Tory's Chapter Eight: Horrorness of Horrors
"Wake up," Someone was poking me. "Tory, wake up." I was being poked harder.
"ANG UNG BLAH!" I made angry sleep noises.
"Victoria Lindsay, get your lazy bottom out of sleep mode or I will be forced to dangle you from a well with enraged polka dotted lions at the bottom." The angry voice yelled. I rolled over. It was Sarina. Who else would threaten to dangle me from a well with enraged polka-dotted lions?
"GACK BACK BOOGA!" I made more angry sleep noises as I glared. Sarina grabbed me, pulled me up, and hit me with a lumpy piece of weird material that was supposed to be a pillow. It felt like a brick (to sleep on and get hit by).
"The captain wants to see us." Sarina informed me, as she continued to shake me so I didn't fall asleep.
"The captain can go be hit by a bloody truck," I muttered brushing straw off my hair and my preppy boy clothes which I was still wearing. I looked (and probably smelled like) horse doo.
In the corner, Ellie was waking up. She rubbed her eyes with her cute little hands.
"Daddy?" She asked.
"No, your daddy isn't here right now. But we are going to go to him," Sarina cooed at her. "If Tory ever gets her act together," she grumbled, shooting me an evil glare.
"Hey, I'm ready right now. It's not like I can brush my teeth or wash my face. No water for cleaning myself. I can't even go to the bathroom," I complained.
"Stuff it, Tory. We have to be in a good mood around Jack or we could be swimming with the fishies." Sarina looked at me pointedly.
"Right. On my best blinking behavior." I saluted her and walked out the door. Sarina scooped up Ellie in her arms and followed.
As we walked along the hallway to the captain's cabin, I tottered a lot. The waves were making the boat very rocky. I don't particularly like boats; bad childhood experiences.
We got to the cabin door and I reluctantly knocked as Sarina had her hands full with Elly, who had conveniently fallen asleep again.
"'oo is it?" called the unmistakable voice of the captain.
"It's, uh, us. Sarina and Tory." I called, "Someone told us we had to-" The door opened.
"Quit yer babblin' girl and come in." Jack scowled as he ushered us into the room. As we stepped in, I heard the distinctive click of a lock. Weird.
In the corner of the room stood Will next to a chair. In the chair was a blond haired man who looked strangely familiar. He had bright blue eyes and some freckles. He didn't have huge muscles, but he was well built. He had bandage on his arm and I could see a few cuts around his hairline. There were some bruises on his arms and legs as well. At once I recognized him.
"You're the man we pulled onto our ship yesterday! The one that was deliriously raving," I said, opening my big fat mouth, still in shock in how good looking this man was with all the blood cleaned off him. He smiled, making my knees wobble like jello freshly out of the refrigerator.
"Yes. That I am." His voice had a nice tone with some kind of accent, but I wasn't sure where it was from.
"Set yerselves down." Jack said. Sarina and I plopped down on the cabin floor with a "Yessir". "This is Luc." Jack said introducing the man. However, he was interrupted. At the sound of her father's name, Ellie opened her eyes.
"Daddy!" She cried triumphantly as she wiggled out of Sarina's arms.
"Ellie! My little Ellimere!" Luc winced as she scrambled into his bruised arms, but otherwise looked happy to be reunited with his daughter. It was a total "AWWWW" moment. But Captain Jack Sparrow had other things on his mind.
"Now that all our fam'ly reunitin's 'er over we be getting' to the important items of the agenda." Jack said, giving a pointed look to Luc. He flushed a cute shade of pink, but didn't look sorry at all as he cuddled his child.
"Luc was carryin' a book o' great importance when we found him. He almost died for it." Jack said seriously. "This book coul' change yeh live yer life." Sarina and I looked at each other in excitement. If they were willing to tell us about something important, we could be promoted from cabin boys to something exciting, like deck sweepers.
"Go on," Sarina urged Jack.
"However," Jack drawled "we can't read the bloody thing." Our faces fell. "We think you luvely ladies can." We began to become excited again. "It's in a language we don't know. But as we were examinin' the items ye brought aboard the Pearl, we discovr'd the same language in books yeh be carryin'." As Jack went on, my excitement turned to horror. The text books Sarina and I had together when we were transported by the elevator were Social Studies: Economics Part I, Geometry, Earth Science, and Latin. Realization struck me like a clod of mud in the face.
"NO!!" I yelled.
"NOT LATIN!" Sarina yelled at the same time, then began muttering obscenities under her breath.
"We think the book's in Latin." Jack said. "Yer goin' to translate it for us."
"Please! No! ANYTHING BUT LATIN!!" I yelled, hurling myself at his feet. As I looked up, I felt a prick of metal at my throat. It was Jack's sword.
"The alternative is simple, luv. Yeh either read me book or yeh'll be swimmin' wi' the fishies." Jack's gold tooth glinted at me as he smiled like a happy shark. "Savvy?"
I gulped nervously. "Savvy."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Of course we couldn't be the kind of Mary-Sues who come, kick butt, fall in love with the hot canon characters, and live happily ever after with still perfect hair. No, we have to sit out here on the deck of some tub of a ship in ninety degree weather translating LATIN for God's sake." Sarina ranted. It was true. But, I was born on the unluckiest day of the year and she was stuck with me, so there goes. (I swear it's true. My birthday is the unluckiest day. Look up December 28th in any birthday book.)
"At least you're not sick." I moaned holding my belly. It hurt. So did my ribs, my feet, my eyeballs, my small intestine, my large intestine, my nose, my teeth, my kidneys, my toes, my calf, my cornea, my knuckles, my hair, my spleen, my fingernails, my esophagus, my throat, my jaw, my chest, my lungs, my heart, my arm, my ankle, my sternum, and my gallbladder. Or at least that's what it felt like. As you could see, I wasn't feeling too hot.
"Yea, thank goodness for that. I hope you feel better soon. There is NO way I can translate this whole damn book by myself." Sarina waved it in my face. It was a dusty old wreck, with half its cover torn off. When we first picked it up, a whole bunch of pages fell out but Will helped us stick them back in with some tar substance that looked like the soup we had. It was really dusty as well. It was handwritten, so some of the words were hard to read. It also had like THREE HUNDRED pages. If Jack wanted us to translate the whole thing, he was insane. Well, I guess we already knew that.
"I'm sure you could translate it by yourself if you really tried." I said, rolling onto my back and closed my eyes. Urg, I felt bad. "There is no way my brain can work when my stomach feels like a washing machine on triple spin cycle."
"Then we'll jus' 'ave to get yer stomach workin' then, won't we, luv?" I opened my eyes. It was Jack.
"Go away. I feel like POOP!" I growled at him and closed my eyes again. Before I knew it, I was dragged onto my feet and some vile liquid was shoved into my mouth. My immediate reaction was to spit it where it came from. And that's how Jack Sparrow's face became covered in purple sticky goop. It was not a pretty sight. I'm not sure who was more surprised; Jack, Sarina or me.
"Can't take yer medicine, can yeh?" Jack snarled. "I'll fix that." He grabbed my nose and began to force my mouth open. I tried to keep it closed, but I couldn't breathe with his hand on my nose. I had to open my mouth or die from suffocation (which is actually better than drowning; when you drown you die because your lungs implode). But I didn't want to die. I opened my mouth and was forced to swallow the liquid. It was possibly the vilest thing I had ever tasted. I glared at Jack.
"I jus' know what's best for yeh, luv," he shrugged and walked away, wiping at the purple goop on his face. I looked at Sarina. She looked like she was trying not to laugh. I glowered at her.
"Let's just translate this and get it over with." I muttered, feeling better despite the grossness of the "medicine".
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
By mid-afternoon, we had translated seven pages. The way we did this was: I would look at the text. If there was a word I didn't know (like, every other word), I would yell it to Sarina, who would either know it, or go and look it up in the dictionary that was at the back of our textbook. She would tell me what it would mean, by this time I would have figured out the syntax and give the sentence to her to write it. It was a very complicated system. The whole book was full of "thee" and "thou" and all sorts of good old English words I didn't get. Jack came around every time we finished a page and brought it to his cabin, where it was probably analyzed by Will and Luc. I wasn't sure where Ellie was, but I figured she was with Luc.
Luc...... my thoughts kept straying to him. He was....... well I wasn't really sure. I didn't know him at all, but for some reason, he seemed to be a very interesting person. Hmmmm.......
Sarina's voice broke me out of my thoughts.
"Tory, come on. He said the captain has given us a break until dinner," she gestured to a hunch-backed pirate shuffling away from us. "Unless of course, you want to translate Latin all day."
"No, thanks I'm fine," I said, getting up. The medicine really did help me feel better, even if it tasted absolutely vile. "So what are we going to do? There is no where to go on this stupid ship."
"Don't let Jack hear you say that. He'll string you from the sails by your ears." Sarina warned.
"Whatever." I said. We walked around the main mast a couple times, just enjoying the wind (which made the air not feel like we were roasting in an oven). As we were walking in circles, I spotted something. There was a square hole in the deck. I ran over to it.
"Interesting," said Sarina. "I guess that's where they throw the cargo down to the hold."
"Fun." I said. I noticed a rope going down into it. "Let's go." I grabbed the rope. Sarina grabbed me.
"Tory, Jack will get really mad at us. I wouldn't do that. You don't know what's down there." She warned. You know when there is a voice of reason bugging you not to do something, and then you go and do it anyway, and you find out that little voice was right? Well, that was one of those times. I ignored Sarina and slid down the rope.
"Um Tory?" Sarina's head blocked most of the light coming into the dark hold.
"Yea?" I called up, still sliding down.
"The rope is about to-" and then a lot of things happened at once. The rope broke, dropping me about fifteen feet (from what I could see), Sarina yelled, Jack came running, I heard a snap, felt pain and landed on something extremely hard. Then I blacked out.
"Wake up," Someone was poking me. "Tory, wake up." I was being poked harder.
"ANG UNG BLAH!" I made angry sleep noises.
"Victoria Lindsay, get your lazy bottom out of sleep mode or I will be forced to dangle you from a well with enraged polka dotted lions at the bottom." The angry voice yelled. I rolled over. It was Sarina. Who else would threaten to dangle me from a well with enraged polka-dotted lions?
"GACK BACK BOOGA!" I made more angry sleep noises as I glared. Sarina grabbed me, pulled me up, and hit me with a lumpy piece of weird material that was supposed to be a pillow. It felt like a brick (to sleep on and get hit by).
"The captain wants to see us." Sarina informed me, as she continued to shake me so I didn't fall asleep.
"The captain can go be hit by a bloody truck," I muttered brushing straw off my hair and my preppy boy clothes which I was still wearing. I looked (and probably smelled like) horse doo.
In the corner, Ellie was waking up. She rubbed her eyes with her cute little hands.
"Daddy?" She asked.
"No, your daddy isn't here right now. But we are going to go to him," Sarina cooed at her. "If Tory ever gets her act together," she grumbled, shooting me an evil glare.
"Hey, I'm ready right now. It's not like I can brush my teeth or wash my face. No water for cleaning myself. I can't even go to the bathroom," I complained.
"Stuff it, Tory. We have to be in a good mood around Jack or we could be swimming with the fishies." Sarina looked at me pointedly.
"Right. On my best blinking behavior." I saluted her and walked out the door. Sarina scooped up Ellie in her arms and followed.
As we walked along the hallway to the captain's cabin, I tottered a lot. The waves were making the boat very rocky. I don't particularly like boats; bad childhood experiences.
We got to the cabin door and I reluctantly knocked as Sarina had her hands full with Elly, who had conveniently fallen asleep again.
"'oo is it?" called the unmistakable voice of the captain.
"It's, uh, us. Sarina and Tory." I called, "Someone told us we had to-" The door opened.
"Quit yer babblin' girl and come in." Jack scowled as he ushered us into the room. As we stepped in, I heard the distinctive click of a lock. Weird.
In the corner of the room stood Will next to a chair. In the chair was a blond haired man who looked strangely familiar. He had bright blue eyes and some freckles. He didn't have huge muscles, but he was well built. He had bandage on his arm and I could see a few cuts around his hairline. There were some bruises on his arms and legs as well. At once I recognized him.
"You're the man we pulled onto our ship yesterday! The one that was deliriously raving," I said, opening my big fat mouth, still in shock in how good looking this man was with all the blood cleaned off him. He smiled, making my knees wobble like jello freshly out of the refrigerator.
"Yes. That I am." His voice had a nice tone with some kind of accent, but I wasn't sure where it was from.
"Set yerselves down." Jack said. Sarina and I plopped down on the cabin floor with a "Yessir". "This is Luc." Jack said introducing the man. However, he was interrupted. At the sound of her father's name, Ellie opened her eyes.
"Daddy!" She cried triumphantly as she wiggled out of Sarina's arms.
"Ellie! My little Ellimere!" Luc winced as she scrambled into his bruised arms, but otherwise looked happy to be reunited with his daughter. It was a total "AWWWW" moment. But Captain Jack Sparrow had other things on his mind.
"Now that all our fam'ly reunitin's 'er over we be getting' to the important items of the agenda." Jack said, giving a pointed look to Luc. He flushed a cute shade of pink, but didn't look sorry at all as he cuddled his child.
"Luc was carryin' a book o' great importance when we found him. He almost died for it." Jack said seriously. "This book coul' change yeh live yer life." Sarina and I looked at each other in excitement. If they were willing to tell us about something important, we could be promoted from cabin boys to something exciting, like deck sweepers.
"Go on," Sarina urged Jack.
"However," Jack drawled "we can't read the bloody thing." Our faces fell. "We think you luvely ladies can." We began to become excited again. "It's in a language we don't know. But as we were examinin' the items ye brought aboard the Pearl, we discovr'd the same language in books yeh be carryin'." As Jack went on, my excitement turned to horror. The text books Sarina and I had together when we were transported by the elevator were Social Studies: Economics Part I, Geometry, Earth Science, and Latin. Realization struck me like a clod of mud in the face.
"NO!!" I yelled.
"NOT LATIN!" Sarina yelled at the same time, then began muttering obscenities under her breath.
"We think the book's in Latin." Jack said. "Yer goin' to translate it for us."
"Please! No! ANYTHING BUT LATIN!!" I yelled, hurling myself at his feet. As I looked up, I felt a prick of metal at my throat. It was Jack's sword.
"The alternative is simple, luv. Yeh either read me book or yeh'll be swimmin' wi' the fishies." Jack's gold tooth glinted at me as he smiled like a happy shark. "Savvy?"
I gulped nervously. "Savvy."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Of course we couldn't be the kind of Mary-Sues who come, kick butt, fall in love with the hot canon characters, and live happily ever after with still perfect hair. No, we have to sit out here on the deck of some tub of a ship in ninety degree weather translating LATIN for God's sake." Sarina ranted. It was true. But, I was born on the unluckiest day of the year and she was stuck with me, so there goes. (I swear it's true. My birthday is the unluckiest day. Look up December 28th in any birthday book.)
"At least you're not sick." I moaned holding my belly. It hurt. So did my ribs, my feet, my eyeballs, my small intestine, my large intestine, my nose, my teeth, my kidneys, my toes, my calf, my cornea, my knuckles, my hair, my spleen, my fingernails, my esophagus, my throat, my jaw, my chest, my lungs, my heart, my arm, my ankle, my sternum, and my gallbladder. Or at least that's what it felt like. As you could see, I wasn't feeling too hot.
"Yea, thank goodness for that. I hope you feel better soon. There is NO way I can translate this whole damn book by myself." Sarina waved it in my face. It was a dusty old wreck, with half its cover torn off. When we first picked it up, a whole bunch of pages fell out but Will helped us stick them back in with some tar substance that looked like the soup we had. It was really dusty as well. It was handwritten, so some of the words were hard to read. It also had like THREE HUNDRED pages. If Jack wanted us to translate the whole thing, he was insane. Well, I guess we already knew that.
"I'm sure you could translate it by yourself if you really tried." I said, rolling onto my back and closed my eyes. Urg, I felt bad. "There is no way my brain can work when my stomach feels like a washing machine on triple spin cycle."
"Then we'll jus' 'ave to get yer stomach workin' then, won't we, luv?" I opened my eyes. It was Jack.
"Go away. I feel like POOP!" I growled at him and closed my eyes again. Before I knew it, I was dragged onto my feet and some vile liquid was shoved into my mouth. My immediate reaction was to spit it where it came from. And that's how Jack Sparrow's face became covered in purple sticky goop. It was not a pretty sight. I'm not sure who was more surprised; Jack, Sarina or me.
"Can't take yer medicine, can yeh?" Jack snarled. "I'll fix that." He grabbed my nose and began to force my mouth open. I tried to keep it closed, but I couldn't breathe with his hand on my nose. I had to open my mouth or die from suffocation (which is actually better than drowning; when you drown you die because your lungs implode). But I didn't want to die. I opened my mouth and was forced to swallow the liquid. It was possibly the vilest thing I had ever tasted. I glared at Jack.
"I jus' know what's best for yeh, luv," he shrugged and walked away, wiping at the purple goop on his face. I looked at Sarina. She looked like she was trying not to laugh. I glowered at her.
"Let's just translate this and get it over with." I muttered, feeling better despite the grossness of the "medicine".
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
By mid-afternoon, we had translated seven pages. The way we did this was: I would look at the text. If there was a word I didn't know (like, every other word), I would yell it to Sarina, who would either know it, or go and look it up in the dictionary that was at the back of our textbook. She would tell me what it would mean, by this time I would have figured out the syntax and give the sentence to her to write it. It was a very complicated system. The whole book was full of "thee" and "thou" and all sorts of good old English words I didn't get. Jack came around every time we finished a page and brought it to his cabin, where it was probably analyzed by Will and Luc. I wasn't sure where Ellie was, but I figured she was with Luc.
Luc...... my thoughts kept straying to him. He was....... well I wasn't really sure. I didn't know him at all, but for some reason, he seemed to be a very interesting person. Hmmmm.......
Sarina's voice broke me out of my thoughts.
"Tory, come on. He said the captain has given us a break until dinner," she gestured to a hunch-backed pirate shuffling away from us. "Unless of course, you want to translate Latin all day."
"No, thanks I'm fine," I said, getting up. The medicine really did help me feel better, even if it tasted absolutely vile. "So what are we going to do? There is no where to go on this stupid ship."
"Don't let Jack hear you say that. He'll string you from the sails by your ears." Sarina warned.
"Whatever." I said. We walked around the main mast a couple times, just enjoying the wind (which made the air not feel like we were roasting in an oven). As we were walking in circles, I spotted something. There was a square hole in the deck. I ran over to it.
"Interesting," said Sarina. "I guess that's where they throw the cargo down to the hold."
"Fun." I said. I noticed a rope going down into it. "Let's go." I grabbed the rope. Sarina grabbed me.
"Tory, Jack will get really mad at us. I wouldn't do that. You don't know what's down there." She warned. You know when there is a voice of reason bugging you not to do something, and then you go and do it anyway, and you find out that little voice was right? Well, that was one of those times. I ignored Sarina and slid down the rope.
"Um Tory?" Sarina's head blocked most of the light coming into the dark hold.
"Yea?" I called up, still sliding down.
"The rope is about to-" and then a lot of things happened at once. The rope broke, dropping me about fifteen feet (from what I could see), Sarina yelled, Jack came running, I heard a snap, felt pain and landed on something extremely hard. Then I blacked out.