He couldn't take his eyes off of it, the heavy lines so well blended into his skin. It was just how he'd pictured it—that lone sparrow flying off into the sunset on the horizon over the sea. He flinched at the last puncture the artist applied.
"You cannot move like that, Mr. Sparrow," the artist chided. "It will only make it worse. Perhaps the arm was not the best place for it?"
"Who's paying for the tattoo? My memory is going rusty on me. Ease up now, mate. I'm only teasing. I'm sixteen years old today. I can handle a wee bit of pain." He bit his lower lip and closed his eyes at the last curvy wave that made up the ocean. He picked up his arm with the other hand and brought it to his lips. Gritting his teeth at the pain that would come from doing so, he planted a small kiss on the beak of that sparrow, the one that was now a part of him. After the fiasco that was living in Italy after leaving the Caribbean, they moved down here to Singapore with a small group of civilians escorted by the Navy. Working at the fort, sweating in that sweltering kitchen while the officers barked menu orders at him finally paid off.
"You love it then?" the artist asked, his palms rubbing together.
"I do indeed, my good man. Here is your fee." He dropped the coins into the man's hand and exited the tattered parlor, side-stepping a shard of glass that had fallen from the window. He still had a few coins with him and Mum would not be home from her work for another hour or two.
Singapore's air smelled of spices and polluted water, but with his sword strapped to his belt, Jack could whistle on the way back.
"You English?" he heard.
The creamy skin tone unique to the Singaporeans contrasted well with her ebony silk draped over her lithe body. A seashell strung onto a black strand of leather led down to the intriguing shadow in the space between her breasts. Jack cleared his throat before swaggering over to her, pocketing the coins. He had lived here long enough to know the Navy could not see every petty crime that occurred in their pretty little colony.
"English, Italian, Indian, mixed in with some Chinese and the rest of me is all Spanish," he said, following that leather strand down her neck.
"The eyes say Italian, yes?" she said, her fingers sliding up to his face, massaging the bone that formed his eye socket. "I get so tired of the blue-eyed English here. My name is Lawan."
"Jack."
"I saw you get a tattoo," she said. "I have one too." She took sleeve of her dress and stretched it down past her shoulder. A red and green dragon lay folded over her right shoulder, half going down her back and the other half hanging down and staring at those breasts. "I had it done on my birthday when I was little, just thirteen, maybe fourteen. I don't remember now."
"It's my birthday today, you know," he said, his eyes twinkling. He knew he didn't know anything about her beyond the name that she told him and that she had a dragon who got to see every inch of her thanks to how her tattoo artist positioned it, but the way her hair swayed down her back pleaded him to get to know her a little better. "This tattoo is all I have to show for it."
"I can fix that," Lawan said. "You just need to come with me."
He followed her up the stairs of the shack next to the tattoo parlor, lit with paper lanterns and filled with a lazy smoke that smelled sweeter than the smoke that blasted from guns, like honey and cinnamon stirred in together. The steps creaked, and her ankle cracked once on the way up, but all Jack could hear was her rambling on about how she knew lots of other girls here and they all lived together, usually welcoming in the enlisted for some Singaporean hospitality. He could guess what she meant, but until she discussed the subject of payment with him, he would just consider this a result of his smoldering good looks.
"This is my room," she said, unlocking the last room on the left. The bed was more of a mattress, purple blankets and pillows burying it. A screen in the corner held most of her clothes. She kicked off her shoes at the threshold and gestured for him to do the same. "You want to carry me over?" she asked, smiling with a slight pout. "I act like bride?" Jack picked her up and carried her back over the threshold and set her down onto the mattress, where she pulled him down to her.
Deciding to seem more experienced than he was, he gripped her wrists and pinned her down, propping her lips open with his tongue before kissing her. Sweat dripped down the back of his neck, the room suddenly feeling twenty degrees hotter. Long as his fingers were, they swelled at the same rate his sex was, an effect of her purrs from under him. Maneuvering down, he reached for her earlobe and nipped at it. Her nails dug into his back.
"Jack!" she moaned at the moment when his hands slid under her silks and cupped her breasts, the size of a baby's head. His mouth twitched into a smirk. Men on ships made it sound as if women were a mystery. This didn't seem too hard.
Lawan wiggled out from under him and hopped up, throwing her dress off over her head, standing completely nude in front of him. His mouth dropped and his sex rose at the sight of her bare thighs and hips.
"Climb back down here," he growled, clearing his throat once more.
She leapt onto the mattress, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed the center of his neck, sliding up to his chin. Now unbuttoning his shirt, he could squirm out of it, revealing the two other tattoos on his back. He saw her twitch at the sight of them. Her astonishment gave him enough time to undo his trousers and kick out of them. All right, he thought, completely nude with a girl completely nude. Maybe she'll tell me what to do…
"You all set for me?" she asked, breathless.
"I could ask you the same question," he said, stalling while his hand rubbed her torso and dropped down to her sex, just to see what was there. She moaned, clawing deeper into him. Trial and error could be his best friend, he grinned, letting the rest of his fingers grope her, so warm, so welcoming of him… "I think now you're ready for me."
XXX
Jack woke with a headache, slowly realizing he'd fallen asleep with no clothes on at all. Ah yes, he remembered, Lawan the Mattress Girl. The clock hanging on the wall right across from him told him only half an hour had gone by since they'd entered together. He could go home refreshed with no one, namely Mum, the wiser.
Reaching over to rub his eyes, he felt a pressure on his wrist. Turning over onto his side, he saw a black silk scarf or skirt or something around his wrist and tied to a large stone dragon statue. When he tried to make his other arm reach over to untie himself, he found it lodged under a metal coffee table.
"Uh, oh, Lawan?"
Lawan appeared from behind her screen, dressed in red silk, her hair tied into a loose bun near the top of her head.
"Oh. Hello, Jack."
"Hello. Could you tell me what the meaning of these are?" He shook his wrists.
"Oh. I took a peek at your trousers. That should be enough to cover everything."
"Cover everything? Look, you could have just addressed the price up front. I mean…"
"Jack," Lawan said, "You would not have given me all of it. This way I got to see how much you had. Jack," she dropped down and crawled over to him. "You, you were so different than anyone else I have been with. I will tell you a secret. There is a mystery to a woman. She has to be explored, the more interesting parts even more so. Most men that come here…they do not want to explore. They think they know the perfect place to go and it leaves a woman wanting. You were different."
"So I was good and you still tied me up and robbed me."
"This time, yes," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "But even if you had come here with nothing, it would not have soured the experience."
"Well," Jack sighed, "if you want more, you'll definitely have to change how you thank me for visiting all the right locations."
"Perhaps you will come here again," she said, kissing him on the cheek. "In fact, I will be outside tomorrow evening if you want to come back. I know some more places to explore in you, too." Not taking her eyes off him until she reached the door, she closed it behind her on her way out.
XXX
Oria set the table without saying a word, leaving Jack to wonder if he appeared different now, and blushing at the fact that if he did, his mother was the first to notice. But Oria kept glancing over her shoulder. The intensity of the sun in the Caribbean and now in Singapore over the years streaked her once brown hair into a more golden hue, a cross between a color of a wheat field and the color of oak.
"What did you do today, Jackie?"
"Went and got me the best birthday present me money could buy," he said, showing off his tattoo. It would be all right if he failed to mention that the very same money he mentioned was now separated from him, thanks to a cunning, greedy, if not satisfied, whore. The men at the fort tomorrow at work would hear a story or two, the major players involved being Lawan's legs, breasts, and quite pert…
"You're probably wondering what your own mother has for you."
"Oh. I haven't thought about that until you mentioned it. But I don't need anything else. We go by Sparrow now, and this here should be the family crest. Next month I'll have enough to take you down and get one on your arm if you so like."
"Jackie, it becomes you, not me. Why you chose such a new last name, I'll never know…but I do have something for you," she said, taking her seat, spooning herself some rice. "After dinner."
"What makes you think you can afford it?" he teased. "All Lord Feng's ever done for you when you made one of his dresses right is give you a spank."
"Sao Feng is not the most decent employer, no," she agreed. "But he pays well for those 'dresses.'"
"He thinks he's so manly, but his clothes, Mum…If I had a job with the East India Trading Company I could sell those gowns to any English girl for two hundred pounds. It would be easy. Why, the shoes the man wears alone would cost, maybe fifty to a hundred pounds when one takes into account the time it takes to make them, the fact they're one of a kind, shipping…yep. I'd price them at seventy-five pounds just to be modest and some rich English aristocrat would just about empty his whole purse to pass them off to a wife or daughter."
"You do go on about having a merchant sailor job," Oria said, already finished with her sparse helping. She picked up her plate and beckoned for Jack to hand her his if he was done with it. One more mouthful and a swig of tea, and he picked up his plate and cup on his own. "You won't let me pamper you on your birthday?"
"No, not when you worked more hours than I did today. It's like cards. Birthdays may be kings, but the long hours are the aces."
"Charming metaphor. I wonder what else they teach you at the fort."
Apparently, they don't teach how to avoid being robbed by prostitutes all that well, he thought, but refrained. Still furious with Lawan, he considered stopping and seeing her tomorrow evening, only to hold her at the point of his sword and demand twice what she stole from him, avaricious little wench.
"Sit down, Jackie. I'm going to pretend you're a little boy for a moment." She reached into her sewing bag that she took to work with her, filled with pin cushions and measuring tape and ribbon of all colors. She pulled out a woven purse that fit in her palm, a shiny item with golden lilies and lily pads embroidered against a scarlet background. Each flower was safely held in place with heavy black embroidery outlining it. Loosening the strings at the top, she beckoned Jack to come over to her and hold out his hands.
Into his hands, Oria dumped coin after coin into his cupped hands. In between some of them, small button-sized blocks of jade fell into his hands, a few overflowed onto the uncarpeted floor.
"Mum, how did you come by all this?" he asked, sorting the coins so he could count them.
"I told you just a minute ago Sao Feng pays well," she said in one monotonous tone. "That's enough to provide you passage to England. We'll make a sailor out of you yet, Jackie." Oria bit her lip, ignoring the shaking of his head. "We're not talking about you leaving and never seeing me again. The sooner we establish the Sparrows as a decent, wage-earning family, the sooner we'll leave behind everything from the past and no pirates will be looking for us. And maybe someday you can pay for your dear old mum to come back and join you."
"You didn't have to get anything for me," he whispered.
"But what would I have done with all of it if not given it to you? Jackie, I don't want you cooking at the fort here all your life, you know that. Silenzio, me amore. This is your gift and I will tell you how to spend it."
"I doubt that's the definition of a gift," Jack said, finally exhaling after hearing he would soon have his own ship.
"I'm the mother. I tell you what things mean. Go back to England, Jackie. Join the East India Trading Company."
He took his mother's hand and kissed her on the forehead.
XXX
The next day, Jack left the fort early, walking down the seedier, spicier district of the colony, where the English phrases were replaced by chickens squawking and the playing of reeds on the corners. Passing people whose skin could have passed for raw meat, he spotted the taller buildings made of sturdier, darker wood. Steam billowed out from the cracks of these buildings as inside fleshy men disrobed and let thinner, younger women wash them in bubbling water.
"Password?" the pair of eyes asked him at the door.
"Empress," Jack murmured, still with a raised eyebrow when it came to the significance of that word. Singapore could not boast an empress and Sao Feng himself, for all his pretty robes and gowns, kept too many concubines to favor just one.
Inside, past the moisture-spawned toadstools and mold clinging to the walls, Jack heard shouting coming up on the entrance to Sao Feng's foyer, inaccessible unless one went through the bathhouse first.
"Thief! There is nothing that can excuse you!"
"It was not me, Sao Feng. I am not so stupid as to take from you," Oria said, unblinking. Jack stood back, not wishing to disrupt any plan she may have concocting.
"When last you were here, there was a purse sitting on this chair," Sao said, pointing to the high-backed chair off to the side. "You leave and today I find it nowhere, cannot be found. My people think too much of honor to steal from me. But a European, so spoiled and used to having more money than she needs…" he trailed off, his long fingernails scraping Oria's smooth cheeks.
"You are wrong. I will not say it again."
"Then you are worthless to me. Your talents are good, Oria Regina, but I have much more at my disposal than you may think."
"I won't demand higher pay if you let me stay on," she said, folding her arms. "I just want to earn my pay is all. It does not matter to me how you earn yours." She paused to lick her lips, as if debating what to say next. "Whether you are a emperor or a peasant makes no difference to me. I have had a pirate as a lover once."
Sao Feng began to laugh, letting his fingernails once again scrape against her face. With his other hand, he revealed strung to his neck a silver coin. Jack strained his neck to see a silver Piece of Eight dangling, resting in the center of his collar bone.
"You do not know the meaning of the word pirate," he said, shoving her to the wall. Jack gripped the handle of his sword, waiting first to see if Mum could move. She broke herself from the wall and stared Sao Feng in the eye, her hands holding each other so they would not rub her shoulder blades that Sao Feng just hurdled into the hard wooden wall.
"I'm pirate enough to know that another pirate can't trust anyone," she said.
A low whistle emitted from Sao Feng's lips. A row of men in pointed straw hats formed a line behind him, each one with a sword or dagger strapped to him. His knuckles white from the grasp he had on his own sword, Jack let go, knowing he had waited too long. A few seconds ago he could have stormed in and sliced Sao Feng the Pirate's stomach open. Spilling out the flesh and fluids would produce no overwhelming odor since outside the women hung inside-out rodents and dug their nails into bloody organs with all the comfort English women felt in kneading bread.
"Cannot trust anyone," Sao Feng mocked. "Please, Oria Regina, step forward and repeat to these men what you said."
While she stuck a reluctant foot out to take a step, Sao Feng produced a pistol from a wide pocket in his robe and fired.
Jack's loud gasp drowned out by the shot, no one heard him. Oria staggered back, clutching her chest, blood staining her tan frock. Sao Feng fired again. Her hair flying back into her face, she collapsed on the ground, her throat releasing a desperate groan. Marching over to her, Sao Feng fired from his pistol, producing complete stillness. The men behind him stayed in their positions, not moving. Speaking in his native tongue to them, Sao Feng pointed at the body on the floor and had it lifted and taken out of sight.
Shaking his head uncontrollably, Jack fell to his knees, fighting for consciousness, unable to tell if his eyes were open or closed, his vision so blurry. His head bobbed back and forth, his eyes almost rolling with it. Sticking his hand out, he braced the wall next to him, trying to focus on a small knot in the floor, but it kept moving on him, or it looked like it was moving on him. Impossible, was the only rational thought he could conjure. Impossible. Impossible.
A/N: Thank you for the reviews. You may be wondering about a few things now. Just let me assure you that everything will make sense. Please, PLEASE leave reviews. One can't learn things if one doesn't listen, and one can't listen if there is no advice...do you think Jack would get along with Michey Mouse? I should just call it a day... I do not own the POTC series.