For once, Jack's plan sounded reasonable to everyone. He wanted to find an island with a big mountain, climb it, and then watch for their guide's glow at night. Considering they happened to be near such an island at the moment, and considering there was a storm on the horizon whose look Barbossa did not at all like, it seemed like a good idea to head that way as quickly as possible.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon when they got there. It should have been warm and sunny. Instead, though the sun was still out, the wind had turned brisk and chilly and everyone was getting a bad feeling about it. Barbossa squinted up at the island. "And who's to climb that?"
"Me," Jack said easily, "Of course. You don't expect any of them to do it?" He nodded towards the crew, most of whom sat picking their teeth or noses with daggers and burping contentedly.
"You're not goin alone."
Willie was already tying back his hair. "I'll go. I climb things all the time."
"Good idea," Jack said. "Not that I think any of you people would ever propose sailing off and leaving me to die, but I think that, you know, should anything go wrong requiring a rescue... I'd prefer to have the boy with me. Not, shall we say, as leverage, but simply... just in case."
"Nobody's going to need to rescue us, Captain," Willie scoffed.
Elizabeth made a face. "If that's how you feel then I think I should go along too, to keep an eye on you. Otherwise the next thing we know Jack will be coming back down the mountain alone because you decided to do something stupid and heroic..."
Jack slung an arm around her shoulders. "No heroes here, love, eh?"
"As well you should remember." She shrugged him off. "So... agreed?"
Will swallowed hard. "Elizabeth. Not that I'd ever be mistrustful of pirates, but I think I should stay here to make absolutely sure the ship doesn't leave until you and Willie are on it. Do not take any chances while you're up there..."
"Nothing is going to happen to Mother," Willie told him firmly. "I promise."
Jack's goodbye was much easier. "Now, mind you don't leave or smash up my ship on the rocks," he told Barbossa, "No matter how bad the weather gets."
"My ship be perfectly safe," Barbossa assured. "Probably better off without you than with. Now hurry up."
Once his wife and son had disappeared on an adventure out of his sight, Will desperately needed to find something else to worry about, or he would go crazy.
He tapped Barbossa on the shoulder and asked, "Did you divide us from them just so you could do something awful to me without Elizabeth interfering?"
"Settin aside the fact that the separation be Elizabeth's idea and not mine, I'll say aye - I'm so upset with ye for shoutin at me that I'm plannin on killin ya. In fact," he added with a smile that made Will wonder whether he was joking or not, "It's to be a death so unspeakable that we're doin it on land, because otherwise your tormented ghost'll be hauntin the Pearl for all eternity, and of course we don't want that." Will still wasn't sure he wasn't serious, and his uneasiness got worse when the captain turned to some of the people lounging around on deck and ordered them, "Drop the anchor and then lower a couple of boats - we're all goin ashore."
Will forbid himself to ask questions, and attempted to look nonchalant as the pirates obeyed. He felt much relieved when Barbossa told the pirates to go raid the island for water and food and anything else they might want, as it was doubtful the Pearl would be stopping again for quite some time. See, Will told himself, THAT'S why we're ashore. He felt even better when, once the crew had disappeared, Barbossa enlisted his help in hiding the oars "so's nobody takes it into their head to leave us."
Us, he said. Will felt good. Everything was fine.
Or so he thought until Barbossa led him cheerfully into the woods well out of earshot of the others and drew his sword.
Jack, Willie, and Elizabeth found that the climb up was actually pretty easy. As they got higher they found that the island had some craggy and rocky bits, but on the whole the way up was bearable enough not to distract Jack from his attempts to flirt.
Oddly enough, despite a whole afternoon of his best efforts, Elizabeth had yet to slap him. He supposed it meant either he was losing his touch for effrontery, or else she really didn't feel like being teased.
"Lizzie," he began, yet again, when Willie disappeared up ahead to peek over some rocks, "I don't think I've told you this yet today, but... you're looking... well."
"Thank you. Though I'm only saying that to be polite."
He put a hand over his heart. "You wound me. Lizzie, really, what's the matter? Pray tell me how I have offended thee, and-"
"How?" she repeated with annoyance that was only half pretend. "By making advances on every single female who crosses your path, that's how!" Actually, it was one specific female she was thinking of. The way he had kissed Tia Dalma goodbye had been a good deal more than friendly, and for some reason (which Elizabeth refused to name as jealousy), she didn't like it.
But Jack seemed oblivious to what was bothering her. "Not true," he protested. "Not every female. I did not make adavnces on your daughter! So there."
Finally Elizabeth had to crack a smile. "Annie is five," she protested, glad to talk about anything other than women and advances with Jack Sparrow. "Although, truth be told, five or not she's already a bigger lady than I am; she never gets her hands dirty or-"
"Hey! Mother!" Willie was waving for them to come closer. "Look, I think we're there!"
Elizabeth hurried ahead, glad to have an excuse not to talk to Jack just now until she had sorted her feelings out.
It didn't occur to Will to wonder how his wife was faring alone with Captain Sparrow. He had bigger problems: he was staring at the wrong end of Captain Barbossa's cutlass, backed up against a tree and wishing very fervently that he had held his tongue the other day.
But before he could work out what to say, Barbossa tossed the sword up in the air and caught it by the blade. "Here," he said, poking Will with the hilt. "Throw."
Will took it, looking confused. "Throw?"
Barbossa pretended not to notice how badly he had scared him. "Y'know, that way you do. I can throw knives and make 'em stick in things," he explained, "But this sword just don't cooperate. I'm thinkin perhaps it be weighted funny. You try."
"Oh... err, all right. Here." He hefted the cutlass and then pitched it. It went end-over-end a few times and buried itself into a tree trunk.
Barbossa went and fetched it, looking irritated. "Again."
Will did it again. "It throws fine. You try."
Barbossa aimed right and put his whole shoulder into it properly and followed through, but the sword clanked against the tree instead of sticking by the point. Will frowned and went to pick it up. "Try again," he called across the clearing. He hurled the sword back over, sinking it into a tree so close to the captain's cheek that he could have licked it.
Barbossa didn't flinch - although he did roll his eyes afterwards at the unnecessary showin off. He jiggled the cutlass free and heaved it again. "Lands about one in four. If that," he confessed as it clattered to the ground.
There was no point suggesting to just keep trying - this was the man who had drilled Elizabeth and Willie on each new pirate skill until they could do it in their sleep; he clearly believed that practice made perfect and probably had worked on this trick for hours at a time. He must be making some mistake.
On the next throw Will saw, and he hurried to explain before he could feel awkward about correcting his captain. "There - it's your grip. You're holding it as you would to fight, but watch-" He drew his own. "It should be like this to fight... and then like this for throwing... even lower... Right. Now try."
The throw went wild, not even close to the tree, but Barbossa did not seem discouraged. "Aye, makes a difference. Give it back here."
Half an hour later, they were still in the clearing, standing on opposite sides hurling Barbossa's cutlass back and forth. Barbossa stood calmly while Will's throws splintered wood inches from his face, and other than sidestepping the captain's occassional (and, Will was sure, unintentional) wild misses, Will didn't didn't do much flinching either.
"It's much better," Will agreed. "You're hitting almost all of them. Now I'm stopping - I'm getting too old for this." He rotated his shoulder slowly and stretched his arm.
Barbossa came over and sneered, "Puppy," and pointedly did not stretch out his own arm, which, incidentally, felt like he might never be able to lift it again. Still, he was not feeling quite so competitve that he neglected to thank Will for the lesson before moving on to the moral of the story. "Much appreciated, Turner. Now. Afore we go back, you should notice somethin:" He stepped up and suddenly put the point of his weapon under Will's chin. Will gasped as it dug in and tilted his head back, eyes squeezed shut as if he expected to be executed right there. "We just had... oh, say, perhaps a hundred chances to 'accidentally' put a sword through each other's eye, and neither of us did it. Stop worryin." He put his blade away and turned to go back through the woods to the ship.
Will followed him. "Err... Captain?"
From the tone, Barbossa predicted that Will was about to begin with I still don't like you but and then stumble through some girly utterance that would end up making them both uncomfortable. He stopped in his tracks so suddenly that Will slammed into him from behind. "Remember what comes before speakin," he suggested without turning around.
"I... you're right, never mind."
"Good." Barbossa started walking again, chuckling, "I think things betwixt you and me be awkward enough already."
More than once over the years, Will had awoken to find his wife clutching a ratty old pillow and mumbling something in her sleep that was definitely not Will. He shook his head. "I'll say."
Once it got dark, a few minutes of patient scanning with the spyglass told Jack which way they were supposed to be going. He predicted that the Pearl could probably catch up to "that loud and unbearably creepy overgrown fly" within a day or two, and, feeling much better, they settled down to sleep.
They hadn't been asleep long when the weather turned foul. Rain started to pour down on their heads and Elizabeth commandeered Jack's hat. "We can't stay out here," she shouted over the whistling wind.
"Come on, we agreed it's too dangerous to go down at night," Willie argued through chattering teeth, "And we promised Father we'd be careful."
"We should go." Now that he'd lost his hat his makeup was a mess, and Jack was annoyed. "We can make it. It'll probably be a little slippery though, so be careful."
"How does one be careful when one can't even see?" Willie yelled.
"Easy! The exact same way a blind man is careful all the time!" Jack started to mince his way slowly to the path that had led them up.
"And how-" Realizing it would be pointless to ask, Willie shut up and just followed.
It went all right at first as they picked their way down the rocky mountaintop, but when they started to reach where the dirt and plants were things got more tricky. What had been the safe way up had turned completely into mud, even more dangerous to climb over than bare rock. "We can't go back this way," Jack declared after the second time he slipped.
Elizabeth waited for a burst of lightning before trying to glare. "You want to look for a new path when we can't even see?"
They argued the merits of certain death versus possible death, and finally went the way Jack's instinct led them.
Unfortunately Jack's instinct led them to what seemed to be the edge of a cliff. When the lightning flashed they could see land on the other side... just out of jumping distance.
"Wonderful! Perfect!" Elizabeth raged. "Now do you want to try climbing back up a mudslide?"
"No," Jack answered a little sulkily, "And I also don't want to stay here, because as I'm sure you can feel, the ground is eroding under our feet and if we stand here all night we'll slip right down over the edge. If I had to guess, given our luck I'd say it's probably a very long drop with some very sharp rocks at the bottom. Now what do you have to say about that?"
Willie squinted across the gap. "I might be able to jump it."
"Oh, right," Jack snapped, "Let's sacrifice you to see if it's jumpable. I'm sure I'll have great fun explaining it to your father."
They all passed over the question of whether or not jumpable was a word. "Oh, and you want to use you?" Willie snapped right back. "That'll go over spectacular with Captain Barbossa, won't it? I've always wanted to see what it's like to have his knife in my guts. Maybe I'll get to find out what my intestines actually look like."
"Not another word!" Elizabeth shrieked over the wind. "There's no point sacrificing anybody - I can tell you both for certain that I could never make that jump. We'll have to look for another way."
At that moment the lightning struck again, illuminating Jack's face. He was wearing an expression both Turners recognized. "Oh, no," they moaned at the same time.
Jack's hands came up. "Just hear me out, mates..."
A few minutes later Elizabeth stood on the rainy cliff between Jack and Willie, clutching their hands and trying not to faint. "This will never work."
"Almost never," Jack corrected cheerfully, "Which is fine really, since we only need it to work once. Afterwards Willie and me'll find our own way across. Ready?"
"Oh, God..."
"Eyes open, love. All right, ready? Go!"
TBC.
Haha sorry for the bit of cliffhanger! What do you think so far?
