Beyond World's End
Prologue
Three Hundred Years Too Late
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end
Methinks it is no journey.
From Tom o' Bedlam
A/N (5/25/07): Yes, this is a self-insert. Possibly even a Mary-Sue, though I'm trying to keep it from being that way. But still worth reading despite all that. If you've read Pirates, Ye Be Warned, Kali-with-an-i is kind of like Lyndsay, but a bit more mature, and not quite as annoying. Also, my writing has improved even further since If I Were a Herald. As always, reviews are much appreciated, and constructive criticism is always taken into consideration.
"He's coming here."
It was after eleven on Thursday night, and my friend Kaly and I were exiting the Hollywood 20 Theater in Sarasota, Florida. We'd just finished watching At World's End and man, was that movie good. So much better than I'd expected. I had a date lined up to see it again, tomorrow (which was almost today), and I was so glad for that. As soon as my parents bought my sister her new used car and I got my car which had been my car for the past two years despite the fact that it was in my sister's name and she had possession of it, I would be heading to the theaters every other day to see it about five more times. Maybe more.
"What?" Kaly asked. She had trouble following my thoughts, sometimes. That was okay, though; I had trouble following my thoughts, sometimes.
"Captain Jack Sparrow is coming to Florida." I was still talking with my pirate accent, which was good enough to fool people into thinking I was British, sometimes, although it sounded much better after a couple glasses of rum. (Even though, technically, I drank my rum straight from the bottle.) That might have been because my judgment was screwed up when I was drunk, but my theory was the alcohol made my tongue loose enough that I slurred exactly like Jack.
"What? Really?" She swung her head wildly as though expecting to see him come swaggering up the street.
"Yeah. He was going to go looking for the Fountain of Youth. That's in Florida."
"Really? Awesome!" She held out her hand, and I obligingly lifted mine for a high-five; then I dropped my bomb.
"I think we should go find him."
"Wow, that's a great idea. That would be so much fun," Kaly agreed. "Do you know where the Fountain of Youth is?"
I shrugged. "Nobody knows, not really. If they did, they'd be rich, selling bottled immortality. But we could probably find it. I mean, there's more solid literature on the Fountain of Youth than there is on Atlantis. Seriously. They didn't even get the date right for Atlantis. It was totally 1050 B.C., not 9400 B.C. The biggest advance in 9400 B.C. was that someone had built a barn to store their grain. In 1050 B.C. they had metalworking and stuff, and Athens actually existed. Because Plato said the Atlanteans attacked Athens, and they couldn't have done that in 9400 B.C. There was maybe one person living in the place that would become Athens at that time." Kaly probably wasn't listening, but that was okay; I was just ranting. I wasn't sure I believed in Atlantis, but if it had existed, the given date was all wrong. The Egyptians had said nine thousand months, and Plato had heard nine thousand years, and the mistake had propagated from there. It wasn't that I felt strongly about the subject, just that I was really fond of the sound of my own voice. We all have our little flaws.
"But the Fountain of Youth is real?" Kaly pressed when I ran out of breath.
"Well…" I hedged. "Jack was going to it. So it must be real." Yeah. Sometimes I don't live in the same world as the rest of you. But at least it's never boring. "I think we should try to find it, so we can find him. And steal his compass," I added, because I'd always wanted to do that. "And his hat. I need a good pirate hat. This one is stupid, and the feathers are falling off." I had a black cardboardy tricorne with white feathers glued around the rim, but one edge of the feathers had started to come loose, and I didn't have any glue with me at college. That was a project for the summer. Also, finding a better hat. A leather one, and tan, to match my boots. And I had to learn Gaelic, and find more agents to query. And finish the fifth novel I was writing. I had about four chapters to go before I was done, and I planned to write another tonight, or possibly tomorrow morning.
"That sounds like a good idea," my friend agreed. "We should do that. Although you can steal his compass, and his hat."
"Great!" I nodded vigorously, in a happy, ADHD haven't-taken-my-medicine-in-three-days kind of way. Maybe I should take some of my pills before my sister showed up tomorrow. If I didn't, I might be completely insufferable, rather than just moderately so.
As we drove home, I sang softly to myself, repeating the song from the movie. "Yo ho, haul together, hoist the colors high. Heave ho, thieves and beggars, never shall we die."