May 26, 1765.

Exactly twenty years to the day after Jones and Beckett were bested, the pirates reigned supreme, and the war was ended, and yet our fight had not been won, not even in the slightest. The entire day had been spent with all of us aflutter in anticipation, awaiting for the sunset. Mother was particularly anxious all afternoon, constantly on the move, moving items that did not need to be moved on the shelves in the storeroom, reorganizing herbs again and again, anything to keep herself preoccupied. I meanwhile was lost in thought as I performed my daily storeroom chores, wondering what it would be like to finally meet my father. What would I say? What would he say? What would he look like? What would he act like?

I had heard both good and bad things about him. He was brave and selfless, witty and loving, loyal and a leader. But he was also ambitious and manipulative, deceitful and cunning, cold and bitter. These traits in my mind cancelled each other out—so which was the Father I was going to get, if I was going to see him tonight at all?

Around the late afternoon, Mother closed the storeroom so that we could get ready. I fretted for hours about what to wear. Was a dress too feminine, or pants too informal? Did my look even matter whatsoever? I finally decided to tie my hair back with a simple ribbon, wearing a white blouse, a vest, and my green skirt with my boots. I met Mother downstairs. She looked beautiful, her hair in elaborate braids twisted among each other to make an almost hypnotic design. She wore her red dress she had once sported aboard the Dutchman with the black bodice. She took my hand, and we walked together to make the hike up to the lighthouse.

We were silent for a time, until I asked the question that had been on my mind for most of my childhood, but had particularly been eating at me for the past few hours; "Mother," I asked gently, "What will he be like? Father? If he comes?" I swallowed my apprehension as I proceeded with, "I'm not sure what to expect when the Dutchman comes back to shore."

She looked down at me, wearing a sad smile. "Your father," she began, "Has a wit that is unmatched. He's extremely astute and has a brilliant mind for strategy. He's...powerful. Commanding."

I shifted uncomfortably. None of these descriptors sounded endearing to me. I then asked, "Do you...do you think he'll like me?"

Mother blinked, as though she couldn't believe what I was asking. She then stopped walking, placing one hand on my shoulder and the other under my chin. "Ma Cherie," she cooed, "He loves you more than you could possibly know. Of course he'll like you."

"But he sounds...cold," I protested.

Her expression grew pensive as she cocked her head to the side. "I don't think I ever told you about when I first told him that I was pregnant with you," she began. "I didn't know it was possible to have a child as we both had already died, so I doubted for a long time. But finally, I just knew, as mothers always seem to do. I realized how it was possible—both you and Henry. Though we technically are dead, our bodies have been kept alive. We still have beating hearts that too in turn can give life. I was hesitant to tell your father anything, for fear of how he would react.

"There came a time that I had to say something, so one night, after our shifts had ended, I sat him down and told him. He reacted much as I initially did, saying that he thought that was impossible. And of course, he was skeptical, just as I knew he would be. And oh, how he worried and doted! But soon, as I began to show more and more, he became so anxious. He really wanted you. Well," she said, looking down at her hands, "Not exactly you. He wanted a son, as all Fathers do."

Though my stomach dropped in disappointment, my mother, as though anticipating my unsettledness at this comment, quickly reassured me by saying, "Your father wanted nothing more than to have a child at all, but I suppose that he was so particular about you being male because in his eyes, he could train the boy to be a man who could defend himself and be fearsome. With a daughter, there would be a constant fear. A need for him to protect you."

"I don't need anyone's protection," I protested.

Mother smiled, whispering, "You and I know that, but you could never convince the likes of him otherwise. C'est vrai?" Once I grinned in understanding, she proceeded with, "And when the time came and you were born, I watched the most miraculous and curious thing come to pass. At first, when he saw you, he seemed disappointed. He just stared at you, and I stayed still, nearly holding my breath. Then he held you for the first time." Mother's eyes started to grow misty as she spoke the next few words. "His eyes smiled first. Such love, something I had always wished to see from my own parents. You were his, something that could never leave him heartbroken. It was a beautiful thing."

She drew herself from the memory and gazed back down at me. "So when you say that he sounds cold…largely, he is. He's had a hard life, and he's been hurt many times. He buries his emotions beneath a facade. And it was when he would let me see through that facade that I fell in love with him."

"Do you think the facade will be up one more around me?" I asked.

"Probably," she reluctantly revealed. "It's been so long, and we don't know what he and Will and the crew have been facing for all these years. Tonight will provide us with answers. But I know he won't be the same as we once were." She grabbed squeezed my shoulders and looked at me earnestly. "Promise me that you'll give him a chance. No matter how he looks or what he acts like. Know that he loves you. Know that he's facing a pressure neither of us can fathom."

I promised, though my anxiety only seemed to balloon. We continued on the path to the bluff, once again ceasing all idle chatter. Henry and Elizabeth were already waiting outside when we arrived, and we wordlessly all exchanged tense glances as we walked together down to the cliffside to watch the sunset. Henry looked dapper in a gold and beige suit, while Elizabeth sported a beautiful pink dress I had never seen before.

We waited there together on the bluff overlooking the horizon, just as Henry and Elizabeth had done ten years previous. Sunset grew ever nearer, and I began to grow increasingly impatient.

"What happens next?" I asked aloud to anyone who would answer me.

"Shh!" Henry hushed me. "Just wait!"

My mother, however, just smiled and leaned closer to me, a misty look in her eyes. She seemed to almost be reciting a line from her past as she murmured to herself, "Seldom times, one can spot a green flash along the horizon. Wait and see if it happens now."

So we did. As the last speck of the sunlight dipped below the ocean, Elizabeth grabbed Mother's hand and held in her breath. We waited and…

…nothing.

For minutes we waited as darkness began to fall. Finally, I looked up to my elders. "Well? Where are they?" Little did I know that I asked aloud the question they were all asking themselves in utter disbelief.

"Did…we couldn't have gotten the day wrong…" Elizabeth said distantly, clearly crestfallen as her eyes still searched the horizon as though she just wasn't seeing the Flying Dutchman floating in the harbor.

"Of course you didn't!" cried Henry, who was visibly enraged. "Mother, so in peril are they that they can't escape their bindings for Return Day!"

"Henry," Mother said in a warning tone. "Just…everyone go home. I will go find them and sort this out."

"Rose, no, it's fine," Elizabeth said, trying to keep from causing trouble.

At the same time, Henry insisted, "Then I'm going with you!"

"No, you aren't!" Mother demanded, silencing him. "Please, just…take Anna up to the lighthouse. I'll be along shortly, with our men in tow. Alright?"

"Rose…" Elizabeth said warningly.

"I'll be fine," Mother assured her, though she seemed less certain than she was simply trying to keep everyone calm. She turned to me, placing a hand alongside my face. "I'll be back soon, my sweet. Go up with Elizabeth."

"Here," Henry said, reaching inside his jacket pocket and procuring a crumpled piece of parchment, then handing it over to my mother. "This will help get you precisely there sooner."

Mother took it and unfolded it to reveal a detailed map of the island, with a distinct marking of where the Dutchman was imprisoned. The map was hand drawn in Henry's penmanship.

"What is this?" she asked him.

"An accurate map of where the Dutchman lies," he responded briskly, not providing any further explanation.

"But…how did-"

"Looks like we're all keeping secrets from one another," he replied, his jaw tight as he looked between the three of us. My heart raced at this tense moment, as no one seemed certain of what to say next.

Mother finally sighed in exasperation, handing the map back to Henry. "I haven't the time for this," she said. "I can find them on my own. I'm leaving!"

Elizabeth caught her arm before she was able to turn and leave, stopping her progress. "Rose," she said in a low voice, "If you're not back by sunrise…"

"I will be," Mother emphasized. Then, looking at me one final time, she said gently, "Don't you fret. I will sort this all out."

I couldn't even get in a word before she had turned, marching straight towards the path which would lead down to the shore. Soon, I was led in the opposite direction back to the Cove, away from the bitter disappointment that was that evening on the bluff.


Upon entering the lighthouse, Elizabeth confronted her son, fury in her eyes. "You will explain to me at once the meaning of that map," she spat.

"Only if you explain to me why I've been kept out of all your plans for the past nine years," Henry countered, returning her glare. I stood unmoving in the back of the room, petrified to get involved in this quarrel. Henry continued, "You think I didn't know that you were sneaking off to the Cove once a week? I've followed you there. Many times." He let out an exasperated sigh, casting his eyes downwards as he asked quietly, "Is this all because of the time I nearly drowned as a stowaway?"

"It's because I wanted to keep you safe, Henry!" Elizabeth cried. "You would have gone galavanting off if I kept all of our plans, and ideas, and theories around you. I wanted you to have as normal and safe of a life as possible. That's why I moved you here, that's why I stopped including you on the plans. You would have tried to go out on your own otherwise, I just know it."

He tensed his jaw before revealing, "I have gone out. To visit them."

"You have?" I said without thinking. Despite some of his more rash behavior I didn't agree with, I couldn't help but be somewhat impressed that he had accomplished this feat.

Elizabeth's face was flushed with anger. "When?" she said simply.

"Twice," he answered. "Once eight years ago, and I was able to get the Dutchman to raise itself up. I conversed with Father then. Then I made another attempt a few months later, but by that time, the current had formed around the resting place. I couldn't even get close."

I then crossed the room to stand at Elizabeth's side upon hearing this. "You were actually aboard? You spoke to your father?" He nodded. "Well, what did he say?" I asked. "Who else was there?"

"He refused my help, much like he did the first time Rose tried to save them. And no one else was there…except voices."

I shook my head, not understanding him. "Voices?"

"It's no accident that they're trapped at the bottom of the sea," Henry said plaintively to the two of us. "Someone has them, and they've been keeping watch over them this whole time." His eyes then grew distant as he remembered. "Father's face…it was covered in growth from living in nothing but the ocean water." He shook his head. "If there are any other crewmen still aboard, I shudder to think of what they look like now. That was eight years ago when I last saw them." He then reached around his neck and lifted out of his shirt a long leather necklace which held a pendant, a shell, and a metal ring.

Elizabeth instantly recognized it, reaching her hand out to touch it. "Will's necklace," she whispered.

"Aye," Henry responded. "He gave it to me as a parting gift that night."

Tears in her eyes, she then murmured, "Why didn't you tell me about this?"

"Tell me why I would," he retorted. "Any time I tried to ask about Father, or Jack, or what Rose was up to in the fortress, you only shut me out. If we would have but collaborated, perhaps they would have been freed years ago. With my research…"

"Your research?" I asked. "What do you mean?"

Without a word, he marched out of the parlor and walked down the hallway towards his room. Elizabeth and I instinctively followed. Within his room, which otherwise looked like the typical furnishings of a boy his age, he began to tear down curtains he had hung over all four walls. As he took them down one by one, Elizabeth and I were astonished to find every inch of the walls covered in parchment he had tacked to them, full of drawings and scribblings and pages from books.

"I have read every book on Shipwreck, I have even borrowed a few from Rose's storeroom without her noticing."

I sneered. "You stole them, you mean."

"I always brought them back!" he protested. "But I have read as much as I could. I have postulated every possible solution, and I keep arriving at but one answer and one answer only; The trident of Poseidon."

"Henry…" Elizabeth began, silencing him.

"The trident's but a myth," I added. "Mother tried to locate it to try to free them all even before I was born. It was supposedly kept in Poseidon's tomb beneath the sea, and don't you think if anyone were to be able to locate it, it would be the very crew who controls the seas?" I shook my head sadly. "It doesn't exist. We've tried that route."

"Father said the same thing!" he insisted. "But there is proof! In the ancient texts, they speak of 'the map no man can read!'"

"—Which my mother mistakenly gave to Barbossa," I interrupted him. "We have no idea where it could be, and even if we could find it, how could it possibly be interpreted if no man can read it?"

"Well nothing is being accomplished by just sitting here!" he yelled. "They haven't come back for Return Day because someone is torturing them down there! If they even are still down there, that is. Anything could have happened by now!"

"We won't know anything until Rose comes back with news," Elizabeth said calmly, trying to ease the tension in the room. "So," she murmured, "We shall wait. We will assess as soon as she returns home with news. Understood?"

Henry and I both nodded bitterly, then wordlessly joined Elizabeth back in the parlor. She fixed us dinner and tea, but our minds were each elsewhere and our bodies completely uninterested in nourishment. Though for ten years, all of us had had the same exact motivation, we somehow had undermined our objective by acting in opposition to one another rather than working together. I couldn't help but fear that Henry was right; Maybe all of this could have been resolved if we had but collaborated from the beginning.

The night trudged onwards at an excruciatingly slow pace. I began pace the room, with every passing moment fearing the worst for my mother. I remembered what Elizabeth had said to her before she left to go find them; If you aren't back before sunrise… If she wasn't back before sunrise, what? What could we possibly do as three mortals without a single clue as to who had captured our loved ones? Eventually I grew weary of pacing and planted myself in a chair, and before I knew it, dozed off into an uneasy sleep.

I was awakened by voices that cut through the silence. I sat up, my eyes adjusting to see the form of my mother, standing in the middle of the room, dripping wet and clutching her silver crab locket that she had inherited from Calypso in her palm. Something else glinted on its chain however…a gold ring.

"Rose, what happened?" Elizabeth asked, fetching her a wool blanket and placing it over her shoulders.

"Aye," Henry added, "Where are they?"

"Mother?" I said.

She opened her mouth and closed it several times, uncertain of what to say. She finally settled on, "James and Will are still there. They're fine." Her lip quivered as she then added on one final, gut-wrenching sentence that cleared the room of any trace of hope; "They're not coming to shore…and they once again refused to tell me what has them trapped."