My apologies for the long wait. I had about a third of this chapter done when the file was accidentally deleted off the disc, and I'm still recuperating, cuz I also lost a good part of another story I was working on of which I had been very proud. ;:sobs:;

Anywho, wow! Seven reviews! You guys—wait, scratch that—you reviewers rock:;huggles and hands out rum;:

Jess is a pirate: You know, just one measly bottle o' rum ain't gonna buy back yer chinchilla. About ten crates of Captain Morgan with just as much or more coke might do the trick, though... X3

Authoressinhiding: One of those. Btw, you do know that Murtogg is spelled with two g's, right? Anywho, you'll just have to wait and see, my friend. And giving Norry the catnip won't give you the answer, savvy?

pirateobsessed: Um, JackxAmes? Can anyone say "EEEEEEEWWW!"? I mean, he's over twice her age. As yummy as Jack is, that's just gross! but I still want him, tear tear Lol.

RespectTheSporks: You'll have to wait and find out. Methinks there's a bit about that in this chapter. The gov'ner? Hmmm...maybe... :;shifty eyes;:

Little Miss Sparrow: Weehoo! ;:runs around in circles:; Yay, a new reader! And yes, that was exactly how I planned it. I like to surprise my readers. XD

marauder4ever: Yayy! Another new reader! ;:runs around in more circles:; Sorry, mate. Can't promise frequent updates. Am a slow writer, often with a bad case of writer's block ((which I wrote a drabble about XD))

luvvcaptainjack: Wheeeee! Yet another new reader! ;:runs around in circles:; Whoa...:;falls over dizzy;: Yeah, I gotta stop doing that. I just gotta ask: tacos? Anyhow, extra rum to you: You're the first person to push all four buttons! YAYY:;applause;:

So yeah, I gots a snow day on Monday! Weeheee!

Disclaimer: Everything belongs to the mouse. I just bow down to it.

For those of you who didn't know: Nicker, whicker, whinny, snort, murmur, squeal, bray, etc. are all horsey noises. Savvy? Good. Glad I was able to clear that up for you. Now then, TALLY-HO! To the next chapter we go!

Chapter Seven: Whowhatandthewhynow?

—Ames' eyes widened in shock. "What in Hellfire—oh you gotta be kidding me!"

And I'm speaking in English, Jack snorted. Of course I'm not kidding!

"Oh my gosh. Really?"

Jack nodded. His mum were claimed to be from a realm similar to yours. Found it out by accident, but it could come in handy if I get into a bit of a...situation.

"Situation? You? Never," the girl teased.

As grudging as I am to admit it, anything's possible, luv, Jack sighed. ((o0 Jack? Grudging to admit the possibilities? Wow. That's a definite first!)) I'm planning on saving it for blackmail.

"Blackmail? How would that be blackmail?" Jack didn't answer right away. "Jack?" she pressed.

Hesitantly, Jack answered. ...His mother...was mistaken for practicing witchcraft...and was burned at the stake when he was still just a lad. He soon after moved to England from his Scottish birthplace under an assumed name, and fell in love with the sea. After that, he quickly began to rise in the ranks until he became what he is today: an esteemed, successful, well-known man. Jack paused for effect before adding, If his past is found out, he could well perish same as his mum did. 'S why he's so...er, how to put this... tight-laced.

"Oh...I always thought he just had some acceptance issues—you know, felt the need to constantly sort of show off in order to feel accepted."

Jack pondered this a moment. ...That too...

A thoughtful pause. "So then we have to go talk to him."

Aye, but not immediately. Amy raised her eyebrows in question. First, we have a few...errands to run.

"Errands? What errands? Huh?-Huh?-Huh?"

Just then, Will strode in through the door, dressed nicely as if he'd just been somewhere socially respectable, and paused mid-stride upon seeing them. Jack looked up and nickered a greeting, willing, for the moment, to forget the lad's plans from the previous night. Jack shifted his lass off his lap and stood slowly, swaying slightly as it was his first time on two legs since he'd first become an equine. Taking slow, discreetly wobbling steps, he made his way down to the forge, motioning for Will to follow. He leaned against a table, crossing his arms and legs, and waited patiently for Will to remove his coat as he always did, and come down after him, unbuttoning his shirt in preparation for the heat of the fire. "You wanted to speak with me, Jack?" The pirate nodded. "I expect this is regarding sending her to the asylum?" Jack only nodded again, and they both turned to look at the girl, who was dozing again. "Right then. I'll send for an escort from the Trinity Mental Asylum immediately." Will turned to throw his coat over a chair, and when he faced Jack again, he found he was staring down the shining blade of the pirate's cutlass. "Jack?" He nervously stumbled away, finding himself trapped between Jack's blade and a stone corner, out of reach of any weapons with which he could defend himself. "Jack, please. She's ill, can't you see it? I just don't want to see her getting hurt." Jack sighed. At least the lad's heart was in the right place. Will continued, gaining confidence from the understanding expression his friend now wore. "Which is exactly why we must send her. She'll be safe there." Somehow, Jack wasn't so sure. "Jack. She thinks you're a horse," Will smiled. "And obviously you're not." Silence. "...Right?"

Jack finally couldn't take his own silence, and uttered a low whinny in response. Will's eyes widened. "Jack?" An equine snort through the nose and a barely-audible murmuring sound was his response. "Then it was true? It was all true?" Jack nodded, dark eyes piercing right through the spitting image of his late best mate before him. Will let a light laugh escape. "You're kidding."

The rogue snorted impatiently and loosed a high, exasperated whinny, loud enough that the girl started and woke. Ames, get up.

"What? What?" She picked up her glasses and jumped down to the lower level, placing them firmly on the bridge of her nose as she joined them. "What's up?" Both Jack and Will gazed toward the ceiling, wearing confused expressions. Ames put a hand to her forehead and stifled a giggle. "Never mind. What do you need?" Jack murmured an answer, and her eyes widened. She backed away a step from Will, looking suddenly suspicious and untrusting. "Mentally ill? You think me insane in actuality?" Her eyes flickered from one to the other. "I may have my time periods mixed up, but didn't they execute people with mental disabilities around now?" she asked wryly, fearfully.

Will's eyes widened again. "How did you know about that?" After all, she had been unconscious every time he'd expressed his thoughts on the subject.

"Hul-loo," she threw her hands in the air. "Where have you been the last five days? Jack told me. You've heard the sounds he makes. Why can't you just accept it for the truth?"

"Because it's not truth, it's an insane girl's fantasy!"

Whoa, calm down, Jack snorted to them both. My apologies, Todd. He's the logical thinker. It's a bit hard for him to go out of his comfort zone and see truth in what he considers fiction without a good bit of irrefutable proof. For instance, he didn't exactly believe in the curse until he saw their decaying forms for himself. Elizabeth is the one who can see through fiction and pick out what may be truth and what may not.

"Then maybe we should go speak with her instead."

"Speak with who?"

"Your wife," she answered simply. Jack murmured something to her. "Oh yeah, but Jack kinda wants you to make me a cutlass first before we go." She smirked.

XxXxXxXxXxX

One new cutlass later, they had snuck through the streets to the manor where the Turners lived ((which was, by the way, the same manor the Swanns had occupied until Elizabeth got married and Will moved in)). "So does the Governor still live here?"

"Yes. He has taken it upon himself to stay out of our way, though, and is out of the house a good bit of the time. He shouldn't be back till nightfall." Will led them to the front door, with a furtive glance over his shoulder to make sure Jack wasn't seen. Ames was a bit curious as to why he was worried; the manor was set back about a tenth of a mile from its front gates. No one in town could see them. Then she noticed what must've been a gardener poking at and tending to a rosebush nearby, saw several other servants going about their routines through the window. Jack leaned back so that he was hidden by the thick foliage of a bush just next to the door. As soon as no one was looking, Will opened the door and the three darted inside. At the sound of the door closing, a butler appeared, expecting to take his master's coat. He had not expected to find with him a young woman dressed in a man's clothes and a certain Captain Jack Sparrow. "Ah. Johnson. Just the man I was hoping to see. See to it that we and Elizabeth are not disturbed."

"Yessir," Johnson replied, suspiciously eyeing Jack who smiled half-heartedly as they were led out of the main hall and into a parlor, where said Elizabeth was sitting comfortably in a window seat, sewing up a hole in one of Will's smithing shirts, a small pile of other clothes of his what needed mending on the floor nearby.

Ames leaned over to Jack. "Remind me again why we came?"

We need someone to straighten Will out. If we can't make a believer out of him, she can.

Shelooked up from her work and paused mid-stitch. "Jack!" She jumped up and caught the pirate and an embrace. Jack returned the hug, nickering quiet greetings. She didn't notice. Will was eyeing her suspiciously, and she was beginning to blush under his scrutiny. "What?"

"You're..." he looked her up and down, "...wearing maids' dresses again."

Elizabeth glanced down at her apparel, then back up at him, shrugging. "It's so much more comfortable than those elaborate dresses Father keeps buying. You know that—I must've told you a dozen times at least, Will."

"Yes, but when we have company?" Will glanced, not at Jack but at the lass.

"Oh, I don't mind," the girl said quickly, an idea beginning to form.

Elizabeth looked at her, not fooled by the deceiving clothes. "Hello there. Elizabeth Turner," she introduced herself, curtsying politely.

"Nee Swann, right? I'm Amy," said the younger woman with a bow and a flourish.

"Pleasure to meet you."

"Same here."

"That's an interesting necklace," Elizabeth observed, noticing a pounded-metal pendant on a chord of braided leather.

Ames touched her fingertips to the metal. "Oh this?" She blinked once or twice, then swiped off her glasses, observing the dust, and shoved them into her belt. She removed the necklace, glad to have a prop, and held it there, the pendant swinging back and forth slightly. "'Ye don't know what this is, do ya?'" Elizabeth didn't answer. Only looked confused. "'This is Aztec gold,'" the lass continued, her voice growing gruff and her accent becoming all-too-familiar. "'One of eight hundred and eighty-two pieces they delivered in a stone chest to Cortéz, himself. Blood money paid to stem the slaughter he wreaked upon them with his armies. But the greed of Cortéz was insatiable. So the heathen gods placed upon the gold...a terrible curse. Any mortal that removes but a single piece from that stone chest...shall be punished for eternity.' 'I hardly believe in ghost stories anymore, Captain Barbossa,'" she mimicked Elizabeth's voice for a moment. "'Aye,'" replied Barbossa's. "'That's exactly what I thought when we were first told the tale. Buried on an island what cannot be found, except by those who know where 'tis. Find it we did.'" Will glanced at Jack, who was rooted to the spot, watching the girl reenact part of his past. "'There be the chest. Inside be the gold. And we took 'em all!'" She lashed her arm out as the wily captain had done to animate her words, then beginning to pace. "'We spent 'em and traded 'em, frittered them away on food and drink and pleasurable company...but the more we gave them away, the more we came to realize...the drink would not satisfy.'" The girl leaned in closer, miming Barbossa'a exact movements. "'Food turned to ash in our mouths. And not all the pleasurable company in the world could slake our lust. We are cursed men, Miss Turner.'" She leaned back into the shadows, looking every bit like a pirate in just the expression on her face. "'Compelled by greed we were, but now...we are consumed, by it.'"

Acting wasn't Amy's strong point, but the speech had been good enough to have the desired effect; Elizabeth stood frozen, looking as if she had just seen a ghost. She and Barbossa had been alone in the cabin when that had happened, save for the monkey. "How...?"

Ames only grinned and wove her tale again.

XxXxXxXxXxX

"...And, well, that basically sums it up."

"...And Will wanted to send you to an asylum?" Elizabeth asked, tone sharp as she shot a glare at her husband."

"He didn't believe me that Jack is—was—is a horse."

"Wait, what?"

Ames heaved a sigh. They had sat down on a couch—which really wasn't all too comfortable—while Will stood, listening, and Jack stared discreetly out the window through the thin curtains. "We got hold of a Eohippus fruit, and, while I took a meager taste and he ate the whole thing, well...let's say, four days later, he was hoofin' it on the beach and I was understanding every word of it."

"She says the fruit turned him, and allowed her to speak with him," Will added. Ames blinked—hadn't he just been contradicting every word she'd spoken only this morning?

"Anywho, something happened last night and he changed back, at least most of the way."

"What do you mean?" nee Swann turned to face the pirate. "Jack?" A low whinny in response floated to her ears. She looked back to the girl. "What did he say?"

"He says that if we're going to pay a visit to our 'little friend,' we should probably do it soon. He thinks the guy might know a thing or two on how I might get back to my own dimension."

Jack nickered again, still staring out the window. Elizabeth stared at her husband a moment, her gaze flicking to the rogue and back. "You didn't believe this young woman about Jack? Even with all these noises he's been making."

"Oh, no, Elizabeth. I've seen and heard enough to assume that, but I still need more proof. That she's from the future, or another world entirely...that I can't believe."

"Well I can't think of anyone who would be able to capture Barbossa's character as well as a girl who has only copied it from a play she's seen. I shudder to think how realistic the actual actor's rendition must have been. Goodness, I doubt she's from our realm at all, as we're apparently fictional characters where she comes from."

Ames had stopped listening to the conversation—she had about the attention span of a mouse when she wanted to—and was instead following Jack's gaze out the window and noticing what a wonderful day it would be for riding. Of course, the only steed she knew well enough to ride was Jack, and thus she was imagining him as such that they could ride through a field or something.

Meanwhile, Jack was pondering how he never developed land legs anymore, and how annoying the unsteadiness was. The horse was much more stable on solid ground than he was as a man. He imagined himself trotting through that expansive garden, weaving between trees and bushes, leaping over a log taller than Marty, the vertically challenged crewman whom he valued very much for his experience and loyalty.

"Skeletal curses by heathen gods may be possible. A man turned into a horse could be possible. But a child traveling from one world to the next just isn't. Elizabeth—." Will was cut off when Jack suddenly loosed a high squeal, and all turned to stare at him. A wind or the like of one seemed to fill the room and whip around him, tearing at his flesh in one place and sewing it up in another. His fingers began to fuse together and become hooves, as were his feet, boots and clothing seeming to melt into his flesh. His snout elongated and ears stretched, and before any of them truly knew what was going on, a horse was standing in the middle of the Turners' polished and elegant parlor. Will's jaw dropped and he stared wide-eyed at the stallion. "Miss Amy?"

Ames was staring at Jack as well, answering without taking her eyes off him. "Yeah?"

"I think I believe you now."

"Yeah."

Oh, did I just do that? Did I just make you wait for the next chapter to find out what you wanted to find out in the last chapter? Oo, I'm such an evil girl–don't shoot me. Now review, or suffer the agony of never finding out who knows the information they need. And to you shadow reader out there; I know you're out there. Four and a half hundred hits to a story says some things. And I do know a couple of you by name, so don't be surprised if I come a-knocking over the course of the next couple of chapters, savvy? Now, REVIEW! Or suffer the not-updating slow writer's block annoyingness that I tend to often exhibit! MUAHAHAHAA! –ahem– ...yeah... XD