This one is short, but please please please review! I know I sound needy, but you guys made me almost expect reviews from the response to the last installment. I still love you, and thank you so much for reading.
-Han
It was cold. Colder than Anna had thought it would be. She was huddled between Ragetti and Pintel, using their warmth along with Jack the monkey's to keep herself heated. She was laden with many blankets and had her arms wrapped firmly around herself to retain as much heat as possible.
Her blue lips were parted slightly, her teeth chattering and her hands rubbing her arms furiously. She felt her hair was heavy with frost and her skin was almost numb. Deciding she needed to move or something might fall off, she stood and began walking towards the helm.
The frozen wasteland around them was nothing if not beautiful. Giant icebergs floated calmly on the electric blue water, wind occasionally stirring up the snow that lay on top of them. Their ship glided softly through the water, beneath arches made of solid ice. Her eyes followed the ring of one as they passed beneath it, and she wondered what God made them.
She made it to the navigational charts, automatically bending over alongside Will and the man she now knew as Tai Hung. They were sliding their numb fingers across the ancient papyrus, moving each unstable ring to match another.
"Nothing here is set," she whispered to herself, while Will nodded along. He crossed another two rings to match up words.
"These can't be as accurate as modern charts," he said, looking at Tai Hung.
"No," the man answered, looking up at the two of them. "But it leads to more places."
Anna deftly moved Will's hand, replacing them with hers and sliding each portion to match up again, until new maps and words were formed. "Over the edge, over again," she read softly, as if reciting scripture. "Sunrise sets, flash of green." The words dripped from her mouth like an ancient epithet, and Will wondered if the writers of it had imagined it being read that way.
"Care to interpret, Captain Barbossa?" Will asked, turning to look behind him at the man at the helm. Barbossa's beard was frosted, his eyes fixed on their course. He briefly glanced at Gibbs, a smile on his scraggly and weathered face.
"Ever gaze upon the green flash, Master Gibbs?" Barbossa asked, making sure he had everyone's attention. Anna turned, watching them both carefully.
"I reckon I seen my fair share," he said solemnly, his angling for a story telling betrayed only in the fervor of his words, and the gleam in his eyes. "It happens on rare occasion. At the last glimpse of sunset, a green flash of light shoots up into the sky. Some go their whole lives without seeing it, some claim to have seen it that ain't. Some say..." He was cut off by a too eager Pintel.
"It signals when a soul comes back to this world, from the dead!" he said quickly, his excitement barely contained. Gibbs glared at him, the life of the story sucked away from him. "Sorry," Pintel squeaked.
"That's an odd color for the sky to turn; shouldn't it be white or something?" Anna asked, looking at Gibbs. The man gave her his rare fatherly look and Barbossa spoke before he could answer her.
"Trust me Miss Windsor, it's not getting' to the land o' the dead that's the problem," he turned the wheel sharply, ice and frost cracking off of it with the movement. "It's getting' back!"
Anna stood still as the ship passed between two walls of ice, a hollow sort of blue on both sides until they were consumed by the inevitable darkness. She seemed to hold her breath as the faux night enveloped them, and she could feel Will lay a comforting hand on her shoulder. She smiled at him, the blank stretch of her lips empty, but somehow meaningful to him. At least she tried.
Her eyes slipped closed again, and her mind unwillingly traveled to Jack. They were so close, so close to finishing this long horrible thing she'd been pushing through, each moment a test on her sanity. Each second a labor to her breathing, to her heart pumping blood throughout her body. She knew Will could see it, the way her eyes refused to light and the way she would stare at nothing for hours, her eyes lost in the bayou behind Tia's house. Sometimes, she would swear she heard his laugh, or could see his drunken walking, always from the corner of her eye.
And when she would turn, he would be gone.
Now they were going to reach him, and she could hardly hold herself inside. She breathed deeply, her body betraying her excitement, and her fear. What if he didn't want to see her again? Didn't want to be near her.
She shook herself, and swore she would stop thinking that way. It would drive her to insanity, this guessing and what if's. As if sensing her doubt, Will's grip on her shoulder tightened, and she leaned against him slightly, the darkness still around them.
"You shouldn't worry so much," Will whispered to her in the dark. "We're going to bring him back."
Anna laughed to herself, and cast a look to where she knew Will to be. "What do you bet, that by the time we get there, Jack will already be on his way to freedom?" she asked a smile on her lips. Will chuckled lowly, a slightly hollow sound. He still remembered what he saw on the deck of the Pearl, the way his fiancée's lips had crushed to his and the way he had automatically recuperated. The way she threw herself at him and the way he was thankful Anna hadn't seen it.
He wondered what would become of them when Jack was back with them, what would become of all of them. As their ship passed between the dark walls of ice, he hoped he could keep his sister close to him.