ROPE-WALKER

written by Jashi

N O T E: PotC isn't mine, for the 666th time! GAH!

It's just a noisy hall where there's a nightly brawl…and all that jazz. Sorry, I haven't updated in a loooooong time.

I must warn you of some very disturbing…things that take place within this chapter. This is the Island of Pain. That means lots of pain, both physical and mental for our heroes. The mental pain can be quite disturbing at times, so if you can't handle it, don't read this chapter. Now on with the show.

CHAPTER TEN

"Should we split up?" wondered Will aloud.

"And have only half of us survive?" snorted Anamaria, "It's obvious that one path is the right way, and one path is the wrong way."

"It'd be better than having all four o' us going down a path…perhaps the wrong one, and then none surviving," mused Tades.

"Or maybe both paths are right?" guessed Jack.

"We'll take the right one, then."

"Left!" yelled Tades.

"How do we know if left is right?" questioned Will.

"Why are you so sure that right is right?"

"Because its right, of course."

Jack massaged his temples. "Or ye could shut up and we could do this an easy way."

"What do ye suggest?" said Anamaria.

"Tades, flip a coin."

"Aye," she said, and dug in her pocket for one. She pulled it out and rolled it between her fingers.

"Heads is right," wagered Will.

"Then tails be left," Tades said, and flipped the coin high up in the air.

It landed softly on the sand, revealing the tails-side.

"I win," drawled Tades with a smile, "We'll be goin' left."

She started towards the left path, Jack and Ana following. Will gave a sigh and began to follow as well, but he picked up the coin that Tades had left on the sand.

As they approached the path, Will rolled the coin between his fingers, tossing it from one palm to the other. His brow furrowed and he stopped walking.

"Tades!" he yelled, furious, "This is a weighted coin!"

Mischievously, Tades looked back at him.

"Pirate," she reminded Will.

Will sighed again.

They stopped at the fork, looking up at the massive rock that separated the two pathways. Then they turned onto the left pathway.

But only two of them made it on.

After a few minutes, Ana stopped short behind Will. She turned around, but there was no one behind her.

"Will," she said in a low voice, "where are Jack and Tades?"

"What?" said Will, flabbergasted. He turned around, and saw too that there was no one behind them. There was no one ahead, either.

"Where in God's name could they have gone?" wondered Will aloud, "I thought we went left."

"Maybe left isn't right…"

"Goddammit!" swore Tades as she looked around, "Turner went right!"

"Did he really?" said Jack, peering behind and ahead of them.

"Yes," she mumbled, "the stupid eunuch."

"Let's go back then," Jack offered. He walked back along the path to the start, but as he tried to pass the rock, a huge gust of wind blew him back. He went flying.

He landed on Tades, who fell under his weight.

"Jack!" she yelled, trying to get him off of her.

"Kinda comfy here, actually."

"Get off o' me, idiot!"

"Ye didn't say the' magic word, lass."

She sighed. "Fine. Captain, get the bloody hell off me."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

He got off of her and she jumped up, brushing herself off.

"Gods above, Jack, what're ye made of? Lead?"

Jack started down the path again without responding, his brow furrowed and muttering to himself. She followed him as they trudged for an hour or so, wondering what had become of Will and Ana, and why they couldn't go back.

The sky grew dark and the dying sun sank beneath the waves of the blue Caribbean ocean.

"It's getting dark," said Will, looking about them cautiously, "I think we better stop."

"Hmm..." pondered Anamaria, "I s'pose we should, not knowin' the island and all."

They were no longer blocked by rock walls surrounding them, but dense forest. But there was still stone. It almost glared at the travelers menacingly, as if to say go back, go back, we don't want you here...

Will sat under a tree and Ana did the same under another. He stared up at the black sky, dotted with tiny pearls of white stars. The trees, green and lush, bordered on it as they reached in their never ending journey to one day touch the sky, and Will fell asleep while looking at them.

He was in a musky place, where the air was not quite air, for it was more soot than breathable stuff. The forge, he remembered. It was his smithy. A rather empty place now that people feared him, Will Turner, the half-pirate. But the swords still glinted brightly when a speck of sun shone upon them, and the fire still blazed bright and red, even though they were both created by the hands of a pirate.

It was at the end of a very long day of work when he hardly stopped to take a breath of rest. There was a knock at the heavy doors, then they were opened without hesitation. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and his head jerked up to see his wife, his Elizabeth. He relaxed, slowly. He took steps towards her, and she smiled and spoke soft words that made warm his heart.

He took her in his arms.

He could feel the fragile beating of her heart. So tiny, so flutteringly soft. And as he held her, his eyes traveled to the swords mere inches away from their heads. Minutes passed. The beat of her heart began to grate on Will's mind. He felt her heart, heard it, fingers heavy from calluses feeling it on her back. But he could not feel his own. It annoyed him, a tiny annoyance only at first. Then it grew to a bitterness, so anxiously annoyed that he had to stop it that beatbeatbeatbeat sound inside his wife, and he pulled a sword down that gleamed no more for there was no sun, only darkness. The fire went out. There was no light.

The sword went in quickly.

The heart stopped. It was sliced in two as her eyes opened wide in surprise and then became lifeless. She fell to the floor. He leaned over her again, closed his eyes, and heard silence.

Beat beat BEAT beat BEAT BEAT beat beat...

He heard it again.

What was that bloody sound?

He leaned close to Elizabeth, listening, and he heard the softest thing a man can ever hear...the sound of an unborn child's heart...the child in Elizabeth's womb...caged by skin until it grew...covered in flesh by the mother...

The sword went in quickly, and Will saw his son for the first time.

He took in a breath and then saw them, his dead wife and her dead son in his hands.

Water began to fall from his eyes, silently as he began to shake violently.

He heard the beating of his heart.

Ana's eyelids drooped. It was tiring, being here like this, nothing to watch but the confounded dark sky. She thought of the Pearl, and of Tades and Jack. Will groaned loudly in his sleep. She looked at him, alarmed, and saw the pain contorted on his face briefly, then disappeared.

She was in Jamaica, a place she remembered well. Everything was warm and lush and beautiful, and she sang to her mother as they walked down the street. Her momma laughed, and she saw her brother Rueni, and her da. Her family. The sky was so perfect, the people did not fight here.

The sun almost danced in the sky in a red and orange ritual of flame. The trees tried to join in, shaking with the breeze. A ship was pulling into the harbor, and she stopped to watch it.

There were lots of white men on that ship. She cocked her head quizzically. They got tied down, then when the man she presumed was the captain of the ship came down to talk to the dock master, the captain pulled out a sword and cut off his head. Someone screamed, and cold took her so quickly it was as though she'd jumped into an ice-filled river. White men oozed out of the ship brandishing knives and shackles and odd contraptions that seized up black men and women by the neck and bound them all together.

They grabbed her people and dragged them on board the ship. She ran, trying to pull Rueni away from the white men, but he was torn from her. There was such panic, such utter hysteria as people ran into each other trying to get away from those of pale skin. Ripped flesh, spurting blood. The streets were lined with it. They killed the old and those too young to do any work. Her eyes were bleeding, at least, in thought, from these horrors she was forced to bear witness of.

Rueni was being shoved into a neck contraption. She ran at him, when a white man grabbed her and shackled her hands. She fought, she hit him and bit him but he got her in a cage, and she saw her da trying to kill them white men, kill them for taking his children and, as she saw in a moment, the death of her momma. They struck down her da, and he fell across her mother in a sea of red.

The sun danced.

Anamaria beat the bars of the cage until her hands bled to add to the red rains falling not from the sky but from the people.

Ana and Will awoke at the same time, gasping for air and writhing on the ground as though they were drowning. Tears streaked down Will's face, and Ana's hands were nastily bruised and scraped.

Will rolled over onto his hands and knees, breathing heavily and letting the sweat and tears run down his skin until they dropped onto the sand below. Ana leaned back against the tree, eyes opened widely. She did not want to blink. She did not wish to see what lay behind her eyes again.

The moon rose high in the sky, gleaming an odd whiteness. It was pale, too pale to be the real moon. It chilled them through their cold sweat.

They spent the rest of the night awake, jumping at small noises.

Tades was beat. She counted days in her head. Uno, dos, tres...quatro. Damn. The fourth day awake now rapidly approached the night. Her body began to ease, becoming tired and more listless. Her body was used to four days. Four days , a night of sleep, then four more days. God, could the timing have been any worse?

The moon rose high in the sky, a piercing white light that struck Tades as very odd for the moon. Usually she was a soft, lamp-like orb in the sky, glowing not for light but for comfort.

Jack called back to her, "I think we better stop now, lass."

"Aye," said Tades, and they stopped.

Hope yer ready to make el cinco grande, Tades, she thought grimly to herself.

The rock path was still high on one side, but there was an expansive forest of huge trees on the other side. Tades could smell saltwater. She knew they were near the sea.

Jack sat against the rock wall. Tades leaned against a tree, standing up and looking at the sky. She kept forcing her eyes open, and fought back valiantly against yawns.

"Lass," Jack said, a smile in his voice, "what the bloody hell are ye doin'?"

"Watchin', like I'm s'posed to."

"Did ye think ye were the only one who counted yer days, Tades?" he chuckled, "Sleep, lass."

Tades was relieved. She slid down against the tree and lay her head on her knees.

"'Night, sir."

"'Night."

And Tades slept.

To be continued...