Flights of Fancy
by Laura
Author's Note: Thank you to the reviewers :D Also I apologize to early readers of this chapter, because the formatting got messed up and all the transitions disappeared. Ack. :p Fixed now though. :)
Chapter Six: A Dance
Guises and layers. He had been walking so long. No, he was at sea. He weaved to them. They called him mad. But then again - they called him mad. What was he but the most brightly glittering speck they'd ever seen? No, no. A fish jumped out of water, splashing before landing back in. The sun had gotten to him long ago. But why shouldn't it have? The sun is there, lighting the world. Was the world then also mad? Why not let himself go mad? No, no.
Sparrow.
So he did have a name. That was him. What? Like waves. Sputter of the first sip of rum. What was he doing here? Yes. Voyage to those faraway lands. Pirate.
A world that could still intoxicate him and make him feel a fuller extent of his being. What his heart-strings were made of, he felt the same in the sea. Why? The salt and brine. Lady Sea will hide everything to you and make you so dizzy that you can hardly even stand sturdy on your own two feet. The words of a salty seaman himself. Had he believed it, or only been so enchanted by it, like the dreamy glitters of gold upon the surface of the sea?
He grinned and laughed. Let himself waver a little. What was the harm in another round?
-
Elizabeth's lantern-light lit aglow a small circle on the table-top. The light wavered as the lantern slid softly and crashed to the floor.
She was back in "her" cabin aboard the merchant ship Cordelia, after Edward had explained to the captain that the ship that Elizabeth had expected to be there for her in the harbor was not there after all, and the captain had not seemed to care all that much, only Elizabeth was Edward's charge, and the Cordelia was to be docked in Tortuga for two days yet, and there was nothing else to do, because she was quite stranded.
How bloody ironic! She was a runaway, a fugitive lady, she had no right to be in a position that trapped her so!
But really, she didn't care much. Or maybe she did. She really couldn't tell. She hardly noted the fallen lantern and the light that had gone out. There was only moonlight that was not turning her hand to bone because she was still alive. Seemingly stuck in a waking dream, yes, but alive.
Was this what it was like for Barbossa's crew? She would never know. Unless she went and plucked a piece of gold from a chest on a cursed island far away, that might or might not have been real after all. If the Pearl was not here, then there was no testament. For all she knew, it could have not happened after all. And Will was gone - no, wait - she was gone. Oh, yes.
She wasn't herself. She let the sea fill in, in the places where she did not want to go, to fix. She let the trilling gulls amass the gold discarded, and the waves lapped ever at the side of the boat, casting the lantern-light from the deck above askew about, for she could see the changing yellow-golden lights upon the waves. Strange how each influenced the other.
Hot tears, the salt. This was all ending. How dare it interrupt her... What would she do?
-
The sailors on the main deck above had bottles in their hands and the sails caught the golden light cast by the lanterns that they held grasped in their left hands, that were not holding the bottles, and they swayed. They were on watch. How were merchant sailors respectable, exactly? The rest of the crew was out about the island upon this night, and it was darkly gleaming.
Only Edward, the ship's cook, and that anonymous passenger - why was she still here? They didn't think about it much - were still aboard with the two night-watchmen, who were drinking from their bottles on the ship, in place of being on the island.
The captain had a lady with him, only she was not a lady, for she was on his lap rather than his arm. The first-mate was in a swinging duel of dirty words with the tavern owner, for charging him too much for too many drinks. And the watchmen were beneath the sails furled, with the lantern-light swinging round upon them, and then the water.
The wind was not much for playing games tonight, and it did not whip their caps off, like it did sometimes out on a rough sea somewhere between here and Spain with a haughty trade about the merchant ship. They had taken so many barrels of crops from the plantations, that slaves' hands had picked under the same hot, hot sun that intoxicated them all through the day when they were up in the rigging or swabbing the deck, but no one cared quite enough. They were here and there and done again and a businessman wrote down the earnings and the balance in a record-book with a red leather cover and his money in a vault off somewhere else, gallivanting with a safety- code and merchants' secrets, that weren't so secret after all.
-
There is only so much one can do until she must do something.
Elizabeth gathered up her skirts and walked down the gang-plank. She stepped onto the pier like a maiden of the past from a sea-voyage with a serpent as her figurehead. Only there wasn't much serpent or venom in Elizabeth, really. She was more catty sometimes, only she would not admit this.
"Thank you for your services," she said to Edward, who had escorted her off of the ship to wish her well. He was, after all, her caretaker.
He did not want to leave her here. Well, they couldn't very well take a passenger with them everywhere they went after this - where would they let her off, if not here? - if she had nowhere to go, like she had said? She said she would get passage back to Port Royal on a respectable ship.
But how can one tell which ships are respectable, on the island of Tortuga?
Elizabeth held in her hand a pouch of money that had been given to her. It contained Edward's earnings for the time he had spent as the passenger's watchman, in addition to his regular week's fare as the ship's cook. Elizabeth had thanked him profusely, and taken the money, because what else could she do? All of her own money had been spent on the voyage over.
Edward was a good, honest sailor, the likes of which she thought perhaps she had never met before. He was the middle, the merchant sailors, and before this she had known only two extremes. The Navy, watchful over her entire life up till recently, and pirates, pirates. The Navy were too "good" to really be considered good, honest sailors, so she could count them as nothing but Norrington, which summed up everything in Elizabeth's mind.
Merchant sailors, she thought, were good, honest men. Could turn pirate in a minute or at a pin-drop if they wanted to, or if the grappling hooks had them reeled in just precisely. Ha!
They pulled in the gang-plank. She had no connection, now. She was as adrift as she had ever wanted to be. Was this freedom? It started in her that it could be if she knew how to make it so. Perhaps there was an unsuspected fine line between freedom and entrapment, she thought, as she stood upon the pier.
She got a room in an inn, the closest inn to the harbor. The sensible thing to do, when there was no sense left whatsoever. It was very strange indeed how she had torn all the sense from her world and extracted herself so from it, and now she was lost, and since there was no more reason, did not know what to do, except rent a room in an inn, and stay locked up there all night when the rest of the world with their lurid lantern-lights went gallivanting out away with their voices like grimy trumpets in the gravel horns and she would do anything to do something.
-
William Turner's father was a merchant sailor who had turned pirate in a minute, or at a pin-drop, apparently, but he would never know why he had wanted to, or if the grappling hooks had had him reeled in just precisely. Sometimes Will was angry about it, and sometimes a strange sadness washed over him, for it was not sadness, really, rather it was waves. But the sea was a lady, and it had not been she who had cursed his father so.
The swords got made punctually. Navy men needed them rather frequently. Will did not like to think of the harm that his hands would do by making swords. Rather he examined their craft, the steel that could have been harmless, that had had the potential to be anything other than a sword also. But swords they were, and they were everywhere. For protection, for marauders. For dueling and for dignitaries to hang upon their walls with their coat-of-arms. For - for -
Will didn't really like to think about it.
He had always thought that it was all right to make so many swords, because the Navy's men were utterly respectable, and they needed their swords, especially ceremonially. How odd, to ceremonially present a sword! To slice a feather from a hat because it had been so obscene. What was the order of things, if he was a blacksmith and it all started with him? Was he waging wars?
But Will didn't really like to think about it, other than that it was his craft, and that was pounding steel, nothing more.
He would go to find Elizabeth. He had promised not to, but broken promises were the pirate's way, and damn it, pirates seemed to be so much better off than he was currently. What if she were in trouble? What if things had not turned out the way she had... expected...
Will sighed. It was useless. What was useless? Everything. The feathers in hats, and their buckles. As if that could keep anyone where they were meant to be, when they were not supposed to be there.
Elizabeth's father was utterly worried and Norrington was sending out a search party. Respect had worn off, because they had all realized finally that there was nothing to respect. It was frantic. The Navy was going out, a contingent, that could quicker turn into a fleet. Will was going with them; he had set it up; Norrington had not listened to him last time, but now, as everyone knew, everything was different.
The Dauntless set out again, chasing pirates, like she had always done, since the moment of her birth, the timbers strong.
The wind whipped in Will's face and he heard something, like always.
He loved her so bloody much.
-
Somewhere, the stars and black sails wove just as well as the Fates with their spinning-wheel a history.
-
Elizabeth Swann hated rum. She hated Tortuga. If rum was the vilest of drinks, then Tortuga was the vilest of places, and she wanted nothing more to do with it.
Tortuga, she thought, was not the epitome of piracy after all. It was nothing like the island of her pirate fantasies. No, no. The real thing was out at sea. The sea-spray. The adventure in the tang. That was a better form of intoxication, because it was not so, but it was real, whereas the rum was not. She still did not have it, and she would not have it in Tortuga, for it was solid land, however many pirate ships came to its shores. It was not the open sea's adventure, because it was not the destination when she was already there.
She needed a ship. She needed Jack! The Pearl! Yes, the black sails unfurled in her heart. That old tremor of excitement. What were sailors' rumors, anyway? The Pearl, sunk? It could not be. Those black sails were filled with wind, or else her heart would not trill so to their canvas whipping. Elizabeth did not like to doubt herself.
What of love? Had she thought she loved him, the bloody pirate who had gone and spun another rumor about himself?
Was she drunk?
Maybe she was, and maybe she wasn't. Either way, Elizabeth still hated rum utterly, although it did seem to burn rather well, and it had, in a way, saved her life once. Funny, the way each influenced the other.
If she was drunk, then it was impossible, because she had not touched a drop of liquor. If she was drunk upon the night air like pirates are sometimes, then it was also impossible, for she kept her window shuttered, and the lantern-light afforded all her illumination in the place of moonlight. To open her window and let in the moon-glow, she would have to take a chance - also would be let in the sweat and the grime of the carousers below and the yells of the men and the coins falling freely, and that wasn't all, it was horrible. She couldn't take a chance.
She had commanded a pirate crew against another pirate crew once, been captured, thought she was going to be sacrificed with nothing she could do about it, longed for Will to save her, striven to save Will (that was when the rum burned best), fought cursed pirates to rescue everything. Next to that, this - having run away, trapped herself up in a shuttered room in Tortuga - was small.
But her adventurous life had slipped away before it had even begun, it seemed, and now she was back to longing for it. Only it had gone round in a cycle, and dropped her headfirst alone in Tortuga, and if she were a real pirate lady then it would be fine, only she wasn't, because she was far too dignified to drink rum.
But what about that island? What had she been thinking? To save Will, of course. And the shiver when Jack put his hand on her shoulder. Oh, that. She was trying not to think of Jack, because in the back of her mind, Jack could have been dead. She shook off the weight. It was impossible, implausible, merchant sailors were not that respectable after all.
There is only so much one can do until she must do something. After all.
And there was a lot of all. Elizabeth lay on the bed, sobbing thoroughly.
And then she rose, and crossed the room, and looked in the mirror, to see if her reflection had the answers to her listless inaction - no, if her reflection had the answers to her. Confound it! would say a character in one of her old storybooks. But this wasn't worth it any longer. She gazed into the looking-glass.
Oh, she wanted that pirate medallion back! She could've worn it right now, and felt a little better. What a foolish thought! She scolded herself immediately. The woman in the mirror scowled.
She didn't look much different than she had that day she had looked at herself in the mirror, that morning. Norrington's promotion day. She had risen late, to the candle-light, after a dream. Crossed to the glass and put on the medallion. What a different woman was she who had done so! She had not known what that fanciful notion and gesture would do...
Strange how things happened like that... how everything turned in a circle, a cycle, back around her... back to her, and everyone else... Was it possible that she too was cursed?
She concentrated on her reflection. The woman in the glass seemed so much better off.
How many lies, or truths, separated Port Royal from Tortuga? How many lengths of rope, fathoms deep, or gold coins laid out in a row? How much of her, stretched thin and worn? The chamber-maid scowling brought biscuits to her in the morning when she called, and she became too listless and lost in thought to take another bite after breakfast. She was awfully thin. She wouldn't even need a corset now, would she, if she were back there? What an odd thought that was!
"Turn yourself around... and pick yourself up. You are strong."
But she didn't want herself to tell her that she was strong. She wanted someone to tell her that it would be all right.
It would've been Jack. Of course, he would not have told her any such thing. One could not get much comfort from a mad pirate. But the look of him was so immortal that she could have believed it.
How confusing are the heart's games and webs! As Elizabeth gazed at herself in the looking-glass, she was realizing something that women had been realizing throughout all the ages before her. And it was a thing to be confounded still. Love had made her drink the rum then burn it all. Love had made her lie to dire consequences. Love had led her pirate fancies, the feather on Will's hat, the tears in her eyes, the missing thing in the kiss. Jack's hand on her shoulder and the fire crackling. How was it that she was more deserted now? She had deserted herself... on a whim... on a flight of fancy.
She watched the tears fall down her cheeks, she watched her long long hair unfurl as she untied it, she watched her lips partly open, and her eyes with the mysteries therein. She watched a little girl growing up, though she was twenty, for goodness' sake, and it had all been such a thing to be confounded, when the boom swung round, and the sea was foaming, and at her order, the cannons fired, and her rafts all splintered.
Now that she had broken herself, there was nothing to do but re-find something, in the grains of sand, or in the highest star, the wood of a ship's figurehead, who was a beautiful lady who knew all that Elizabeth knew not about love. She had loved a blacksmith, and she had loved a pirate, but before both she had never loved. Perhaps love must then be present in every ounce of one's being before it can be ignited by one's soul-mate, and she had never had it.
She had wanted to save Will; she had loved Will. She had wanted Jack to set her free; she had loved a part of Jack, for he cast illusions everywhere he went, and a pirate lady's illusion was bound to fall in love with an illusion of Sparrow that he had left on her heart, inadvertently. But Elizabeth was not really a pirate lady, and her fantasies were slowly dissolving, right before her eyes, in the looking-glass.
It could not happen. It could not be. Elizabeth had lived on fantasies, all throughout her life. The pirate hymns she hummed on the way to church on Sundays (amusing, that).
But perhaps - her reflection, who looked somehow wiser than her, seemed to tell her, slowly - there comes a time when one must decide not to content herself merely in fantasies - when she must decide instead to live more than she ever has in any fantasy. When she must not only be contented with the notions of dreams' tapestries, locked up, far away, inaccessible - but instead, when she decides that she will find them in her very heart, and unleash them from the confines of her own mind, filling herself, and the world.
Elizabeth opened the shutters and yelled out into the night.
A thousand midnight carousers seemed to answer her with cat-calls to an unknown source; they did not know her; she would not concern herself with them. But a more prominent, and more important, answer seemed to reach her. It was the echo of her own voice, flying through the night, the sultry Tortuga night, yes - but also the greater night, the deepest night, that filled the Caribbean, where the stars were, where even the birds of dull plumage broke from their clippings and trilled through something of emptiness, filling it up. And then comes life, life, blossoming life, blooming trilling singing and dancing, a pirate song, whirling, anything that is true! Everything that is true! The embers that burned her feet, no, she was not drunk! She would never need to be drunk.
Her own reflection had taught her the most important lesson of her life. The echo of her own voice had been the wild trill that set her free. How obvious it was, now! How utterly and completely magnificent was the night! She was no longer afraid, or trapped. How had she ever been trapped? She was in a hotel room, on the island of Tortuga, but the world was no smaller, and the horizon still as endless as ever! All she had needed to do...
There were noises downstairs, and before she knew it, a knock on her door. She whirled around from the open window, and crossed the room. She opened the door as far as its chain would permit, and gasped loudly.
"Will!"
He stood, looking like - what? He did not look like the little boy he used to look like, sometimes, but he was not the noble pirate, either, with the feather and the buckle.
He swallowed hard and looked at her. He felt like crying. Or doing - what? He did not know. So much had changed in him lately that he hardly knew what do any more.
"Elizabeth," he said.
But she felt so incredibly different that it was permissible to accept that Will Turner was standing in the hallway outside her room in an inn in Tortuga. After what had just happened - what had just happened? She had just set herself free, come to life, become a woman, and now Will was here?
"Come... come in..."
It was incredibly odd, to say the least. Elizabeth unchained the door and let him in, and he sat on the edge of the bed, she on the stool at the dressing-table. Will stared at her, and it was very dark, for the lantern had burnt out.
"Let me... light the lantern..."
Elizabeth struck up a match and lit it, and the light mixed with the blocks of moonlight falling across the table and the floor. She could see Will clearly now, his eyes deep brown like always - well, of course like always - and still with that look of innocence about him, though there was much, much more to him, as always.
"I wanted to see - if you were all right..." he said. She opened her mouth to say something - what was it? - but he raised a hand and proceeded: "I know that I made a promise." He had that same look as the night when he slammed the medallion down on the table, with pirate's blood running through his veins, with the moonlight bright outside on the sea.
"Where are they?" asked Elizabeth. "... The Navy, I mean. Norrington..."
Will took a deep breath. "Norrington did not come," he said. "At the last minute..."
Elizabeth cut him off: "I understand." She smiled a little. "He understood. I mean."
The two sat staring at each other for a while. They had been so intimate all of their lives that it was not uncomfortable to stare at each other - even after... well.
Elizabeth no longer felt the need to explain herself. So she didn't. But her heart was reaching out to Will... to love someone without that person's love - did he think? - how could she dispel the illusions for someone else?
"Will," she said. He looked at her, in the lantern-light, and she looked at him, in the moonlight. "This night has been the best night of my life and all I've done is stared at..." She laughed a little. "...Stared at my reflection and thrown open the shutters and let out the wildest yell I could into the night."
Will smiled. He was like that sometimes. He had always understood her when she was a little girl - it was just when she got older that he had seemed not to understand, sometimes. Truth be told, the two of them probably understood each other perfectly. They would indeed have been a perfect match if there had not been the missing part when she kissed him.
There was a long silence between the two. And then Will said, "Where will you go? - From here, I mean. Are..."
Elizabeth smiled at him, but the tears were brimming already. Such a free woman had no right to cry. But these things cannot be done - these immortal, profound things - in one moment. They start off with a glorious moment, but they must come as they will. Slowly, through trials.
"Honestly? I do not know." She stood up and went to the window. "I have no idea." She turned back to Will. "Well, I have an idea. I..."
But then she remembered the rumor. Curses, curses, curses! It ruined everything... Surely Jack had just invented a rumor about himself to keep the Navy away, or else to bait Norrington, for a little bit of fun, another round. But what if the case were otherwise? She had no way of telling.
"Will," she said, sitting back down. "Have you heard anything from... I mean, about - Jack?"
Will looked pained for a moment - oh.
"No, Will -"
"Do you really - love him?"
Elizabeth glanced at the mirror, which reflected Will.
"I really don't know any more," she said.
Neither did Will.
A moment later, he said: "I haven't heard anything."
No, he hadn't.
Suddenly she felt a rush of gratitude sweep over her. Will was here. She had been alone, and gone through the most profound change of her life, and now Will was here. She did not love him, but he was Will.
"Thank you," she said. Deep breath. "For coming." She smiled.
Will nodded. As if it were his duty, or something. He was glad to have a bigger duty than that of pounding steel. He looked at Elizabeth, into her eyes. He loved her. He always had...
He breathed deeply. The air was still around, and it smelled intensely like the sea, which was in his blood, whether he liked it or fully accepted it or not. He liked that feather that he had worn in his hat. And the blood of a pirate ran through his veins, and of that he was proud... A very odd pride it was, but it was there anyway.
It was all right. In this room in Tortuga with the shutters wide open and the moonlight pouring in and the flame in the lamp lit by Elizabeth, who was keen at striking matches, because of that peculiar fire of hers. Yes, somehow, it would be all right.
It was all that the both of them needed.
A sloppy embrace; it lasted a bit longer than it should have, because Will did, after all, love her, and he wanted her to be safe, but he loved her quite truly, and this led him to accept her whether or not she was absolutely safe.
"Thank you," said Elizabeth.
Will closed the door behind him and stood in the hallway a moment. He would see her after this, he was sure. He did not believe much in endings any more. He breathed deeply, however foul or stuffy the air was in that hallway in an inn in Tortuga, and walked away. Somehow, the Dauntless was gone the next afternoon. Had it ever been there, or had Elizabeth dreamed?
But one thing was certain. Elizabeth would not be the maiden standing at the pier until the salt and brine consumed her. No, that would not be her fate.
-
There was a storm brewing out at sea.
Jack liked the sea-spray better than the rum, and the compass sometimes whirled, or perhaps it was only himself. And the storms were alive indeed, and the deck was salty with sea.
by Laura
Author's Note: Thank you to the reviewers :D Also I apologize to early readers of this chapter, because the formatting got messed up and all the transitions disappeared. Ack. :p Fixed now though. :)
Chapter Six: A Dance
Guises and layers. He had been walking so long. No, he was at sea. He weaved to them. They called him mad. But then again - they called him mad. What was he but the most brightly glittering speck they'd ever seen? No, no. A fish jumped out of water, splashing before landing back in. The sun had gotten to him long ago. But why shouldn't it have? The sun is there, lighting the world. Was the world then also mad? Why not let himself go mad? No, no.
Sparrow.
So he did have a name. That was him. What? Like waves. Sputter of the first sip of rum. What was he doing here? Yes. Voyage to those faraway lands. Pirate.
A world that could still intoxicate him and make him feel a fuller extent of his being. What his heart-strings were made of, he felt the same in the sea. Why? The salt and brine. Lady Sea will hide everything to you and make you so dizzy that you can hardly even stand sturdy on your own two feet. The words of a salty seaman himself. Had he believed it, or only been so enchanted by it, like the dreamy glitters of gold upon the surface of the sea?
He grinned and laughed. Let himself waver a little. What was the harm in another round?
-
Elizabeth's lantern-light lit aglow a small circle on the table-top. The light wavered as the lantern slid softly and crashed to the floor.
She was back in "her" cabin aboard the merchant ship Cordelia, after Edward had explained to the captain that the ship that Elizabeth had expected to be there for her in the harbor was not there after all, and the captain had not seemed to care all that much, only Elizabeth was Edward's charge, and the Cordelia was to be docked in Tortuga for two days yet, and there was nothing else to do, because she was quite stranded.
How bloody ironic! She was a runaway, a fugitive lady, she had no right to be in a position that trapped her so!
But really, she didn't care much. Or maybe she did. She really couldn't tell. She hardly noted the fallen lantern and the light that had gone out. There was only moonlight that was not turning her hand to bone because she was still alive. Seemingly stuck in a waking dream, yes, but alive.
Was this what it was like for Barbossa's crew? She would never know. Unless she went and plucked a piece of gold from a chest on a cursed island far away, that might or might not have been real after all. If the Pearl was not here, then there was no testament. For all she knew, it could have not happened after all. And Will was gone - no, wait - she was gone. Oh, yes.
She wasn't herself. She let the sea fill in, in the places where she did not want to go, to fix. She let the trilling gulls amass the gold discarded, and the waves lapped ever at the side of the boat, casting the lantern-light from the deck above askew about, for she could see the changing yellow-golden lights upon the waves. Strange how each influenced the other.
Hot tears, the salt. This was all ending. How dare it interrupt her... What would she do?
-
The sailors on the main deck above had bottles in their hands and the sails caught the golden light cast by the lanterns that they held grasped in their left hands, that were not holding the bottles, and they swayed. They were on watch. How were merchant sailors respectable, exactly? The rest of the crew was out about the island upon this night, and it was darkly gleaming.
Only Edward, the ship's cook, and that anonymous passenger - why was she still here? They didn't think about it much - were still aboard with the two night-watchmen, who were drinking from their bottles on the ship, in place of being on the island.
The captain had a lady with him, only she was not a lady, for she was on his lap rather than his arm. The first-mate was in a swinging duel of dirty words with the tavern owner, for charging him too much for too many drinks. And the watchmen were beneath the sails furled, with the lantern-light swinging round upon them, and then the water.
The wind was not much for playing games tonight, and it did not whip their caps off, like it did sometimes out on a rough sea somewhere between here and Spain with a haughty trade about the merchant ship. They had taken so many barrels of crops from the plantations, that slaves' hands had picked under the same hot, hot sun that intoxicated them all through the day when they were up in the rigging or swabbing the deck, but no one cared quite enough. They were here and there and done again and a businessman wrote down the earnings and the balance in a record-book with a red leather cover and his money in a vault off somewhere else, gallivanting with a safety- code and merchants' secrets, that weren't so secret after all.
-
There is only so much one can do until she must do something.
Elizabeth gathered up her skirts and walked down the gang-plank. She stepped onto the pier like a maiden of the past from a sea-voyage with a serpent as her figurehead. Only there wasn't much serpent or venom in Elizabeth, really. She was more catty sometimes, only she would not admit this.
"Thank you for your services," she said to Edward, who had escorted her off of the ship to wish her well. He was, after all, her caretaker.
He did not want to leave her here. Well, they couldn't very well take a passenger with them everywhere they went after this - where would they let her off, if not here? - if she had nowhere to go, like she had said? She said she would get passage back to Port Royal on a respectable ship.
But how can one tell which ships are respectable, on the island of Tortuga?
Elizabeth held in her hand a pouch of money that had been given to her. It contained Edward's earnings for the time he had spent as the passenger's watchman, in addition to his regular week's fare as the ship's cook. Elizabeth had thanked him profusely, and taken the money, because what else could she do? All of her own money had been spent on the voyage over.
Edward was a good, honest sailor, the likes of which she thought perhaps she had never met before. He was the middle, the merchant sailors, and before this she had known only two extremes. The Navy, watchful over her entire life up till recently, and pirates, pirates. The Navy were too "good" to really be considered good, honest sailors, so she could count them as nothing but Norrington, which summed up everything in Elizabeth's mind.
Merchant sailors, she thought, were good, honest men. Could turn pirate in a minute or at a pin-drop if they wanted to, or if the grappling hooks had them reeled in just precisely. Ha!
They pulled in the gang-plank. She had no connection, now. She was as adrift as she had ever wanted to be. Was this freedom? It started in her that it could be if she knew how to make it so. Perhaps there was an unsuspected fine line between freedom and entrapment, she thought, as she stood upon the pier.
She got a room in an inn, the closest inn to the harbor. The sensible thing to do, when there was no sense left whatsoever. It was very strange indeed how she had torn all the sense from her world and extracted herself so from it, and now she was lost, and since there was no more reason, did not know what to do, except rent a room in an inn, and stay locked up there all night when the rest of the world with their lurid lantern-lights went gallivanting out away with their voices like grimy trumpets in the gravel horns and she would do anything to do something.
-
William Turner's father was a merchant sailor who had turned pirate in a minute, or at a pin-drop, apparently, but he would never know why he had wanted to, or if the grappling hooks had had him reeled in just precisely. Sometimes Will was angry about it, and sometimes a strange sadness washed over him, for it was not sadness, really, rather it was waves. But the sea was a lady, and it had not been she who had cursed his father so.
The swords got made punctually. Navy men needed them rather frequently. Will did not like to think of the harm that his hands would do by making swords. Rather he examined their craft, the steel that could have been harmless, that had had the potential to be anything other than a sword also. But swords they were, and they were everywhere. For protection, for marauders. For dueling and for dignitaries to hang upon their walls with their coat-of-arms. For - for -
Will didn't really like to think about it.
He had always thought that it was all right to make so many swords, because the Navy's men were utterly respectable, and they needed their swords, especially ceremonially. How odd, to ceremonially present a sword! To slice a feather from a hat because it had been so obscene. What was the order of things, if he was a blacksmith and it all started with him? Was he waging wars?
But Will didn't really like to think about it, other than that it was his craft, and that was pounding steel, nothing more.
He would go to find Elizabeth. He had promised not to, but broken promises were the pirate's way, and damn it, pirates seemed to be so much better off than he was currently. What if she were in trouble? What if things had not turned out the way she had... expected...
Will sighed. It was useless. What was useless? Everything. The feathers in hats, and their buckles. As if that could keep anyone where they were meant to be, when they were not supposed to be there.
Elizabeth's father was utterly worried and Norrington was sending out a search party. Respect had worn off, because they had all realized finally that there was nothing to respect. It was frantic. The Navy was going out, a contingent, that could quicker turn into a fleet. Will was going with them; he had set it up; Norrington had not listened to him last time, but now, as everyone knew, everything was different.
The Dauntless set out again, chasing pirates, like she had always done, since the moment of her birth, the timbers strong.
The wind whipped in Will's face and he heard something, like always.
He loved her so bloody much.
-
Somewhere, the stars and black sails wove just as well as the Fates with their spinning-wheel a history.
-
Elizabeth Swann hated rum. She hated Tortuga. If rum was the vilest of drinks, then Tortuga was the vilest of places, and she wanted nothing more to do with it.
Tortuga, she thought, was not the epitome of piracy after all. It was nothing like the island of her pirate fantasies. No, no. The real thing was out at sea. The sea-spray. The adventure in the tang. That was a better form of intoxication, because it was not so, but it was real, whereas the rum was not. She still did not have it, and she would not have it in Tortuga, for it was solid land, however many pirate ships came to its shores. It was not the open sea's adventure, because it was not the destination when she was already there.
She needed a ship. She needed Jack! The Pearl! Yes, the black sails unfurled in her heart. That old tremor of excitement. What were sailors' rumors, anyway? The Pearl, sunk? It could not be. Those black sails were filled with wind, or else her heart would not trill so to their canvas whipping. Elizabeth did not like to doubt herself.
What of love? Had she thought she loved him, the bloody pirate who had gone and spun another rumor about himself?
Was she drunk?
Maybe she was, and maybe she wasn't. Either way, Elizabeth still hated rum utterly, although it did seem to burn rather well, and it had, in a way, saved her life once. Funny, the way each influenced the other.
If she was drunk, then it was impossible, because she had not touched a drop of liquor. If she was drunk upon the night air like pirates are sometimes, then it was also impossible, for she kept her window shuttered, and the lantern-light afforded all her illumination in the place of moonlight. To open her window and let in the moon-glow, she would have to take a chance - also would be let in the sweat and the grime of the carousers below and the yells of the men and the coins falling freely, and that wasn't all, it was horrible. She couldn't take a chance.
She had commanded a pirate crew against another pirate crew once, been captured, thought she was going to be sacrificed with nothing she could do about it, longed for Will to save her, striven to save Will (that was when the rum burned best), fought cursed pirates to rescue everything. Next to that, this - having run away, trapped herself up in a shuttered room in Tortuga - was small.
But her adventurous life had slipped away before it had even begun, it seemed, and now she was back to longing for it. Only it had gone round in a cycle, and dropped her headfirst alone in Tortuga, and if she were a real pirate lady then it would be fine, only she wasn't, because she was far too dignified to drink rum.
But what about that island? What had she been thinking? To save Will, of course. And the shiver when Jack put his hand on her shoulder. Oh, that. She was trying not to think of Jack, because in the back of her mind, Jack could have been dead. She shook off the weight. It was impossible, implausible, merchant sailors were not that respectable after all.
There is only so much one can do until she must do something. After all.
And there was a lot of all. Elizabeth lay on the bed, sobbing thoroughly.
And then she rose, and crossed the room, and looked in the mirror, to see if her reflection had the answers to her listless inaction - no, if her reflection had the answers to her. Confound it! would say a character in one of her old storybooks. But this wasn't worth it any longer. She gazed into the looking-glass.
Oh, she wanted that pirate medallion back! She could've worn it right now, and felt a little better. What a foolish thought! She scolded herself immediately. The woman in the mirror scowled.
She didn't look much different than she had that day she had looked at herself in the mirror, that morning. Norrington's promotion day. She had risen late, to the candle-light, after a dream. Crossed to the glass and put on the medallion. What a different woman was she who had done so! She had not known what that fanciful notion and gesture would do...
Strange how things happened like that... how everything turned in a circle, a cycle, back around her... back to her, and everyone else... Was it possible that she too was cursed?
She concentrated on her reflection. The woman in the glass seemed so much better off.
How many lies, or truths, separated Port Royal from Tortuga? How many lengths of rope, fathoms deep, or gold coins laid out in a row? How much of her, stretched thin and worn? The chamber-maid scowling brought biscuits to her in the morning when she called, and she became too listless and lost in thought to take another bite after breakfast. She was awfully thin. She wouldn't even need a corset now, would she, if she were back there? What an odd thought that was!
"Turn yourself around... and pick yourself up. You are strong."
But she didn't want herself to tell her that she was strong. She wanted someone to tell her that it would be all right.
It would've been Jack. Of course, he would not have told her any such thing. One could not get much comfort from a mad pirate. But the look of him was so immortal that she could have believed it.
How confusing are the heart's games and webs! As Elizabeth gazed at herself in the looking-glass, she was realizing something that women had been realizing throughout all the ages before her. And it was a thing to be confounded still. Love had made her drink the rum then burn it all. Love had made her lie to dire consequences. Love had led her pirate fancies, the feather on Will's hat, the tears in her eyes, the missing thing in the kiss. Jack's hand on her shoulder and the fire crackling. How was it that she was more deserted now? She had deserted herself... on a whim... on a flight of fancy.
She watched the tears fall down her cheeks, she watched her long long hair unfurl as she untied it, she watched her lips partly open, and her eyes with the mysteries therein. She watched a little girl growing up, though she was twenty, for goodness' sake, and it had all been such a thing to be confounded, when the boom swung round, and the sea was foaming, and at her order, the cannons fired, and her rafts all splintered.
Now that she had broken herself, there was nothing to do but re-find something, in the grains of sand, or in the highest star, the wood of a ship's figurehead, who was a beautiful lady who knew all that Elizabeth knew not about love. She had loved a blacksmith, and she had loved a pirate, but before both she had never loved. Perhaps love must then be present in every ounce of one's being before it can be ignited by one's soul-mate, and she had never had it.
She had wanted to save Will; she had loved Will. She had wanted Jack to set her free; she had loved a part of Jack, for he cast illusions everywhere he went, and a pirate lady's illusion was bound to fall in love with an illusion of Sparrow that he had left on her heart, inadvertently. But Elizabeth was not really a pirate lady, and her fantasies were slowly dissolving, right before her eyes, in the looking-glass.
It could not happen. It could not be. Elizabeth had lived on fantasies, all throughout her life. The pirate hymns she hummed on the way to church on Sundays (amusing, that).
But perhaps - her reflection, who looked somehow wiser than her, seemed to tell her, slowly - there comes a time when one must decide not to content herself merely in fantasies - when she must decide instead to live more than she ever has in any fantasy. When she must not only be contented with the notions of dreams' tapestries, locked up, far away, inaccessible - but instead, when she decides that she will find them in her very heart, and unleash them from the confines of her own mind, filling herself, and the world.
Elizabeth opened the shutters and yelled out into the night.
A thousand midnight carousers seemed to answer her with cat-calls to an unknown source; they did not know her; she would not concern herself with them. But a more prominent, and more important, answer seemed to reach her. It was the echo of her own voice, flying through the night, the sultry Tortuga night, yes - but also the greater night, the deepest night, that filled the Caribbean, where the stars were, where even the birds of dull plumage broke from their clippings and trilled through something of emptiness, filling it up. And then comes life, life, blossoming life, blooming trilling singing and dancing, a pirate song, whirling, anything that is true! Everything that is true! The embers that burned her feet, no, she was not drunk! She would never need to be drunk.
Her own reflection had taught her the most important lesson of her life. The echo of her own voice had been the wild trill that set her free. How obvious it was, now! How utterly and completely magnificent was the night! She was no longer afraid, or trapped. How had she ever been trapped? She was in a hotel room, on the island of Tortuga, but the world was no smaller, and the horizon still as endless as ever! All she had needed to do...
There were noises downstairs, and before she knew it, a knock on her door. She whirled around from the open window, and crossed the room. She opened the door as far as its chain would permit, and gasped loudly.
"Will!"
He stood, looking like - what? He did not look like the little boy he used to look like, sometimes, but he was not the noble pirate, either, with the feather and the buckle.
He swallowed hard and looked at her. He felt like crying. Or doing - what? He did not know. So much had changed in him lately that he hardly knew what do any more.
"Elizabeth," he said.
But she felt so incredibly different that it was permissible to accept that Will Turner was standing in the hallway outside her room in an inn in Tortuga. After what had just happened - what had just happened? She had just set herself free, come to life, become a woman, and now Will was here?
"Come... come in..."
It was incredibly odd, to say the least. Elizabeth unchained the door and let him in, and he sat on the edge of the bed, she on the stool at the dressing-table. Will stared at her, and it was very dark, for the lantern had burnt out.
"Let me... light the lantern..."
Elizabeth struck up a match and lit it, and the light mixed with the blocks of moonlight falling across the table and the floor. She could see Will clearly now, his eyes deep brown like always - well, of course like always - and still with that look of innocence about him, though there was much, much more to him, as always.
"I wanted to see - if you were all right..." he said. She opened her mouth to say something - what was it? - but he raised a hand and proceeded: "I know that I made a promise." He had that same look as the night when he slammed the medallion down on the table, with pirate's blood running through his veins, with the moonlight bright outside on the sea.
"Where are they?" asked Elizabeth. "... The Navy, I mean. Norrington..."
Will took a deep breath. "Norrington did not come," he said. "At the last minute..."
Elizabeth cut him off: "I understand." She smiled a little. "He understood. I mean."
The two sat staring at each other for a while. They had been so intimate all of their lives that it was not uncomfortable to stare at each other - even after... well.
Elizabeth no longer felt the need to explain herself. So she didn't. But her heart was reaching out to Will... to love someone without that person's love - did he think? - how could she dispel the illusions for someone else?
"Will," she said. He looked at her, in the lantern-light, and she looked at him, in the moonlight. "This night has been the best night of my life and all I've done is stared at..." She laughed a little. "...Stared at my reflection and thrown open the shutters and let out the wildest yell I could into the night."
Will smiled. He was like that sometimes. He had always understood her when she was a little girl - it was just when she got older that he had seemed not to understand, sometimes. Truth be told, the two of them probably understood each other perfectly. They would indeed have been a perfect match if there had not been the missing part when she kissed him.
There was a long silence between the two. And then Will said, "Where will you go? - From here, I mean. Are..."
Elizabeth smiled at him, but the tears were brimming already. Such a free woman had no right to cry. But these things cannot be done - these immortal, profound things - in one moment. They start off with a glorious moment, but they must come as they will. Slowly, through trials.
"Honestly? I do not know." She stood up and went to the window. "I have no idea." She turned back to Will. "Well, I have an idea. I..."
But then she remembered the rumor. Curses, curses, curses! It ruined everything... Surely Jack had just invented a rumor about himself to keep the Navy away, or else to bait Norrington, for a little bit of fun, another round. But what if the case were otherwise? She had no way of telling.
"Will," she said, sitting back down. "Have you heard anything from... I mean, about - Jack?"
Will looked pained for a moment - oh.
"No, Will -"
"Do you really - love him?"
Elizabeth glanced at the mirror, which reflected Will.
"I really don't know any more," she said.
Neither did Will.
A moment later, he said: "I haven't heard anything."
No, he hadn't.
Suddenly she felt a rush of gratitude sweep over her. Will was here. She had been alone, and gone through the most profound change of her life, and now Will was here. She did not love him, but he was Will.
"Thank you," she said. Deep breath. "For coming." She smiled.
Will nodded. As if it were his duty, or something. He was glad to have a bigger duty than that of pounding steel. He looked at Elizabeth, into her eyes. He loved her. He always had...
He breathed deeply. The air was still around, and it smelled intensely like the sea, which was in his blood, whether he liked it or fully accepted it or not. He liked that feather that he had worn in his hat. And the blood of a pirate ran through his veins, and of that he was proud... A very odd pride it was, but it was there anyway.
It was all right. In this room in Tortuga with the shutters wide open and the moonlight pouring in and the flame in the lamp lit by Elizabeth, who was keen at striking matches, because of that peculiar fire of hers. Yes, somehow, it would be all right.
It was all that the both of them needed.
A sloppy embrace; it lasted a bit longer than it should have, because Will did, after all, love her, and he wanted her to be safe, but he loved her quite truly, and this led him to accept her whether or not she was absolutely safe.
"Thank you," said Elizabeth.
Will closed the door behind him and stood in the hallway a moment. He would see her after this, he was sure. He did not believe much in endings any more. He breathed deeply, however foul or stuffy the air was in that hallway in an inn in Tortuga, and walked away. Somehow, the Dauntless was gone the next afternoon. Had it ever been there, or had Elizabeth dreamed?
But one thing was certain. Elizabeth would not be the maiden standing at the pier until the salt and brine consumed her. No, that would not be her fate.
-
There was a storm brewing out at sea.
Jack liked the sea-spray better than the rum, and the compass sometimes whirled, or perhaps it was only himself. And the storms were alive indeed, and the deck was salty with sea.
