As he and Will plodded slowly along the pebbled riverbed, Jack glanced upward to ogle the sky. It was less difficult to see without the lush canopy of jungle overhead, but still a strange sight. More than slight curiosity made him squint up at the domed sky. It was the desire to know how it was that what seemed less than a bubble of light held back the solid surround of sea beyond it. Like the threads, the bubble seemed tangible. Water ran in rivulets down it. The flickering yellow sky made them green snakes writhing against a golden orb, predatory protectors of some ancient treasure waiting to strike. It was an ominous sight that seemed to Jack like something of a challenge.
"Well I'm up to it," he grumbled, narrowing his eyes at the sky. It flashed so bright back at him that he had to squint out of necessity. "Glare all you want. Doesn't change the fact I mean to find what we seek."
"Jack," Will cut in, jabbing him sharply in the injured ribs. At Jack's hiss, he winced. "Sorry."
"Sure," Jack growled, patting the whelp's shoulders, the ones flinching he knew to be bruised, to draw a similar hiss. A smarmy smile he was unable to keep from his lips. "Don't give it another thought."
Will Turner's eyes darkened and his brows drew together but his gaze left Jack's to scan ahead. Jack's followed—from one green wall of jungle to the other and between them to the riverbed that was a trail of pebbles to the rise of green rock what's base gaped open with a dark mouth of a cave. Jack's gaze narrowed. Standing against the shadows, he saw, was the pale figure of a doll of a woman—her white curls gleaming in the darkness.
"This," said Jack, "can not, by any stretch of imagination, be what I'd consider... 'good'."
--- --- --- ------- () ------- --- --- ---
The commotion that the appearance of the Swan caused on the other ship, Jack Sparrow's Black Pearl, Neris had been expecting. Upon hearing the shouts and thumps, she'd taken a wide-eyed Jack Turner by the shoulders and sat him down beside her Queen. Despite his protests—which had been stammered quite too quickly for her understanding of a one of them—she'd left him to watch over the woman and swept out on deck to join those gathering there.
Several men of the Pearl were already clambering aboard—Cotton and Marty and the young helmsman. Save for his name, which was Roth, that he was of good spirit and that visions of a raven-haired beauty danced in his head—she did not know much of him. A stout sailor she knew as Gibbs was hedging over the plank set between the two ships. Anamaria, the dark beauty—indeed, with flowing hair the color of the raven's feathers—leapt onto the Swan before him. Neris ignored her pointed glare. She knew the woman well enough to know that if she were to acknowledge her, the woman would pounce. In fact, she knew that if she met any one person's gaze aboard the Swan she'd be reduced to a reeling mind full of their fire.
Asmeriei?
Neris glanced sharply aside at the priest who had dared ask such a question. Infamei, endubitum. Feeling the man's doubts ebb away only to feel his spirit engulfed in guilt, she softened and touched a hand to his. No asmereo et i no toleros nun.
Perseipio.
She saw in his mind that he did understand, that he knew her intentions and knew well why she could not tolerate a reeling mind. It was necessary she kept as clear a head as possible if she were to do what she meant to. It was unthinkable what might happen if she attempted such with a head full of the hate of others.
Kautelei, karosamina.
"Aeturnos," she whispered, slipping between he and a pouting Isaac. She ignored the latter, and shook her head at the former. Of course she would be cautious—there was no doubting it unless she wanted to be lost to omnis oblivio. Sending out her spirit would be tiring enough. Perception had already told her that bringing her body along would be an exhausting experience.
Passing by Elizabeth, she tuned out the woman's worries for her husband. The voices raised to shouting were more difficult to ignore, however. Pausing in a step, she turned an ear toward the conversation at hand.
"I know it ain't right, ya big lout!" Anamaria was scowling, and her eyes were narrow upon the man towering over her. "But when's anythin right when Jack Sparrow's concerned?!"
"Big lout?" Samson snorted and slapped his knee. "Aye woman, a lout bigger'n ya. So shut yer 'ole if ya know what's good for ya!"
Anamaria's grip on her already folded arms tightened and she turned a tight-lipped gaze heavenward.
"Now ye listen here, Sam Samson," rasped Gibbs, red in the face and with wild blue eyes, "that's no way to speak to our Marie!" When surprised faces, Anamaria's included, turned toward the sailor his flush turned to a blush. He gulped, pawing his greying hair. "And far as I can tell it won't help none! Now, see, Marie's tellin it like it was..."
Neris chose that moment, that beat of clarity that came from Gibbs' support of his fellow sailoress, to whiten her mind to its purest. She closed her eyes thinking of the white-hot flame still flickering in her heart. And when she opened them, the Swan was gone and her heart leapt into her throat as she saw the one who'd lit it pacing before her.
"William."
--- --- --- ------- () ------- --- --- ---
Startled by Neris' sudden disappearance, those aboard the Swan quieted and glanced about the deck for signs of the Intuit priestess. Finding none, Isaac sighed. To the priest at his side he turned. Every other gaze followed.
"Where did she go?"
The priest opened his hands to the air and spoke in a tongue no one knew but knew all the same. "I do not know."
All eyes save for those of the other priests narrowed upon him.
A nervous smile turned up the corners of his mouth but he lifted his nose nonetheless.
Isaac folded his arms. He heard the heavy steps of the great Scot clod up behind him. The other man's height and stature added to his and so he arched a brow at the wide-eyed Intuit man before him.
"Ah," the priest said, swallowing a gulp. "Ah, I remember! Yes, I... I believe she has gone, body and soul, to fix what has gone wrong."
--- --- --- ------- () ------- --- --- ---
The riverbed's trail of pebbles went sparse—the smooth stones fewer and farer between as Jack and Will neared the cave's entrance. Underfoot there was softer grey sand. For that matter, Jack could spare but a glance but he knew without looking that Will was frowning down at the strange change in landscape. His gaze, however, was narrow upon the woman standing none too far before them.
He wasn't exactly sure how it could be, or even if it truly was, but there stood Alice Witter nonetheless. She was unmistakable, really, what with those white curls and pale glow of a pallor. And that certainly was the gown he'd had made for her. But what was that swirling down about her—
"Wait!"
Shaken from his wondering by Will's sudden cry of alarm, and startled by the force of the man's hand that drew him back a step, Jack whipped around. Scour their surroundings for any sign of danger he did, glaring at every plant and tree he saw. To his relief each one seemed rooted to the ground and all unmoving. He sighed and turned his glare on Turner.
Will hesitated.
Jack rolled his eyes. "Well?"
"I—" Will stopped, a sheepish smile wavering the corners of his mouth. He chuckled. The laugh shook. Then his brown eyes went wide with worry. "You don't think she might've..." he trailed off to gulp, "brought Elizabeth?"
Jack frowned.
Will flushed.
"Well that would be quite the debacle, now, wouldn't it?"
Jack left Will wondering what, precisely, a 'debacle' was—though he suspected the blacksmith would give up at some point and follow after—and forged ahead. Games he'd had enough of. What sort of game Alice was playing he did not know or dare to venture guess.
--- --- --- ------- () ------- --- --- ---
The whisper on her lips she had not been able to keep from spilling over them. It was a name Neris had whispered to herself in her darkest of moments. It was a name that for all its melancholy had always lifted her spirits on high as if his spirit was throwing her a rope of light from the heavens.
William had stopped dead. His hazy shoulders tensed. Slowly, he turned to peer over one.
Neris met his gaze. She held it for a long moment. While his form didn't flicker as it should have, it did soon blur before her. Tears stung her eyes. "You are not dead!"
Tears hampered her vision too much, Neris decided. She had been about to cast them off when it was she felt the breath of a caress wiping them away. It was not the rough thumb she'd been used to, but she knew that's what he'd reached with and she smiled despite herself and the situation that they were all in. When her vision cleared, she saw close before her that which had been too far for too long.
"Thought I was."
Neris closed her eyes. So soothing was the voice that always had been that she forgot her worries. They lifted from her shoulders and she breathed a sigh of relief. When she opened her eyes, the pang in her heart flared up.
"So did we all," she said, surprised to her the accusation in her voice. She had not expected it but she could not keep it from tinging her words. "Why did you not come to prove us wrong?"
Bill's gaze fell from hers.
"Answer me," she said, anger creeping up on her. "Answer me, pirate. I will not allow you silence!"
"Oh," he said, voice full of his irritation, "stuff it, Neris! Ye've no say in my silence. It is you I owe the least of answers. Ye'll consider yerself lucky if I give a one."
Neris had known it was what he would say but the knowledge did not lessen the hurt she felt. The pang turned to an ache and she turned from him so that he would not see it. The truth was that she knew also that what he said was just. She deserved it, the pain—but so did he. "The fire in your heart, William, I did not kindle." A rush of anger swept her gaze to his, which was hard upon her, and she clenched her fists at her sides. "It was not my doing. I'll not be blamed for it!"
The brown eyes blinked. They grew bright under the haze of his spirit as he reached for her. "Then I will." With a squeeze of her shoulder—warm and strong—he turned away. "Tis only one thing on a list of wrongs so long that I can not hope to read and revise it."
"Wrongs?" Tears stung her eyes—again. She grabbed at his form and clenched fingers around his arm to turn him back towards her. Though blurry her vision was, she suspected that she'd met his gaze. "Were they all so wrong, William?"
He did not answer. His hand—a wisp of warm smoke again—went to hers. Perhaps he'd intended to pry her fingers from his arm. If so it had been only intention, for his fingers—or, more accurately, the feeling finders of his less than embodied spirit—rested between hers.
In her mind's eye flashed the image of Bootstrap's son—Will the blacksmith. Warm as his father, the young Turner was in trouble. He was in the same trouble that Captain Jack Sparrow was in.
Neris smiled sadly at her lost love. "We do not, either of us, have time for this."
--- --- --- ------- () ------- --- --- ---
As Jack climbed the last bit of incline, he stared hard at the woman before him. By the Gods, if she'd done something to jinx his finding that sword after everything he and Will had been through—he winced. The very thought had stricken and stung at his lashed ribcage. Reaching for the spot, he grimaced. As painful as it was his hand came away unbloodied. After all he and Will had been through... after all the trouble he'd himself, Captain Jack Sparrow, gone to...
If, after all the trouble William Bootstrap Bill Turner's lost—and, worse yet, sunken—island story had caused him, Miss Alice Ice Queen(and Hag and Nag and Shrew too) of the Caribbean Witter had jinxed his finding that mythical sword of that equally mythical Ahku Neko Neko Khar, Jack would have no choice but to throw himself directly onto the point of his sword.
There would be, he determined darkly, no other option.
Stopping before her, he fixed her with a smile but spoke to Will over his shoulder. "You see, whelp? I told you we were looking for Mount Doom. And lo," he shouted, fluttering hands toward Alice, "here be the doom—the wench I left behind—here—to greet us!"
Will's eyes widened at Alice over Jack's shoulder. "You did not bring Elizabeth, did you?"
Ignoring the question, and the flicker of confusion that passed over Alice's face, Jack folded his arms and fixed her with his most suspicious—and least friendly—glare. "What the devil are you doing here?"
Alice smiled.
"If you brought Elizabeth," said Will, rushing to speak before she opened her mouth—
Jack growled, jabbing his elbow back. It poked Will in the gut. "How whipped are ye, whelp?"
Will scowled and folded his own arms.
"I swear—as Neptune's me witness, mate, you're tied right to the strapping post." Feeling Will fuming behind him, Jack turned back to Alice who'd yet to speak. Such silence, he knew, was not like her. For Alice Witter to hold her tongue was nothing short of a miracle. His eyes narrowed upon hers. "You've yet to answer my question."
Alice lifted her chin. "Whoever said I should answer to you, Jack Sparrow?"
Well, Jack thought, that wasn't good, was it? That tone she'd taken to say his name—it was not the sort of tone that was any kind of 'good'. In fact, it sounded... hostile, no—derisive. There'd been only a few times he'd ever heard his name said in such a way and... none of them had ever ended up being any sort of 'good'. Actually, he thought, the only one who'd ever said his name that way—derisive and hostile and spat as though the very sound of the name bittered the tongue—was...
"Jack."
The pirate glanced at Will and followed his gaze toward the woman who'd turned and slipped through the shadowy crevice of the cave. Ducking under a hanging vine, he went after her. By all that was holy, that woman would be the death of him!
--- --- --- ------- () ------- --- --- ---
Neris paced opposite Bootstrap, her robe flaring with every pivot back. She wrung her hands. They shook a bit. Fret she did for his son and Jack Sparrow. In the place where they were, she could not catch glimpse of anything save what was there in front of them.
"Nothing?"
With the question came a rush of her own emotions and thoughts and Neris paused, hoping for once that she would catch sight of another's. When she didn't, her shoulders sagged with a sigh. "Nothing." Her gaze flicked to his. "And you?"
"Not even a glimpse."
"It's this place," she griped, anger flaring her fire. She stomped a foot. "This godforsaken place!"
William glanced about the place. It was unlike any space he'd previously occupied. There was a strange, smooth floor. If he didn't know any better, he would say it was glass. In fact, it was so clear that if not for the fog swirling below it, they would be able to see beyond. As he took in the white walls that rose to infinity it occurred to him that perhaps the fog was better fate than being able to see past it. If William were dead, and if he were more confident of his not facing eternal condemnation and less skeptical of Barbossa's ghost deserving worser torment, by the pure white calm of the place he'd believe it to be the final peace.
"What is this place?"
"An indefinite extension of the unknown realm."
"Oh," he said, glancing about again as if he better saw the space for what it was, "well that explains it."
Neris ignored him. She'd meant what she said. If there was no time for their emotions, there certainly was no time to bicker.
In the unsettling quiet, Bootstrap's gaze narrowed on her. To his eye she was the most vivid thing there. Against the pallid place she was all lovely colours and life. That reminded him—despite his immediate surroundings, he was not dead. "Get me out of here." At her skeptical look, he sighed and pointed out her fleshly form. "If ye can do that," he said, "I'm fairly certain ye can do anything."
"That," she seethed, "would require your willingness to tell me where, exactly, you are—something you neglected to do for nearly two decades!"
A smile playing at the corner of his mouth, William cocked his head. "Thought we hadn't the time to argue?"
Neris glared at him.
He shrugged.
"Do you," she seethed, "remember where the rest of you is?"
"How could I forget?" The sheepish smile he couldn't hold back. "It was a quest, afterall, to find Antolune."
Cussing in what sounded to be Jack's florid form of English, Neris slapped a hand to her head. With her other, she grabbed at the haze of his. There was the recitation of an incantation and then the words whispered away as she and William were whisked through the bright white stillness of time and space. To a stop they lurched. Neris felt pebbles under her knees and the warmth of a rough palm under her own. Breathless, she helped William to his feet and found that they stood in the center of an overgrown cavern. Shortly after, she found his warm, brown eyes.
"I'm sorry," he said, and she felt that he meant it.
"As am I."
--- --- --- ------- () ------- --- --- ---
Without so much as a glance backward, Alice slipped through the rocks before her. Jack's anger got the best of him and he stormed after her into the overgrown cavern. At the far end of it, under a ledge of rock, laid a large slab of black stone. Upon it laid a sliver of glittering green.
"You found it," he breathed. His step forward was stilled by Will's hand and he turned a frown at the young Turner. It faded as he saw the whelp's white knuckles on his shoulder. From them to the stark white of Will's face to the place his gaze was fixed Jack looked. He felt his own face drain of color as he saw, standing in the middle of the cave with Neris, a man he thought he'd never see again. "William."
But the name had been whispered and so the two did not look up. In fact, the couple embraced. Jack watched, spellbound, as they shared a kiss.
"It was them all along!"
"Imagine my surprise," Alice said lightly.
Will's growl was low, but the hiss of the sword was not. Before Jack could stall him, Will Turner had pushed him aside. Just as helpless, Jack watched him stride down the slope of stone to stalk the two that had, by all appearances, tricked the two of them into almost certain death.
As the tip of Will's blade neared his father's shoulders, Bootstrap released a startled Neris and spun around. As his eyes widened, so did those of the Intuit priestess. But Jack found, much to his dismay, that her gaze was focused upon he and Alice Witter.
"Look out!"
A hiss punctuated her warning. Jack leapt away from it. Aghast, he gazed down at the snake—the very big snake—coiling about Alice Witter's feet.
"Have you a new pet, love?"
Alice chuckled then, a sinister sound that did not seem to fit her. Jack took another step back, very nearly falling off the edge of the rock he stood on. His gaze followed the woman's down to the snake. It wound up her legs and around her waist. She held out a hand. It slithered up her arm and behind her neck to drape her shoulders.
"I do," she said, smiling as the thing slipped down her other arm. "An' I think," she said, lifting her ringed—there it was, the ring Jack had lost—hand where rested the head of the snake, "he is my very favorite. I think we'll be gettin' along just fine." Its yellow eyes flashed as surely as hers, grey, glowed golden. "Hector and I."
Then the hiss that Jack heard was his own.
--- --- --- ------- () ------- --- --- ---
Author's Babble: As for the Intuition here... to Neris' thoughts of those aboard the Swan fixing her with their anger he priest says 'asmeriei?' meaning 'do you deserve(merit) it?' The high priestess then shames him 'infamei, endubitum'—'shame on you, doubter.' She goes on to say 'no asmereo et i no toleros nun.' That means 'I do not deserve(merit) it, and I won't tolerate it now.' The mention of 'now' regards her plans for the moment—feeling the others' anger will not serve her in her quest to go body and spirit to figure out what is happening. The priest understands, or perceives this, and so says 'perseipio' and then 'kautelei, karosamina.' The latter means 'take care, my precious.' To that Neris responds 'aeturnos' which means '(I)always(do).' After that she does not really say anything but thinks her being careful goes without saying as if she isn't careful she might be lost to 'omnis oblivio'—'all oblivion.' All of this is a loose!!! mixture of Greek and Latin that has been tweaked to my personal liking. There is, however, a form to everything the Intuits have said, including earlier parts of the story. Some of you may have noticed the '-ei' suffix, or the '-o' and '-os'. They're not random. As Elizabeth would say, I do not give my words lightly.
