Chapter 7: Coven

It took the newcomers a few moments for their eyes to adjust to the blast of light. When the spots cleared, they saw a group of about 15 women, young and old alike, milling around in the clearing. The clearing itself was pretty large and at the center was a large fire that was a multitude of colors and gave off no smoke.

Li smiled at the clearing and stepped inside, beckoning to her guests to do the same. They stepped inside the clearing behind her and suddenly all of the noise stopped.

"Lady Lirimaer! It's about time you got here!" a tall, black haired woman exclaimed, her light rose robes swirling around her.

"I'm sorry, Lady Alexandra. There was traffic. And I had to show my guests the way here, instead of transporting myself." Li bowed slightly, hands clasped and hanging loosely at her waist.

"You will be absolved this time. Do not expect it to happen again," Lady Alexandra said.

"Are these the ones you told us about?" an older blonde asked, curiosity shining on her face. She was dressed in orange robes and had an orange ribbon holding her curly hair back.

"Yes, these are the ones. And Lady Carmen, you have a bug on your shoulder." Li pointed to the insect and Lady Carmen plucked it off and placed it onto a nearby leaf.

"Let us sit and listen to Lady Lirimaer's story about the ones from the past," Lady Alexandra announced.

Almost at once, all of the women sat around the fire. There was a space for four people to sit and Li led Jack, Will, and Elizabeth over to the space.

"I don't think that I am the one to be telling the story, with all due respect, Lady Alexandra. I believe that my guests are better suited to tell the happenings of their passage better then I," Li intervened.

"Very well. Introduce them so that we may call them by their names and not 'the guests'," Lady Alexandra consented.

"From right to left is Elizabeth Swan, Will Turner, and next to me, Captain Jack Sparrow of the Black Pearl. I believe that that was the ship that your great-great-grandmother was born on, correct, Lady Susannah?" Li directed her question at an elderly lady with the same vocal eyes as Li and who was wearing a deep emerald robe.

"Yes, that would be it. I never thought that I could met the Captain of such a fine ship," Lady Susannah replied.

"Would Captain Sparrow like to start?" Lady Alexandra asked.

"Stand up," Li whispered to him.

He stood and began to talk. "I had docked my ship, The Black Pearl and had started towards my friend Will's blacksmith shop. I was going to check up on the status of the sword that I had ordered and to catch up on all of the news. I got to the shop and had sat down to talk when his fiancée, Elizabeth came in and offered us supper. It was then that the fire began to glow black and red. I felt myself being pulled into some sort of hole and I hit my head on something and lost consciousness. When I awoke, I was in a well furnished room and a few moments later, Lady Lirimaer opened the door to the room," Jack finished.

"Is that what happened to you as well, Lady Elizabeth and Will?" Lady Alexandra asked.

"Yes, Lady Alexandra," they answered.

"Lady Alexandra," a plump young woman said. She had brilliant red hair, brown eyes and was wearing a deep purple robe.

"You may speak, Lady Patricia," Lady Alexandra said.

"Lady Alexandra, my sister's best friend might be able to do the spell to the fullest. She has always known of her powers, because all of the females in her family are wytches, so she is very advanced, although she is only 20. I could ask her to visit us, if it pleases you and Lady Lirimaer," Lady Patricia offered.

"If we can find no other solution, we shall take up your offer," Lady Alexandra agreed. "But first, who brought them here? For what reason? And why won't the wytch send them back?"

"Lady Morgan brought them. I don't know why, unless she was acting upon something that I said during an argument. I had yelled at her, saying that I was tired of being alone because of her. I think she took it to herself to bring them here. And you know her. If we made her bring them back, she would put them into the middle of a war or on a deserted island." Li sighed and shook her head. "I believe that we should call Lady Patricia's acquaintance, to see if she can help. The sooner the better, because they have already made several requests that I send them back."

"And I understand why you can't. You did spend all of that time in bed last time. And that was just sending only yourself, but you ended up half way over to the other world!" Lady Alexandra shuddered at the memory. "But that is in the past. It is time to end the meeting and I shall see you all next week, same time, same place," Lady Alexandra dismissed them.

Li led the way back to the car and didn't speak to her friends on the way home. When they arrived at Edwards Estate, Li excused herself to her room.

Li shut the door behind her and sat on the edge of her bed. There was a wytch that could send them back. And she could met her next week.

Li shook her thoughts away and walked to her vanity table. She pulled her hair into a ponytail and took out her shears. She cut the ponytail off and trimmed the ends a bit. When she was done, her hair was chin length and she decided that maybe she would keep it this way for a while. Until the next Coven meeting at least. She always wore her hair long for those.

She changed out of her Coven clothes and replaced all of her things back in the box, returning it to under the bed. She took a pair of white sweats, a turquoise long-sleeved shirt, and the white over coat that she had worn earlier out of her closet. She put them on and combed out her hair. She looked at the mirror for a minute and was startled when Morgan appeared.

"What have you done to our hair!?" she cried, staring at the chin length tresses that were once a mane of curls. "It's a mop!"

"No, It's pretty. Now leave me alone," Li growled back. She turned and stalked downstairs to the kitchen. She walked into the room, still muttering about her hair when she saw her guests all sitting at the table. She looked at them warily then went about making 4 cups of hot chocolate, adding rum to Jack's.

Placing the cups down in front of their drinkers, she sat in the one seat left. "Is there a reason we are all sitting here in silence?" she asked, taking a sip of her cocoa.

"Why did those Ladies call you Lirimaer? I thought that your name Li," Will pointed out, wrapping his hand around his mug.

"My name IS Li. Lirimaer is my Coven name, because all of our names mean something. Alexandra means protector, Carmen means song, Susannah means lily, Patricia means of noble birth. Lirimaer means lovely one. Your names are given to you on your initiation day," Li explained, staring down at her cup of hot chocolate.

"And what was up with the robes? They all had them on, but they were in different colors," Jack asked, clearly not thinking that maybe the robes were only for fashion.

"The color of a Lady's robe is the color of her magic. It's a way of respecting their powers. Morgan has a different colored robe, it's black with red glitter woven in. It's very pretty on her," Li said, looking up at them. She could see that Jack's cup was already half gone.

"Why was the fire different colors, and not the normal red and orange?" Elizabeth asked, having waited until the men were done talking.

"I must say, if you are going to come to anymore Coven meetings, you are to go before the males of the group. That is how things are run in the Coven. Might as well practice it here," Li giggled. "And the fire was a spectrum because it was created long ago when the first Coven in this area was formed. Every time a wytch joins, she adds a bit of her power to the jar that holds the fire when there isn't a meeting. This way her power lives on even when she has passed into the other world."

Her friends absorbed this information and they sat in a comfortable silence, sipping cocoa and enjoying the company. Li enjoyed it the most, because she was sure that there would not be many more evenings like this in the future.

"I am going to go to bed now," she announced after a while. "Good night."

She put her cup in the sink and started up the stairs. When she got to her room, she walked over to her stereo system and put in an instrumental CD. She listened to it for a few minutes, then sat at her desk and pulled out her notebook to write. She was in the middle of a historical fiction that she had started in college.

Time passed quickly before Li was distracted from her writing.

"I thought that you were going to bed," Jack whispered in her ear.

Li jumped a mile, throwing her hands back to grab his neck. "Don't do that," she scolded when she realized who it was. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

"No. I just came to ask you a question," Jack replied.

"Well, I was done for tonight anyways." Li stood and stretched, wincing at the cracks that could be heard from her neck and back.

"That sounded painful," Jack observed, sitting on her bed as she trudged to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

"Not too painful. It hurts like hell when I need to do a back bend and then I slip and I land on my head and then both hurt," Li commented, pulling her toothbrush out of the holder and getting it wet.

Jack was silent for the time that she was brushing her teeth. He had a lot to think about with all of the Coven information and how there was going to be a baby born on his ship. That scared him because he didn't have a doctor on the ship at all and none of the crew knew how to deliver a baby. . . That would have to cause him to question their background if they did. He shuddered at the thought of the parrot giving instructions on how to liberate a baby from its mother.

"Whatever you're thinking about must be very scary," Li remarked, coming out and sitting next to him. "You've shuddered 3 times in the past minute, all with a look of horror on your face."

"I was imagining the chaos a baby would bring to the Black Pearl. And what would happen if it were to be born while we were out at sea," Jack replied, flashes of the scenario going through his head. He shuddered again, then turned to Li.

"So, what did you want to ask me?" Li asked, although she thought that she knew already.

"I was wondering what you had meant by the kiss this morning. You haven't said a thing about it and I was starting to wonder." Jack avoided her eyes and examined the dark blue carpet under his feet.

"Well, not only was I trying to prove to you that you are unable to take control where a female is concerned, but I thought that it would be fun," Li admitted, laying back and observing Jack as she had two days before.

"So does that mean that I am just a source of entertainment?" Jack asked, pretending to be hurt by her words.

"Don't say it that way. It makes me sound evil," Li protested, pouting as Jack smirked at her.

"Aren't you?" he asked, settling down next to her on his back.

"No. Morgan is more evil than me, and her evil is just mischief. Mostly, at least. I wouldn't recommend getting her angry unless you have a death wish," Li replied. She was quite calm and peaceful when compared to Morgan.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, before Li spoke again.

"Why did you bring the kiss up?"

"No reason in particular. . ." Jack replied, avoiding her eyes as she turned on to her side to look at him.

"I think you're lying," Li teased, sounding like a second grader that had just caught her best friend holding hands with a boy. Li started to poke Jack in the side and didn't stop.

"Okay, okay!" he exclaimed, trying to defend himself from her poking fingers. "The reason I brought it up is because I was wondering if I could have an encore presentation, so to speak," he confessed, using a phrase that May had taught him.

"Oh really?" Li asked, moving so that she had him pinned to the bed on his back.

"Just a question though," Jack squeaked, suddenly scared for the first time in his life. The mischief that had suddenly rose in Li's eyes was quite scary.

"I can't believe that the great Captain Jack Sparrow still hasn't finished becoming a man," Li teased. "He still has a shrill, high-pitched voice. Let's fix that, shall we?" She swooped down and gave him a repeat of that morning. She had just begun to add a little bit of tongue when the was a cough from the doorway.

Li stopped almost at once and her head shot up.

"I just came to say goodnight and that the coffee machine is set," Elizabeth announced from the door. Will was standing right behind her and observing the couple on the bed with wide eyed silence.

"Good night," Li replied weakly, getting up off of Jack and smoothing out her shirt and pants. "Jack I think that you should get to bed as well. You all have work tomorrow, remember?"

Jack nodded and stood, starting towards the door, following Elizabeth and Will on their way down the hall. They all went to their own rooms and Li closed the door behind them and smacked her head against the side of the doorjamb.

She walked over to her bed and pulled herself under covers and fell into a deep sleep, her dreams filled with the face of a certain pirate.

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Okay. Kinda, sorta short. Not really, but it could have been shorter, I suppose.

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