Author's note: I apologize for my embarrassing lack of posts, and beg my readers' pardons. Hopefully this chapter, and coming chapters, will be worth the wait.
Tidal Serenade
Chapter Four: They Say the Sea Is Cold
Jack, obediently sprawled on his bed as Ana had asked, closed his eyes and attempted to focus.
My name is Jack Sparrow. No, Captain Jack Sparrow. My ship is the Black Pearl. I captained her for two…three—no, two—
The tidal song surged through his head, erasing memories and thoughts and dreams as it ebbed and flowed, ebbed and flowed, ebbed and flowed, ebbed and…
Jack opened one eye and peered around for a good, therapeutic bottle of rum. On the opposite end of his desk was a smallish, rounded green bottle that looked hopeful. He lurched to his feet and, staggering across his cabin in a crazy zigzag, seized the bottle. He had just lifted it to his lips when movement at the edge of his vision snared his attention.
He glanced over; the tide suddenly filled his consciousness. The bottle of rum dropped and shattered, unnoticed, by his boots. Between the rushing waves blurring his sight, he could see that the universe had tilted gently beneath him, as it had in the marketplace, and that the colors around him had once again paled to curious dullness. A current of song drew him to a window; not entirely understanding why, he gazed out at the water. In a moment he noticed a dark spot hovering at the surface of the glistening cerulean ocean. Then the shadow shifted and the darkness parted to reveal a crescent of pale skin.
As Jack recognized the water-figure as the singer from Puerto Bello and the source of the song that transformed him into coral and spindrift and kelp, his knees grew weak. He felt an overwhelming compulsion to throw himself to the sea, a craving as inescapable as the tides.
Numbed to all but the shadow gazing back at him from the water, Jack did not hear the glass shatter. He could not feel the drip of blood down his palm where a stray shard of glass had sliced into him. The chill of ocean water briefly shocked him into semi-consciousness, but then the continuation of the tidal serenade pulled him even more forcefully to its source. As he reached the mysterious singer among the waves, her translucent green gaze smiled on him. He managed to return the gesture, and then cold water pressed against him from all sides as he followed her down and down into the darkening blue depths.
"Hurry up, ye bloody scalawag!" Anamaria barked at Cor. The poor abused man muttered something vaguely apologetic and quickened his stride to a jog. Anamaria trotted along behind him, suddenly impatient for no apparent reason. A feeling of foreboding spread through her chest, and she cursed herself for leaving Jack alone. Something was terribly…incorrect about the captain—he had truly gone mad, with fever, with drink—his ship was sinking and he had cried out to her for help, but she had abandoned him. Now she was frightened, blindly and with no other cause than pure instinct.
Finally, the pair reached the captain's quarters. Anamaria elbowed her way in front of Cor, flinging open the door as she yelled gruffly, "Cap'n! The doc—"
Her words dried and shriveled away in her throat like some small, stranded sea creature forsaken by the departing tide. Jack was nowhere to be seen; instead, inexplicably, the wreckage of a bottle of rum lay on the floor beside his desk. More alarming than that, however, was the window. It gaped open like some translucent shark's mouth, lined with jagged shards of glass-teeth. The hole was large enough to accommodate a man of Jack's size.
Anamaria rushed to the shattered remains of the window and peered out at the sea. Distantly, in the troughs of the waves, Jack treaded water with something—someone—else. Several soft, incongruous notes reached Anamaria's ears, and then a wave rose, shielding her captain from sight. When the water subsided once more, the two figures were gone.
Anamaria turned to find Cor, dazed, gaping at her from the frame of the door. She stared back, at a complete loss for words.