The next two days were not happy ones. I spent most of them in a sort of stupor, never able to sleep, never quite awake. There was no food or water. Anamaria did not die, and did not wake. Jack just lay peacefully in the corner of the cell, stretched out like a cat in the sun, as if he were safe on his own ship taking a quick nap. He never once gave any sign that he was uncomfortable or upset. Maybe he really wasn't.
But as I said, I was never all the way awake after the first few hours. My hand blossomed from the brief reprieve of shock all the way into full-blown agony. It was never quite bad enough to justify screaming, but thinking clearly was out of the question. At one point I begged Jack to just chop it off, but he asked me, "With what?", which was a devastatingly reasonable question.
In the late afternoon of the second day, Captain Biskin came down to the brig again, along with two flunkies. "Jack," he said, "we're at the damned channel. You'll guide us through."
"Aye, I will," Jack answered, not looking up. "And then you'll be free to kill me and have your pick of the treasure, cursed and uncursed alike."
"Cursed?" Biskin asked, hesitating.
"Cursed! Have you not heard of the torment of Barbossa and his crew? They blithely looted the treasure of the Isla de Muerta, heeding no warnings, and they were punished soundly for it. Ten years they went, unable to eat, to drink, to make love, to so much as smell the salt of the sea. Only death freed them." Jack paused and looked up at Biskin, a merry little smile on his face. "Of course, it's not all cursed, so as long as you're very lucky and happen to only take the right treasure, you'll have no trouble at all."
Biskin shrugged. "And you buy yourself another hour or two of life. Sooner or later you'll be out of silly excuses you can cower behind while thinking yourself so terribly clever. You haven't outsmarted me, Jack, not once. I've only kept you alive because it costs me nothing and I get a little help out of it. The ladies are only alive because I don't like to shed female blood, so I'll maroon them instead.
"I know I'm going to kill you soon enough, and you know it too. The only difference is that you're too stupid and cocky to understand that that means I'm really going to kill you."
"I suppose so," Jack said. "Now, will you take this stupid and cocky man up to the helm to guide you through the channel, or do you have another grandiose speech to make about the bloody obvious?"
Biskin nodded to his flunkies, and they opened the cell, grabbed Jack, and marched him up the stairs far more roughly than necessary, leaving me still locked in the cell with Anamaria.
About an hour later, three pirates came down into the brig. None of them was Jack. One took me, and the others carried Anamaria, and we all loaded into a longboat with Jack and Biskin and a whole bunch of pirates. The sun was low above the watery horizon, its white light beginning to bleed orange and yellow, as we rowed into the Isla de Muerta.
I tried to pay attention to what was going on, but my thoughts kept turning back to my hand. The bandanna around it was completely soaked with blood, and even through the cloth I could see that my hand was not in the shape a hand ought to be in. All this from one sword blow, and one I had blocked at that. No wonder pirates tended to have missing body parts. At least in movies. Now that I thought about it, the pirates I'd actually seen in person were mostly intact. Then again, they were huge men who'd spent years learning to wield weapons. Not small confused teenage girls whose only knowledge of swordplay was "pointy end goes in the other guy."
The pirates tied Jack and my hands behind our backs before prodding us out of the boat. Anamaria they just flopped down onto the bank, her legs in the water. Jack sauntered up the pile of treasure, seeming to head in no particular direction. One of Biskin's lackeys twitched toward him, but seemed to decide that there was no harm in letting him wander around.
Jack started to talk, in a slow mumble, so it seemed like he was just background noise. "Near all of this treasure on the ground here is... well, I'd say it's mostly... safe to take. The only stuff you really need to worry about are some of these statues... the ones with the Indian writing on them... it looks like square little people and lizards and things... and I wouldn't touch the idols either..." He rambled on, and the pirates started to ignore him and pick through the treasure themselves. Only two people kept their eyes on him: me and Biskin. And as Jack talked, he walked, with a staggering amble that seemed to go absolutely nowhere. But with each drunk-looking weave, he managed to get just an inch closer to the stone chest in the center of the cave.
"And one more thing," Jack said, when he was nearly at the chest, though his back was to it and the lid still on. "Don't ever touch these little trinkets in here..." Before the words were all the way out of his mouth, he'd scooted the lid of the chest back, slipped his hand in, and grabbed a coin. I heard it clink back into the chest, and then the lid was back on, and Jack was staggering away casually, keeping up his mumbling patter.
"These curses can be really terrible I hear... really awful... Barbossa's men were quite miserable when they were cursed, no food or drink you know... and no pleasant times with women either if you know what I mean..." Jack had succeeded in getting absolutely no one to pay attention to him. Even I barely registered his voice; I was more worried about how horribly ironic it was that, after all that, I would end up dying right back where I started. At least I thought it was ironic. It might have been merely coincidental. I can never get that definition quite right.
Ironic or not, I had just been sitting on the ground near Anamaria moping, and so I didn't see what happened when the commotion started. When I looked up, Jack's hands were untied, he had a sword in his hand, and Biskind was dead on the ground with his throat slashed. The pirates charged him all at once, and he stood his ground. He only winced when they rammed swords straight through his body. I screamed.
At least two pirates turned at my scream, and those two died at Jack's hand. The others slashed and stabbed at him again, and again almost nothing happened. He looked uncomfortable being turned into a large pincushion for very large pins, but he didn't start spurting blood or screaming or dying, as is customary for people who get run through with swords. I wasn't sure what was going on, but I figured that it wouldn't be long until the pirates caught on and ran for it.
Couldn't let that happen, so I went to the boat we had come in on, now empty and ignored while everyone tried to fight with Jack. I couldn't row it away with my hands tied and only one good hand anyway, so I just leaned my back against the boat from outside and shoved it out into the water. It coasted away for a moment, then drifted back in, carried on the current. Crap.
I went to plan two, which was, to be fair, really less of a plan and more of a random impulse. Kicking the gunwale on one side down with my foot, I managed to flip the boat upside down. Once it was flipped, I jumped, hard, feet together, legs rigid, onto the very point of the keel. Sure enough, it splintered. I fell through it, the splinters scraping at my legs, and stuck there, kneeling on the ground with a girdle of broken wood around my waist.
The pirates who were still standing looked at me. They looked at Jack. They dropped their weapons. Jack started pulling blades out of his body.
Unfortunately, in addiction to forcing a surrender, I'd put everyone into a sticky situation. Without a boat, we were all stuck on the Isla de Muerta together. Eventually, the crew back on the Perilous would send out another boat, but what then? Anamaria and I weren't suddenly invincible, as far as I could tell, so it would be a bit risky for us to get on a small boat with angry pirates whose captain and buddies had just been killed. But if we took the boat for ourselves, we'd be marooning the pirates on the Isla, which wasn't right either--most of them had done nothing wrong but join Biskin's crew, and marooning would be a horrible death, especially with bodies lying around. They would eat each other.
"All of you lily-livered scalywags! On your bellies, hands behind your heads! If you move, it's at risk of your life!" Jack barked at the surrendering pirates, and they obeyed. "Holly, get yourself and Anamaria over here," he said standing in a tidepool off to the side of the cave, but pointing at the chest. I clambered out of the boat, grabbed Anamaria under her arms as best I could with my hurting hand, and dragged her up the pile of treasure. It was slow going but Jack came and took most of her weight, and then the three of us were around the chest. "Take a coin," Jack mouthed at me, not making a sound. As quietly as I could, trying to avoid clinking, I took one.
As soon as the coin crossed the threshold of the chest, something happened. Nearly all the pain in my hand disappeared. But so did every other sensation. I couldn't feel the ground under my feet, the shirt on my back, the dampness of the water soaking my stockings. I could still tell they were there, but it had none of the texture of touch, it was just a blank awareness that I was in contact with something. The other thing I felt was need. I had been bitterly hungry and thirsty to begin with, but my desire for food and water was painfully sharpened, though less weakening than it had been. I was suddenly, unaccountably, uncomfortably horny. And more than anything, I wanted to touch. I wanted to sweep Jack or Anamaria or, hell, one of the pirates up in my arms and just feel the warmth of their skin. But I knew instantly it wouldn't do any good; I could embarrass myself all I liked, and I still wouldn't feel a damn thing.
Jack gestured for me to put the coin back, and I did, laying it down softly. "And her," he said silently, indicating Anamaria. I hauled her up to the chest, and Jack put her limp hand in the coins, lifted a coin with it, took the coin from her, and put it back. As he was doing this, she woke up.
"Bloody hell, Jack!" she nearly screamed. "What the blazes is going on?"
"That," Jack said, "is a very long story, and one I promise you will hear once we are more comfortably situated."
Anamaria looked at him and shut her mouth with an effort of will.
"Good ladies," Jack began, "I do not wish to maroon an entire crew of men. Nor do I wish to travel any farther in the care of these scoundrels. So we're going to... go for a walk." He waved toward the water lapping at the golden banks of treasure, and with his other hand slipped the lid of the stone chest shut.
Anamaria and I traded blank looks with each other before sharing them with Jack.
"Come on," he said, marching down toward the water. "Take some swag, we might need it." He stuffed some pieces of gold in his pockets, and Anamaria followed suit. I didn't have pockets, but I threw a couple of necklaces around my neck. Then Jack stepped into the water, wading straight down, not trying to swim, just letting himself sink until he was completely submerged.
"So it's true," Anamaria muttered, and followed him a bit more hesitantly. I followed her, even more hesitantly. It was one of those situations that I didn't dare think about too carefully for fear that it would crumble instantly under the touch of logic. I just went along. So I stepped into the water. Going up to my ankles was easy, so was my knees, really everything up to my neck wasn't a problem. That's when I froze. I couldn't put my head underwater. There was just no way. I had nearly drowned a few days ago, and invulnerable or not, I wasn't doing that again.
I didn't get a lot of time to stand there quivering. As soon as she realised I was going to be a pussy about it, Anamaria grabbed me by the front of my shirt and dragged me down into the depths. I yelped a little, and for the second time that week, my lungs filled with water.
I won't tell you it didn't hurt. It felt like the worst case of bronchitis you ever had, and I couldn't even cough. But after a moment of thrashing around with Anamaria tackling me, my body finally figured out that I wouldn't die of it. Breathing water was a little achy and a lot salty, but it seemed to be working out fine besides that. And it was easier for me to walk on the seafloor with water in my lungs, I didn't have to fight buoyancy. I opened my eyes, trotted awkwardly for a moment to catch up with Jack, and we began our journey, a long march on the bottom of the sea.