Author's note: Thank you to all reviewers. I very much appreciate your kindness and encouragement. I still say that Jack and Ana are horridly out of character, but I half hope it might work itself out as I continue and grow more familiar with the characters.
Tidal Serenade
Chapter Two: When It's In the Veins
The next morning dawned cool and pale, the dark waters gilded with the light of the rising sun. Jack was up and prowling the Pearl restlessly before the majority of his crew had woken. His gait, always staggering and swinging and never quite balanced, seemed even crazier than normal. Those of the crew who were awake watched surreptitiously as he reeled and swayed across the decks like a piece of driftwood drawn along some oceanic current. Jack ignored them all, one moment pacing across the decks, the next minute stalking around belowdecks, and the following instant climbing the rigging.
He told no one about the tidal song of the previous night, guarding it possessively, almost to the point of obsession. It ebbed and flowed just beneath his consciousness, quietly surging into his thoughts at unexpected moments. He tried in vain to remember it exactly, driving himself to the brink of madness attempting to play it in his mind. But, as elusive and uncompromising as the sea itself, the song remained slightly beyond his grasp. And so he paced, always moving, to distract himself.
Finally, the captain settled into the crow's nest, shooing the watchman from the post to give himself some privacy. He hummed involuntarily as he stood, watching the horizon, the notes of his rendition of the song off-key, jarring, fighting each other, somehow flat and unmelodious. At the edge of his vision, he spotted the Pearl's destination: the port of Puerto Bello in the Spanish-held territory of New Granada. The trip had been his idea; the town was celebrating some saint's day or another by hosting a carnaval. The marketplace had more than quadrupled its size, and the town was swarming with troupes of entertainers. His crew—excepting Anamaria, of course, who saw the entire diversion as completely ridiculous—was more than happy about the chance to enjoy themselves. Jack was personally hoping for a chance to discover more about his Atlantis quest. And, in the midst of all the revelries, he suspected that the soldiers of the port's heavily fortified garrison would be preoccupied; hopefully, they would be less apt to try to arrest or shoot at him, which soldiers across the Caribbean had an unfortunate tendency to do whenever he crossed paths with them.
A shout went up from another crewman; he had sighted Puerto Bello as well. Jack allowed himself a faint smile and, singing wordlessly, clambered down to the decks once more.
Several hours later, Jack wound his way through the enormous labyrinthine marketplace, filled with rich colors and richer goods, demanding vendors, the scents of spices and smoke and sweat, and many different languages and dialects. Jack absorbed all the sights, searching for any stall or cart that seemed promising or interesting. Several young Spanish women watched him sweep past from beneath demurely lowered eyelashes; he winked and grinned slyly at as many as he noticed, for if nothing else he liked to consider himself a connoisseur of women.
He slowed as he neared a small plaza between the rows of shops and stalls, where the road split and diverged off in five different rambling directions. A modest crowd had gathered in the center of the square, and he saw as he drew closer that they were watching a small band playing a traditional Spanish flamenco song. A dancer, clad in a crimson dress, accompanied the band. Her movements were graceful, sharp, and precise, as emphatic as an exclamation point. Jack watched her, interested, until the music ended, and then he gathered himself to continue on.
As he began to turn down another street, however, a clear sound yanked him back and left him reeling, as though he were a sea-critter suddenly spat onto shore by a furious wave. He gasped as the tidal song rang in his ears, and whirled back around to seek its source. The world titled very slightly underneath him, a twitch that had nothing to do with his usual imbalance on land. The scenery around him blurred at the edges, and the colors of his surroundings seemed unreal, leached of their intensity. The melody raged through his body; in its fully embodied presence, he became a creature of the ocean: his bones transformed to coral, his blood rushed through his body as spume and spindrift, his muscles morphed into tightly braided pieces of kelp.
Jack staggered, once, toward the front of the crowd. Then, regaining his balance with some difficulty, he noticed something very curious. As affected as he was by the song, whose notes were interspersed with the sounds of the sea, whose lines were interrupted and covered as waves surged between and over them, none of the other people gathered in the plaza seemed to perceive the presence of the ocean. They simply, it appeared, heard a song and nothing more. Certainly none of them were having the reaction that he was. None of them seemed to feel the inexplicable urge to fling themselves to the incoming tide and allow the waves to absorb them.
Finally, the pirate reached the front of the group of people. There! The singer of the song stood not ten paces from him. She was a woman he had not noticed before. Apparently, she had slipped into the plaza while the flamenco band took a short break. She was clad plainly, wearing a dress the deep cobalt of the ocean on a moonless night. She swayed faintly as she sang, as though buffeted by some invisible current, and her face was hidden behind a curtain of long dark hair. Then her hair parted and Jack glimpsed pale skin, an elegant jaw, a straight nose, rosily plump lips; her eyes, the translucent green of the sea in a certain light, met Jack's directly.
The song seethed to its crescendo and fell away abruptly into silence. Her eyes recloaked themselves beyond her hair and, as the audience applauded politely, she slid away into an unseen alley. Jack stood where he was, dazed. The universe quietly readjusted itself, the scene's colors righted themselves, and the edges of his vision gained clarity once more. The revelers streamed by around him and the flamenco band began to play again, distantly.
So what'd you reckon? Still vaguely interesting? Please review.