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Chapter 2: Out of the Ordinary
"Anamaria?" Gwen echoed.
Gibbs moved to stand beside her at the rail, where she stood watching the other ship.
"Used to be a member o' the crew, more or less," he replied.
"I see," Gwen said slowly. "Was she bad luck?"
The first mate shot her a quelling look. He had long since dropped his vendetta against her sailing, but that didn't keep her from teasing him about it.
"It weren't quite a matter of luck, so much as just trouble," Gibbs answered after a pause.
"How so?"
"With Jack, mostly."
"Oh," Gwen said lightly. Inwardly, though, something twinged suspiciously.
"Jack had a habit of taking things from her without asking," Gibbs said confidentially, keeping his voice low.
"Like what?" she asked, almost fearing the answer.
"Well, a boat, for one thing. And since he's allays borrowin' from her, she allays figured he owed her something. So she tended to take things here and there herself- a bit more control than she was allowed, that sort of thing."
"So they just didn't get along," Gwen said, hoping that she didn't sound hopeful. And wondering if she could really feel so shallowly toward this woman she had never met.
"Got along just fine," Gibbs answered, oblivious to the quality of her tone. "It was just a battle of wills. Can't say who really won, if either of 'em. Jack took a ship one day 'stead o' just the booty, and give it to her to sail off and command 'er own crew, and that's that. And there she be." He nodded toward the vessel unnecessarily.
The Black Pearl was slowing on its approach. The other ship, as well, had slowed and altered its course so that now, the two ships were executing a sort of docking maneuver with each other. Gibbs moved off to help some of the other crewman prepare lines to keep the ships from drifting apart. Gwen checked first to see if her assistance was needed, but was relieved to note that all was more than amply taken care of. She was still tired from a lack of sleep last night due to… aerobic activities, and then from her hours practicing in the gym with Smithy and then Jack that morning. So she then simply watched the other ship as the two moved into a friendly version of the side-by-side stance Jack preferred as more efficient in looting.
Gwen searched among the crew of the other ship for a woman who might be this "Anamaria," and was admittedly at least a little surprised when she noted there were actually four women in the dozen and a half crewmen on deck. Well, if there was a woman captain, she supposed, it made sense that she'd be more lenient toward the fairer sex in allowing them to participate on her ship; perhaps she even enjoyed having the back-up. Gwen studied each of the women quickly and briefly.
While Jack tended to be more laid-back than many of the high-strung captains Gwen had met, he did enjoy yelling orders. If this propensity to shout was to be taken as a tell-tale sign of a captain (it was a trait Gwen had noted in the other captains she'd met as well), then she would wager that the dark-skinned woman standing on the poop deck, shouting, was Anamaria.
Gwen sized up this woman as both crews worked to secure the ships together (although not too secure; they did maintain a reasonable dosage of vague paranoia) and set up a rough boardwalk to allow easy crossing between the two ships.
Anamaria didn't seem to amount to too much by simple physical considerations. She wasn't particularly tall (or short, for that matter) and didn't seem particularly outstanding in any corporeal way. Her apparel was rather like Jack's: unpresumptuous, comfortable attire that went against the pirate captain ideals, at least in a few Gwen had witnessed, of trying to show success by wearing fine stiff collars and cuffs and all sorts of rich bedeckments. Anamaria was wearing a simple blouse and trousers, well-worn boots, and a broad-brimmed old straw hat.
Gwen's skin tingled and she turned reflexively to see that Jack had come down and was standing on the main deck just behind her, waiting for Anamaria to board. She only smiled lightly at him, then turned back to watch again.
Well, that did make sense. Jack outranked Anamaria, after all, so it was she who would leave the comforts of her own ship to talk with Jack. To be silly and blunt, Jack's ship was bigger. Not to mention he was more renowned, and that Anamaria's own ship could still belong to him if he had so chosen to keep it, forcing her to sail under his colors and share her loot with him.
The two captains would probably converse for an hour or two, sharing information about their recent travels (the Pearl had recently returned from an exploit of some of the colonies up north; they'd been back in the warm Caribbean for only a few weeks), advising of which areas were being tightly patrolled by British or other officials, catching up on maritime small-talk, and perhaps some bartering of cargo items.
Which meant that, for all the initial excitement of seeing a ship, there was really very little going to happen here now. No doubt the crew of the two ships would visit some and talk and joke while their captains concerned themselves with business-related discussions. Which was all well and fine. But Gwen didn't know any of the other crew. Of course, normally, that wouldn't necessarily mean anything. She wasn't afraid or shy of new people. But she was scarcely in the mood to worry about listening to or telling jokes and tales even amongst those she knew well. She really was more tired than she had thought.
"Anamaria!" Jack stepped forward, grinning winningly, his gold teeth gleaming in the afternoon sun.
Gwen blinked. She'd lost herself in her thoughts, hadn't noticed the other captain boarding.
"Captain Sparrow," Anamaria said curtly in acknowledgment. She spoke with an odd but pleasant lilting accent. Her tone, though, carried a perfect blend of deference to Jack and, by stressing his title just enough, a reminder as well that she too was a captain and was to be addressed as such.
Jack led the way toward the map room, and once both captains had disappeared, as expected, the relatively well-ordered crews dissolved into a mass of calling, hooting, and laughing men (and women). Gwen silently slipped away to the captain's cabin.
Once in the relative peace of the cabin, she went to Jack's trunk and fished out a fair-sized leather-bound volume. Then she crossed to the bed, made herself comfortable, flipped the book open to a marked page and began reading where she had last left off:
Prepare you, generals:
The enemy comes on in gallant show;
Their bloody sign of battle is hung out,
"I heard tale ye'd headed back east for a while," Jack said, flopping down into a chair and kicking his feet up onto the table.
Anamaria sat down in a chair across the table from him. Jack mused that she was still very much Anamaria. But her mannerisms still seemed slightly changed from the way he remembered her. He presumed this was Anamaria the captain.
"We were just coming back into home waters from a couple of months around the Mediterranean," she confirmed. "And we run into you. I was wondering if you were going to recognize us or not."
"How's that part of the world, then?" Jack asked, grinning. "Still there?"
Anamaria gave him an unreadable look. "Things are getting strange, Jack. More than strange," she said, jumping straight to the most substantial news she had to offer.
"How so?" he asked, his demeanor still casual, nonchalant.
"First we heard was rumors in port. Sailors heard from other sailors heard from others on ships no one's heard of. They was saying there were some odd ships sailing around the Sea."
Jack let his feet slide off with a thump to the floor and he leaned forward. "The Black Pearl's an odd ship," he said, dismissing the detail in light of the lack of more significant information. "What else?"
"The Pearl doesn't appear out of nowhere," Anamaria said shortly.
"Nearly does. She's fast," Jack smirked.
"Not that fast," she said, refusing to let her serious mood give in to Jack's teasing.
Jack frowned. "Did you see one of these mysterious ships, then?" He looked at her expectantly. If she had more to share than just sketchy rumors, he would listen to the tale willingly. As it was, it sounded as far-fetched as some of the tales he'd heard about the Pearl itself. Still, most of those at least had a shred of truth in them.
"I did see one, Jack."
His eyes narrowed, but otherwise he made no response.
"We was sailing round Crete. Cabby spotted a ship approaching. It wasn't moving too fast, but it were coming straight at us, sure. But it never met us. We watched it disappear, Jack."
"Jes' disappear right out?" Jack asked, still sounding a bit skeptical.
"No," Anamaria answered flatly. "That's the strangest bit. It was there, sure as anything. It sort of… faded. We didn't even realize it, really, until it was just gone."
Jack leaned back in his chair. "And there's proof more'n one of these ships exists?"
"Can't prove anything. I've heard different descriptions of 'em, though. Different from what I know I saw and different from what others seen, like there's more. Nobody's seen one up-close, though, and you know how stories get mixed up."
He nodded and offered a grin at that. How indeed. He'd had plenty of experience with mixed-up tales. "There's something more," he observed then, judging by her expression.
"Aye," Anamaria said, nodding. "It's the strangest bit, to me. There are disturbances all over the Mediterranean. I don't know if anyone's connected them all yet, 'cept sailors, we hear 'em all. Started in Rome."
"What kind of 'disturbances'?"
"Graves. Ancient ones. Underground tombs. Children and farmers are finding ancient burial grounds all-a sudden. Because all-a sudden they're getting uncovered, half-dug-up."
Jack was silent for a moment as he tried to decide if Anamaria was really trying to say what he thought she was. "So you think there are ghost ships sailing around crewed by the dead of ages past," he said finally, with a dramatic flair and a gold-toothed grin.
Anamaria drew a breath and, ignoring his slight sarcasm, added, "And I think they're going to keep spreading. The reports I heard kept getting further and further apart."
He merely looked at her, his expression a contradictory mix of belief and skepticism, amusement and concern. "All right. What are they up to, then? And could they be stopped?"
"We've dealt with a cursed crew before."
"By lifting the curse," he pointed out. "But how do you kill the dead?"
Gwen was reading from Julius Caesar, Act V, Scene i. Julius Caesar
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