The rain had reached a consistent downpour by time I was rounding the corner back toward the crest, but it was the very least of my concerns. Carina had just revealed to me that it was me who was the sole reason she had stayed on Shipwreck. Me! Not Henry, not Will or Elizabeth, not the allure of a new island home…but little ole Anna Norrington!
However, the pep in my step died instantly upon spotting Will through the thicket, stomping his way along the path back to the lighthouse. I froze in place, uncertain of how I should interact with him if at all, as he was very clearly still irked from our familial civil war that had just unfolded less than an hour ago. Instead, he spotted me, and as he passed, he said above the noise of the rain, "Your parents will be looking for you. Best get home now."
I gave a quick nod in obedience as we both turned to each make our way to our respective homes, but I felt unresolved. I took a deep breath and called out to him, "Will?" When he stopped, I boldly said, "For the record, I understand why you'd wish to see the Dutchman off…"
But before I could try to argue my family's stance, he took my empathetic remark as though it was a complete thought and smiled sadly, saying, "Then at least someone does," before turning to go home. I hadn't the heart to argue the matter any further.
It wasn't long before I ran into the full search party comprised of Elizabeth, Henry, and Father. Elizabeth immediately pulled me into an embrace. "Anna!" she said in relief. "We were so worried when you ran off."
Proving that all members of the group didn't feel that way, Henry unsurprisingly interjected, "Where is Carina?"
"Safe," I confirmed. "Got her back to the lighthouse before the rain really began."
Elizabeth placed a hand under my chin and with the other brushed my wet hair from obscuring my eyes. She said sincerely, "This was a dreadful night, and I apologize to you children for having to bear witness to it. We let petty squabbling come between us, and we can't let that happen again." She looked up to my father as she said, "Tell Rose that I will be at the Cove first thing in the morning." Father gave her a reverent nod, then motioned for me to follow him back home.
Before we parted ways, I grabbed Henry by the elbow. "We found Margaret Smyth," I told him. His eyes widened, but he deflated upon seeing my dower expression that revealed her fate. I couldn't quite believe my own words as they left my mouth, but I told him, "Don't leave her alone tonight. She's heartbroken."
He nodded slowly, then put on a brave face and slapped me on the back. "Thank you. Thank you for being good to her." And he meant it.
Father and I returned back down the hill without a word. I finally broke the silence with, "What, no reprimand?"
He raised his eyebrows, "Not from me, no. You're about to get a heap of it from your mother."
…he wasn't wrong. Upon returning to the shop, Mother was fraught with terror and hit me with a barrage of exclamatory concerns. "What were you thinking?" "I told you not to chase after her!" "Even Henry was wise enough to not race out in the pitch dark alone!" "Anything could have happened!"
After what felt like an eternity of these same sentiments repeated over and over again, Father interjected, "Rose, I think you've made your point. Let the girl go to bed. She's exhausted. She's wet. She's heart enough yelling for one night."
Mother's jaw tensed as though she wanted to protest, but then she took a good look at me and saw that what he said was true. …I'd be lying if I said I didn't additionally adopt a pitiful expression to help melt her heart a bit. She relented, collapsing in a chair, exasperated as she said, "Alright. On you go then." Without a second thought, I rushed to scurry up the stairs, eager to record Carina's sentiment towards me in my journal. As Mothers always seem to do, however, she knew my intentions without my vocalizing them, shouting after me, "But straight to bed! I had better not find you scribbling away in that journal!"
"Alright…" I muttered bitterly.
"What was that?" she called.
"ALRIGHT!" I shouted, trudging up to our floor.
I stopped, however, when I heard my parents start speaking in hushed tones.
"You as well," Father said tenderly to her. "Elizabeth will be here early in the morning."
Mother scoffed. "Well…at the very least this night wasn't entirely worthless."
I heard her start to mount the steps, and moved to scurry so they wouldn't catch me eavesdropping, but then realized that she hadn't continued upward.
"James…" she was now saying.
"It's fine," he replied. "I'll only be up for a bit longer."
"I thought we said no lies."
He was silent for a moment, then said, "I don't know what you want me to say. You know what happens when I try to sleep."
"Well let me fix you some tea!" she tried. "Let me—"
"It doesn't matter," he replied. "Please, it really is not a bother to me. Just go on to bed."
She took a deep breath, then finally relented, giving him a kiss before going to bed. I then raced upstairs and threw off my wet clothes and changed into a nightgown as quickly as I could appear as though I had been up there for quite awhile. Good thing too, for after a few minutes, Mother soon cracked open my door, shining her candlestick within to check in to see if I had kept my word about not journaling.
"Ah," she said stepping inside wearing a nightgown of her own. "Still awake, I see. Good. Need any company?"
We crawled into my bed and settled in, and Mother blew out our candles, leaving us in darkness listening to the rain patter on the wood of the fortress walls outside. Pretending as though I hadn't heard what had transpired downstairs, I asked, "No Father?"
"No," she said simply.
"…how long will this go on?" I asked.
She was quiet for a long time before finally murmuring. "As long as it has to, I suppose."
Sleep came to me soon after. I could hear the soft rumbling of far off thunder somewhere in some far off part of my mind that was still conscious. Suddenly, a loud clap of it send me sitting straight up in bed. I checked to see that Mother was still next to me, sound asleep. I breathed a sigh of relief, laughing at myself for scaring so easily at just a bit of thunder. I turned back toward my side of the bed, but when I turned my head, I found myself face to face with a monster. His skin was green and slimy, his eyes cold and calculating as they stared deeply into mine. Most disturbingly of all, his beard was made of dozens of writhing tentacles. I knew at once that it was Davy Jones. I opened my mouth to scream, but before I could, he grabbed my throat and throttled me with his giant crab claw hand, cutting off my air supply as another crack of thunder sounded. This time, however, the thunder was real and stirred me from my nightmare. I took a deep gasp of air as I again sat straight up in my bed, grabbing my pistol from my bedside table and waving it around wildly. But it had been just a terrible dream. Mother was there, still fast asleep. The rain still pounded against the fortress. And Davy Jones was nowhere in sight.
It took me a moment to calm myself, and I began feeling deep empathy for the hell my father must be going through. Having to experience that level of fear night after night was unimaginable. I placed my pistol back down and moved to climb back into bed to fall asleep, but the nightmare had been too jarring to quiet my thoughts. It had all felt so real. I could see the moisture of his skin, his cold, stone-faced expression as he throttled me. I could feel each notch of his claw sink into the skin on my neck.
It was clear that I wasn't going to be able to fall back asleep again, so I eventually resolved to dress and begin my morning chores. When I tossed my legs over the side of the bed however, my toes made contact with something wet and hard on the floor. I instantly recoiled, peering down. The floor was damp right next to my bed, right in the spot where Jones had been standing in my nightmare, and tiny particles of…something littered the ground. Hesitantly, I bent down and picked one of them up. It was rough and conical, and resembled a barnacle. What in the blazes…
Sidestepping this oddity, I dressed in my day clothes and left my room. I walked past my parents' room, which was still empty with undisturbed bedsheets, indicating that Father hadn't even attempted sleep. Feeling that something was terribly awry, I resolved to find Father and tell him what I had just experienced. However, as I briskly walked down the stairs, I gradually heard voices in the storeroom. I continued down slowly, peering into the room where I spotted a disheveled and near-hysterical Will pacing the room, saying in hushed tones to my father.
"You don't understand," Will was saying through deep breaths. "He was there, I saw it. He came through the door, poised to attack. Then I woke up. I thought it was just another one."
"It was just another one," said Father placidly, his arms folded over his chest. "Don't forget that I get them too."
"No, this wasn't an ordinary nightmare," Will said, his eyes wide and panicked. "He was there. I felt it! I have proof!"
To this, Father's eyes narrowed. "Proof? What do you mean?"
Will looked earnestly at him. "I couldn't go back to sleep, so I rose. When I came around to the door, I saw the floor. It was sopping wet. And on the ground…barnacles. Scattered about."
My heart sank into my chest. This was serious. Whatever had been at Will's bedside had also been to Mother's and mine.
Father shook his head, "It can't be," he said. "Are you certain you didn't hallucinate them?"
"I didn't hallucinate anything!" Will insisted. "That's why I came straight here to see if the same happened to you."
"I haven't been sleeping, I wouldn't know," Father replied. He then looked demure as he said, "If I try to sleep I just…wake Rose up with the screaming. I can't keep putting her through that."
The mention of Mother got Will thinking. "Wait…Rose used to have dreams."
But Father was quick to curtail that point. "She had prophecies. She says what we have is a result of trauma."
"It can't be," Will said emphatically, his voice still elevated with tension. "I know what I saw."
"Was it…this?" I asked, coming down from my step and retrieving the barnacles I had collected.
Will and Father immediately walked to me to see what I had outstretched in my hand. Upon recognizing them, they shared a horrified look.
Father's eyes were fearful as he asked me, "Where did you get those?"
"Explain it to me again," Mother said to me, investigating the barnacles carefully in her palm. "When you saw him, were you or were you not in a dream."
"He appeared in the dream, and then I woke up from the dream and he wasn't there."
"But, he was there, otherwise what are these?" Henry asked, scattering a handful of barnacles he too had found at his bedside across Rose's storeroom desk. After Father and Will had interrogated me about my dream and had compared it to Will's, Henry wandered in not long afterwards holding barnacles and sporting a details regarding a dream of his own. This sent us all into a frenzy, and even though we had gathered but a few hours previous under tense circumstances, suddenly both families were back in fortress walls, though this time in solidarity.
"I don't understand," Elizabeth was saying as she paced across the floor. "He can't come on land."
"He wasn't on land," Father said. "He came through a dream."
Carina, who was leaning against a medical case alongside me, said aloud, "It doesn't make any sense though. Why did only three of you get the dream? Only Will, Henry, and Anna?"
Father tensed his jaw. "It would have been four of us," he said. "I guarantee you he would have gotten to me too had I been sleeping."
Carina's mouth was agape as she looked between Will and my father. "And you two have been enduring these nightmares nightly since you've been back?"
"Aye," replied Will. "But never this vivid. And never did he leave evidence behind."
Elizabeth furrowed her brow. "But why Henry and Anna? Jones was dispatched before they were even alive, so he would have no reason to pursue them! Why not me? He knew me?"
"Mmm," Mother agreed. "I never saw him, but I knew Calypso. Why not me for that matter?"
It suddenly hit me. "Our blood," I muttered. Then, louder, "Our blood! Henry, we're the only children of the last two living crewman of the Dutchman."
His expression fell. "'Part of the ship, part of the crew,'" he recited in horror.
Father blanched and suddenly sat down, placing his head in his hands. "What?" Carina murmured to me. "What does that mean?"
"I'm not sure if this is the case," I explained, "But it might be possible that because my father and Will were tied to the crew, Jones can track us through our blood."
"Now hold on," Elizabeth said, holding her hands up to keep us all calm. "He's not tracking anyone. Even if he was real, he can't physically come on land."
"All sea curses are broken, Mother," Henry protested. "Anything is possible."
"If you broke all curses, Jones should be gone too, correct? Otherwise how did the Dutchman go free?"
"Jones isn't a curse," Father said gravely. "He's a scourge."
Amidst the chatter and dissenting opinions, I noticed that our group was one person short: Mother. I slipped away from the group and began searching the storeroom for her. I stopped when I caught a glimpse of her through an opening in the jagged wall that separated us from the rest of the Cove. She stood at the edge of the dock, peering downwards into the lapping water below.
"Mother?" I called from the opening. But it was if she couldn't hear me at all. From where I was I could see that her eyes were narrowed in concentration. She slowly bent down, her fingertips extended, and just as they touched the surface of the water… BAM. As though a bolt of lightning had just surged through her, she jolted and then fell to the ground.
"MOTHER!" I shouted, racing towards the egress of the shop. At this, all other conversation ceased, and everyone inside followed me. Upon seeing her unconscious, Father ran past me to Mother's side, taking her in his arms.
"Rose?" he was asking her while patting her cheek frantically as I fell to my knees on the other side of them.
"Mother!" I exclaimed again.
"What happened?" Will asked. The others were now standing over the three of us.
"She was just standing here. And then she touched the water and collapsed!" I exclaimed.
Just then, she stirred with a deep gasp of air. We all moved backwards to give her space, though Father still held her. She wrapped an arm around his neck to steady herself, and as the rate of her breathing slowed, she asked in a whisper, "How long was I gone?"
I answered, "But a moment!"
She laid a hand over her eyes. "It felt like years."
"Rose," Elizabeth said, kneeling next to Father. "What did you see?"
She looked fearfully between all of us. After what felt like eons, she finally said, "I saw Jones. It is him. And he intends to kill us all."
