Disclaimer: Alas, I do not own Pirates of the Caribbean.
Back from the Dead Yo Ho Yo Ho
By
Runt Thunderbelch
Chapter 1: Tales of Woe, Tales of Treasure
"Let me go! Let me go!"
Was that a child screaming? Captain Jack Sparrow struggled to get his kohl-lined eyelids open. He felt the quarterdeck of the Black Pearl beneath his spine and saw the endless blue sky above him. He hated this blue sky—it with no sun, no clouds, no wind, no night, just endless, endless, endless blue.
He clambered to his feet. Now, two more children were also shouting protests. Three children? Aboard his ship? That was bloody impossible! He launched himself staggering across the quarterdeck and down to the main deck. As he ambled along, he thought better of it. He was after all Captain Jack Sparrow. He must always be gracious.
Gunners Mate Jack Sparrow was holding a struggling mulatto girl. Purser Jack Sparrow was holding a Eurasian lad, who was also fighting. Able Seaman Jack Sparrow was holding what appeared to be a Euro-Incan girl. All three children seemed to be exactly the same age, which was estimated by Captain Jack Sparrow to be about, that is approximately, oh, somewhere around, frankly he had no idea. He'd avoided children whenever possible and knew next to nothing about them.
"Good morning," he began. "Er, good afternoon, er, good day. Yes. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl. I am Captain Jack Sparrow, at your service."
The struggling mulatto girl shouted, "Make these ruffians let us go!"
"I can do that." He closed his eyes and concentrated very hard. He found that, when he did this, he could somewhat regain his sanity. When he opened his eyes again, his delusional crew had vanished back into the nothingness from where his deranged mind had summoned them. "Better?"
The three children looked around as if they expected the crew to suddenly reappear. "Yes, thank you."
"You are very welcome!" He glanced around at the desert that stretched away in all directions. "The natural question to ask at this point is: how did you come to be aboard my ship?"
"Our mothers sent us here to find you."
"Did they now?"
"You don't believe us?"
Sparrow waved his arms expansively. "Look about you! I'm the captain of a ship which is stranded in the middle of a desert. My crew is imaginary. The sky has no sun. The days, er, the day is an endless nightmare of never-ending boredom. At this point, I'd believe just about anything."
"Our mothers need your help. If you can help them to get home, each of their families will pay you a reward greater than you can imagine!"
"I dunno. I can imagine quite a lot."
"We are not talking about 'a lot,'" interrupted the boy. "We are talking about amounts of money far in excess of that!"
"I like what you're saying."
The mulatto girl shot the Eurasian boy a sharp glance and took back the conversation. "My mother is a princess of the royal family of the Mali Empire. She grew up in the palace in Timbuktu. One day while crossing the desert, her caravan was attacked by slavers. She and all who survived were taken prisoner. When she saw the cruelty of the slavers, she didn't want them to get the huge random which she knew her family would gladly pay. So she concealed who she was. She was put aboard a slave ship bound for the Americas, but when it entered Caribbean waters, it was captured by pirates. The pirates took the slaves to Tortuga, where she was sold to a bordello. There, she has been forced to work ever since."
The Eurasian boy shouldered his way forward. "My mother is from the legendary city of Shangri-la, which is in the mountains at the Roof of the World. Foreigner interlopers are pressing in, threatening us, the French and English from India in the south, the Chinese coming down from the north. My mother and her husband were sent with chests of gems to purchase guns and to find allies in the West, so that these interlopers can be driven back across our borders. They traveled first to Manila, then across the Pacific to Acapulco, across Mexico and onto a ship bound for Spain. But it too was taken by pirates. My mother's husband was killed in the fighting. My mother was taken to Tortuga and was sold to the same bordello. –Your turn."
The third child stepped forward, struggling with shyness. "My family is Incan," she began. "When Pizarro conquered my nation, my ancestors carried all the gold they could to our last remaining city, on the east side of the Andes. The Spanish heard legends of the lost city of El Dorado, but they never found us. Many, many years passed and we learned that we were located between two great European empires, the Spanish in the west and the Portuguese in the east. We thought if we could get the Portuguese to help us, maybe we could take our nation back from the Spanish. So my mother and a score of others undertook a perilous journey down the greatest river in the world. It flows from the Andes all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Only three people survived the journey. But the King of Portugal is not in the Americans. He is in Europe. So the three survivors obtained passage on a ship bound for Lisbon. However, it was captured by a pirate ship coming from Madagascar and heading for Tortuga. My mother was sold to the same bordello."
Captain Jack Sparrow nodded. "I see a pattern developing here," he said.
The mulatto princess continued the story. "Then one night, into this wretched place came a very drunk Captain Jack Sparrow. He bragged about how he was going to have every girl in the bordello. And he did too. He still holds the house record. Every girl was visited by him that night. And, lo and behold, three of them became pregnant: my mother, his mother and her mother." The girl smiled with feigned sweetness. "Captain Jack Sparrow, you are our father."
The pirate remembered that night, vaguely, mostly he remember how his head felt the next morning. Strange, it didn't seem all that long ago. But how could one measure time in a place which had no sun and where night never fell, a place where one day and all eternity were the same thing? "So you think I'm the one who should come, rescue your mothers and take them back home? Charming, love. But how? I seem to be stuck here."
A new voice said, "You just leave dat to me, Captain Jack Sparrow." He turned to see Tia Dalma gliding across the deck. As always, her clothes looked like rat-eaten layers taken from a trunk in the attic, and the ebony cornrows in her hair were dirty, unkempt and hung down like ancient seaweed. Her skin was dark, with a line of tattooed dots running across the tops of her cheeks. Her tattooed lips pulled back into a rectus grin, showing blackened teeth.