Disclaimer: If I owned stock in Disney maybe I could claim about 0.000001% as mine, but I don't own anything except my instrument (a clarinet, for you curious folks) and my mind, which I'm sometimes not sure if I want to admit to owning . . .
AN: Sorry it's taken so long to get these chapters up. Thanks for the patience. Real life can be incredibly hectic, and I haven't been home at night for the last three . . .um, four? . . .not sure . . .nights. Now that I am home, I will continue with the story, and hope that no important details have run away while I was out continuing with life. Right. Also, college essays are evil. No more can be said about them than that.
AN2: I mean no disrespect to anyone reading this who is Hindu or knows somebody who is. I suppose that's why they decided to use the Aztecs in the movie—there aren't many people who can trace any heritage to them, and those who can probably wouldn't mind an ancient religion of theirs being used. If this chapter is confusing, it's because I had the gist of what the curse/blessing would be and cause, and worked backwards towards a source. Yeah, that doesn't work very well. Put anything that needs clearing up into a review. Oh well, like I said, I'm not very good at bad guy stuff . . .
Trust Me Still
Part 6
One, two, three, four, five, wall, turn . . .one, two, three, four, cot, turn . . .one, two, three, four, five, wall, turn . . .one, two, three, four, wall, turn . . .
Will paced around the confines of his small cell. He was fairly certain that he knew every crack in the flagstone and every brick in the wall personally, and he had only been there for eight hours . . .or at least he was fairly certain it had been about eight hours, the only source of light in the room being a lamp that hung from the low ceiling.
It had taken them three days sailing from Port Royal to reach their destination, and Will disliked it intensely.
Caves. Ever since the fight with Barbosa, Will had a rather strong dislike of caves—not that it had mattered much in Port Royal. He had felt a familiar sense of panic twist at his insides as he was led, his hands bound once more, through the entranceway and into the island.
These caves were nothing like the ones where Barbosa and his crew had camped, though. They was no water inside the caves, and the ceiling was intact. Once past the entranceway, which seemed a completely natural formation, it appeared as though someone had carefully cut into the stone, making it symmetrical, changing the feel of the place to something almost like an underground castle. In the innermost parts, where the raiders obviously lived, flagstones had been placed on the ground, and bricks formed the walls, dividing what once might have been a very large cavern into small cells like the one that he occupied.
Will paused in his walking at the cot and kicked it gently, not wanting to damage his foot due to frustration. That would definitely fall under the headings 'stupid' and 'foolish'.
The raiders had been incredibly careful with him, treating him almost as he treated Elizabeth, as though fearful that his human body might break at any moment. They had bandaged his chest despite his protests, and made sure that he ate and slept at regular intervals. Given what they were, Will supposed it was only natural, but it still made him distinctly uneasy.
He really, really didn't want to become one of them.
Given a choice, he would simply leave with his daughter and swear to forget anything had ever happened.
He might even succeed in forgetting, eventually.
Yet no one was giving him that option . . .
Or any options, for that matter.
Will resumed his pacing.
Footsteps sounded outside his door and he stopped, moving into the center of the room. The sound of the lock being unbolted echoed in the small enclosure as the door swung open.
The same raider who had brought him food every day, the one that Will had stabbed, was standing there, a tray in his hands again.
Will stood silently, waiting for the man to set the tray down and leave as he had all the other times on the ship.
Instead, the raider closed the door, signaling to someone who stood out of Will's line of sight.
The small cell suddenly seemed claustrophobic.
"What do you want from me?"
"It's what we'll give you that should interest you, lad."
"I don't want your invincibility or your immortality or your blessing or whatever you want to call it. I just want to take my daughter and go home."
"You don't have a home left, lad. We're giving you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here. What have you got left out there?"
"I have a wife and a son!"
"Are you certain of that?"
Will's blood froze in his veins. "You swore . . ."
"We didn't kill them, no,
but that doesn't mean that they're still alive, or that they're still in the
Caribbean. The little lady must think
that you're dead by now."
"Elizabeth will come after me."
"How, lad?"
How, indeed? They hadn't heard from Jack in months, and the British Navy, once they determined that something was wrong, would hardly take the word of a woman, especially one talking about raiders who couldn't be injured, seriously . . .
If Norrington had survived, it would have been so much easier to hope.
"Even if she comes after you, that only means that we'll have to kill her."
Will stared at the floor in silence.
"Lad, what's your name?"
Will looked up in surprise. They had shown no interest in calling him anything but 'lad' until now. In fact, they hadn't spoken to him at all, save for this man the day that Will had stabbed him.
"What's yours?" Will wracked his brain for a believable false name.
"Marcus. And if you're thinking of telling me a name that isn't yours, don't. I need your name, lad, or it'll be your death, and that would a tragic waste of talent that the brotherhood needs."
Will hesitated another moment before answering. "My name is Will Turner. What brotherhood do you speak of?"
"Will short for William? Good. As for the brotherhood, that's a long story, lad, but it's what you'll be joining."
"I don't want to join." Will spoke slowly and firmly, using the same voice he used on the twins when they weren't minding but hadn't yet crossed the line into out-and-out rule breaking.
"It doesn't matter that you don't want to now." Marcus rubbed his hand along the hilt of his sword, still firmly strapped to his side. "It doesn't matter if you hate us now."
"I don't understand."
"Are you familiar at all with India?"
Will shook his head no.
"They have very strange customs there, a very strange and barbarous people, and they hate the British. Not just the British, of course, but any power that tries to bring civilization to them. They worship very strange gods. One of their most powerful is Kali, a mother goddess and a queen of destruction. She was seen as night, the devourer of all things finite. The bloody people would make statues of her standing on the corpse of her god consort, Shiva, the dancer, who danced things both into and out of creation."
Will attempted to appear interested.
"You probably don't care much, do you, lad? You should, though. They would murder the rich in her name, strangling them with a cloth. They would sacrifice their own flesh and blood. There was one man, though, who hated the British, hated them with a fury born from the loss of his wife and unborn child in the crushing of a minor rebellion.
"He collected twenty-four swords from fallen British men, and he called upon his goddess to bless them as holy weapons. He spilled the blood of his eleven-year-old son upon them to invoke more favor from the goddess, and let his own blood soon after, that the ties of family might be upon those who bore the swords. His daughter was to take the blades and give them to the loyal so that the blessing might be used to defeat the British. She never had the chance, though. They were betrayed by a friend, and the girl hung while the blades were distributed to the loyal within one of the garrisons."
"Was that when you became . . .?"
"No. For the first year, there was no difference in those who had been gifted with the blades, and it was nearly forgotten. Then Aaron and Jason decided to settle an argument with a duel. I'm not sure if Jason truly meant to attempt to kill Aaron or if it really was an accident, but he thrust his blade through Aaron's heart. Imagine his surprise when the man stumbled back and stabbed Jason through the heart before pulling Jason's blade from his chest."
"Both men had been given the swords."
"Aye, both had been, and both lived, not even a scar to tell the tale. Our commander was . . .intrigued, to say the least. He had them cut their arms, but the wounds didn't heal. So he began calling the ones who had been given the swords before him, one by one, and stabbing them with their own blades." Marcus paused. "I was the last one, the twenty-fourth man. When he struck me he created the brotherhood. All of our injuries healed instantly, but that wasn't the major change, no, not by a long shot. We were tied to each other, by bonds stronger than anything I'd ever felt in my life. Even Aaron and Jason couldn't fight it. We would defend each other from harm in any way we could."
"If you were soldiers in India, how did you end up in the Caribbean?"
"Defending each other from harm in any way that we can, lad. They tried to use us as a unit to put down the uprisings. The orders to place our brothers in danger, out of our help . . .the pain that brought . . .it's indescribable. We killed our commander, we stole a ship, and we ran."
"You place each other in danger now, with your raids."
"We need provisions to survive, or at least we're fairly certain we do, and it isn't someone else ordering our brothers to their death, it's us, all of us, together. The pain is bearable then."
"I killed one of you."
"Aye, and you aren't the first man whose managed that. Daniel, the man outside, he killed Jason, and he took his place, just as you will take Matthew's place, so that the brotherhood can be complete again and the pain will stop."
"You can only die if someone cuts off your head?"
"The body can't work without the mind. If, though, you somehow managed to wrest Carsa from me—" Marcus rubbed a hand down the hilt of his sword lovingly. "I would be as mortal as you are. That won't happen, though. I'm bound to the sword and the sword to me, as you will be to Nerla, and the swords bind us to the brotherhood."
"They have names?" Will wasn't sure if he should laugh or cry.
"Aye, they have names, and personalities. You'll understand soon enough though, lad. Eat up, and you might want to take your shirt off pretty soon. It's only about an hour to dawn, and you don't want to get it all bloody. Aye, you'll understand very soon."
Marcus turned and left, the sound of the lock being set echoed again through the cell, and Will was left alone, any appetite that he might have managed to maintain suddenly gone.
He had a really, really bad feeling about this.
He was going to be stabbed . . .through the heart . . .with a sword . . .and supposedly transformed into one of those . . .things . . .and he hadn't even done anything stupid!
All he'd done was attempt to protect his family.
Will resumed his pacing, his heart racing as he tried to find a way out of the mess that he was in, but no solution would come.
And he was running decidedly short on time.