Chapter 4
"Remembering"
"Um...could you repeat that please?" Jack asked hastily.
"My name is Siren Sparrow."she obliged.
"Wouldn't be any relation to say...old Jack here, would it?" he said hopefully.
He knew they'd show up someday.
"Yes."
His children.
"And I'd be your...?"
"Father."
"That's the one."
There was a silence while Jack contemplated this new information. Who was she from?
Giselle, Scarlett, Lucy, Esmerelda? Or was she from a one-night stand? He couldn't remember ever coming to Serpent's Mouth.
"Lass, who was your mother?"
She looked intrigued, if not disinterested."You don't know?"
She stared at him inquisitively and he never felt more uncomfortable. She sensed this and said"May I offer you a drink?"
"Have any rum?"
She nodded to the empty bottles on the floor "Fresh out."
"Unfortunate." he replied.
"I suppose, with you being a man of the sea, wine does not usually strike your fancy but I bartered this off a man from Greece. He said it helps with memory loss."
She held out a goblet to him. He took it hungrily, anything to break the silence. As he drank, bits and pieces of a journey to Greece floated up to his conscious mind. How could have he forgotten? The rum, the girls, and the gold. He was 16 years younger and had not acquired the Pearl, he had captured a lesser ship named the Swift (he recalled that it was not fast at all). He used to run the ship with his best mate Martin Craft. Martin died shortly after their trip to Greece of consumption.
Oh, but Greece surely was memorable...
"How did you manage to grant an invitation to this grand banquet "Sir"Sparrow?" Martin joked as a Grecian servant woman with a tunic tousled his red hair.
"I happen to look very regal "Lord" Craft if you haven't noticed." Jack replied saucily.
They were in a large purple tent that overlooked the Aegean Sea. The roar of the sea could hardly be heard over the noise of the drunk crew, who was feasting and drinking on long wooden tables. There were no men who weren't from the Swift in the tent. Just the servant girls. Jack's eyes narrowed as he searched the room for the host of the feast. As he searched the room, he spied a pair of eyes. Those eyes were such an entrancing purple, he saw little else. The eyes focused on him. The face shifted and he saw the eyes belonged to a woman.
Her Greek complexion rivaled the torches in the room for light. Though she looked beautiful and young, there was a sense of wisdom in her face that added a becoming maturity to her countenance.
She had chestnut hair with long curls that traveled down her face and ended at her chest. The woman motioned to the servents who were fanning her to stop. She rose out of her seat of honor gracefully and left the tent with her two handmaidens.
"So, who are we gracing the presence of anyway?" Martin asked amid being fed grapes by one of the servants.
"Good question, Martin. I shall go find out."Jack answered ambiguously.
"Jack, don't go we hav—" Martin's mouth was smothered with grapes as Jack slipped out the way she had. As he peered out into the night sky, he saw a candle in the distance moving up a hill. Jack set off towards the light. He followed the light until he thought he had caught up. He saw the candle had been extinguished and three figures climbing the stairs of a tower that loomed ahead. He ran towards the tower, hoping that he wouldn't lose sight of it in the ever darkening night.
The tower was made of tough, beige coquina rocks but the floor was fine marble. He noticed there was no door or shutters in the tower, making it completely vulnerable to the weather. The captain sprinted up the stairs until he reached the top. Out of breath and thirsty, he quietly entered the top chamber of the tower.
The woman was looking out a window unto the moonlit sea. She didn't stir as he entered the room, but her two handmaidens lit the last of the candles in the room and left silently. It seemed as if all the women were undaunted by his presence, which was unusual for Jack indeed. The room was filled with influences of the sea; shells and mosaics of the ocean decorated the room in various places.
"Are you in need of drink Captain Sparrow?" the woman asked. Jack did not ask how she knew him but watched intently as she poured wine into a goblet carved out of a conch shell. She held it out to him like a generous gift. Though he was surely drunk enough as it was, he knew this wasn't the sort of woman you would speak without being spoken too. He took the wine, though not his favorite form of alcohol, and drank it.
If lust were a fruit, Captain Sparrow had just sampled its nectar. The room spun slow enough for Jack to feel the woman's arms around him.
"I am Circe." she whispered.
When Jack awoke the next morning he was in the same tower as the night before. He was in the plush bed of the woman but the woman was not there. Once he fully awoke, he noticed (much to his glee) he had no headache from the previous nights drinking. He rose out of the bed and went to find the wine the woman had given him (he wanted more) when he heard someone calling for him down below. He peered out of the window and saw the Swift's crew busily packing riches. He knew they very well might just leave him there if he didn't hurry down to the shore. He ran down the steps of the tower towards the ship. As he neared the Swift, he saw that the crew was smiling and singing some song (badly) in Greek.
He saw Martin in the middle of the action with a small scroll in hand, obviously taking inventory. "I take it the crew hasn't felt the repercussions of their heavy drinking."
Martin smiled "No, not at all."he replied.
"An island of women, riches, good food, good weather, and endless drink with no headaches after. We are coming back VERY soon." Jack said and hurried off to his cabin to mark the islands coordinates.
But they did not find the island again. Martin died within that next year and Jack crashed the Swift shortly after (Matin was always the more level-headed sailor). And Captain Jack Sparrow never knew what became of Circe from that Grecian isle.