The absence of the giant man who'd been hogging the covers stirred Jack Turner awake. He cracked open an eye and frowned. It was really, really dark. Too dark, he thought, sitting up. Careful not to wake his sister—as she was every bit the surly picture of his mother when people woke her prior to when it was she wanted to wake herself—he crawled out of the huge bed and narrowed his eyes as if it would help him see. It didn't, in fact, and were he an older man he might've cussed the darkness for all he were worth. As it was, he was yet a young lad and so he settled for trying to find his way to the stairs.

Somehow, after much stumbling, he managed to strike the bottom step—with his toe. Giving a yelp, he kicked it angrily. To his dismay it hurt worse and so, cussing the step for all it was worth, he hopped up the rest of them and found before him utter chaos.

At some point his elders had must've thought it was too dark themselves. They'd lit every candle, and the room was ablaze with yellow light. It was also ashambles. Cushions were tossed about as if the place had been ransacked. For a fleeting moment he wondered if pirates had attacked and looted their ship, but it passed when he saw Isaac Faust, dressed in rumpled clothing but otherwise untouched, bent low and peering under the round table.

"Lookin' for somethin'?"

The disheveled man leapt up, whirling to fix Jack with an accusatory glare. Before he'd the chance to advance, however, Jack's mother appeared, fire in her eyes. The lad smiled sweetly up at her, and at the strange exotic woman called Neris who peered at him from between the hands she'd buried her face in.

"Get back to bed, you," his mother scolded, hurrying toward him. "What did I tell you upon the conclusion of our bedtime story, young sir? It isn't nice leaving your sister to her lonesome!"

But Jack ducked her hands and scurried into the room. For all the darkness he'd seen a flash of white through the balcony doors and he was not about to let it go without at least a preliminary investigation. Pressing his nose to them, he squinted down at the deck where it lay.

"Jack!" Missus Turner sighed and strode across the room towards him. "Can you not see that we are preoccupied? We can not mind you in the midst of our search for..." Her hand stilled on his shoulder and she turned with wide eyes to the other adults in the room. "Alice!"

--- --- --- ------- () ------- --- --- ---

Guiding a ship through complete and utter darkness was a mite more difficult than Samson could handle. Steady as she was, the Swan could not tell the Scotsman which way to turn her wheel. If it weren't for the three Intuits strolling the deck and calling out directions and warnings, he might've sailed unknowingly off the edge of the map.

"Lucky fer me," he scoffed, jerking the wheel starboard as one of the men shouted the order to him. "Can't see a bleedin' thing an' I ain't even slightly in me cups!"

A commotion below his feet cast his glance there even though he could not see. He wondered if the lad and lady were again at each other's throats. For their sake, he hoped they were not. Irritation twisted his face in a grimace. He stomped his foot.

"Look!"

Samson looked up then, and swore a string of praises to the angels in heaven. Leagues away, but straight ahead, there floated a speck of yellow light. "Aye, I see her." He glanced down at the skinny priest scurrying up the stairs. "Can I trust ya to hold her steady, mate?"

"But..." the priest stared down at the spoke in his hand and then peered over the rail at the giant who'd stomped down the stairs. "Big captain—"

Whatever the bag of bones said, Samson didn't know. He'd flung open the door to the captain's quarters and strode in, relieved to see that someone had had the sense of mind to light a few candles. What he saw was somewhat a relief—the Faust lad, Will's wife, and Neris huddled over the Witter woman.

"Ye found her, then?"

Neris, whose hand was upon the woman's head, looked up at him but did not answer. She closed her eyes and drew a thumb o'er Miss Witter's temple. "She is not with us, but she is not gone."

"What," growled Isaac, "does that mean?"

"It means," Neris said, "that as she breathes here before us, her spirit soars elsewhere. Let us have hope that it will return to her."

--- --- --- ------- () ------- --- --- ---

There was darkness and cold, and the feeling of having no feeling at all as some sort of consciousness returned to Alice Witter. To her disgust she did feel a snakelike tongue writhing around hers. Wondering if he'd somehow managed to take her from life itself, Alice Witter wrenched herself from Barbossa's grasp and spat the acrid taste of his rotten kiss from her mouth. Furious, she swung a fist at his chuckling lips and was ever more angry when it passed right through them.

"Now, now," he chastised with a sneer of a smile. He waggled his brows at her and indicated with a proud hand his flickering self. "Can't touch this."

Alice growled and glowered up at him, baring her teeth. "I bet you bloody well wish I could, Hector."

Barbossa's fury mounted, his hands going to fists at his sides. A low growl rumbled from his throat but turned to a hiss of laughter, his yellow eyes flicking behind her. "Just like a woman to say the things that strike so deep a man's heart, eh William Turner?"

Stunned, Alice spun around. To her horror, she saw a slightly hazy figure of a handsome man—the less pretty version of Will Turner down to the warm brown eyes—sitting calmly in a chair. He was puffing quietly on an ivory smoking pipe. It seemed he was not shocked to see her in the way she was to see him. In fact, to her eye, he looked as if what was happening was not at all out of the ordinary.

"Well I'd say good evening," he said in a voice smooth as smoke, "but I don't think yers has been all that enjoyable."

Alice stalked to him. Her eyes narrowed on his hazy visage, on the unblinking gaze that stared so easily up at her, and she bared her teeth. "Traitor," she hissed, "it's your own son you've tricked!"

--- --- --- ------- () ------- --- --- ---

Watching Will Turner slosh about the edge of the riverbed, Jack took a gingerly seat on one of the smooth boulders and examined the damage done his side by the lash of branch. At the seam his shirt was torn ragged and he was none too surprised to find spots of crimson that meant he'd bled a bit. By the feel of things, he thought with a wince as he reached for his ribs, he'd been a bit bruised. All in all, however, it was nothing more than he could handle. It was nothing compared to the sinking feeling in his gut.

Somehow, he reasoned quietly, they'd all been played fools. Even Neris, for all her tricks, had been tricked. And by whom, he wondered. With a glance aside he saw that Will wore the weary look that meant he was wondering the same. For a few moments he watched the young Turner out of the corner of his eye, and for the sag of the whelp's shoulders couldn't help but feel just a bit sorrier for him than he felt for himself. Gathering what strength he'd left, and wits too, Jack rose from the rocks and picked his way gingerly over the smaller ones toward Will.

"It wasn't my father."

Jack had reached out to lay a hand upon Will's shoulder but stopped short of it. And just in time, he noted, as the man turned abruptly to face him. Wearily, he noted the dismal dismay in Will's brown eyes.

"Was it?"

Jack opened his mouth to respond, but was cut short by the sound and shake that meant the tree that had been waylaid was on its way. His gaze switched side to side. Downstream, he imagined, led to more such tributaries. He'd studied enough maps to know as much. Upstream, however, would lead to the mouth of the river and, if he were right, the mouth of the river was exactly what they were looking for. Without preamble he took Will's arm and together they dashed up the riverbed to dodge the walloping whomp of the tree they'd already had a brush with.

They'd gone some ways when the black waters around their feet rushed faster downstream. Startled, they both cast a glance over their shoulders. They both lost their footing, splashing into the water that the whipping trees roots were drinking up. Struggling against the current, for fear of being swept right to the thing that seemed to want to wallop them, they splashed their way toward dry ground. When he reached it first, Jack scrambled to his feet, hooked a foot in the narrow space between two boulders, and latched onto Will Turner's grasping hand.

But in that instant the river ran dry. Cussing a bit at the crunch of wood that meant the tree was moving again, Jack let go of Will's hand and shoved him forcefully in the direction they'd been trying to run. "Go!"

With wide, worried eyes, Will stumbled forward but rose gracefully on his legs and took off like a shot. Grumbling a bit, Jack wrenched his boot from the boulders and bounded after. From rock to rock he leapt, boots barely skimming their surface, until he caught up. He dove into a clean roll toward the dry riverbed. The bumpy surface of pebbles he barely noticed for all the adrenaline pumping in his veins. With a cry of triumph he sprang to his feet and broke into a run beside Will.

"How much longer do you think it'll follow?"

"Depends," Jack shouted back. "However long d'ye think it'll take to catch us?"

Will scowled.

Behind them cracked the groaning bellow of the wood that was giving chase. Fast they went around the corner. Ahead there sounded a soft rustling. And to his everliving horror, Jack saw some ways before them a circle of towering, twisted and twisting trees.

--- --- --- ------- () ------- --- --- ---

"However long d'ye think that'll take?" Four sets of eyes turned t'ward Samson, three of them narrow and one glinting with amusement. He shrugged. "We're nigh upon the Pearl. Floatin' straight-aways she is. Figure Jacky'll be none too pleased to hear 'is dove's coo's gone silent."

"Don't worry," Neris said quietly. "Jack has not yet made it back to the Pearl."

Elizabeth Turner's eyes narrowed. "And what of Will?"

"Yes, Neris," Isaac hissed, "what of them? What do you now know?"

"Laddy," Samson warned.

Neris folded her arms o'er her chest and closed her eyes. "They have been tricked into more trouble than they know. I do not know what it is." When she opened her eyes, they were narrow. "But I intend to find out."

--- --- --- ------- () ------- --- --- ---

Massive limbs swept between the circle of sentinels. Branches swiped the ground, loose leaves soaring through the air with every whip. Twigs scattered so far as to smatter Jack and Will with the scrape of the sharp shards of wood. The rustle Jack had at first heard was nothing as compared to the whooshing of wind the gnarled giants swiped into motion. It was, he thought nervously, the sound of one's soul being sucked to its illest fate.

"Around them?"

Jack glanced aside at Will and was at the same time relieved and terrified to see his same horror etched upon the younger man's face. He glanced o'er his shoulder at the following tree and then looked ahead to the wide circle of its fellows. "No! Through them!"

"Through them?!"

Noting Will's disbelief, which he admittedly shared at the moment, he attempted to flash the man a reassuring smile but knew it wavered too much to be considered so. The wind was whistling as they neared, and Jack turned to shout one last thing at Will before they rushed into it. "It may be a good idea to watch for falling branches!"

The look Turner shot him was one of the darkest he had ever, and Jack couldn't help but agree with it. It had been a most ridiculous thing to say—for surely Will was going to be watching out for branches... the branches would be, Jack figured, falling purposely into them. As soon as they leapt over the first set of clumpy, bumpy roots, he was proven most certainly correct in that assumption.

A thick tree limb swung at them so fast that all they'd time to do was tuck and roll. When Jack leapt to his feet, he was promptly knocked aside by a lesser limb. The distance between he and Will seemed a great one in the midst of such deafening dread. Dodging limbs and twigs, whipping roots, leaves and branches, he tried desperately to get to his friend. The trees were having none of it, however. More they struck at him, and more he had to dash to and fro and forward altogether. As he dove between two swinging limbs, Will came into view. The sinking feeling in Jack's stomach flipped.

Will was standing upon one of the roots. He had in his hand the flowers of fate. Its blade was stuck through the root he stood on. It wriggled and writhed under his feet, but he held steady. So focused he was on not falling that when he hefted his sword out of the wriggling root he did not see the other whip out to wallop him. The force of the blow sent both he and the sword sprawling, and even though the anger creaking the trees and the whistle of wind were so loud, Jack heard the sickening smack that meant Will Turner had been flung too hard into tree trunk.

--- --- --- ------- () ------- --- --- ---

The pirates aboard the Black Pearl were not yet certain what their captain had gotten himself into, aside from the sea of course. They had all, including Gibbs and Anamaria, seen him disappear in the dark of the water just before the great green beacon had followed in a yellow blaze of glory, and they had all shivered with anticipation. There was of course a faction of them who seemed to believe that 'that Cap'n Jack' would rise from the depths glorious and victorious and with the secret to a cache of riches beyond their wildest dreams—but they were few and far between those whose thoughts turned to the more worrisome idea that perhaps the slightly daft Jack Sparrow had finally made his craziest leap.

"Stupid fool," spat Anamaria, her hands jabbing the air angrily and dangerously close to the three men nearest her. She turned on her heel, missing the wary looks upon all their faces, and grabbed the lantern that had made its way to Roth's hand. "If he thinks we be followin' after he's another think comin'!"

"Temper, temper," squawked the parrot.

The young helmsman raised his brows at Cotton but watched as his superior stalked off with an angry, but attractive, sway into the darkness. Eventually the lantern in her hand was the only bit of her he was able to see. A shame, he counted that.

"Oi!" The startled shout of Toddle turned most of the men in its direction. "Looks to be like we got comp'ny!"

Past the voice and out over black water they peered into the darkness. Spots of light danced in it. Gibbs clambered over Roth to press himself against the rail. He took up his flask, narrowed his blue eyes, and took a hearty swallow of rum before he turned 'round to face the crew he could not see.

"On yer guard," he shouted, "and be at the ready!"

When whatever it was loomed closer, Gibbs was pleased to see that all the men had obeyed his orders. Even Anamaria was perched in the crow's nest like an angry raven waiting to swoop down upon whatever crawled their way. Whatever it was was none too small, it seemed to him, and near swift as they. "Hope for us all," he muttered. He glanced out at the water. "And for ye too, Cap'n."

"Whatcha riled fer?"

The deep Scottish brogue was loud in the near silence of the still waters. A mite later, Sam Samson's great big head appeared lit by the lantern he held by it. A great grin spread across his face at the red—orange in the lamplight—of Gibbs'.

"S'only us o' the bonny Swan come to save the day!"

Gibbs snorted. "Hope be damned..."

--- --- --- ------- () ------- --- --- ---

Jack hadn't time to dwell on Will. There was, he heard, another sound slicing fast for him. A glance upward found a glint of silver, a flash of smited flora.

Pressed for time, Jack covered his head and ducked. It was fortunate he had, for the flowers of fate stuck hard into the ground behind him. If it had been his salted self stuck like that... Jack perished the thought with a growl. The smack he'd heard echoed in his head and tore at his heart as he reached for the sword. Its blade made a satisfying squelch as he, with strength he'd not thought he possessed, heaved it up out of the scattering soil.

"Have it your way, you clump of pernicious plankwood," he snarled, twirling the silver tip of the sword in the air. "No more Mister Nice Pirate!"

At that, Jack hefted the thing and swung at the limb sweeping toward him. The blade sliced swiftly through the wood, chopping the thing in two. He leapt back as one piece thudded to the ground before him and turned on his heel to do battle with the branches that he heard swipe at him. Growling and whipping his hair from his face, he struck out. The first he sliced, the second he slashed, and the third he cut down to size. The root underfoot he heard whipping toward him and he whirled, chopping the thing from the trunk. To his satisfaction it withered, and its tree creaked a scream.

A wicked grin split his face and fury filled his eyes with fire. "This," he spat at it, swinging around the trunk to avoid a limb lobbed his way, "is for being such a big stick!" Ducking low to dodge a smacking stick, he twirled the sword behind him and sliced neatly through another three roots. "This," he told it, bringing up the blade to slash the last root that whipped toward him, "is for all the trouble!"

The dismembered tree creaked. It cracked, and then it groaned, and Jack felt victorious as it swayed lifeless. Leaping back, he watched it topple over, watched as it fell to its fate, and turned to narrow his eyes challengingly upon the rest of the trees that had stilled in its wake. He wished Will would have been standing there beside him to witness the magnitude of such an accomplishment. The thought darkened his heart. With a low growl, he darted forward, slicing through limbs and slashing at roots all the way.

Two more towering trees toppled. The one that had cost him so dearly he circled, fending off its angry jabs as he cleaved with the sword to tear it limb from limb. Its roots, wary of the fate he was dealing the others, wriggled into the soil but did not bury deep enough. Sword swinging in one hand, he latched onto one with the other and ripped it from the ground. The tree creaked and the root writhed in his hand but he held firm and with the blade slashed through it.

"And that," he snarled, spinning 'round to chop clean through the other roots that shook from the soil and whipped towards him, "is for Will Turner!"

It was, he decided as he watched the tree's thudding to the ground, the most satisfactory toppling of all. Not because he'd made such quick work of it and not because the trees remaining took off through the jungle, but because it seemed some sort of justice for what the thing had done to his friend. A sigh rushed from his lungs as he looked up at the strangely yellow dome of sky above him. He was about to turn and find Will when a strong hand clasped his wrist.

"It is a good thing he saw it then."

"Whelp!"

"Otherwise," rasped a breathless Will, struggling to his shaky feet and treating Jack to a lopsided grin, "the stubborn fool might have never believed it happened."

Jack smiled, relief sagging through him, and he slung a supportive arm around Will. "The funny thing," he told him, leading the both of them further upstream but at a considerably slower pace, "is that I don't doubt that."

--- --- --- ------- () ------- --- --- ---

In the tense moments that followed her accusation, Bootstrap hadn't flinched. He'd gazed up at her calm as he'd been before she'd said what she had. Though they were hazy as the rest of him, she saw his eyes darken just a bit as he put the pipe back to his mouth. Taking that as a sign that he was not going to answer her, she kicked the leg of the chair and glared down at him.

Bootstrap regarded her as he took a long, slow drag on his pipe. He took it away from his mouth and arched a brow. "Tricked, ye say?" The hazy, odorless smoke he blew up at her, and his eyes narrowed. "Tricked how?"

"Why ask me," she grit. "It was you who done it!"

"Is that so?" Bill looked skeptical as he took a puff on his pipe. He blew out a quick smoke ring and cocked his head to study her. The light of recognition dawned in his glossy eyes and his lip twitched a bit before he spoke. His voice held a hint of amusement. "And how can ye be so certain o'that, Miss Witter?"

Alice frowned. Barbossa's chuckle turned her around and she narrowed her eyes at his flickering form. It occurred to her then that Bill's was not the same. It was as hazy—she turned back to confirm such and did—but it did not fade in and out as Barbossa's did. In fact, she thought with a glance down at her own form, he looked much the same as she.

"Aye," Bootstrap said quietly, drawing her gaze back to his friendly face. "Afraid we're both in the same boat."

"Speakin' o' that," snarled Barbossa, his filthy, flickering arm grasping her about the waist and yanking her from Turner's reach, "it's come to my attention that our presence be required elsewhere!" His chuckle sounded in her ear. "Apologies, Mister Turner. Don't ye worry none, now. I'll be sure to tell yer boy all about ye 'fore I'm through."

Through her struggling, Alice saw Bootstrap snap to his feet. She saw the fury twist his face. And she saw him charge determinedly toward the grinning ghost that was holding her hostage just as the cloak of darkness closed in on her once again.

When she opened her eyes, there was yellow light all around her. It was mostly silent, save for a strange whisper. Glancing about, she saw that she was standing at the overgrown entrance of a dark green cave. The cold, smooth snake writhing about her shoulders she reached down to stroke. Its hiss and flashing yellow eyes brought a slow smile to her face.

"Jack Sparrow is on his way," she told it softly, admiring the foul fangs as it grinned up at her. "Get ready to strike."