The next couple of days passed uneventfully; no one paid much attention to me, but someone always brought me food and water, which was all I could ask for. They gave me clothing, a white long-sleeved shirt and a pair of trousers that were probably knee breeches on a man but covered my legs down to the ankles. After my time on the island, I just didn't care about sleeping on a damp wooden floor and eating salt pork that was slightly off. It was so strange to think about my life before. Hell, I didn't even eat pork before. It's not kosher. And I remembered going into fits of indignation when I had was using my sheets as props in a student film and I had to sleep on a bare mattress for a week.

Student film. Heh. That was one thing I wasn't going to be doing much more of. Along with seeing my family or friends ever again, but I tried not to think about that. It hurt too much to think deeply, especially when I had so much time alone with nothing to do but think, so I tried to focus my self-pity on lighter, sillier things. How I would never watch another episode of Queer Eye for The Straight Guy, would never eat another slice of pizza, would never make another phone call, or use another flush toilet, or swallow another antibiotic pill. That last thought came too close to the sort of deep worries I was trying to avoid. I distracted myself by thinking "Nelson's Column is gone," which amused me until I realised that I could never read Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy again. Now that was depressing.

Then, late at night on the second day of my time in the brig, I awoke to the sound of cannon fire and screaming. Not anguished screams for the most part, but manly, angry battle screams. We were under attack. Or being attacked. Or something. I couldn't tell, and that was the worst part. I heard feet stomping around the deck above me, and I felt the ship vibrate with the impact of cannon balls, or maybe just with the recoil from firing cannons. In my little cell, there wasn't shit I could do. If a cannonball hit the brig, I was dead, end of story. Didn't matter where I stood or if I covered my head or anything. With that in mind, I curled up in the corner closest to the center of the ship, covering my head.

It went on like that for a while, the sounds of battle seeming to grow louder and louder. Then the door to the brig burst open, and one of the Pearl's sailors, a younger man named Tobin, ran in, unlocked my cell, and handed me a sword. It was short and straight, slightly rusty and far heavier than I expected. I touched the blade, and found that it was indeed sharp.

Tobin grabbed me by my collar. "We've been boarded and we need all the hands we can get. Go up there and fight." I nodded, but he wasn't done, and jerked my collar painfully tight around my throat. "Don't betray us," he said. "Pirates are vengeful men, and I can promise you that if you turn sides, even if none of us lives, you will soon come to a very bad end."

I muttered something about how I'd never do that, and then Tobin let go of my collar and grabbed my wrist instead, half-dragging me out the door, up a ladder, and into utter chaos.

On deck, men were fighting, with swords flying everywhere. I couldn't tell who was on which side. There was another ship pulled up beside the Black Pearl, a pirate ship with the Jolly Roger flying from its mast. The smell of blood was strong in the air, and I saw a dead man lying on the deck. Tobin let go of me and ran into the fray; I just stood there, shell-shocked, hanging onto my sword cluelessly, with no idea what to do. There wasn't even anywhere to run. Then a man came at me with a sword.

I took a class in fencing once, and I wasn't too bad at it. But our swords weighed half a kilo, and we stayed in a straight line and didn't go for low blows or head shots. None of that applied to this. The man swinging at me was huge, and I was terrified, but I tried to parry.

My blade hit his, all right, but didn't block it. The sword kept going, slipping over the guard, and slicing into my wrist. I screamed in surprise more than pain, hardly feeling anything. My sword fell from my hand, blood ran down my arm, the man raised his weapon again, and I did the worst possible thing for that situation. I fell down.

The man could have killed me without hardly trying, but he didn't. Instead, he picked me up by my good arm and dragged me across the deck to a plank lying between the two ships, then shoved me onto the plank so hard that I staggered and nearly fell into the water. A man on the other side of the plank caught me and hauled me onto the deck of the ship. I was shoved from one pair of rough hands to another. Someone quickly tied my hands and feet and dropped me on the deck.

The noise of the battle went on, more distantly. Pirates ran all around me, but there was no fighting on this ship. My right hand felt strangely cold. I pulled my bound hands in front of my face and looked at them. There was blood smeared all over, though it wasn't a fast or spurting bleed. And my right hand was just... taken apart. The forearm looked normal, and so did the fingers. Everything in between was a red, pink, and white mess so alien and confusing that it didn't seem like it could possibly be part of me.

Something landed with a heavy thump on the deck next to me. I rolled over and looked, and it was Anamaria, the only woman on the Black Pearl's crew. She was tied like I was, and seemed unconscious. I poked her with my foot. She didn't react. The battle went on.

I heard a rough voice yell, "We got him, boys! All hands back to ship!" Pirates ran across the plank, then pulled it up into the ship. "Hard to starboard! Pull away!" Several people repeated the orders, and I felt the ship lean over as it moved away from the Pearl.

"Prisoners in the brig!" someone yelled. "Get them out of the way for now." I was still in a daze as I was dragged across the deck, down a steep set of stairs, and literally thrown into a cell much like the one I had inhabited on the Pearl. The pirates threw Anamaria in after me, and then, to my shock, Jack Sparrow.

"All hands muster on deck!" a command came from above, and our captors obeyed, leaving the three of us still tied up as well as locked into the dark little cell.

"Anamaria!" Jack yelled. "Come on, woman, wake up." She didn't. Jack turned to me, sudden fury on his face. "You."

I shook my head and showed him my wound. "If I were with them, I wouldn't have this." My hand still felt cold and tingly more than it actually hurt. So did my whole body.

He nodded grimly. "True enough. Now, if it's not too much trouble," he said, and scooted around Anamaria to hold his bound hands in front of me. The knots had been hastily made, and with my teeth and left hand I managed to undo them. He untied his own feet, then freed me and Anamaria. She was still breathing, but that was all. Jack pinched her cheek, and she didn't stir.

"What's going on?" I asked.

Jack shrugged. "We happen to be guests of Captain John Biskin on the good ship Perilous. I'm to be tortured for the location of the Isla de Muerta, and you ladies are to provide companionship for the crew."

I hugged my wounded hand close to me. The pain was just starting to really bite in. I didn't have anything helpful to say. But that never stopped me before. "What are we going to do?" I asked.

"Well, I suppose I shall be tortured and killed and you shall be raped. Unless you have a better plan."

I have a very firm policy of not crying where anyone can see me. So I held my breath in and frantically wiped the tears from my eyes before they could run down my face.

"It's not as bad as all that, love. I've been captured many a time, but I've never been killed." He thought about that for a moment. "Yet."

I sort of laughed even though it wasn't funny. For a while we were quiet, just sitting in the cell. Jack noticed my hand was still bleeding, and he undid the bandana around his head and tied it around my hand.

"That's a bit better, eh?" he asked. "You needn't worry any more. I have a plan."

"What is it?"

He shook his head. "Best if you don't know. But whatever happens, just go along with it. Trust me."

"Oh, well, I'll be sure to, then." Even I'm not sure if I was being sarcastic or not.

Soon after, three pirates came down into the brig. Two were big square-bodied lugs with a lot of scars, and one was wearing a very nice hat. It wasn't hard to divine which one was Captain Biskin. Although, honestly, he was pretty much a big, square-bodied, scarred lug himself. But the hat gave him away. I wondered if pirate captains ever gave really nice hats to random crew members, just for a decoy. I also wondered if shock was affecting my thinking a little.

"Jack Sparrow," Biskin said, and Jack tipped an imaginary hat to him. "These gentlemen would like to have a discussion with you regarding the location of the Isla de Muerta." The goons on either side of him smiled disconcertingly. I half expected Biskin to slip into an Italian accent and make Jack an offer he couldn't refuse.

"No need for discussion, gentlemen," Jack said. "I'll be more than glad to provide you with a bearing to the Isla."

"Yes?" Biskind asked, his tone suggesting that he didn't expect a straight answer.

And he didn't get one. "On certain conditions, of course. The women are not to be harmed, and I..."

Biskind laughed. "You're my prisoner. There will be no conditions. You'll give us the bearing, or we'll convince you to give it to us."

Jack shrugged. "Fine then. The Isla de Muerta is roughly seventy miles south-south-west by west of our current position. I should warn you, however, that it's rather a tricky passage to get into the island, and if you don't know what you're doing you're liable to end up smashed on the rocks."

"So what should we do?"

Jack did a very poor imitation of thinking hard. "You know, I'm not sure exactly what I do, I just know that it must be done in a very particular way. It's quite difficult to describe without having it all in front of me."

Biskin sighed. "You're only buying yourself two more days of life with this ridiculous stalling, Jack."

"True, but I believe in living every day to the very fullest."

"Whatever you like," Biskin said. "Harris, O'Neal, please escort the young lady to my cabin."

I froze, terrified. Jack just chuckled. "She's a fine little tidbit, I'll grant, but there is one thing I think you should know."

"And what, pray tell, is that?" Biskin asked, exasperated.

Jack gestured at a nasty-looking open sore on his jawline. "This one isn't so bad, but the other ones itch something fierce. I'd hate to see you in the same sort of suffering."

"I don't believe you and I don't care."

"Fine then. I've warned you, that's all I can do. Don't mind me when your bits start turning black and falling off. I'm already rotted pretty far away, would you like to see?" Jack asked, hand on the button of his breeches.

Biskin made a disgusted face. "That's fine, thank you. I still don't believe you, but you've managed to kill my appetite for such things. I hope you're happy."

"Delighted," Jack said as the pirates headed out and slammed the door behind them. So was I. In a relative sort of way. My hand burned.