The ship rocks. My head tips back and forth. There is carpet on one side of my face, and cold wood on the other. I open my eyes.
The room is deserted. Nothing has been touched. Pale light floats in from the windows. I stare at the ceiling feeling lifeless and cold. I feel as though I will never move again. When they come for me, I'm sure they'll only find my skeleton.
Suddenly memories of the previous night flood my mind. For some reason, however, I hardly feel any emotion. I was so filled with terror at coming face to face with the undead that I feel absolutely drained.
I lay on the floor for another hour. When I force myself to my feet, I stretch and then cross the floor to use the chamberpot. Then I return to my place in the corner. I stretch out my legs and lean my head against the cabinets.
Blood to be repaid, I hear in my head. Barbossa said they were going to lift the curse—with blood. Mine is the blood to be repaid. I'm the sacrifice. They're going to kill me.
For as long as I have been on the Pearl, I never really thought they would kill me until now. I think of my body lying upon the heaps of gold, bloodless and grey. All my hopes of rescue seem childish now.
Maybe Will didn't recognize me in the chaos of that night, I think miserably, my breath feeling coarse and cold in my throat. Maybe he never even considered it was me.
But what about Father? And Commodore Norrington? They would realize I was missing, wouldn't they? Father would. Commodore would send out the Interceptor. It's the fastest ship in the caribbean. No other ship can overtake it. But if they were out looking for me . . . surely they would have caught up to the Pearl by now.
My hope evaporates as quickly as it have come. I'm going to die on account of a curse and a treasure.
I climb up onto the table and lean my face against the dirty window. The ocean is dark and untame, suggesting a storm had recently passed. As I look out across the ocean, I think of Port Royal. I miss my Father. I long to see him, even if I can't speak to him, one last time before I die. My eyes sting painfully and I bury my face in the purple skirt of the dress. Suddenly a large mass of black passes the window. I spot it out of the corner of my eye. My head snaps up.
Rocks. We've arrived.
Suddenly I feel the strain of the anchor and the Pearl comes to an abrupt halt. Candles fall off the tables and roll forward. The Pearl evens out and the door to the cabin opens swiftly. Rigetti and Pintel stand in the doorway. More pirates appear behind them.
"Time to go, Poppet," Pintel whispers. My body gives a little jerk of its own accord. I stand up stiffly and they take hold of either arm, leading me out onto the deck. The air is dry and the sky is blue-ish grey. The crew converges on me. I don't fight as they bind my hands with thick rope. There's no use fighting anymore. Rigetti chants under his breath as hands pull my hair behind my shoulders and clasp the golden medallion around my neck. I resist twitching, even though it seems to feel white-hot on my chest. This is the reason I'm going to die.
For the tenth time, I regret ever retrieving the medallion. I should have thrown it into the ocean, then the pirates would never have come to Port Royal. And I would never know that Will was once a pirate.
I'm forced to climb over the side of the ship and down into the rowboat waiting beneath. The crew follows. The rowboat is lowered into the water rowed towards the rocks. My heart feels dead within my chest.
I am just wondering if they are considering drowning me when I see an opening in the large, black rock mass ahead of us. The mouth of a cave. The four rowboats enter it and darkness envelopes us.
The only sound is the slapping of the waves against the rowboats and the erratic pounding of my heart. No one speaks for a few minutes. I can't even see the oars propelling us forward. Suddenly our boat scrapes the bottom of the sea floor. We've hit ground.
Torches are lit and the cave comes to life. I'm pulled out of the rowboat and forced ashore, with pirates in front and in back of me. We turn a corner into the cave and light shines down through its ceiling. I can't believe it. Mounds of glowing gold are piled high all around us. Sparkling jewels, glistening silver, expensive statues and precious trinkets. Pirates pass on either side of me, carrying chests and barrels full of plunder. They throw them unceremoniously onto the piles of treasure. Suddenly I stop mid-step, seeing Barbossa on top of the piles of gold and stand beside a large, stone chest.
The chest of Cortés.
"Move," someone pushes me forward towards Barbossa. I splash through the small river flowing through the cave, soaking my slippers. I climb up the pile of gold towards the pirate captain, who stands at the top.
My body is trembling. I'm going to die. I'm going to die.
Someone pushes me so I'm standing beside Barbossa, who is grinning with an evil glint in his eyes.
"Gentlemen, the time is come!" He shouts loudly, right arm raised. I flinch. His voice echoes eerily throughout the cave.
The crew yells in anticipation, raising their swords and torches in triumph.
"Our salvation is nigh!" Barbossa bellows, followed by a shout of the crew. "Our torment is near an end."
Another resounding yell.
"For ten years we've been tested and tried, and each man jack of you here has proved his mettle a hundred times over—and a hundred times again!"
Their shrieks echo in agreement.
"Suffered I have!" Shouts Rigetti, his wooden eye swirling.
"Punished we were, the lot of us, disproportionate to our crimes!" Barbossa smacks his fist on a flat hand. I glance around me—searching, searching, all in vain, for a way of escape. The only entrance I can see is the way in which we came in, but there is no possible way to get there, not with my hands tied and the pirates staring right at me. They'd shoot me the minute I moved.
"Here it is!" Barbossa growls, shoving the lid of the stone chest off with his foot. I gasp and step backward. There lay the 881 pieces lying in the chest, just as Barbossa had described.
"The cursed treasure of Cortés himself," Barbossa runs his hand over the gold. "And every last piece that went astray, we have returned—save for this!" He points at me and the crew shouts ever louder.
Make this end. Make it stop.
"881 we found but despaired of ever finding the last, searching and searching for the one that can free us from our doom!" He cries, followed by the pirates echoing shout.
"We took out of greed! Sought out of desperation—to lead us here where we are now! As fate would have it we found the last, and we bring it here before the heathen gods to pay it back to them!"
Another shout.
"And who among us has paid the blood sacrifice owed to the heathen gods?"
"Us!" Cry the pirates.
"And whose blood must yet be paid?"
"Hers!"
My throat is seizing up.
"You know the first thing I'm gonna do after the curse is lifted?" The captain laughs and turns to me. "Eat a whole bushel of apples." I stare at him in disgust. He grabs my shoulder and holds me over the stone chest. I see him grab a yellowed knife off the top of the pile of gold. He raises it up.
I'm going to die. I'm going to die.
"Hoo. Hoo. Hoo. Hoo," The crew chants. I can't stop my mouth from falling open.
"Begun by blood—" Barbossa barks.
"Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!"
"—by blood undone."
"HOO! HOO! HOO!"
Barbossa rips the medallion from my neck and grabs my left hand, slicing it open with the yellow knife he holds. I gasp in pain and then look from the medallion to him.
"That's it?" I gasp. He looks at me.
"Waste not," he replies. He grasps the medallion in my bleeding hand, turns it over, and releases the medallion onto the pile of gold pieces. The chanting stops.
The medallion hits the surface, dripping in my blood.
Barbossa releases my hand and I look down at it, gasping and resisting the hotness of my eyes. The cut looks remarkably deep.
I look up to see the crew standing motionless. Some of them have their eyes closed. Others stare at Barbossa. There is no sound, not even a jingle of gold.
One by one, they open their eyes.
"Did it work?" Asks a pirate with dreadlocks.
"I don't feel no different," Rigetti says.
"How do we tell?" Pintel demands. Barbossa pulls out a long, gold gun from his belt. A shot rings out. A hole is blown through Pintel's jacket. Pintel looks down at it.
"You're not dead," accuses the pirate with dreadlocks.
"No," laughs Pintel, before glaring up at Barbossa. "He shot me!"
"It didn't work," Rigetti says.
"The curse is still upon us!" Shouts another pirate.
The crew begins to grumble.
It didn't work. They got the wrong blood. It wasn't my blood they needed . . .
Barbossa rounds on me.
"You! Maid! Your father, what was his name? Was your father William Turner?" He shakes me by the shoulders.
"No," I say angrily. You deserve to be cursed. You deserve to rot in Hell.
"Where's his child?" He shakes me again and then pushes me away. He picks up the medallion stained with my blood. "The child that sailed from England eight years ago, the child in whose veins flows the blood of William Turner?"
I look down at the medallion.
I know whose blood they need.
"Where?" Snarls Barbossa. I look up at him smugly, not saying a word. He growls and hits the side of my face. I fall face first down the pile of gold.
Something cold and wet grasps my mouth. I jerk awake.
The very person I have been aching to see, the very person whose blood the pirates need, floats in the water before me.
Will gestures with his index finger to be quiet and to follow him. His other hand briefly touches my face.
Is Will really here? How? I'm I really going to leave with him?
But I can't leave. Not without—
I turn around and see the medallion lying in the dirt. I snatch it up and put it around my neck, quietly following Will into the water. It's cold and dark, but I grasp Will's hand with my good one beneath the water, which goes well over my head. We swim as quickly as we can, while the voices of angry pirates bounce off the cave walls. Finally Will climbs out of the water and helps me out. My dress clings to me in odd places and my slippers must have been lost somewhere along the way. Dirt sticks to the bottom of my feet as Will leads me around the piles of gold. I squeeze his hand ever tighter as we sneak past the the hoard of pirates, who seem to be turning on Barbossa, but somehow we make it past them undetected.
Will leads the way to a rowboat and climbs in after me, shoving off the shore and out of the mouth of the cave.
I don't believe it.
I've been rescued.