Insolation: incoming sunshine
The enemy shrouded themselves in the trees. They knew the forest. It was a different kind of sea, Elizabeth thought, unable to take a step without sliding on a leaf or snapping a twig. She narrowed her eyes to search for human shadows behind the tree trunks, in fallen logs.
"I see you!" she sang out into the woods, three words she would have preferred to call bravado rather than a lie. Absurd chills tingled her back, the sensation of a caterpillar or a long-legged spider crawling on her shoulder soon overcame her. Pausing to brush off the phantom critter, she heard a giggle out in the distance. Freezing, she held her breath to listen for it again. I can't see you, but I can hear you, she thought, a smirk growing on her face. She ducked a web and weaved through the brush.
"Aha!" she cried out. Nella Harper squealed, her grin showing off a few gaps where baby teeth had once been.
"Where's Fanny?"
"I don't know! I ran off and hid here and didn't see which way she went!" was the breathless reply. Extending her hand, Elizabeth pulled the child to her and continued deeper into the forest.
A fortnight had passed since she and her father arrived in Philadelphia, guests of Governor Thomas Harper and his wife Tabitha. Nella and Fanny, ten and eight, immediately drew Elizabeth into their world, and most of it consisted of the tallest, stoutest trees the latter had ever seen. They looked so much stronger than the palm trees back home, and Elizabeth found herself wishing at times Port Royal offered such a fairytale forest in which to get purposely lost.
"Fanny!"
"She won't answer and you know that." Elizabeth smiled down at the child. "Fanny!"
"You just said she wouldn't answer!" Nella giggled.
"You. She might for me. Let's look over here." It had to be they didn't consider her a woman, she thought. More than a head taller than either of them, they still viewed her as a girl, an equal worthy of playmate status. Twenty years old and still a child. She pouted at the thought.
"Don't worry, Elizabeth. We'll find her!"
"Of course we will," she said, shaking off the notion. Fun was fun, no matter what the age. She caught a hint of white behind a tree. Kneeling down in a huntsman's position, she motioned for Nella to do the same. Placing her finger to her lips, she made the girl follow her eyes to the spot. Gesturing for her to go one way and herself to go the other, they broke apart in an attempt to surround the tree. Elizabeth held up her fingers. One. Two. Three.
"Fanny!" Nella shrieked, arms out in front of her. She pounced on her little sister and the two of them fell to the ground laughing like a pair of hyenas.
"I thought you'd never find me!" Fanny said, brushing grass stains onto her white frock.
"If you keep doing that, you'll really blend in next time." Elizabeth pointed at the dress.
"Oh no! Come on. You need to see the nest."
"Oh yes! She'll love that!"
"What nest?" Running after them back towards the governor's mansion, Elizabeth spat some hair out of her mouth, unsure if she'd dodged the spider web this time.
"At our castle! Oh, Elizabeth, it's so lovely! The eggs will hatch most any time, Mother said!" The forest gave way to a groomed field with a large, winding oak in the middle. Someone had built a spiral staircase around it, letting the girls explore every branch up close without having to actually climb into it. It was all an old, twenty-year-old playmate could do to keep up, Elizabeth thought between breaths, her feet pounding on the steps. They weren't quite at the top, which was a railed platform with a turret, but close enough. Nella and Fanny squatted.
"There," Fanny whispered, pointing. Elizabeth peered down and saw the small nest further into the tree.
"You haven't frightened the mother away, have you?"
"Oh no, not at all. Mother and Father Bird come here all the time. Here's one of them coming back now."
A small brown bird, a sparrow, judging by its plainness, swooped down and positioned itself in the nest, covering the eggs.
"The birds here are so peaceful compared to at home," Elizabeth sighed.
"What are they like in the Caribbean?"
"Scavengers, utter scavengers. They're seagulls, mostly, and they could eat all day as much as they wanted, whatever anybody threw to them, and they still wouldn't be satisfied." She followed them back down the staircase. "The pelicans and cranes aren't so insatiable, but the seagulls don't know when to stop." She could almost see the white outlines hovering over the harbor, the diamond-and-sapphire sea behind them.
"You look homesick," Nella said.
"I'm having a wonderful time with you." And it was true...just like the previous statement.
"Tomorrow we'll make the Caribbean here!" Nella said. "Isn't that a good idea, Fanny? We'll paint up palm trees and we have this enormous blue blanket and the toy ships! We can go to the lake and launch those!"
"What about pirates?" Fanny asked, biting her finger on the way back to the house.
"What about them?"
"Who will play the pirates and who will play the navy?"
Elizabeth laughed. "If I'm going to be a pirate, I'd rather not worry about the navy. We can go find some treasure instead."
"But your book said it didn't know of any pirates who actually buried treasure," Nella said, her brow furrowed.
"There's no reason why we can't. I'll have Estrella hide a treasure out here tonight and make a map for us to follow. But first we'll launch our ships in the river. How does that sound?" The girls adored the book. What was supposed to be a cautionary tale against piracy instead made it seem like the most coveted lifestyle imaginable, The Perils of Piracy, written by a privateer, no doubt, Elizabeth had thought when she'd first picked it up. Soon, after they finished that one, she would share her latest, a published list that someone converted into a book of all the notorious pirates in the area. Her father had given it to her as if he'd given her a talisman. No doubt he assumed the scant excuses for biographies would steer her away from her fascination, that the brief, vague descriptions would help her choose the right sort of company. That was a laugh, she thought. If she ever got close enough to a pirate to identify markings and match descriptions, she'd be dead before she could tell anyone about it.
The governor's mansion reminded her of home, a massive white columned house that could easily fit in with the Roman Forum. The back door opened into a cozy nook precisely for the girls' coats, boots, and other outdoor necessities. Silhouettes of the adults came into view as Elizabeth pinched her skirt up to make it up the last small hill. Amused faces—that was what she liked most about Governor and Mrs. Harper; there was no path they had set out yet for their daughters. They were fine with them being exactly who they were and judged them on their own merit.
"We thought the three of you had disappeared," Governor Harper said, bending down and dusting off Fanny's shoulders.
"I overestimated my ability to find such excellent hiders," Elizabeth said, feeling the warmth of the inside of the house on her cheeks. The crisp air of the evening had given them an extra ruddy look, she noticed in the mirror from the corner of her eye.
"You all look like you could do with a hot drink and some quiet time by the fire," Mrs. Harper said, nodding and trying to decipher what her girls were saying as they desperately tried to talk over everyone else on top of the servants helping them into clean shoes.
"Elizabeth, dear, this came for you while you were out."
"What's that, Father?"
"A letter from Will."
It was only after she plopped down onto a floral-print sofa in the sitting room did she realize she hadn't thanked her father for the letter. Tearing it open, she inched closer to the candelabra on the adjacent table.
Dear Miss Swann,
How good of you to write to me while you and your father are visiting. Nella and Fanny sound like dear girls, and they are lucky to have such an enthusiastic visitor. Had you ever met them before? Port Royal remains unchanged save for the heat. Summer has certainly come early. It's only April and it already feels like August. There aren't as many people walking about during the day, naturally. Enjoy the rest of your trip and God speed on the voyage home.
Flipping it over, she scowled at the blank back. She'd written pages to him. The appearance and demeanor of everyone, the environment, the activities, how good it was of the Harpers that they hadn't held a ball or any lavish social event—and this general, formal...she couldn't even think of what to call it since it was decidedly not a letter in the truest sense of the word. Miss Swann again. Never Elizabeth. Her fluttering heart had calmed into disappointment.
"Bad news?"
"No," she said, looking up at her father. "Will's never been the talkative sort."
"He knows his place." Governor Swann sat on a high-backed chair, ready to open a book, when he looked at her again. "He is also rather soft-spoken around you. I'm sure he just didn't know what to say."
Elizabeth smiled. Will had always been liveliest when they played. Anything from ten pins to a card game could turn into a passionate, competitive adventure, and he showed affection through his actions as well, fashioning iron shoes for her as a joke one birthday, another giving her a ball and chain for when they pretended they were prisoners escaping a medieval dungeon. Conversations had always been one-sided. Why should letters be any different?
"Elizabeth?"
"Nella, you startled me!"
"Could you..." She looked over at Fanny, who was holding the book out towards her.
"No Perils of Piracy tonight?"
"We think we know how to be pirates now," Nella said. "We want to pick out ones to be tomorrow."
"Are there pictures?" Fanny asked.
Elizabeth picked up the book and shuffled through the pages. "No, I'm afraid not. But we can pretend, can't we?" The girls took that as an invitation to curl up on the sofa next to her, Fanny climbing onto her lap and adjusting between Elizabeth and the book. Governor Swann chuckled to himself as Elizabeth gave him an embarrassed smile.
"Are there lady pirates?" Fanny asked.
"I'm sure there are. We'll look through..." The printing was small with little breaks between the text. Punishment for reading it, Elizabeth mused, skipping the introductory pages. She read out loud in a muffled, storybook tone, wondering if she should take on an accent for the more foreign-sounding names. Fanny picked whatever pirate they were reading about at the moment to be, always changing her mind with every page turn. Nella raised her eyebrow and pursed her lips in thought, more selective in her choosing, speaking only once to say she wanted to wait until they'd gone through the whole book. While reading the book at many times felt like greeting old friends, Elizabeth could feel her throat begin to dry up, and her eyelids grow heavy from the work.
"Last one for right now. If you don't choose, we can pick up where we left off at breakfast." Clearing her throat, she turned the page. "'Jack Sparrow has not committed any acts of crime or debauchery infamous enough to warrant the attention of the authorities in recent years, however, failure to attract the eyes of the Royal Navy does not mean failure in other regards.'"
"I want to be him!" Fanny cried.
"I thought you'd picked Ammand the Corsair?"
"Oh," she giggled. "Go on."
"'Upon refusal to deliver precious cargo to contracted destination, Jack Sparrow was branded a pirate and eluded several agents of the East India Trading Company. His insidious nature prevented him from killing said agents as he preferred humiliation, often tricking them into switching clothes and then leaving them indecent in...'" She turned the page and read ahead, her eyes widening.
"Where?" Nella asked.
"Somewhere...it doesn't say," she said quickly. "'The most notorious act, without a doubt, would be the sacking of Nassau port. Contaminating not only his soul but prized and beloved literature as well, Jack Sparrow mysteriously fashioned a large wooden horse and left it just outside the fort. Hauling the enormous eyesore into the fort, he was able, with only four other men, to sack the fort under the cover of darkness, taking priceless riches. The ignorant officers were promptly replaced." She burst into laughter, placing a wrist over her mouth to contain herself.
"You have to be making that up," Governor Harper said, entering the sitting room with a cup of tea.
"Upon my honor!" she said, regaining her composition. "Hopefully your garrison here has a fundamental knowledge of what happened to Troy." Grinning, she continued. "'Take caution upon meeting him. Jack Sparrow is a dark haired, dark eyed man estimated to be between thirty and forty years of age and can be identified by the standard brand placed either on the arm or the forehead, and several scars and tattoos, notably one of a bird and sun on his forearm.'"
"Can you paint tattoos like that on us?"
"Girls!" Mrs. Harper hissed from across the room.
"They'd be painted on, Mother," Fanny argued.
"We could wash them right off. Please, Elizabeth? We want bird tattoos. Like the ones in our nest!"
Suddenly exhausted, Elizabeth let her back fall back against the sofa, nodding her head without speaking. A bird flying towards a rising sun. That's how she imagined it, anyway, some carefree creature soaring towards the unknown, towards discovery, towards legends. Placing the book onto the table, she folded her hands into her lap after the girls clamored off of her, suddenly homesick.
A/N: I do not own POTC. This story is not going to be very long, so you have been forewarned.