Disclaimer: Don't own.
A/N: I was reading this over, and had to laugh. Does anyone else notice how Governor Swann's name mysteriously changes from "Franklin" to "Fredrick" in chapter 22?…Ah, I amuse myself so much with my stupidity.
Laurelyn let out a whoop of joy and Mary squealed happily, jumping up and down even though the Commodore's arm was still securely around her waist. Anamaria grinned at her sister and even Maurya hid a reluctant smile.
"'Bout bloody time," Gibbs grumbled, walking over to where Laurelyn's friends from Tortuga stood gathered around her, seemingly to catch up. The other mercenaries were crowded around Richard's still form, but they didn't stay for long. I heard Gillette murmur something about how the most untrustworthy of men were the sell-swords, eyeing them gravely from beside Norrington, who had eyes only for Mary. Jack was grinning at me, too, and winked. I smiled back and looked anxiously to Will again. Absently, I noticed that everyone but Naneth, Maurya, Taeryn and her husband were scattering in different directions. It seemed that Naneth really would have my hide. Even Maurya seemed nervous.
That didn't matter to me, however, because Will still hadn't answered my question. He looked so confused that I wondered if I had even done the right thing, asking him to marry me like that. Suddenly I was thinking about what my father would say, if he ever found out that I had asked Will to marry me. It just isn't done, after all. It's not proper. And from the look on Will's face, I was beginning to wonder if he was thinking the very same thing.
He looked up at me with those dark eyes of his that it was all I could do not to scream. In fact, I don't even think I made it that far. "Well, answer me, you lout! I don't think I can sit still another bleeding minute!" I yelped. Will's face broke out into a grin and I nearly fell over with relief. "Yes," he said gruffly, pulling me down for a kiss that left my face burning and my face nearly split in two from smiling back at him. When we finally broke away, I noticed that only Naneth stood before us, her hands resting scornfully on her tiny waist. Maurya and Taeryn stood nearby, and Taeryn's dangerous looking husband further off still, presumably waiting for Will.
Will stood and helped me up, his arm going protectively around my waist as he tried to stare down Naneth. The sight should have been quiet ludicrous, really, considering the fact that Naneth was a head shorter than I, and I myself only reading about up to Will's nose. But Naneth didn't seem intimidated at all. She merely raised an eyebrow at me, and taking it as my signal is disentangled myself from Will albeit reluctantly.
"You do be wise, young Princess, to keep your distance from this boy," Naneth said gravely. Will stiffened and opened his mouth to say something, but I glared at him and he closed it again. Naneth's eyes crinkled at the edges, as if she were about to smile, but the rest of her face remained as it if had been carved from stone.
"You were sworn to be a daughter of this island and you did disobey the rules we placed upon you," Naneth said quietly. I met her eyes steadily, ready to face whatever punishment she would bestow. "For this, you will be punished. You shall be strapped in the center of the maiden's camp as an example for all the young girls who have any ideas about running off with a boy in the middle of the night." Naneth placed emphasis on calling Will a boy rather than a man, as if by his actions he had proven himself too irresponsible for titles of maturity. "You will receive twenty lashings, and every day for the next three days you will take on all the chores of the women who share your tent."
I nodded and bowed before Naneth. Will was practically shaking with anger. "You will not lay a hand on her, old woman!" he snarled. I looked at him sharply, about to implore him to hold his tongue, but Naneth got there first. "Do not think you will get away so lucky, young Turner. Taeryn's husband will take you now to the man-chief where you will be punished for your own broken vows - you were told it is forbidden to spend a night with a maiden sworn to the island." Will's mouth closed with a snap, but he remained glaring at Naneth. "Jack will take us off this island -" he started to say. Naneth raised her chin. "Jack Sparrow does know the rules of this island, as do you. You did choose to break them, and now you shall be treated as one of our own," she said with such formality that even Will could not retort, and he can be quite hardheaded when he wants to be.
Taeryn's husband led Will off to the opposite side of the island, while Taeryn and Maurya came to stand with me. "You will receive your punishment tonight," Maurya said. I forced myself not to shudder and held myself stiffly as they led me to the camp fire.
1.
Hours later, I laid on my belly in the middle of my tent as Taeryn applied a salve of aloe to my burning back. While harsh, the punishment was not made to last, and so the angry marks from the willow-whip were already being coaxed into healing. I hissed as the cool aloe touched my skin, and Taeryn laughed quietly under her breath.
"I don't see what's so funny," I muttered. While I had gone to the punishment calm and collected, it hadn't taken long until I'd been shrieking. The other girls had gone back to their tents swearing that they'd never sneak out in the middle of the night - or at the very least they'd never get caught.
"This isn't as rare as you'd think, Princess," Taeryn said smoothly. I tried to raise my head to look at her, but found that moving was too much for my sore back. "What isn't?" I asked. I could tell she was trying hard not to laugh at me. "Young girls like you getting caught in the woods with boys like young William." There was a definite note of laughter in her voice.
"It rarely amounts to anything really worthy of punishment. In fact, I'll let you know a secret…"
"What?"
"When I was your age, I did get caught three times out of bed when I was supposed to be sleeping…"
"THREE? You went through this three times?" I gasped, starting so much that she pressed hard on my back and I yelped. "Stay still," she admonished. "Anyway, I only did get caught three times. I was out much more than that."
"You are a much braver woman than I am, Taeryn. Future husband or not, I will not risk my hid to go out and see Will…" I muttered, cursing him for my own misfortune. She placed long, thin leaves over the aloe salve and then applied a bandage that would hold them in place. "He is in the same condition as you right now, Christina," she reminded me gently. "Sit up," she instructed, pulling away. We sat facing each other and she took my hands in hers. "There is something we must discuss, but we will wait until Laurelyn and Mary return." My two friends - ever inch of their respective skins still in place and without strap marks - were out and about this cool night, enjoying the island air. I don't know how they managed it, as Mary couldn't take her eyes off the Commodore since he showed up, and Laurelyn could barely keep her lips off Jack.
It wasn't long, however, until the tent flap opened and both of my island-sisters walked in. Mary seemed to be in a much better mood now that the Commodore was back - she wasn't harping nearly as much as usual about wanting to go back to Port Royal. She did, however, blush a brilliant shade of red when he remarked on her "strange attire" - she still wore the white dress of the maidens, and I don't think Commodore Norrington had seen so much leg on a woman before in his life.
"How are you feeling, Miss?" Mary asked me cheerfully, coming to sit down next to me and placing her hand on my shoulder. I hissed angrily, "Do be careful, Mary, and be so kind to remember what I was put through today!" She rolled her eyes at me, "It was your own fault, Christina. Nobody told you to go off and spend the night with Will. You knew it was forbidden…"
"I never knew you were so fond of rules, Mary. But you seem to have abandoned some propriety as well," I said, indicating the slits in her skirt. "Oy, you should have seen it. I never would have thought a grand old puff like the Commodore could do it, but Mary's got a love bite right above her -"
"Do be quiet, Laurelyn!" Mary said sharply, turning almost as red as her hair. Taeryn and I laughed loudly as Mary scowled at Laurelyn. "And what about you, hmm, Miss Lupine?" Mary snapped. Laurelyn grinned as Mary opened her mouth to say more. "Don't worry, Mary-belle, I'm not ashamed of my activities." She shot a glance at Taeryn; a knowing grin that neither Mary nor I could begin to contemplate the meaning of, although I had a feeling that I might, soon.
"There are some wonderful places on this island," Taeryn said, grinning at me. "Very secluded…the elders will never find you there…" I crossed my arms over my chest. "Don't even think about it, Taeryn. I am not going to tempt Naneth into wielding that switch again. Now what was this little meeting called for anyway?" I prodded. It had been a long day - I had barely gotten enough sleep the night before, and had my life threatened earlier - and to finish it all off I'd had any exhaustion whipped out of my by the strict chief-mother herself. For a tiny woman, Naneth certainly had a strong arm.
Taeryn grew more serious - or as serious as the woman could be. She was a lot like Laurelyn, except she was married. "It has to do with the passing of the red scarf. You see, even before you did ask young William to marry you - a custom which may not be prominent on your island but is quite frequent on ours - you passed to him the red scarf that was handed to you after you became a daughter of our land."
"And?" I stifled yawn. "The bestowing of a scarf is never planned, never conscious. It is a sacred act of this island, it is demonstrates when fate brings two people together under the blessing of the Mother," Taeryn said. Mary was watching the dark native woman with big eyes, twisting the edges of her skirt nervously. Taeryn's eyes ticked to her, amused, but it seemed she had nothing to say at the moment.
"But I gave the scarf to Will because he was bleeding…" I said slowly. Taeryn smiled brightly. "It is a tradition," she explained to me. "Even with my dear husband, stubborn though he may be…when I was fifteen, I did roam around this island. It happened one day that my husband was out hunting and had been caught in his own snare…I did free him from the tree in which he was trapped, much to his embarrassment, and he did fall to the floor and split his head." Mary shuddered, but evidently to Taeryn is was nothing new that her husband fall out of trees and crack his skull open.
"I did give to him my maiden scarf, and when Naneth found out, she did consent for us to marry."
"But you were fifteen!" I gasped. When I was fifteen, I was barely old enough to wear a corset. Then again, my father had begun looking for suitors for Elizabeth and I at about that time.
"We did wait for three years, and I had little contact with him until the day of our marriage, except on feast days. I did hate him, but Naneth had ordained that we be married, and so we were," Taeryn explained. She placed a hand over her round stomach and smiled at me.
"Wait…so you married a man you barely knew?" Mary asked. I shrugged uncomfortably. "It isn't like that doesn't happen at Port Royal, Mary," I offered. Taeryn nodded. "Except this was different. I was not a willing bride, but I knew I must obey the rules of the island. And the ribbon-passing never does lie. My husband did come to be my hearts-mate, and I, his." Laurelyn sighed happily, touching the sides of her neck absently. I noticed a rather large amount of scattered purple bruises. She grinned wickedly at me when she noticed my watching.
"You will marry William in three days time, after your chores are completed. Tomorrow morning at dawn you will undergo a ceremony preparing you for marriage." Taeryn smiled at me and took my face in her hands, kissing both of my cheeks. "Welcome, my sister. I will be honored to attend your wedding, and I do wish you much luck with your fine man."
1.
Taeryn left shortly after to begin preparations for the coming dawn with Maurya and Naneth. I sat with Mary and Laurelyn in shocked silence, to stunned to move. "I'm going to be married on this island?" I asked, disbelieving. Laurelyn sighed and fell back against her sleeping mat. "It is so romantic…imagine, a marriage fated by the Island Mother herself! This surely must quell all your fears, Christina…If only I were so lucky…D'you reckon I could steal one of those red sashes and capture Jack with it?"
"The sashes are only for maidens, Laurelyn," I said dryly. Laurelyn pouted. "Oh. Right. Damn that Jack Sparrow." It wasn't long before her trademark wicked grin made its way onto her face again. I rolled my eyes.
"Surely you aren't going to go through with it, Christina? It isn't proper! You deserve a good Christian wedding, in a church with a priest and a beautiful white dress -"
"- which she will surely get upon returning to Port Royal. But I'm sure she doesn't want to have to promise of love, honor, and obey. Do you?" Laurelyn asked. I snorted. "William will have to prove himself quite a hardheaded oaf if he expects me to swear under God to obey him," I retorted. Mary clucked her tongue angrily. "You cannot mean that, Christina. Will you truly give yourself to this paganism - this heathendom?"
I stared at her, shocked. "You don't truly believe that, do you, Mary? Have you seen anything here to make you belief that some evil exists on this island? All I have seen here is beauty -"
"What about the thrashing that Naneth gave you today?" Mary accused. "No better and no worse occurs at Port Royal, Mary. Three days from now I will get married to Will. At dawn I will take part in whatever ceremony required of me to do that. I'm done waiting for something else to happen to deter me…"
"But…"
"Don't worry, Mary," I said, touching her arm gently before turning and readying myself to sleep. It was hard to find a comfortable position; the salve and bandages that Taeryn had applied to my back was making the skin tight. "We shall be back at Port Royal soon, and you can spend as much time as you want making Commodore Norrington make up for how he treated you…"
Mary gave a disgruntled sigh as we all laid down for sleep.
A/N: Short chapter. I'm sorry. I'm getting back into the groove of writing. Hey - how gorgeous is Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi? OMG just call me Crystyna Kenobi from now on…seriously…x