Nothing is Enough
They met at the gallows.
The storms had passed and one more man was dead, his crimes hung for all to see on a placard around his neck. Piracy. The deed done, the crowd began to disperse like seeds on the wind.
"That won't be me," a boy said to the girl beside him.
They met at the gallows. Years later, that's where they would part.
"I promise you," he said, "That will never be me."
How was she to know that he would be right?
He liked making promises, that's what she would remember most. She was the daughter of freed slaves and he was a street urchin with no family at all. She had never seen him before, but he spoke to her as though he had known her all his life. He might as well have. In his eyes, dark as her own, she could see her own struggles, her own dreams.
He was thirteen. She was eleven. He took her hand and promised her a share and a kiss if she would help him steal some lunch. She was nimble and he was clever and soon their pockets were filled with bread, cheese and a banana. They squabbled over the bread and cheese until the portions were even. He gave her the banana. The kiss she stole from him.
Afterwards they were still hungry, as they always would be. She stared at the sky, listening to the lonely cry of the seagulls. "Nothing is enough," she whispered.
He told her that soon he would have a job on a ship as a cabin boy.
"When I go," he vowed. "I will take you with me."
"Where you go, I will follow."
He liked making promises, but she was the one who kept them.
---
The next time they met was on the docks, and he was leaving without her. She felt like her world was slipping away on the tide, but he kissed her forehead and took her hands in his. He said he was sorry and he promised that he would come back for her. She was so young and he was so sweet that she took both promises-one broken, one whole-and placed them over her heart.
He never came back.
It was she who found him. Three years later and nearly a thousand leagues from where they had started, she came upon him languishing down by the quays, deep in his cups. He greeted her as though not a day had passed since last they had spoken and promptly asked her for money.
Instead, she gave him a job. Dressed as a boy, she worked on a small fishing boat now, and had a modest bit of sway with the captain, who treated her like the son he had never had. The irony of that was not wasted on her.
Though not naturally honest, her boy (for so she thought of him) took to his employment with a surprising amount of enthusiasm. Any chance to be at sea was enough for him. Indeed, he became so acclimated to the water that it came to be a very part of the way he moved. On land he seemed out of place, his steps fluid and rolling with waves that weren't there.
During the days they would fish, and in the evenings they would drink together. Sometimes, at night, he would become very pensive. He would watch her for a long time in silence, bathed in the orange light from their fire.
"You are a pearl," he told her once. "A black pearl."
For what seemed a long while, he said nothing more. She wanted to ask him what he meant, but he was drunk and she feared that perhaps he had already forgotten what he'd said. She watched him over the rim of her cup. He was staring at the stars as though he meant to steal them from the heavens.
"One day," he said suddenly, "I'll be the captain of my own ship. And when I am, I shall name it after you. The Black Pearl. My Black Pearl."
It was more of a declaration than a promise but, in a way, it was a promise just the same. They said nothing more that night and, in the morning, he was gone.
---
He came back a few days after, tired and hungry, and when she asked him where he'd been he wouldn't tell her.
"Nothing is enough," was all he said, before he fell asleep.
She watched over him that night, mostly because she was never quite sure what else to do with him. When he woke up he took her by the shoulders and kissed her, because he wasn't sure what else to do with her.
The dawn was breaking. She strode across the small cabin and opened a porthole, letting the sea breeze clear the air of fevered dreams and misbegotten wishes.
From that day on, they let the wind carry them both. They drifted with it, letting it fill their sails to take them where it would. Time passed in a dreamy haze of Caribbean heat, sea salt and stolen kisses. For many months the wind was kind to them, a gentle current that guided them when nothing else would, and for a while they allowed themselves to be content. But it is dangerous to put too much store in a lady as fickle as Mother Nature. Three days after the lass' sixteenth birthday, deep black storm clouds invaded the sky like a conquering army. The wind, warm and gentle only the day before, turned cold and sharp as a knife.
The two of them struggled to keep their small fishing craft under control, but like a spooked steed on the run it wouldn't obey their desperate commands. The small little boat was tossed violently up and down upon the waves.
They could barely see each other through sheets of rain that separated them. Each fought their own losing battle with the ropes. Sensing defeat, they called each other's names over and over again, and groped towards each other. They linked hands and tried to brace themselves for whatever fate had in store for them.
She tried to tell him that she would miss him in the next life, he tried to make a promise to her, a promise about anything at all, but their words were torn away by the force of the wind. Kneeling on the bottom of the boat, they held on to the rail and gripped each other's hands tighter, that simple connection saying everything that needed to be said.
Suddenly, with a sickening crunch, the small boat's hull was torn on the rocks. Water poured in. Seeing the damage, he let go of her and, blinded by rain and desperation, began the futile task of bailing out the water. She called out to him but he couldn't hear her. Yet, something deep within him must have sensed her voice for he turned to look at her.
The last thing she saw of him was his eyes, wide open and calling out to her, before a wave washed him away.
She screamed his name. Uncaring, the storm roared around her, ignoring her cries. In that moment, she felt a deep anger well up inside her, a pure defiance greater than herself. She had given her life to the sea. It belonged to her just as much as she belonged to it. She refused to let it steal from her. She would yield neither her life nor her love to it. Yelling a curse to whatever gods might have been listening; she grabbed a coil of rope and dove head first into the raging waters.
She swam under the dark waves, searching. Coming up to gasp for air, she tried to call for him again, but she was out of breath and there was no way she could make herself heard. She looked to the boat, but it was nothing more than scraps of wreckage by now. A broken piece of the mast floated by her and, exhausted, she grabbed hold of it. She took the rope, looped it around her waist a few times and tied the other end to the length of wood. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw his hand briefly break the surface of the water before once more slipping under. Tightening the ropes around her body, she dove under once more and swam towards him. Beneath the waves it was eerily quiet. Separated from the storm, it was like a world between worlds, on the threshold of death. With that thought in mind, she swam faster.
She reached out…and her hand struck flesh. She wrapped her arm around the unconscious boy and began to struggle towards the surface, using the rope to pull herself up.
At last, their heads broke free. She draped her boy and herself over the broken mast. With the last strength left to her she unwrapped a length of rope from around her waist and tied herself to him. She would not lose him again.
When they woke, they had drifted ashore. The sea had tested them and found them worthy. For the time being, they had won.
Her muscles ached, she could barely move. She clung to him and he pulled them both onto the beach. They collapsed onto the sand, buried in each other's arms. They were still tied together; her to him and him to her. And in the years to come, no matter how hard they fought, they always would be.
Once the strength returned to her arms, she raised herself over him and kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her, one hand on her back and the other on her hips and pulled her further into the kiss. When at last they pulled away, they were laughing from despair and crying for joy.
They rolled together on the sands, tangled together. He brushed the hair out of her eyes and kissed her forehead.
"There's nothing left," he said.
She caressed his cheek gently and smiled. "Nothing is enough."
And he knew just what she meant.
When the other fishermen found them a day later, they were walking along the beach, hand in hand, heads held high, and she was no longer a maiden.
---
It was not long before he was gone again. For three months she waited for him to return, but three months passed and when they did with no sign of him, she locked her door against the night and locked his memory in her heart. He'd left nothing behind except an old pair of boots and a scrawled note: To my lass, I'll see you on the other side of the horizon. Then, as an afterthought, he had added, I'll miss you. The letters of this last message were very carefully printed, as though he had taken a long time to write them. He'd written something else too, but it was scratched out, and try as she might, she wasn't able to make it out. He didn't sign it, because he knew he didn't have to.
The boots she put on. The note she carefully folded and placed over her heart, one more promise to carry. Their weight sometimes made her feel weary, but she carried them regardless.
Years passed; there were other boats, other storms, other lovers, and she worked hard and weathered her way through all of them. Sometimes the sun shone brightly and sometimes it rained, but always the wind was there for her, filling her sails. The old fishing captain died and left his boats to her. And so she was captain. The first thing she did was reveal her identity to the crew, daring them to challenge her authority. It was no real problem, most of the crew already knew her gender and paid it no mind, and the few who didn't soon learned that she was more than capable with a sword and pistol.
Word of him reached her, carried on the wind. They were fantastic tales, some of them impossible, woven with superstition and rumour, and soaked in rum. Stories about daring escapes, conquests, deals with otherworldly powers and a ship with black sails as fast as the wind itself. Each new moon brought a new story and she was always there to hear it, listening in the dim light of the taverns, with a mug in her hand and a secret smile on her lips. She took a certain pleasure in knowing that she could always find out where he was, even if he couldn't do the same.
Then one night she learned the name of his fabled ship, and for a moment time stopped. She clutched her mug of grog until her knuckles turned white and she wondered, through a fog of doubt and bitterness, if perhaps he missed her as she missed him and if somewhere under the stars he was thinking of her.
The Black Pearl. His Black Pearl.
At the age of twenty-three, she thought herself too old for fancies, but that memory of the smoke and the stars and the dreams in his eyes brought her old longing for him crashing down on her senses. Her memory of him wasn't just in her mind. He was in her fingertips, on her lips, between her thighs. He was all around her, enveloping her as the sea does a drowning man. Her hand slipped to her waist, where a ghost of the rope still lingered. When she closed her eyes she could still feel its pull.
After that she waited for him, though she would never have deigned to admit it. She would stand on deck staring at the waves, trying hard not to think of him. She wondered if he was going to come back for her, and she wondered even more if she would go with him if he did.
Ultimately, all she had were the stories, and a handful of faded promises.
She kept his promises, because she knew he never would.
---
Two years later, long after all her fancies had been blown away by the wind, he washed up on her shore. He was battered and nearly broken, a shipwreck all on his own.
For three days she left him on that beach, and for three days he lay there unmoving, so still that on the dawn of the fourth day she feared he was dead. With a cry, she fell on her knees beside him and shook him by the shoulders. When his eyes flew open, she nearly wept with relief, and it was in that moment that she realized just how lonely she had been for all those years that he'd been gone. Carefully, she helped him to his feet, slung his arm over her shoulder and carried him home as she always had and always would. She was silent the whole way back and so was he. There were too many words and none that they could say.
Bit by bit and kiss by kiss she pieced him back together. It was no easy task. He was a mess. Most of the time he was drunk, and when he was sober he was little more than a ghost in his own skin. By day he haunted her cabin and by night his demons haunted him. He would wake in the night screaming someone's name, and she would hold him and kiss him and keep the demons at bay.
He was a drowning man, but she had saved him from drowning before and she knew she could do it again. She had to. He was broken, and only she knew where all the pieces fit.
---
They were bound together. Him to her and her to him. Sometimes he pulled her under and sometimes she couldn't help but sink beneath the waves. But when one sank, the other was always there to pull them both to the surface. Together, they managed to keep themselves afloat, but it was always a struggle.
Her to him and him to her.
He tried to break away, and she tried to let him. Every year he sailed further away, and every new year he found his way back. And when he walked up to her door, she was always there waiting for him as though he'd never been gone at all.
"Nothing is enough," he would always say as she led him inside and, silently, she agreed.
---
He promised to bring it back.
It was a morning much like all the others she had shared with him, except he wasn't there. Closer inspection proved that neither was her boat. She found his note-scrawled in charcoal on a piece of sailcloth-nailed to her dock. He thanked her for the use of her fishing vessel, and gave her his regrets as well as his word that he would return it. But with someone like him, words came very cheaply indeed.
---
He promised her a ship.
Not that she believed him, of course. She was getting too old for that. But there was a part of her that wanted to believe him; the young girl within her that had stolen kisses from his lips and pulled him from the sea.
"Where you go, I will follow," she had told him long ago, and she had not forgotten.
With her boat had gone her livelihood and she had nothing left to lose. Whether he'd meant to or not, he'd taken everything away. It was what he did best.
Take what you can. Give nothing back.
"And nothing is enough," she whispered, slipping a faded, well-worn note into her breast pocket.
---
She went back for him.
She didn't mean to. She had wanted to leave him to what should have been his fate. She had wanted him to know for once how it felt to be the one left behind.
His ship was in her hands. The ship with her name; the name he had given her, once upon a time.
He was the one to blame, she thought, her fingers gripping the helm. He had made her, named her and then abandoned her. There were two Black Pearls, and he only loved one. Anger and hurt welling up inside her, she spun the wheel, willing to take any course but the one she was on. Yet as she tried to change course something stopped her, or rather, she stopped herself.
Two Black Pearls? Or was there only one?
She stared at her hands on the helm. Flesh against wood. Suddenly she was unsure where she ended and the ship began. Understanding pierced her heart like a dagger's point, and as it did she let out a broken cry. She had always told herself that she had come first, but she knew now that she had been wrong. They were the same, she and the Pearl, each a part of the other. But it was the ship who loved him, not her, and she finally understood why he could never love her, and why, despite all that lay between them, he still needed her as any captain needs his ship.
So she went back. A captain needs his ship just as a ship needs her captain. The Black Pearl needed him, and she knew it.
As she entered the harbour he was there swimming towards them both. He knew the truth, just as she did. They would always find each other.
"The Black Pearl is yours," she told him softly, for his ears alone. And in that moment she didn't know if she meant the ship or herself, but she did know that it didn't matter.
It didn't matter at all.
---
He promised to love her.
Sometimes she believed him, and sometimes she didn't, but it no longer seemed as important as it had when she was younger. Years had passed since she'd gone back for him and, one by one, she had freed his promises to her, letting the wind carry them away. The ship herself was a promise, of freedom and escape and sometimes even love, and that was enough, at least for a while.
He gave her a ship of her own; a small sloop and a crew of ten men to plunder boats along the coast. They met twice a year, to trade, to plan and to fall in each other's arms.
He promised to love her, so he gave her a ship. And she understood, because she knew that that's what love meant to him.
They didn't love each other, but they both loved the sea and sometimes that was almost enough.
---
Betrayal came, one after another, as inevitable and as innumerable as summer storms. Perhaps they turned their blades on each other in the hopes that they could cut themselves loose. Perhaps it was just in their nature as pirates. Yet, always they would find each other again, and they would apologize to each other in the dark and wait for the coming of the next storm.
They didn't mean to. It was just the way they were. The world had taught them only how to take. The only thing they knew how to give was nothing at all.
---
They met at the gallows. Years later, that's where they would part.
Hands bound behind her back she watched the crowd, looking for him, though she knew he had already gone before her. She knew because the rope from around her waist was gone, replaced by the noose.
He'd been right, that boy from a hundred lives ago. It would never be him. It would be her. His Black Pearl. She would face this death so that he wouldn't have to, as her sister had before her.
The blood in her veins. The wind in her sails. Sisters of flesh and wood. One lost beneath the waves and now the other beneath the noose.
He was gone now, but he had come to her last night. She had thought she was dreaming, but he was real; an old man, nearly out of tricks, but still able to slip through the defenses, especially to find her.
He came as close as he could, his fingers through the bars, entangled with hers. Just like their dreams. Just like their souls.
An officer was reading out her crimes, but she barely heard it above her memory of him.
"I remember," he had told her. "Finally, I remember. It was you. The Pearl. She was always you."
"No," she had whispered, kissing his fingers, one by one. "She and I…it was always us."
He closed his eyes.
Someone slipped the rope around her neck.
"There's nothing I can do."
She smiled, as she had years ago. Her hair was grey now, the same shade as caps on the waves, but her skin, though creased, was still dark and rich and the colour of Caribbean dreams.
The rope tightened. She turned her face to the sky.
"Nothing is enough," she had told him.
He was gone.
Where you go I will follow. I promise you. Her to him. Him to her. The other side of the horizon. The wind the wind the wind the wind is calling. Take what you can…
"Nothing is enough," he said, for her ears alone. But she was not alone. He was there.
She was falling.
And then…
The ropes were gone. She took his hand. He was young once more, just like her.
"Nothing is enough," he said again.
And as the wind carried them away, she knew just what he meant.
The End.
---
A/N: Finally, it's done. This story has grown from a little diversionary vignette from my other projects into a full-blown short story. It took five months, several bouts of acute writer's block, and listening to Coldplay's Swallowed in the Sea over and over for an entire afternoon to write, but it's done and, even though it's not what I expected, I'm happy with the result.
A couple of things: for artistic reasons, I never say their names but this story is all about Jack and Anamaria. If it's unclear, they're both dead by the end. I'm not sure how Jack dies, but he's lost everything so I think he gets himself killed somehow (in a duel maybe?), because he knows that he belongs with the Black Pearl and Anamaria is all that's left. I started writing this before I saw the second movie so, obviously, Anamaria is still in the picture and Jack doesn't die until the end, but I decided that the Black Pearl would sink anyway because it suited my evil purposes.
I hoped you enjoyed this. It's not about romance, but it is about love, and, really, that's life. Feel free to tell me what you thought.