Of course. Why would a few days together and a couple airy conversations mean anything to Jack compared to the safety of his ship and crew? I was still a stranger who couldn't be trusted. They set me free to break the curse, at least. Jack, Anamaria, and I rowed back out to that godforsaken little treasure cave together. The two pirates took the obsidian knife from the chest and pricked their fingers, dripping blood onto the coins.

Anamaria handed me the knife and I cut a slit on my forearm, below the stump, and squeezed out a little blood. When it splashed on the coins, spottily dulling their golden sheen, everything felt different. My hunger and thirst and need eased. I felt as if I was back in my skin again--my senses returned, and I was very conscious of the smell of the ocean and the feel of my clothes on my skin.

"Time to go, Holly," Jack said softly, breaking my small trance.

I gestured at the treasure around me. "Can I take some?" I asked.

"A little. You can't live off it no matter how much you take; you'll need some sort of occupation."

I dropped the knife into the chest and walked down toward the boat we had come in on, scooping up a few gems in my hand as I went. "I'll work," I said earnestly, but out of the corner of my eye I was looking at the same thing they were: the useless stump of my right wrist. "I'll do any work I can."

"We'll talk back on the Pearl," Jack said.

And we did. Back in the brig, in privacy, he could be honest with me. "Your hand isn't the problem, love," he said quietly, almost forlorn. "You're just not made to serve on a pirate crew. You've no knowledge of sailing or battle. And I'm sorry, I truly am, but the Black Pearl is a tight ship. We can't afford to just keep you around. And you wouldn't want us to. I'll see you to a safe home in Tortuga."

"I thought you said I wasn't suited to Tortuga," I said. Unspoken, that I wasn't suited to anywhere. Just being a single woman without a family would probably condemn me to beggary in this world; add in that I had one hand and no skills, and I was damn lucky that Jack was even bothering to feed me.

"Aye, but I know you better now, and you'll survive there." It was a compliment, of sorts. Or a way to cover that he hadn't been able to think of anywhere else to ditch me. "You'll have work and food and a place to sleep, I'll make sure of it."

I understood what he was getting at. "I'm going to be a whore." My voice was as bitter as dry heaves.

"It's not a shame. You'll make honest money. And what do you do? Comfort lonely sailors far from their homes. If piracy can be a noble profession, so can whoring." The way he said it was so matter-of-fact that I almost believed him.

"Noble. Fucking strangers for money." I might have hit him if there weren't bars between us, even though it wasn't really him I was angry at.

Jack just nodded, and left.

Over the four days it took the Pearl to reach Tortuga, I cried a little. But hell. I'd have a job and a home. Not my dream job, sure, but my dream job was film director and I had a funny feeling that wasn't going to happen anyway. So fuck it. Fuck dignity, fuck syphilis, fuck unwanted pregnancies, fuck everything I ever hoped or wanted for my life because I needed to survive and this was the only way open to me. It was like drinking the filthy water in the cave, only forever.

As it turned out, it wasn't so bad. In Tortuga Jack brought me to a man called Lauro, who, after a bit of quibbling over my missing hand, took me in. I joined the four other girls working in Lauro's house, and Jack left.

So that's where I stayed, and what I became. For no reason at all, I went from shooting films in Walla Walla to turning tricks in eighteenth-century Tortuga. Funny the way things turn out, isn't it?

I'm not unhappy. My job may not be cookie-dough taste-testing, but it's not the worst; I only work nights, Lauro's not a cruel man, and the other girls and I have some good times together. There's good food and plenty to drink and life goes by fast and fun. And hey, I always wanted to live by the beach.