Disclaimer: They belong to Disney, they are mine only in me dreams.
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The mood aboard the ship was somber, and the captain had sunk into such a depression that the crew was actually becoming a bit concerned for their own safety, as the captain was not known for a great deal of patience if foolish behaviour was evidenced... he was known to shoot first and ask questions later; everyone kept to their duties and kept their mouths shut. Usually the days that they left port for open sea were days of high spirits, but today was not going to be one of those days.
The first mate watched his captain with great concern, as he oversaw the crewmen unfurl the sails and the anchor was rolled up. The seas were fair and the time was nigh... the wind filled the sails fully as soon as they were let out, and the ship lurched forward in the capable hands of the helmsman. The captain did not move from his place at the stern, watching the land that they were about to leave behind them start to slip away. The first mate thought about the past year, and he watched the unmoving back of his captain as the wind blew his long, dark hair all about him, his long coat catching the wind as if it were a part of the sails, the long tails of his bandana waving about his back as if they were being hoisted as the ship's colours...
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...She was a serving wench at the largest tavern in Dublin... a tiny girl, only about five feet tall, with a wasp-thin waist and a ready smile. She had waist long hair, naturally blue-black in colour, and in lovely, bouncing ringlet curls. Her skin was as dark as a walnut shell, and her dancing, sparkling eyes were warm and chocolate brown. She wore a colorful cotton skirt, and her hands wove and darted about as she spoke, telling stories from her travels in her family's gypsy caravan.
She had caught the captain's eye, and he was almost instantly in love with her. He had been alone most of his life... his mother had borne him out of wedlock, and his parents had not married until after he was born. His father was a sailor, and had died at sea. The captain had never known his father, and the only thing that he'd inherited from the man was his last name and his long, slender hands. His own mother, a free spirit just like this lovely gypsy girl, had moved from place to place with her young son, until he finally took to the sea to unleash his own restless, wild spirit, and had become a cabin boy upon a merchant vessel. He had heard from someone that his mother had taken out from Ireland and had married another husband in Glasgow, Scotland... a man named Turner, he thought, but he could not be sure. Perhaps he had half-siblings by now, but he shrugged it all off as he watched the enchanting gypsy girl dance and sing in his own native language, Gaelic.
As she passed around her tambourine to collect coins in appreciation of her seductive dancing, the girl's eyes met the black, mesmerizing eyes of the young pirate captain. He had just been able to obtain his own ship, and was about to embark upon the adventure of his young lifetime... he was about to head for the Orient to meet, informally, with other pirate captains. He was a pirate lord, even at this tender age, passed along to him by the man who had taken him in as a cabin boy... a pirate lord at the age of twenty two.
As he drank his Irish whiskey, the young gypsy girl kept watching him with her dark eyes sparkling... she had a strange gleam to her eyes, he thought, like as if she was not quite seeing everything as it was... like she was seeing something on another strange level, he thought. As she read palms and flirted with the other tavern patrons, she finally was pulled aside, roughly, by the tavernkeeper and ordered to serve up drinks, not fortunes.
The captain's sallow face frowned as the lovely young thing was handled so roughly, and once he heard her being slapped in the back room... hot words being exchanged and another slap. The captain stood up and made his way to the back room... what happened next was Dublin history, as the tavernkeeper was given a rough taste of his own medicine before he was shot dead. The captain was a pirate... and was ruthless to those who dared to break unbreakable laws... one of which, in his mind, was striking a woman... a woman that the young captain was totally captivated by...
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The crew was of the opinion that having a woman on board was bad luck, but having a woman that was with child was good luck, indeed, especially when the woman was as sprightly and beautiful as their captain's woman. She could cook, she could administer medicine, she could dance and tell stories that would curl one's grimy hair, and she was wildly at home upon the sea. At Shipwreck Island, she told the captain that she was carrying his child, and he had never been so happy in his life. His life was a good one... he had signed the unofficial register in Shipwreck City, and the pirate world knew that there was a new Pirate Lord of Madagascar. He was also approached with a proposition for another important position, one that transcended his title as a pirate lord... but he had proven his salt for several years, and was being considered as a prime candidate for the most powerful position in the world of the Brethren of the Coast.
He offered to marry her and give the baby his name, but his beautiful gypsy girl merely laughed, and said that marriage did not suit either one of them. She was happy with things the way that they were, and she would accompany the captain upon her Irish harp as he played his turtleshell guitar... they were happy... almost too happy, it seemed...
It was not her time to give birth, but she went into early labor as they were returning to Madagascar to their home port... the typhoon season was upon them, and they had hoped to dodge the storms that were now dotting the horizen, but the seas began to churn much like the pain that Maggie Sparrow's petite body was being overcome with in great waves. It was too early... it was much too early for the child to come... yet there was nothing that could be done to stop what was to be borne upon this day, whether it was to be the captain's child or the storm that was about to keep them from putting in. The Indian Ocean opened up with the sky and threw her worst at them for two days, as Maggie clung to the bunk that she and the captain shared, and struggled to give life to the baby who was stubbornly insisting upon coming into the world...
He did not breathe, at first... and Maggie had lost consciousness for the loss of blood... the captain desperately willed his tiny son to breathe, rubbing his little body to warm him, and speaking to him softly... his black eyes would glance over at the mother of his child, who was lying pale and still in the bunk, as the first mate wrapped her in blankets. The ship was tossing wildly in the storm, as the wee, premature boy finally let out a weak sound like that of a tiny baby bird... his dark, slender little fists doubled up as he finally took in a breath and cried like a baby should...loudly. The captain held his son in his hands, and in relief, smiled at him, wrapping him in his own coat and marveling at this small wonder, who was so irritated at being born that his little nose wrinkled up. The captain finally laughed a bit, as the wee one finally opened up his own eyes and stared indignantly at his father... his knotted up fists opening, and waving about lightly in the air, as if he were trying to talk with his hands...
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The birth had taken a hard toll upon Maggie... she was sick for several days, and the captain thought that his tiny son might starve to death before Maggie was able to feed him. Once she was awake and able to hold her son, there was a strange gleam to her eye that the crew almost feared. Madness... she had always been on the brink, and now it was thought that the illness that had overtaken her by the birth of her son and the loss of blood had finally driven her over. She was prone to vagueness, and she began to talk to herself and to others that were not there... the captain watched her as she cared for his baby son, and she was able to focus completely upon him and loved the child with all of her heart, but her heart was closing itself off to all others around her. Her eyes were only for her babe... she was not even able to remember the captain's name, most times, and she grew withdrawn and morose. She wanted to go back to Ireland. She was homesick. The captain acquiesced, thinking that a visit would do her good, but he was not prepared for what would greet his ears when they reached the craggy coast of Galway.
Maggie was leaving him... she'd had enough of pirate life, and was going to move on... a true gypsy... never to stay in one place for long. The captain did not reduce himself to begging, but he asked her how she would support herself, hoping that she would allow him to care for her and their boy. She turned to him with mad eyes, eyes that only saw her own version of reality, and smiled benignly. "I can sew and make lace" she had said, "... We will be fine. There is no need for you in my life..." With those words, the captain was stunned... his beautiful gypsy girl... his love... the mother of his son... did not need him.
As she and the crew were moving her belongings off of the ship, he held his baby boy in his hands, looking deeply into the chocolate brown eyes. The baby stared back at him, and all that the captain could see was Maggie. "My little bird," he whispered to his boy, as the tiny one hiccuped and gazed at his father's face, now already creasing from the weather that he had endured since he was a cabin boy. "My little bird." The captain tried to memorize everything about his son... his dark skin... his fine high cheekbones... the tiny hands waving about... his black, black curls... "My little bird"...
And as Maggie took the child, the captain felt his heart closing inside of him like a locking chest... his breaking heart... his boy looked just like Maggie... right down to the gleam in his brown eyes... except for his slender Teague hands, the boy was his mother all over again. He would not fight Maggie... the baby needed his mother, and a pirate ship was no place for him without her.
Maggie did not say a word to him as she walked past him, the baby tied into a sling made of her fringed shawl; as she went down the gangplank and onto the rocky natural pier, she turned and looked up at the captain, smiling oddly... "Don't try to find us... we won't need you... thank you for bringing us back..." and with that, she walked away brightly, talking to herself in Gaelic, her harp under her arm...
Suddenly, there was the sharp cry of a baby splitting the air... a wailing cry, as if he knew what was happening... and Maggie kept walking.
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"Orders, cap'n?"
The captain turned to look at his first mate, as he finally could no longer see the coast of Ireland shrinking away behind them. The look upon his face was dark... foreboding... and it left the loyal first mate cold clear down to his feet. The captain's eyes were glittering, deep pools of despair. As he turned to face his first mate, he said in his deep, low voice, "You have a son... how is he?"
The first mate cleared his throat... this had been a hard voyage back to Ireland, and his captain seemed changed... he decided he had better do his best to humour this man who, up until now, had been very good to him. There was no reason to change his feelings, he thought, except for the captain's naturally dark nature to turn darker with the departure of the tiny baby that he loved so much. "My son Joshamee?" the first mate answered, "He's fine, sir. Joshamee has been at sea for some time now, and from what I hear he plans t' join th' Navy..."
"... does he know about you bein' a pirate?"
"No, cap'n. He thinks I am a merchant sea man."
"We'll keep it that way... it's better that sons not know about their fathers, savvy?"
The first mate did not know how to answer that one. He shuffled his feet uncomfortably, and rubbed his graying grizzled face thoughtfully. "Do ye have an idea where we might be headin', cap'n?"
The captain looked hard at his first mate, his eyes hard. "Aye. We are headin' back t' Shipwreck Island. I've decided t' try for th' position that is available... the Keeper of the Code."
The first mate opened his mouth and then closed it, again. The captain had not said anything about that until now... just as the love of his life had disappeared into the horizen, taking their beautiful baby son with her.
The captain walked slowly to his cabin, and opened the door. Turning to his first mate, he said, sadly, "... Aye, Mr. Gibbs. Don't tell your son, Joshamee, anything about yourself... always let him think what he will."
And as he turned to go into his cabin and lock away his heart from the world, Captain Edward Jonathan Teague could understand the legend of Davy Jones a bit more.. he felt like cutting his own heart out.
Sighing deeply, as though he might never be able to again, he wrapped one hand around the neck of a bottle of rum...and he wrapped his other hand around the silver locket that was around his neck, under his shirt, and next to the heart that was slowly turning to stone. The locket that contained a single, black curl of hair. The locket engraved with one word...
... Jack...
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