Remo's Tale

We had no children, Ernesta and I. So we would claim the world, leave no corner unexplored, the sun and the stars the only limits. We made it as far as Paris.

We'd decided long ago the Sword would never let us have a moment's peace, and with no heirs to pass it to, we searched and searched for a safe place, some uncharted nook of the world where we could hide it, hide it from men such as Henry Alberich. That is when we learned of the Wendigo.

Long, spindly giants covered in white fur, there are stories of hunters seeing them from a distance, only to find out too late they aren't a bear. They have a long dark blue tongue and their fangs and claws are always stained with blood. They seemed all-powerful at first- strong, swift, and with an intelligence—but then we learned, ah! They are only functionally immortal. Fire, of course, keeps them at bay, but that won't do much to stop their shrieking howls. Silver is what destroys them. So does a blow to the head, but one never wants to be so close. Silver and Cygnus.

God rest Ernesta. She wanted to go even after hearing all the dangers, especially the Wendigo Fever. It is a curse of the most horrid kind, brought on by encountering them during a fever, or, God forbid, eating one's own kind. Nauseating odors and nightmares follow the accursed, but the awakening...the awakening. Your limbs feel filled with fire, so much so they carry you into the wilderness, as you lose your mind and your clothes at the same time. The victims never return.

I told Ernesta she could not go, forbade her to go. It was no place for a bed-ridden woman in Paris with a fever. But she, ah, she forbade me to go alone. I said I would wait until her fever broke and we would hide Cygnus among the Wendigo together. It never did.

We were married fifty-two years and it still was not enough time. So I went on alone, slaying a small one with Cygnus. I put on its skin and prowled the North in my massive disguise, ready to collapse from the burden at any second. Their cries...mercy, their cries. They echoed in my dreams for so long I felt for sure the Fever was upon me. I came to a wall of ice, thicker and colder than anything I'd happened upon before. This was the place, I decided. I was through. I lodged it into the block of ice and tested it. It would not budge, and so I left the wilderness, making my way south until I could find passage back to Italy. My brothers and their children, they think this is a time for soul-searching and mourning. That is only the beginning.

I found a room at the inn where you found me, intending to only stay one night and then go aboard a ship. Alone. It was that empty feeling one's adventures are over. Your friend Alberich took care of that.

I went down the stairs to drown my sorrows, I'm sorry to say, when I found what must have been almost a full regiment with rifles pointed right at me. Hands go up in the air, I demand to see who is in charge, and there he is, demanding to know where you are. It's been how many years, Jack? Twenty-two? I remember you, of course, but I spoke the truth. I hadn't seen you since you were a child just on the brim of becoming a man and that you and your mother ended your service with me so you could go to Singapore.

"Where is the Sword?" he kept asking.

"What sword?"

"The Sword of the Swan. Cygnus!" Every time he befouled the name of it with his mouth he slapped me. "Your former student is a notorious pirate and known thief. And you, sir, are a braggart and so must have told him you were too special for just any sword." I asked if it was bragging if it was true. That is how I got this little scar on the back of my neck. He had a piece of paper, as wrinkled as the spot where his ear had been, and showed me a drawing.

"It is a work of art," I told him. That slap left no scar.

"Do you know where a place called Shipwreck Cove is?" I did not. The Benedettis do not associate with pirates or ships that wreck...no offense. He said you would be there sooner or later and I had no choice but to wait you out. Weeks of being spooned thin, watery soup, long sessions of slapping and punching, just asking where the Sword could be found. But, Jack, you would be proud of me. I held out. I told them bandits had taken Cygnus away from me years ago and it was taking the better part of my life searching for it. It was perfection, my plan, no? At least it was. I don't know how I can go back to the lands of the Wendigo. I don't know how I can stand it.

"Hold on now, mate," Jack said, holding up a hand. "Why go back at all?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean why suffer when one doesn't have to? They don't know where Cygnus is. I, up until now, didn't know, so what say you to us dropping you off in Italy and having ourselves a festival realmente grande since I'm sure we can find something worth celebrating, savvy?"

"Oh, Jack. If only it were that simple." Remo took in this grown version of his student, the keen mind and ravenous eyes still very much intact, although there was more facade now. "Your Royal Navy knows of the Wendigo. They consider it their duty to destroy them."

"That don't sound too bad," the older one, Gibbs, he thought that was the right name, said. "Sound like real pieces of work the way you described them."

"That they are, and they will massacre every man that sets foot on their lands. This we must stop."

"Must stop?" a voice scoffed. Remo licked his lips in thought. Treach? Teague. That was it. Jack's father. For amusement, and then sincere bafflement, he'd recalled Oria Pettirosso and tried to picture her next to a younger version of this man. She'd had a harsh, haggard look about her, too, but only when she was being harsh. Too soon gone were the women who loved to laugh, whose hearts shown openly when in the presence of their children. He saw the family resemblance too easily; a less observant mind with a worse memory might have said Jack was the spitting image of his father, but it was a blend. There was just enough of his mother...

He'd realized he hadn't listened to a word the man had just said.

"What?" he asked, making sure to snap it out, as if in shock.

"The Royal Navy spends its time hunting us," Teague said, rolling his eyes at having to repeat himself. "Rabbits don't wave signs around for the wolves to see."

"There may be some good men among them," Elizabeth said.

"Then they can die heroes. The Golden Queen's journey ends here." With much presence, he left the galley, Jack following him out.

Remo sat, shifting from Elizabeth to Gibbs, wondering if he'd always known how full of strangers the world is. They smiled, shifting awkwardly themselves, though, and that was more than Admiral Alberich had ever done.

"I'm sure the Black Pearl will help you," Elizabeth said. "And the Golden Queen. Captain Teague must know that if even one person so much as survives, there's a chance he'll find Cygnus."

"And that must never happen, bellezza!" he shouted, pressing his fingertips into the table. "I'll be dead before I see it!"

"How is it the Navy knows about these Wendigo anyway?" Gibbs asked.

"It is my fault, my fault." He shook his head. None of them were meant to know his folly. He took his log out of his coat pocket and flipped through the yellowed, starchy pages. "They ransacked their way through my log, violated it. There was nothing in it Alberich didn't already know, but this."

Watching their eyes widen at the drawing would have made Remo smirk and offer to tell his story again, but the bleak knowledge of having to return to the cold, to all the blood, to that heavy carcass crushing him with every step left no room for even a smile. Their eyes explored the red, beady ones on the page, a wolfish head with quill-like teeth jutting out of the body of an enormous ape, the rippling muscles almost on the outside rather than the inside. For Remo, the lingering horror had come from the hands, thick and humanoid, four fingers and a thumb with knuckles, joints, even palm lines. They were a frostbite blue with dagger-like claws at the ends, but it was enough to keep Remo from forcing himself to believe they were just another dumb animal.

Sighing, Remo folded the drawing back up and stood so straight his back tensed. There had been a few students after Jack, but he'd been the first, the expensive, lustrous schools deciding he was too rapidly approaching the end of his usefulness. Students seemed to go in and out faster each year and yet he could always remember a face, a name, some amusing story, but Jack had been his first student as a tutor, and the first student, as far as he knew, to turn pirate.

Eager to hear that long story prompted enthusiastic steps out the galley onto the main deck of the magnificent ship. Surely it meant Jack was successful, for a pirate anyway. He froze at the sight of Jack and his father farther ahead.

"So ye plan to stick it out?" Teague huffed, his stance stern and rather rooster-like, Remo thought. "Nothin' in it for you, ye know."

Jack remained silent, his gaze narrowed, his hand angled as if to gesture.

"You still manage to surprise me, Jackie-boy. You must owe this tutor a great deal."

"Making two square is something you find objectionable?"

"It's something I find suspicious on your part. It must have put your mother at ease knowing you had a father of a kind around," he said, stroking his chin.

"Ah, so that's it, is it? Eh? Jealous?" Jack's posture remained the same, even though it swayed just a little now and then. In fact, Remo thought, it reminded him so much of their sparring sessions, the way he stood now, shoulders back and head forward, like a predator about to strike.

"Don't tell me you want to save a whole regiment of marines for morality's sake," Teague said. "Go on. Admit he was like a father to you. You seem to have hard enough a time telling people how you feel. Start with your old man. Say how you'd run through broken glass for him if you knew it'd put his fears at bay."

Remo cringed, waiting for the clash of swords. Instead, Jack drew his pistol, the barrel pointed straight at Teague's head.

"You said the Golden Queen's journey ends here," he said coolly. "The Pearl goes on and you can do as you like. Per the usual. Captain."

As he made his way to the captain's cabin, Remo and Teague locked eyes for only a moment, each one waiting for a caustic remark, or worse, a new pistol forging its way into the fray. They marched off in separate directions.

"Footwork, Jack, footwork!" He blocked another mindless chop from Cygnus with a wooden sword. A few chips fell to the floor. "You are too out of breath, and no one wants to dance with one who is sloppy!"

Holding the blade out in front of him, straight arm, Jack inhaled, beads of sweat dripping from his hair onto his temples. It would not be long before a careless tilt of the head would make it sting his eyes. Remo took advantage of the moment to charge. Strolling towards him, he twisted his blade onto that of Cygnus. Guttural sounds of struggling responded.

"This is not a competition of strength!" Remo reminded him. "This is a dance. And it ends when the one who has taken the lead meets the body of the other. You are not calm. Has a dancer ever been any good when he is not calm?"

"We're leaving Italy," he panted, sticking Cygnus into the floor, his hands cupping the swan head. "We're going to work for the Royal Navy in Singapore."

"Ah! Then it is all the more imperative you dance calmly." His mother had already notified him, and it had stung, a year and a half gone in the blink of an eye. Jack picked up the sword and swung it at him. "Have you forgotten everything you've learned? You are still angry!"

"Did you not hear me say why?" He swung at him again.

"They say the men of Singapore have been dancing many years," Remo said. "Their new ways will anger you. The new surroundings will anger you. The gorgeous women whom you can't understand..." He grinned, but no laughter answered him. "An angry dancer is a sloppy dancer, Jack. Dances do not happen when all is well. They happen when there is...trouble!" He swung. Jack blocked. "Conflict!" He blocked again, his stance improving. "When what has been smoldering beneath the cinders cannot stay hidden any longer. That is when you must dance, and if you are angry..." The parry lasted longer, a volley of offense and defense until Remo had the wooden sword against Jack's throat. "Then I am the better dancer." At last a smile. "We will say our farewells later. For now, control your fire. Use it." A more expert, sophisticated parry followed. Remo smiled as he practiced steady, controlled breaths. When was has been smoldering beneath the cinders cannot stay hidden any longer.

A/N: Keep that last scene in mind for the next chapter!