Chapter 22 : Eyes On Fire
Two boats would carry them from the ship's engorged hull to the sandy banks of the inner bay; Jack setting lead in the first with Cotton and Marty, and Elizabeth claiming her otherwise rightful place with Gibbs, Pintel and Ragetti in the second. She had put this movement in place mostly to intrigue his already spinning head, perhaps even to show him that she was still just the same as the day before. No swarming sheets nor candlelight bliss coaching would change this in the hopes of her mind.
Though Jack knew better of this.
He sat contently flipping the lid of his compass back and forth, glancing down every so often to see its arrow shoot directly southeast, to where the second dinghy occupied the warm waves. It would never change, at least not as long as he deprived himself of the truth he felt running in his veins, the most uncomfortable feeling he had ever known. For years now he had held it within and away from even his own minds' ability to judge. His plan, was to continue this routine. At least as long as the teasing sheets and rum would allow him to.
The hour passed in half by the time their boats struck the shore, and boots sunk in the soft and watery crystals of sand. Jack was first out, as was his nature and right, and stepped in ease toward the brush filled inland, tipping his head between the compass still and the scene beside him of Lizzie's boat. She helped Gibbs with a few satchels and canteens before following the growing boot prints to come to Jack's side. It would inevitably be her lead.
"This as' only ever proved to do ye any good…" He spoke, handing the compass sideways to her. She smiled and held it out for a moment before she felt the bag lifted from her shoulders. Turning to the touch, she caught Ragetti nodding kindly and placing the rather heavy sack onto his own arm.
"Got it fer ye, Liz'beth."
Jack eyed him curiously, almost jealousy and pulled her along in haste of 'finding the fountain', glancing back at the ragged and skinny pirate a few more times. Elizabeth went with what he spoke of, accepting at least his arm around her shoulders as her eyes stayed focused on the spindle of the compass. Jack too, eyed the movement of the dial over her head, the scent of her hair still strong in the thick breeze.
"I remember it was only a few yards beyond where we met yesterday, in the swamp."
"Easy nough'." He smiled down at her when she looked back, still stumbling along the sandy beach toward the forested edge. "An' you say ye ne'er went inside?"
"No."
"Defeated the curiosity, did ye?"
She rolled her eyes when he chuckled above her head, "I am quite capable of denying myself of desperate urges, despite what you may believe."
"In this matter perhaps I do."
"And what of other matters?" She stopped for a moment to let the others catch up with their insistent movement and to properly question him face to face.
"Your weakness generally precedes you."
"Is that so?"
"Tremendously."
"Would you not agree then, that weakness derived by curiosity is most often the strength of a good pirate?" As always, he was nearly too impressed to speak. But he did, approvingly so, with an arm back around her shoulder as he heard footsteps behind and tugged her along again.
"Indeed I would be forced to. For you've ne'er managed t' disappoint in that sector, love."
Another good ten yards of walking together, Elizabeth caught in his constantly tightening hold, and they had made it to the gentle darkness of the crowding trees. Gibbs and the others were still a good distance back, and so they waited for a moment again, this time silent and leaning against opposite palm trunks. Jack fumbled with the chart that had been tucked under his free arm the entire walk, and after watching him for a short moment, Elizabeth found herself mesmerized by the compass' never-ending spinning in the place she stood. It would stop momentarily, and then begin twisting about again, to unimportant, otherwise boring places in the trees or at the beach. She wondered if her heart was playing tricks on her, if it truly was a lost cause in a sea of endless woe. It was altogether the most possible of all reasons.
"West coast…Gulf…these demons…" Jack mumbled to himself with the chart settled against the trunk of the tree, his back turned to her as he traced along in ignorance of her own interest. Elizabeth kept her gaze on the dial as it moved again, fluttering between North and South, East and West, forever teasing her. A second passed quickly before she focused on its point to see the direction in which it had approved of. It was Jack. Not for the first time in her life, but certainly for the first time since sleeping with him, since showing him all of her and leaving herself vulnerable enough to him to see whole world. Had he? She thought alone against her tree as he remained in still mode with the map, his head bobbing along with the images. She tried to shake the compass into another direction, and yet it kept its possessed nature and point on his back, where her eyes moved. She noticed how the blades of his shoulder poked through and indented his coat where they were separated by his belts. Elizabeth how these bones had felt under her fingertips as she held onto him for dear life the evening in pass. They had felt perfect, tender, sizeable enough to grasp and strong enough to protect her.
There was obvious motive behind the compass' hint to her. And just seconds later, as she continued to stare at his back, the sound of men approaching startled her away from the timid concentration she had caught hold of.
"The two of ye keep a quick pace, ay?" Gibbs chuckled with a brief smile as he ushered the other three alongside him into the brush. Jack turned with a grin and held the chart in a harsh grasp in one hand, while his other gestured toward Lizzie.
"New point?"
"Oh…" she caught herself, looking away from his smoldering, pleading eyes to see the arrow. It pointed directly at him for one more second, creating further nerves, until it stiffened and flipped back toward the woods. "…um…just this way."
The parading thieves followed close as they could on her heels as Jack kept a firm pace by her side through thick brush, high leaves and falling trees. Footprints were still in place from the day earlier, but he couldn't make out whether they were of his own boots or Elizabeth's, and instead counted them rather than making out their origin as they continued into darker greenery. She said not a word beside him and only focused on the distant sound of water trickling over rocks, which meant they were getting closer by each step. Gibbs, Pintel and Ragetti stumbled along behind, making comment on everything they caught sight or wind of for another twenty or so feet.
At the end, there was a swamp bank.
Elizabeth stopped near a large boulder, the compass turned upright into a glow of sunlight through the monstrous trees to see the reddish spindle whip around again from left to right. Jack stood idly, watching it the same, nervous over its questionable movement. Eventually though, it stopped in a northeast point and Lizzie moved on quietly.
"Swamps seem t' be a might bit memorable, eh Cap'n?" Gibbs stumbled in behind Jack with a glowering anxiousness in his voice.
"Aye." Was his simple response while his mind was focused on something deep in his history and his eyes were tight on the swaggering form of a distancing young woman.
"Need not t' think on the idea o' Injuns…or else we're t' find ourselves cursed again."
Jack did not answer to this, but took it as only a sign to keep moving, swiftly. Gibbs followed the lead with the final two, humored rouges in tow. It was only a short walk around the bend of the swamp's shallow cover that all four of them were brought to a halt by the view before them. Standing a good fifty feet high and a mile wide, with Elizabeth at its base opening in waiting, was the cave, the one that had caught the interest of every man on board in the telling of its origin. Grown well over with moss, layers of aging leaves and grass, its broad archway encompassed most of the scene, where vines and a waterfall enclosed it halfway between.
"She was right bout' it! Smart lass eh Cap'n?!" Ragetti shouted as he darted off toward the stepping stones that crossed from the end of the swamp they stood at to where Elizabeth was concentrating on a patch of soil. Jack smiled in watching the motions of her fingertips over the soft earth, hunting out something, examining as only a pirate can. He soon enough followed the other three across, tiptoeing along the rocks, and coming to stand just overhead of where she remained kneeling in the soil, casting his shadow to catch her attention.
"Surely you don't intend to block out the only available light."
She glanced up at him, brushing off her hands.
"You are welcome t' play in the dirt later, once ye've decoded this cave o' yours." He leaned down to offer her his hand, to which she of course, refused and stood up straight before him. He knew her well enough to know his hand was a mute invitation and this made him smile as she walked away toward the fissure in the boulder.
"Liz'beth?" Ragetti stood near to the opening of the cave with a freshly lit lantern in hand and grin upon his ragged face. She accepted kindly with a knowing glance back to Jack and then delicately stepped inside the illuminating darkness. As much as he wanted to follow her in and expose himself to the talent of her skills first hand, detail her every action and word, he remained outside of the dwelling alone, peering out and into the swampy green waters and thinking about the first time he'd been here, such the same as now.
And yet still, so indifferent.
Her name was Nahimana. He remembered and swore he always would.
Jack remembered being young enough to fear things when he met her, young enough to doubt the world, young enough to still hope easily. He had saved her from death and abuse prior to such. He had carried her miles through this same trackless swampland, dirt, overgrowth in darkness of night. Gibbs had followed out of habit rather than agreement, and together they had located the village in which she belonged safely.
There had been immediate hesitation from the council of elders, from her father and each potential mother, from every black haired, reddened skinned individual that approached them. They feared that Jack and his mate had left the ill fated tracks on her body, they saw them as instant enemies just by way of their stature and prose of words. They were the same tone, same nature as the men who had brought death to their village in the years before. They were the 'white men' despite their knowing so.
It wasn't until Nahimana had spent hours explaining her unfortunate fate to those of her own way, that they finally greeted Jack and Gibbs with open and willing arms. A celebration of sorts was held deep into the forests and night air, with fires, cultured foods, chanting, and even the occasional ingestion of certain foreign elements. All of which Jack found enticing, delicious even for the fill they provided his lungs. He could remember the taste well, the splintered aroma of carved oak, the puffing scent of fueled smoke intoxicating him for the first time, the choking, the ease of power to his senses, the hazy and rich auburn eyes staring back at him from across the open flames.
She was watching him only, her savior, her un-native hero.
The transition was eventually made from festivity to rest, in which groups left quickly to return to their own individual thatched and clothed shelters, leaving Jack and Gibbs to be taken one by one to their own, private edifices. These were given to them out of appreciation for their doings and saving of one of the village's daughters. It was a far greater deed than they even realized at the time.
Jack settled in comfortably and quickly, warmed by the spirits of the howling wind and a nearby fire from outside of his tent, the open skin of his bronzed chest nearly catching flame of its own, doused in sweat as he lay still listening to the sounds of the woods around him. He heard every falling leaf, every croaking frog and moving lizard. He heard the world in this place and time, in this state of inebriation. And all of this was heightened quickly, dangerously even, by the interruption of rest that came with the movement of the tents opening. Jack's head bolted upright from the mountain of blankets to see the same eyes, the burning ones of black, staring straight down at him in the blue haze of the night outside.
Nahimana had come for him as he hoped she might.
"You are not like the others that have come to us." She spoke softly, carefully as she stumbled through words nearly unfamiliar to her everyday speech. Jack listened and waited for her as she stepped inside of the tent, the glow of the outside fire catching her silhouette. "They would not have helped me. They would have left me to die."
She sat beside him on the blankets as he rose beneath them at her level.
"I owe you very much."
"I wish for nothing." He spoke nervously, unaware of the moment's deepening as she came closer, her eyes catching his aflame, her skin melting within reach of his own.
"I have come for you. What will you have me do sir?"
Her English, although colored by culture and accent, was impeccably strong and driven. He found himself lost in her question, in her gaze as she spoke and held his curiosity.
"I ask nothing of ye. I could not ave' left you there."
"Will you not have me?"
"Have you…how?" He was confused by the conversation greatly, one he'd only ever had in a drunken stupor, inside of taverns, with women who meant little more than coin would allow him. Jack Sparrow was youthful in the ways of women still, fresh in his journey's, new to this sort of strengthened female, one with demands and interests beyond most.
She did not reply to his inquiry, and instead leaned closer toward him, her hand settled low on his lap near the bulge protruding through the woven blankets, and let her lips melt into the heated skin on his neck, his bared shoulder blades, his heaving chest. The shoulder length wisps of his black hair met entanglement in his fingers as she pulled him further into her, wanting to taste him at all costs, wanting to give him what he wished for without notation. Jack had never known such a feeling before, such pleasure without labor, such intoxication in the freedom of passion. This first sensation of true sexual awakening, in the backwoods of the Florida landscape, beneath the strange mouth of a dark and mystically named Calusa woman, had changed him forever.
It was Nahimana who had given him the power of bliss in the world, that night.
All through the night.
Jack sat crumbled by the cave, his concentration on the black and green waters broken by the sound of footsteps and joking in approach from behind. He heard Elizabeth laughing by way of his first mate's antics, and his heart jumped through his skin and into the sky, in a way he'd never known it to before. Something was going wrong with the world around him, something was twisting itself into confusion and utter complexity.
And he swore as he turned around to face a smiling, humbled Elizabeth Turner, Elizabeth Swann…that he felt the power of passion from her eyes set on his. He swore he felt the stoned ground beneath him quake with anticipation such as he had only ever known once. It was Nahimana's stare through Elizabeth's solid crimson eyes.