Chapter 3

A/N: Yeah, I'm a Sparrabether writing a fic about a different couple. Sooo… for those of you into symbolism, foreshadowing, and such, find the 24 references to Sparrabeth already made in this fic… LOL.

"Ye've made yer bed, so lie in it, Jacky." Teague's shadow hung over the spot Jack had exiled himself to, a rail on a dock, a dock that seemed somehow familiar. And Teague's blunt directive sent a bit of fear down Jack's spine. He was surprised how quickly one accommodated oneself to fear—how quickly one's life came to revolve around it. So recently it had been the shadowed land of slaves and near-dyings. And what had Teague said to him about pride coming before the fall? "God, boy, stand on yer own two feet. I warned ye of that company."

But ye didn't warn me of the aftermath, Jack thought dully. Didn't warn me of a face like snakes and a hand like ice. Didn't warn me of the unreasonableness of despair. Didn't warn me not to barter one freedom for another.

"Its life, lad. That's all it is. Maybe it weren't for the best but the thing's done now." Ye've made yer bed, so lie in it.

The jutting shape of a black ship cut apart the horizon, cut apart Jack's line of vision, coaled-out his view of Teague. For the first time Jack knew what it was to hold love and hate in the same hand, for the same entity. The duality of love. Or perhaps the duality of need. Yes, need was a better word. How ironic, how contradictory that he had made himself a slave to freedom.

"Every man has an idol," Teague said softly. He always meant to be harsher with the boy, but couldn't. Couldn't see it through. Those inhuman black eyes were a spell to man and beast… to goddess and now the sea himself. It was unfortunate—how many destinies would be thwarted by that spell?

Jack was perturbed at the softening of Teague's voice. He lifted his face up with the clearest smile he had ever put forth, squinted his eyes at the moon, laughed as though he hadn't a care in the world. And he was gratified to see confusion curl across Teague's face like a cat-o-nine-tails.

"What do ye mean with that grin, boy? Are ye mocking the gods?"

"Aye," Jack said, spring to his feet, capering about. "I weren't upset over the bargain. It's just a fine night for listening to the waves."

Teague shook his head, incredulous. "Fearless. Absolutely fearless."

Jack put his tongue out toward the moon and his heart uttered a silent prayer that Teague would never know how terribly afraid he had been in the presence of the Dutchman, or how terribly afraid he was even now, days later. It would never do to have Teague think he was a coward.

"Here," Teague stuck out his hand with familiar brusqueness. A book was in it. He hoped the boy would never know the lengths he had gone to fetch this one—and all because he had heard Jack mention it in passing weeks ago. It would never do to have Jack think he had gone sentimental.

"Il Principe," Jack said, taking it with reverence. "Didn't know ye could get it in these parts…"

Ye can't. "I have a fair share of luck… all stolen, of course."

"Well, that's a lark, that's quite…" He shifted on his feet, the ship behind him blotting out the stars, making it impossible to guess the book's color.

"Ye know yer Italian, eh? So get to it. And don't waste time having that cargo to the Cove."

"Aye," Jack said, still transfixed on the book. "Aye, it'll be there."

"Jack my lad…" his voice trailed off into the groping murk. He thought he might shake his hand, show him he was proud in the face of disastrous bargains, in the face of the brand newly etched into his skin. Instead he rolled up his own sleeve. "I wouldn't have been sorry to see ye respectable, boy, but ye done an old man proud any way."

The glow of delight that beamed across Jack's face was hidden in the overhang of his ship.

She saw things move everywhere. The hut that had once been a solace of clear space—clean air, a clear aura— was shrinking. How many months had passed since the boy Jack left, and the visitors began coming? Many months; few years. The answer was simple as his fearless black eyes. He had given her away.

Perhaps he had thought it was for her own good. Perhaps it had been pride that made him talk at the cups. Perhaps the world had grown so dark he had taken drastic measures. But come they did, a few here and there, a trickle that scared the bayou back into hiding. The bayou waited for Jack and hoped with every flat-bottomed boat he had returned. Sailors came, pirates came, wise women and a soldier or two. Calypso took them all. Took their payments, their gifts, their bodies, left them with a handful of magic they couldn't understand, sent them on their way. But that boy, that man, hadn't returned.

Calypso lay on her back above the swamp, the boards of the porch curving to fit her, encasing her. But she didn't think of herself as Calypso now. She was Dalma. Dalma, many-sided. She had built the shack with her own two hands and never wanted a grander edifice. The building of it had eased the fury of betrayal… the hot hours alone and toiling, her first understanding of the bayou. In moments of resentment the living wood was the opium that soothed her spirit. How much of her life was spent in that, soothing the fire, calming the storm, taming the wildness inside her for survival's sake? Was this how all humans lived?

Her mind was beginning to be like the hut. Strange forgotten memories appeared here and there in visible form, fragments of past lives and threads of the time she had believed in love. Trinkets and tapestries, laced with the burning chemical regret. She began to think she would never escape. She began to wonder if she wanted to.

The shape of a bird outlined against the sun met her like a hallucination. She idly watched the bird—the sparrow— flit from tree to tree and sky to sky, seeking something. Calypso envied it that too-clear sky. Her hand slid off the porch and the water rose to meet her, whispering to her, bending the laws of nature for her touch. What news? her hand said to the water.

News of coming, Aunt, the water said back. News of returning. We hear his echo from far away. We hear and his noise has changed. His spirit has changed.

Not broken? her fingers shot back. It seemed too early for that.

Not broken, the water said in a fast gurgle. We cannot spell the change to you.

Calypso's hand plunged deeper and the water, markedly, was cold. It was winter somewhere, and the seasons changed without her. Deeper her hand went until she felt mud. The water couldn't tell her the change, but the earth could. The earth knew.

The mud was like flesh in her hands, the blood of the earth, a revelation. Groaning and laughter, life and death, she would never be fully human, she could never stop her mind, her senses from that endless union. She could writhe with the torment of too many perceptions, she could fall with the colored leaves and bury herself in decay, but she could never be fully human. And wasn't that what she wanted more and more, to leave behind that last cord binding her to another world? To leave behind that shame and that pain and that bitterness?

Fear, the earth said, we smell fear. Love and unlove, and the searing of skin. The brand goes deeper than he suspects. He doesn't want to read now, doesn't want to waste his time. Time's running out and he can't forget it. He drinks and drinks, peers over the edge, tries to prove to himself he isn't scared with a thousand dares.

"De wind drives him back to me," Calypso said aloud, abruptly loosing the earth. The wind, at least, still served her.

"Dalma!" His voice was warm, playful. "Dalma, have ye left the swamp? Where are ye?"

She stood in her doorway and watched him, knowing his words were for the Africans and not her. For the second time he arrived at night. This time he was alone.

"Dalma!" he cried again, as stealthy figures slid out of the shadows.

Calypso lit a cigarette in the embers of a torch. She watched him tie up his boat on the roots of a giant tupelo. She watched him strip off the jacket he wore, unaccustomed to the clime. She took in the lines of his body—taller, aye, a bit taller than last time, more muscled. Hands growing careless in their movements. Hair longer, the ends burnished and dried by the sun and poor diet. On his arm, a new mark. And his eyes—they flitted back and forth in almost a suspicious way. Was he afraid? Afraid of her, afraid of her land? His movements were slightly off balance— drink or weariness? "Jack de Sparrow…" she finally called, throat constricting as took in another draft. "What are ye looking for?"

His face brightened. "Why, you of course! What did ye think, Dalma? Were ye hiding from me?"

"Aye," she said with irony. "Hiding in me own house."

He waded through the water and caught hold of the ladder.

"So… ye're coming up den?"

He paused. "Well… that's why I came. To see ye."

"Ah…" she blew out a trail of smoke. "Jack de Sparrow. Jack de traitor. Jack de bad man."

"Bad man?" he repeated, his face giving away too much. He looked crestfallen. The words burrowed into his mind like a virus.

"Did ye not give up me hidin' place to de world, Jack? Did ye not send dat rabble of sailors and pirates to me door?"

He let go of the ladder and stepped back. "Aye. Didn't know ye were such a secret."

"Well I'm not anymore."

He seemed to change his mind, and scaled the ladder very quickly. "Ye've got it all wrong," he began, widening his eyes, talking with his hands. "The world needs ye something fierce, ye see… and since ye were here all alone, and ye seemed glad the last time I brought ye company, I figured ye could help us out in our plight. Men whisper yer name again, Dalma… they pray to you on the water. How could they do that if ye remained always a secret, eh?"

Calypso let out a laugh. "I see how it be, witty Jack. Ye've learned to talk yer way out of every danger."

"Not every," he returned, though he seemed proud of breaking the tension. "Haven't ye missed me at all?"

"Missed ye?"

"Aye," he stepped closer, all mischief. "Just the littlest bit?"

She matched his tone. "How could I miss someone I barely know?" She took his arm and studied the brand with interest. "So, dey got ye, did dey?"

A powerful emotion crossed his spirit, and then cooled. He smiled and shrugged. "That's life for ye. Ye make yer bed and then ye lie in it."

"Ye don't fool me, Jack de Sparrow. Ye cried when dey branded ye."

"Me? Cry?" he scoffed. "Ye're highly mistaken. Practically branded meself, as it were. Wanted them to spell out the whole word instead of one measly letter."

She reached to his chest, spread her fingers along it. His heart was racing so fast she wondered he was standing upright. So afraid! "I mean," she said gently, "ye cried in here. Ye're spirit weren't pleased by it." Tentatively, she wrapped her arms around him, feeling small against his height. His heart slowed, his breathing relaxed. "No need to be afraid here, Jack."

"I'm not afraid," he said unsteadily. Her smell like wet earth and incense, like rain or sweated summer spread through his mind, numbed it a little. She touched him like an old friend might, unreserved. "I'm not afraid," he said again. He gave her a lopsided smile. "Not of you, anyway."

Her mouth tipped. "A wise man would say, if ye were goin'to be afraid of anyting, it ought to be me."

"Just as I suspected," he said. "Yer Lady Macbeth."

"Lady Macbeth?" She reached for her cigarette on the ground and put it back in her mouth. "And by dat token, who are ye?"

"Puck!" Jack said proudly. "Obviously."

"Puck and Lady Macbeth… somehow I don't think dose two would've been friends."

"I've read them all front to back," Jack asserted, his eyes giving the phrase a double meaning. "I know Shakespeare very, very well by now."

"Do ye?" she played into his insinuation. "Makes a woman curious…"

He leaned in and his tongue wrestled the cigarette from her. "I need a map," he said abruptly, tossing ash into the sliver of space between them. "Or a set of bearings."

"What do I look like, Davy Jones?" she did that one on purpose.

"Thank yer stars ye don't," he said, hardly missing a beat. "Tentacles everywhere! Like Medusa. But I think ye can help me anyway."

"Do ye?"

He flipped the cigarette between his teeth and slid it back into her mouth. "We can help each other, eh?"

"I'd of given ye de bearings ye wanted," she said in amusement. "But if ye want to barter, so be it."

"Not barter!" he said, as though insulted. "Help each other… as friends do."

"Friends or lovers?" she asked.

"A goddess… and her faithful worshipper," Jack whispered, knowledge of his triumph already in his eyes. "Ye see, I've read of an island... an island known as the Isle de Muerta…"

More to come soon.