rated painting there, and almost the whole damn island was just like it. But there was one redeeming feature, as I saw it, of the place: there was a nice tall hill in just the right spot to overlook the port. When I wasn't tramping around the jungle or doing what I was actually supposed to be doing back at home, I was up there.
I could often be found down actually at the port too, though someone always eventually removed me from the premises. Probably afraid I'd be overlooked and therefore stepped on by the huge hulks of sailors. I was a small kid, like I've mentioned. This, of coarse didn't mean I didn't try to sneak onboard some of the ships, just out of curiosity, and to be a little pain in the hind quarters. The farthest I ever got, I did by somehow "accidentally" sneaking aboard when all the men where busy hefting and carrying, and simply hid away in the first below-deck corner I found. I was ecstatic and thrilled when I felt the ship start moving. Though I wasn't there long before I was found, all the men where very impressed that I had managed to get on the ship in the first place, never mind remain undetected for as long as I did, and as they'd barely left the piers, they just lowered me overboard and let me swim the relatively short distance back to shore. As a joke, they also placed a small piece of paper marked "RETURN TO SENDER" on the back of my shirt. Still legible when I got back home, though most of the ink had washed away during the swim. I never quite explained to my Dad why I'd been "returned to sender" or from where. Mostly because he never bothered to ask. Probably a wise thing to do.
When I was growing up, I was taken to be a bit slow. Nonsense of coarse, I've never been dumb, I was just smart in my own way.
You're looking at me like that again!
As I was saying before I was so interrupted, they didn't think me the brightest star in the firmament: Oxbay was a decently well-to-do town, and even farmers' sons were expected to do some decent book-learning with the local priest. I was simply incapable of doing it. Numbers that did not directly and clearly pertain to some task were firmly and decidedly out of my grasp, and I am no friend of the written word. Letters tend not to stay put, and it's bloody distracting. They seem to maintain their proper positions for everyone else, though. Go figure. It's also why people are surprised when they see some very much-read-looking books in my cabin. But with letters that change residence every few seconds, reading's a challenge, and I like challenges.
But I digress. I do that a lot. I never did well with what I was actually supposed to be learning, and was one terrible farmer's son-what with my innate ability to inspire naturally herbivorous animals to suddenly become carnivorous in my presence- and never knew how to sit still indoors for long, but one thing I did know well is everything that was happening in the port. Whether it was actually visible from where I was or not, I knew what was happening, sometimes from nothing more than what the seagulls were up to. Anywhere were there was a lot of water, I sort of tended to gravitate toward there. Some things simply don't change.
Never got a long with my peers either, now that I think of it. Never saw eye-to-eye, us, but I was alright with that, seeing as I''ve always been vastly superior to them. Couldn't out-learn them at school, and, as scrawny a little scrapper as I was, had to cheat blatantly to outfight them, but out-thinking and practical joking, there was something I could do.
Some times I got the better of my peers without their knowing. For example, some of them would get a few shillings for a snack after lessons. I never got any money, living as close to the church as I happened to, but I knew I wanted their money. They knew I was a bit odd, but not violent, so they didn't naturally fear me, I hadn't quite the skill to pickpocket it yet, and I was too small to be intimidating, so that left me with my brain. Thankfully, it's always been in working order. I could almost always manage to go up to one of them, and start talking with them about pretty much anything, and then turn the conversation toward money. By the end of the conversation, they were so badly confused, they'd simply give me their money, since I'd made it seem like a good idea at the time.
Adults were not exempt from my tricks either: and that includes the mayor (Oxbay had no Governor, we were under the jurisdiction of Redmond's Governor-Redmond being the island closest to ours, almost visible in the east.). One day when I heard he'd be out and his house empty for about a half an hour, I immediately set to work. I got my friend and cajoled him into helping me remove everything from the mayor's house that we could carry that was not nailed down, and moved it out to the jungle-through back roads, so no one saw us. When we'd finished stealing the mayor's decor, his house looked quite Spartan indeed. So we were actually being nice when we put a small pile of banana peels in the middle of his floor, and covered the outside of the windows in melted caramel. My friend got all the ground floor windows, while I climbed up the storm gutters and the ridges in the siding to get the higher up windows. Unfortunately, we weren't finished when the mayor and his lot got home, and my friend and I was forced to help my friend escape. There was no time left for me to get away, so I had to hide in a broom closet. I was discovered, of coarse, as if they didn't know I did it. I took sole responsibility (I got my friend into things, and I had to get him out. If we got caught, it was my fault for not getting us out, and so I'd carry the punishment alone. So went our agreement, anyways). It was required that I put all the furniture back and remove the caramel from the windows. But it worth it to see the look on the mayor's face, hah
Yes, I actually had a friend, though Ron was more an accomplice than a friend. He had rather untidy red-black hair, clipped to just above his ears. His skin was light for someone living in the Caribbean, and he had a generous helping of freckles. He wasn't mischievous by nature, but he was a follower by nature and probably still is, and I'm a born leader, so we got along fine. We never played in the traditional sense of it, never shot the breeze together. But whenever I was up to something that needed an extra set of hands, I'd go calling on him. Got off some good gags with his help, and I think by the end, I'd taught Ron how to have fun.
And the cow? She was at home, of coarse. You don't bring cows into the jungle, though if I had, I wouldn't be here telling you this. My parents...uh...bloody hell, I can''t even remember their names. I can only assume they were Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow. But at any rate, they were farmers. Yes, farmers. Loyal...English...farmers. Which is why I haven't spoken about them in more years than I care to count. They had every variety of quadruped you could care to imagine. Horses, pigs, dogs, cats, a bull, sheep, goats, and that fateful cow. Oh, and chickens...I guess they have two feet, though...
And the cow, you ask again? My, you are impatient, aren't you? But, ah, yes, the bovine author of my fate. Well, before I explain that, you have to know that my Mum was already dead. I think. Or maybe just left my Dad before I can remember, either way, I never knew the old hag. And at the time, my Dad was in the barn, with said cow.
This is the part where you're likely to make about the same observation most people make when and id I tell them this particular bit of my tale: you're about to think "It must not be true, or how could this looney old pirate be talking about it so lightly?" But the minute you think that, you're forgetting that I'm Captain Jack Sparrow. And I'm the type who tends to make light of serious things. A healthy practice, I say, though some just call it morbid.
My Dad was in the barn, with the cow. It was evening, and I was out in the jungle outside the city. Puttering around in "my" pond, as I seem to recall. Since it was evening, as my Dad milked the cow, the sun was going down, and you can't milk cows in the dark, so he had a lantern there with him. The lantern was of the candle-in-a-glass-dome variety. Unfortunately, this goddamned cow was of the ornery variety.
The cow kicked. The lantern shattered and fell. The barn burned, and everything and everyone in it. The barn, the hay, the horses and bull and chickens. The cow. My Dad. Gone. Just like that.
Of coarse, no one bothered to tell me. I could see the smoke from the jungle, but thought it was another town bonfire. Never had much interest in such social events, so I ignored it. Later when it was getting dark and I was getting hungry, I ambled home, and there was a crowd of people on our property. I pushed my way through, and there it was: the ashes, the remains, the nothingness. A black-burnt hoof. A tarnished cow-bell. The smell of burned flesh and hair and blood: a smell I'm sorry to say I only became more familiar with over these years.
I'm not sure how long I stood there. I'm not sure if I cried. But if I did, it was the last time I ever would. The ashes were cold and dead when I saw something glinting in them. I wandered over the skeleton of the barn, the fallen timbers that flaked black dust, needling out of the ground, and pulled away that blackened metal of a few door handles. Under all that was a ring. A silver ring with a blue sapphire in it-my father's. I looked at it, and jammed it on my finger, and stood, looking around. The moon was up, and turned all the shadows around me into wraiths. My own shadow, the shadow of the skeletal barn. All was shadows, all was silence.
Now that I think of it, I don't actually think I cried. I don't think I felt anything. That was when I learned to turn my emotions off or just recede into my own head. To kill, to lose, to lie and not feel it, I learned it all right there in the pit of ash.
A hand came down on my shoulder. A heavy hand that felt strong and sure, large like a paw. I mistook it for a farmer's hand, and turned, for one dizzying moment thinking my father had escaped the fire.
But that was not my father there. It was a large man, powerful looking, tall and broad, and built like a bear, with long, shaggy, tangled, dark brown hair to match. There was not much light in the middle of the night, but I could see his weathered features, the blue bandana around his head, the gold hoop pierced to his right ear, the brown tunic and pants, his sharp features. I knew this man was not Dad, but he looked just like him, and at a closer look, not unlike me.
"Jack?" he asked in what I assume was the gentlest tone he could manage. It wasn't gentle at all really, it was rough, a bit like a talking dog, but it seemed like he wasn't willing it to be. I nodded curiously, probably looking disoriented, maybe even frightened. The man nodded back and continued talking: "Lad, my name is Christopher Sparrow. I'm your father's brother, your uncle Ris. You're coming with me, now."
Ris held me by the shoulder and turned to lead me away. I stood among the remains, as steadfastly refusing to move as an old willow: roots too deep to move, it felt. But I was only a young sapling at ten years old, or it would have been even harder. My roots there did not run as deep. Ris sighed, and knelt down in front of me so our faces were at the same height, and he said to me as sensitively as he could manage:
"Jack, lad, what I'm about to teach you might be the most important thought ever put in your head. I want you to take everything you're feeling, and I want you to put it away for another time. There will be a time to mourn, a time to think, a time to cry if that's how you choose to deal with it, but it's not here, not now. Wait for the opportune moment."
I nodded.
"The opportune moment." I whispered. Ris smiled grimly.
"Now I want you to walk with me. We're going to walk away from here. But take one last good look around you, because in a minute you'll never see it again, it'll be behind you, figuratively and literally. You are going to walk with me away from here, and you're going to look forwards. No glance over your shoulder, never look back. Don't ever look back."
I nodded again and Ris stood. I took my last look, checking for anything else like my father's ring that may have survived, but there was nothing but ashes and bones and metal. I looked up at Ris, who nodded again.
"Now. Never look back."
Ris put his heavy hand on my shoulder to lead me again and this time I followed him away into the night. Looking perfectly normal. Not consciously aware of feeling anything. Well, not feeling anything isn't quite true.
I felt nothing, but I felt Strong.
A/N: So...yeah. That was my first chapter of fanfic. I know this is supposed to be a humour/adventure fic and all that, and the ending of this chapter was a bit more angst-y, but what do you expect? He was just orphaned, after all, and he's only ten...but anyways, I promise the next chapter will go back to being more light hearted, particularly since Jack starts getting comfortable as his new self. Assuming that R&R means around here what I'm relatively sure it means (read&review?) Please do so Ta! doldrums: n. An equatorial region of habitual calm, interspersed with sudden storms, and , importantly to the specified simile, most of the time has virtually no wind.
With regards to the mentioning of letters that move around the page, in case it wasn't made clear or you just plain didn't get it (don't worry, happens to me all the time) for some reason, I decided to make Jack dyslexic. If you think it was a dumb idea, go right ahead and tell me!
A/N: Although I''ve rped incessantly for a long time, read fanfic everyday, and write creatively for my own entertainment, and watch POTC compulsively....This is the first time I''ve written fanfic of any kind. Ever. So while I think it probably won't altogether suck, I'm still not 100% sure what I'm doing. So if you review, please keep that in mind and be nice ;;
Chapter One-"Of Cows And What There Once Was."
Ultimately, it was the cow's fault.
I will contend that to the end. I blame the cow. And so can anyone else who's possessions were missing after I parted company with said person. Just remember that: If it weren't for the cow, I wouldn't be Captain Jack Sparrow.
Now, don't look at me like that! There's a perfectly logical explanation. Yes, logical. I am capable of it, you know. However, I've heard the beginning is a good place to start, so let's give that approach a try, eh?
When asked if I was born and/or raised in a barn, I have reason to answer in the affirmative. Not that it was something that automatically meant I was at all good with animals. To date, I've been bitten by three rabbits, five cats, eight dogs, four horses, two pigs, a hawk, a parrot, nine donkeys, and a three-toed sloth. But sloths have no teeth, so that wasn't that bad. Interesting story, though, but since we're starting from the beginning, we'll leave that there for now.
I was an odd child, I really was. At four, my Dad brought me in for a check up and I bit the doctor. I don't mean a little snap. I mean "Chomp!" Hard. On the wrist. Which may not be so unusual, no one really likes doctors, and biting is relatively common in four year old...isn't it? I dunno. Anyways, the odd part came when I insisted that, since I bit him, he was now a werewolf. I also had it in my head to find a silver bullet and put it to good use, but my Dad's belt on my backside took that idea promptly out of my mind.
Then when I was six, I started hunting by ambush: I'd sit quietly in a tree, and wait until someone walked underneath it, then jump out of the tree and scare them silly.
By the age of seven, pretending to be things was what interested me. "Things" often included talking animals, which isn't so weird, talking objects, which is a little stranger, and things pretending to be other things. For example, a rabbit who's pretending to be a cat. I also liked to play out scenes for more than one character. Just imagine what the other people from the town must have thought, seeing a child, who, at the tender age of seven, was already considered an established looney, out in a field trying to be a cat and dog at the same time. It's so difficult to chase yourself around a cornfield, you know.
There's that look again! Now, cut it out! It's not like I do it anymore...I do not!
Yeah, I was a kid once, too. Not that it's something I'm proud of. I was quick, athletic, and clever. But I was also a scrawny little piece of work: clothes hanging loose as sails on a slow day in the doldrums, ribs sticking out like a washboard, and looking chronically half starved though I ate everything I could lay hand on. Yes, I was a severely scraggly whelp...nothing like the pinnacle of masculinity I am now.
What have I just said about looking at me like that?
Anyhow, so when I was a kid, I lived in this place called Oxbay. It was nice enough...I guess. Two towns on the island, Oxbay it's self, which had the port, and Greenbay, which was on the other side of the island, through the jungle. There may have been some odd things in that tangle of foliage, but I liked it, mostly because it made me look brave to be the kid hanging out in the jungle when no one else would go. I was an odd kid, like I said.
I remember one time when I was nine, I went out into the jungle-and it's not like I even go very far from the city gates-and went out to putter around in what I considered to be "my" pond. A pool that was up to where my waist was at the time, where nice, cool water, seeped up from an underground, freshwater stream. I used to go out there with wooden toy boats to float, buckets to get water to make mud puddles for reasons I don't remember, and so forth. On that particular day, it was excruciatingly hot, even for in the Caribbean. So, naturally, I got into my pond, and took a nice, cool, little swim. At some point during this, I fell asleep, with my head on the bank, to prevent drowning. Remember that, you, drowning is never a good thing. It started getting dark, and people started going "Where's little Jack?" and started getting worried, because the last anyone saw of me, I was heading into the jungle. About one panicked hour later, someone I don't remember found me dozing peacefully, half-submerged in a pond. I was brought home, clothes, hair and everything dripping, really soaked. Once home, was given a good talking to that I don't quite remember either. Something about taking unnecessary risks, and the possible dangers of jungles.
Another point about the young me: I seem to recall always having been easily impressed by shiny things and money...it seems some things just don't change.
The town of Oxbay was a series of scattered farms where there were valleys, and really, really green hills where there were no valleys. I do mean really, really green. Looked like an over-rated painting there, and almost the whole damn island was just like it. But there was one redeeming feature, as I saw it, of the place: there was a nice tall hill in just the right spot to overlook the port. When I wasn't tramping around the jungle or doing what I was actually supposed to be doing back at home, I was up there.
I could often be found down actually at the port too, though someone always eventually removed me from the premises. Probably afraid I'd be overlooked and therefore stepped on by the huge hulks of sailors. I was a small kid, like I've mentioned. This, of coarse didn't mean I didn't try to sneak onboard some of the ships, just out of curiosity, and to be a little pain in the hind quarters. The farthest I ever got, I did by somehow "accidentally" sneaking aboard when all the men where busy hefting and carrying, and simply hid away in the first below-deck corner I found. I was ecstatic and thrilled when I felt the ship start moving. Though I wasn't there long before I was found, all the men where very impressed that I had managed to get on the ship in the first place, never mind remain undetected for as long as I did, and as they'd barely left the piers, they just lowered me overboard and let me swim the relatively short distance back to shore. As a joke, they also placed a small piece of paper marked "RETURN TO SENDER" on the back of my shirt. Still legible when I got back home, though most of the ink had washed away during the swim. I never quite explained to my Dad why I'd been "returned to sender" or from where. Mostly because he never bothered to ask. Probably a wise thing to do.
When I was growing up, I was taken to be a bit slow. Nonsense of coarse, I've never been dumb, I was just smart in my own way.
You're looking at me like that again!
As I was saying before I was so interrupted, they didn't think me the brightest star in the firmament: Oxbay was a decently well-to-do town, and even farmers' sons were expected to do some decent book-learning with the local priest. I was simply incapable of doing it. Numbers that did not directly and clearly pertain to some task were firmly and decidedly out of my grasp, and I am no friend of the written word. Letters tend not to stay put, and it's bloody distracting. They seem to maintain their proper positions for everyone else, though. Go figure. It's also why people are surprised when they see some very much-read-looking books in my cabin. But with letters that change residence every few seconds, reading's a challenge, and I like challenges.
But I digress. I do that a lot. I never did well with what I was actually supposed to be learning, and was one terrible farmer's son-what with my innate ability to inspire naturally herbivorous animals to suddenly become carnivorous in my presence- and never knew how to sit still indoors for long, but one thing I did know well is everything that was happening in the port. Whether it was actually visible from where I was or not, I knew what was happening, sometimes from nothing more than what the seagulls were up to. Anywhere were there was a lot of water, I sort of tended to gravitate toward there. Some things simply don't change.
Never got a long with my peers either, now that I think of it. Never saw eye-to-eye, us, but I was alright with that, seeing as I''ve always been vastly superior to them. Couldn't out-learn them at school, and, as scrawny a little scrapper as I was, had to cheat blatantly to outfight them, but out-thinking and practical joking, there was something I could do.
Some times I got the better of my peers without their knowing. For example, some of them would get a few shillings for a snack after lessons. I never got any money, living as close to the church as I happened to, but I knew I wanted their money. They knew I was a bit odd, but not violent, so they didn't naturally fear me, I hadn't quite the skill to pickpocket it yet, and I was too small to be intimidating, so that left me with my brain. Thankfully, it's always been in working order. I could almost always manage to go up to one of them, and start talking with them about pretty much anything, and then turn the conversation toward money. By the end of the conversation, they were so badly confused, they'd simply give me their money, since I'd made it seem like a good idea at the time.
Adults were not exempt from my tricks either: and that includes the mayor (Oxbay had no Governor, we were under the jurisdiction of Redmond's Governor-Redmond being the island closest to ours, almost visible in the east.). One day when I heard he'd be out and his house empty for about a half an hour, I immediately set to work. I got my friend and cajoled him into helping me remove everything from the mayor's house that we could carry that was not nailed down, and moved it out to the jungle-through back roads, so no one saw us. When we'd finished stealing the mayor's decor, his house looked quite Spartan indeed. So we were actually being nice when we put a small pile of banana peels in the middle of his floor, and covered the outside of the windows in melted caramel. My friend got all the ground floor windows, while I climbed up the storm gutters and the ridges in the siding to get the higher up windows. Unfortunately, we weren't finished when the mayor and his lot got home, and my friend and I was forced to help my friend escape. There was no time left for me to get away, so I had to hide in a broom closet. I was discovered, of coarse, as if they didn't know I did it. I took sole responsibility (I got my friend into things, and I had to get him out. If we got caught, it was my fault for not getting us out, and so I'd carry the punishment alone. So went our agreement, anyways). It was required that I put all the furniture back and remove the caramel from the windows. But it worth it to see the look on the mayor's face, hah
Yes, I actually had a friend, though Ron was more an accomplice than a friend. He had rather untidy red-black hair, clipped to just above his ears. His skin was light for someone living in the Caribbean, and he had a generous helping of freckles. He wasn't mischievous by nature, but he was a follower by nature and probably still is, and I'm a born leader, so we got along fine. We never played in the traditional sense of it, never shot the breeze together. But whenever I was up to something that needed an extra set of hands, I'd go calling on him. Got off some good gags with his help, and I think by the end, I'd taught Ron how to have fun.
And the cow? She was at home, of coarse. You don't bring cows into the jungle, though if I had, I wouldn't be here telling you this. My parents...uh...bloody hell, I can''t even remember their names. I can only assume they were Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow. But at any rate, they were farmers. Yes, farmers. Loyal...English...farmers. Which is why I haven't spoken about them in more years than I care to count. They had every variety of quadruped you could care to imagine. Horses, pigs, dogs, cats, a bull, sheep, goats, and that fateful cow. Oh, and chickens...I guess they have two feet, though...
And the cow, you ask again? My, you are impatient, aren't you? But, ah, yes, the bovine author of my fate. Well, before I explain that, you have to know that my Mum was already dead. I think. Or maybe just left my Dad before I can remember, either way, I never knew the old hag. And at the time, my Dad was in the barn, with said cow.
This is the part where you're likely to make about the same observation most people make when and id I tell them this particular bit of my tale: you're about to think "It must not be true, or how could this looney old pirate be talking about it so lightly?" But the minute you think that, you're forgetting that I'm Captain Jack Sparrow. And I'm the type who tends to make light of serious things. A healthy practice, I say, though some just call it morbid.
My Dad was in the barn, with the cow. It was evening, and I was out in the jungle outside the city. Puttering around in "my" pond, as I seem to recall. Since it was evening, as my Dad milked the cow, the sun was going down, and you can't milk cows in the dark, so he had a lantern there with him. The lantern was of the candle-in-a-glass-dome variety. Unfortunately, this goddamned cow was of the ornery variety.
The cow kicked. The lantern shattered and fell. The barn burned, and everything and everyone in it. The barn, the hay, the horses and bull and chickens. The cow. My Dad. Gone. Just like that.
Of coarse, no one bothered to tell me. I could see the smoke from the jungle, but thought it was another town bonfire. Never had much interest in such social events, so I ignored it. Later when it was getting dark and I was getting hungry, I ambled home, and there was a crowd of people on our property. I pushed my way through, and there it was: the ashes, the remains, the nothingness. A black-burnt hoof. A tarnished cow-bell. The smell of burned flesh and hair and blood: a smell I'm sorry to say I only became more familiar with over these years.
I'm not sure how long I stood there. I'm not sure if I cried. But if I did, it was the last time I ever would. The ashes were cold and dead when I saw something glinting in them. I wandered over the skeleton of the barn, the fallen timbers that flaked black dust, needling out of the ground, and pulled away that blackened metal of a few door handles. Under all that was a ring. A silver ring with a blue sapphire in it-my father's. I looked at it, and jammed it on my finger, and stood, looking around. The moon was up, and turned all the shadows around me into wraiths. My own shadow, the shadow of the skeletal barn. All was shadows, all was silence.
Now that I think of it, I don't actually think I cried. I don't think I felt anything. That was when I learned to turn my emotions off or just recede into my own head. To kill, to lose, to lie and not feel it, I learned it all right there in the pit of ash.
A hand came down on my shoulder. A heavy hand that felt strong and sure, large like a paw. I mistook it for a farmer's hand, and turned, for one dizzying moment thinking my father had escaped the fire.
But that was not my father there. It was a large man, powerful looking, tall and broad, and built like a bear, with long, shaggy, tangled, dark brown hair to match. There was not much light in the middle of the night, but I could see his weathered features, the blue bandana around his head, the gold hoop pierced to his right ear, the brown tunic and pants, his sharp features. I knew this man was not Dad, but he looked just like him, and at a closer look, not unlike me.
"Jack?" he asked in what I assume was the gentlest tone he could manage. It wasn't gentle at all really, it was rough, a bit like a talking dog, but it seemed like he wasn't willing it to be. I nodded curiously, probably looking disoriented, maybe even frightened. The man nodded back and continued talking: "Lad, my name is Christopher Sparrow. I'm your father's brother, your uncle Ris. You're coming with me, now."
Ris held me by the shoulder and turned to lead me away. I stood among the remains, as steadfastly refusing to move as an old willow: roots too deep to move, it felt. But I was only a young sapling at ten years old, or it would have been even harder. My roots there did not run as deep. Ris sighed, and knelt down in front of me so our faces were at the same height, and he said to me as sensitively as he could manage:
"Jack, lad, what I'm about to teach you might be the most important thought ever put in your head. I want you to take everything you're feeling, and I want you to put it away for another time. There will be a time to mourn, a time to think, a time to cry if that's how you choose to deal with it, but it's not here, not now. Wait for the opportune moment."
I nodded.
"The opportune moment." I whispered. Ris smiled grimly.
"Now I want you to walk with me. We're going to walk away from here. But take one last good look around you, because in a minute you'll never see it again, it'll be behind you, figuratively and literally. You are going to walk with me away from here, and you're going to look forwards. No glance over your shoulder, never look back. Don't ever look back."
I nodded again and Ris stood. I took my last look, checking for anything else like my father's ring that may have survived, but there was nothing but ashes and bones and metal. I looked up at Ris, who nodded again.
"Now. Never look back."
Ris put his heavy hand on my shoulder to lead me again and this time I followed him away into the night. Looking perfectly normal. Not consciously aware of feeling anything. Well, not feeling anything isn't quite true.
I felt nothing, but I felt Strong.
A/N: So...yeah. That was my first chapter of fanfic. I know this is supposed to be a humour/adventure fic and all that, and the ending of this chapter was a bit more angst-y, but what do you expect? He was just orphaned, after all, and he's only ten...but anyways, I promise the next chapter will go back to being more light hearted, particularly since Jack starts getting comfortable as his new self. Assuming that R&R means around here what I'm relatively sure it means (read&review?) Please do so Ta! doldrums: n. An equatorial region of habitual calm, interspersed with sudden storms, and , importantly to the specified simile, most of the time has virtually no wind.
With regards to the mentioning of letters that move around the page, in case it wasn't made clear or you just plain didn't get it (don't worry, happens to me all the time) for some reason, I decided to make Jack dyslexic. If you think it was a dumb idea, go right ahead and tell me!