Chapter 1: 1741 - Lost to Davy Jones' Locker

The whiff of a breeze blew across the seemingly endless expanses of a deserted landscape, and whirled up a few clouds of fine sand, which drifted aimlessly in front of it. The white sand got blown over from the dunes, which could be seen some distance away on the horizon, and which at the same time seemed to be the only heights for several miles around. Apart from them, there was nothing else for a lonely beholder's eye to cling to. Nothing but a white desert that stretched as far as the eye could see:

A sea of snow-white and hard-baked sand reflecting the blazing rays of the sun burning down mercilessly on it.

There were hints that this place might once have been the bottom of a mighty lake or even an ocean, but if this would have been true then all life that might have ever existed here was long gone.

A faint woosh in the distance suggested that somewhere the waves of an ocean were still breaking on a beach, but those who didn't know the ocean existed would take the sound for mere imagination. Solely intended to slowly driving them insane. Something that seemed to apply to everything in this cleared and monotonous landscape:

A landscape, where there were no trees and no bushes, where there were neither mountains nor valleys, and where there were neither rivers nor lakes.

And, still, worse than the shapeless nothingness the desert appeared to be, was the agonizing silence it was covered in:

It was a silence in which thoughts and heartbeats would reverberate all the louder inside every lonely human being forced to endure it.

It was a silence in which no birds sang, no insects hummed, no waterfalls rushed, and wherein not even a brook gurgled somewhere in the distance.

Over this desolate landscape shrouded in deadly silence, an almost cloudless sky stretched in a strangely washed-out blue, which seemed to be the canvas for the sun by day and the moon by night. And every living creature that was still breathing and sane desperately longed for that moment when the sun disappeared behind the horizon in the evening - for then, and only then, was there an escape for a few hours from the relentless heat and blazing light with which the otherwise life-giving orb burned down on the hard, drought-cracked ground.

All the more astonishing was the sight offered to a secret observer - if there would have been one - if he would let his gaze wander over the withered landscape towards the dunes, for there seemed to be a ship at anchor, just waiting to that the parched seabed was filled with water again.

And this sight was no hallucination: The ship was real.

Its keel was buried deep in the dry ground, and the bow aimed at the dunes on the horizon, as if the proud galleon wanted to sail on them as on the waves of an invisible ocean.

She was an eye-catching three-master, which could still be seen in this surreal place, even if she might never feel water under her keel again. Her sails were reefed, and the Jolly Roger on her main mast just waved wearily in the barely perceptible breeze trying to dance with it.

The strange ship was armed with a respectable number of cannons, but both port and starboard hatches were closed.

Three intricately wrought lanterns adorned its stern, although one of them appeared to have taken a direct hit during a sea-fight, and its through and through black wood looked like it had been burned at some point, and yet, at the same time, as if it belonged that way.

And still nothing all around the impressive vessel was really able to explain how it ended up at this godforsaken place.

Only some visible damage to its rail, stern and decks suggested that the elegant sailer had gotten into a fight with an opponent who seemed hell-bent on sinking it with all hands.

The ship that so daringly braved the scorching sun, the stillness and the loneliness was the "Black Pearl" and her figurehead, the winged beauty at her bow, seemed to want to show her the way back to another world.

That path was barred to her, however, and there would be no way back for her to where she had come from, for the creature having brought her to this lonely place would prevent it - at the behest of the man who was lord of these lands: Davy Jones.

It was he who had once raised the "Pearl" from the depths of the sea and it was he who had sent her back there after the time he had granted her and her captain did run out.

From now on she would forever follow an unknown course that would never take her towards any destination again. And so from now on she lay frozen in time and space in a sea of hard-baked sand, waiting for the day when eternity itself would crumble to dust.

And yet:

Just as the "Pearl" defied with all her might the place in which she was trapped, so it was also she who gave comfort and shade to the lonely figure that lay motionless on the hard, dry ground beside her.

She shielded the stranger from all the inconveniences of this inhospitable place as well as she was able to, and so protected him from the blazing sun, the constant breeze, which didn't bring any cooling, and the fine sand that seemed to grind and shape the landscape all around them.

The figure dozing in the shadow of the ship, looking small and lost in this white and wide-spread desert, was a man.

His handsome face, with its finely chiselled features, owned that timeless youthfulness only a few people would ever got to get, and it seemed to be a reflection of what made his extraordinary personality.

He wore a white, slightly haggled shirt, over it a waistcoat of grey-blue linen. A sash and a wide belt were wrapped around his body, to which were attached a sword, a pistol, and an apparently unimpressive little wooden box. The trousers he wore were also made of grey-blue fabric and his feet were clad in comfortable jack-boots of dark brown leather. Above it all he wore a linen captain's coat, though in a slightly darker colour than trousers and waistcoat.

Long, dark hair framed his face, tamed only by a headscarf made of dark red fabric, and one could see innumerable small ornaments and wooden beads braided into the thick soft strands. His closed eyes were rimmed with khol and a well-kept beard highlighted his slightly opened lips, now dry and split.

Several flamboyant rings adorned his slender fingers, and bracelets of cloth, lace, and leather were wrapped around his wrists.

And while one of his hands gripped an eye-catching hat, a tricorn, that lay beside him, the other held a small trinket, a locket, in a tight grip...

The stranger forced to hold out in the quiet solitude of this unreal place was the captain of the black ship, the "Black Pearl": Jack Sparrow.

And the quiet solitude of this place was the punishment for him to receive, because he had been unwilling to keep true to his end of a bargain which had served only one purpose from the very beginning: Never really giving him a choice or a chance to settle his outstanding scores in the time Davy Jones had granted him.

He knew by now that he had been nothing more than a piece in a game of chess seemingly played by forces more powerful than he would ever be able to defeat. But they had not reckoned on his being able to see through the web of lies and deceit they had woven around him.

And that was why he was here and why they had condemned him to an eternity of loneliness and silence.

He didn't know what he could have done wrong to deserve such severe punishment, as at the time when he first ended up in this place, he and the woman he loved had been cheated out of everything they had owned.

Their lives and love included.

Everything had gotten taken from them, even the slightest hope of ever seeing each other again, and yet it was he who got punished for the deeds he had done, so, if ever there was a moment in his life when he was willing to question everything he had learned about justice and righteousness, it was this one...

Jack sighed deeply before slowly opening his eyes and sitting up in the shadow of his beloved vessel. He blinked a few times to get used to the hard white light again, and tried to determine what time it was - but in vain.

Time had no meaning in this place and it seemed to stand still ever since he ended up here after the monster from the deepest depths of the sea had devoured him along with his ship.

When had this been?

Had days, weeks or months passed ever since?

He did not know and each of his attempts to calculate the time span had failed so far.

True, here, as everywhere else, there was the alternation of day and night, but he could not say whether an hour in this world equalled an hour in that world from which he had come.

He didn't even know if what he was seeing was real.

Of course he could touch the ground, the sand, and the strange round stones scattered around his ship, but did that really mean it was all real?

And since he was utterly alone, there was no one who could answer these questions for him either.

He sighed again, shook sand from his hair and clothes, and placed his tricorn on his head, before looking around once more, only to find that nothing had changed since he'd slipped into his dreamless slumber.

What did that mysterious stranger in the Turkish prison explain to him at the time: Everyone who ended up in Davy Jones' Locker perceived this place differently?

If so, what did this mean?

Was this mysterious place nothing more than an illusion playing out in his head while driving him a little more insane with each passing day?

Not if this was meant to be a punishment stretching on till eternity and beyond...

And yet, if madness was a way of escaping the daily monotony of loneliness, silence, and scorching sun to which he would henceforth be exposed, he would only too willingly embrace this last resort.

'No,' he thought to himself as he stumbled to his feet: 'this can therefore not be an illusion, because if it were an illusion I wouldn't be hungry or thirsty, right? But what if hunger and thirst are the illusion? Am I not here because I'm supposed to be dead? Well, assuming I actually would be dead... Then I shouldn't be craving freshly baked pancakes or a bottle of rum anymore... should I?'

He covered his face with both hands for a moment to drive away both the tiredness and his strange thoughts - to no avail!

'Maybe I'm already crazy and just don't realise it. Who knows!"

Looking back at the "Pearl" he turned round and headed for the dunes.

He knew that beyond them spread both a seemingly endless beach and an ocean - both of which he had discovered shortly after his involuntary arrival - but the knowledge that he would never find a way to get his proud ship there all on his own had quickly dashed even this last hopeful thought.

Had Jones granted him the mercy of letting him and the "Pearl" end up in this sea of infinity, he would have at least had been given the illusion of still being the captain of a ship but then the punishment meant to hit him would not have been a punishment anymore...

For a while he looked down at the beach and the waves rushing ashore in a steady and eternal rhythm, then he slowly stumbled down the dune, got down on one knee and cupped water into his hands to cool his face.

As his gaze wandered thoughtfully along the horizon, he wondered if there was anything beyond.

Maybe a way back to the other side?

Involuntarily his gaze fell on his right forearm and the image he got tattooed years ago:

The sparrow in full flight before a bright sundown...