Tia Dalma hurried below decks, the Pearl lying on her side on the beach.
"Mary! Mary, ye hear me when I summon ya."
"Glad to see you're still one of the ones on board."
"What are ye dinking, girl? I tole ya ta watch over dis crew and you toss 'em all overboard!"
"Nay, not all of 'em, Calypso. I made sure to keep that spry one on board. Not to worry. He got the spirit of a leader, he does. He'll see 'em all to safety, Will Turner. I 'spect he saw me, though, got the crew a might worked up. You was sayin' how they'll all kill each other so I had it in mind to send this tempest, blow 'em all over the place. They'll collect each other and be so thankful to be alive they'll forget all about whatever ails them. Make no mistake, Calypso, them what's on this island'll have a change of heart."
Tia Dalma sighed, remembering for all her pirating experience, Mary still somehow managed to be so childlike at times. A well-meaning little angel who never shied from cleaning her own messes.
"Mary, little ye know bout dis crew. Now I need to go back up and calm da rest."
"What do you need from Mary then?" she asked, hands behind her back, hovering above the steps.
"You. You watch dem dat braves the island."
"Well, somethin' tells me we won't be capsizing the ship at sunset." Barbossa stomped down the deck's steps, the charts rolled up in his fist. Will watched him squint his glare at the remaining crew. Over half had to be washed away somewhere, if not on this island, then…
"Barbossa, can we die in the Locker?" He cringed at the question, remembering seeing the man shoot one of his own just to see if their curse had been lifted.
"Davy Jones only keeps ya alive if he wants, which means we best not be countin' on that luxury. Can't say for certain, though. We ain't playin' by his rules no more. Ya see, Jones likes to keep thing stagnant—no storms, no waves, no bloody cold spells. Mister Gibbs!"
"Aye?" Gibbs bounded towards them, now in a long coat.
"Where did you find a coat?"
"We've got loads of 'em here, didn't think the Locker would take those, seein' how it mended the main cabin and all."
Will's hands flew up to his face, his fingers pressing into his scalp. Without saying another word, he stormed down into the hull and emerged moments later with his arms full of coats of all lengths and materials. The men ran to them, dripping wet and numb from the cold. Almost trampling him, they threw off their shirts and wrapped themselves up in the coats, thanking him in several languages for them.
"Now that no one else here is going to die of exposure," he scolded the rest of them, "we need a plan."
"Where be the witch?" Gibbs asked. The three of them turned their heads every which way.
"A fine name comin' from you," Tia Dalma said from right behind Barbossa. "I tot maybe Barbossa would at least be smart enough to defend my honor."
Will thought he caught Barbossa's bottom lip quiver, perhaps at the thought of being dead again. On top of everything-- Elizabeth, tempests, freezing temperatures, and imagined albatrosses, he did not need one of the last men left standing to be killed just because of her vanity.
"All right. This looks like the only place anyone tossed overboard would have ended up. I say we search it, gather everyone back here, and press on from there. We may not be able to leave this sunset, but it looks like there will be plenty of food to be found." He stepped over to the edge of the ship. "You men, stay on the ship." Tia Dalma repeated the order to them. They nodded their heads while Will silently pleaded with Cotton and Marty. They nodded back to him, assuring him the ship would still be here when they returned. "Gibbs, Barbossa? Tia Dalma." She smiled at him and winked. "You can come with us if you like."
Sashaying over to him, she bumped him with her hip and waggled a finger at Gibbs and Barbossa to follow her. No wonder Jack had said it was his front he was worried about when he was with her.
The interior of the island was hilly, jagged rocks jutting out of massive landforms between the branches of the trees. They weren't mountains, but they might as well have been, leaving only a fraction of even terrain. Elizabeth followed Pintel and Ragetti, their ramblings now background music to her. They all marched on, hunched over in cold, their movement the only thing stopping their drenched clothes from freezing them to death.
"Wait," she called to them, curving off to a row of medium-sized trees with staunch, hard trunks. Resilient sentinels, their oval leaves brushed her neck, a few greenish objects hanging lazily off of them. Pushing back one of the branches, she held it in her fingertips. "Olives," she whispered. "Olives!"
"We thought you was shoutin' for help, poppet."
"No, no, there are olives on this island. We can eat these. Here." She plucked the rest of them from the branch, handing them off to the two of them. "It must mean this place doesn't see a lot of cold." She tugged at another branch, sweeping the olives down to the ground. Gathering them in the end of her soaked shirt, she motioned for the clearing. "We'll have to get a fire going and come up with some sort of shelter."
"Fire sounds mighty fine right now," Ragetti said, rubbing his long hands together, leading them out of the brush and back onto the beach. The green choppy sea still looked uninviting.
Scanning the long narrow strip of sand, she felt like a hand squeezed her heart into pulp. The olives went flying as she broke into a sprint.
Pintel and Ragetti soon saw it too, racing into the cold surf to find Jack on his stomach, eyes closed and a magnificent cut running along the side of his face.
"Jack? Jack!" she shrieked, her forearms tensed parallel to the ground, too paralyzed to touch him.
"Blimey, he's freezing cold," Pintel gasped when he and Ragetti dragged him out onto the dry sand.
"Warm him up!" Elizabeth screamed. They only cocked their heads at her. "I know how it's done. Warm him up! Both of you, take off your clothes and hold him!"
"What?"
"Do it!"
Neither moved a muscle. She drew out her pistol, the fire in her eyes giving the rest of her a few seconds of unbridled heat. Pointing it right at them, she noticed a droplet of water crash to the ground from it. Bloody thing probably didn't even work, she thought, before remembering she was dealing with Pintel and Ragetti. The heat left her as quickly as it came, the metal of the pistol chilling her fingers.
"Miss Elizabeth, do be reasonable."
"I am being more than reasonable! He'll die! Take his clothes off and make him warm!" She took a step forward, her lips curled back in a menacing sneer. "Don't make me tell you again."
They bent down, out of her line of sight. She hoped they were doing what she told them since she was keeping her eyes zeroed in on the clouds above, black and enormous with no sign of clearing.
"Miss Elizabeth?" Ragetti asked.
"What?"
"Seein' as how there's three of us, could you build us a fire?"
She about dropped the pistol with the speed her shoulder slumped. All she could do was bite her lip, her mind wondering just how angry with herself she ought to be. For two straight months, she had steered a ship, charted courses, mended sails, heaved nets of fish onto the deck, gutted them, cooked them, and ran her sword through anyone that had stood in their way…and she still didn't know how to make a fire? Still? Her second time being marooned and she didn't know how to make a fire? Wasn't that the key ingredient to being human, the act that separated them from the animals? And here she found out it only separated her from Pintel and Ragetti.
"Do, do one of you know how to?"
"Sure do, Miss Elizabeth, and I'd be very happy to make one." Ragetti sprung up before she could avert her eyes, but there was no need. Only their shirts and boots were off, lying in a slushy pile off to the side.
"I'll, I'll leave you to it then," she stuttered, realizing what would have to come next. At least this way she would be more than dead weight. "Right over there, where you can see us. Don't…don't watch me."
"No one's looking at ye, poppet," Pintel yelled up to her. "I'd be much obliged if you took the front, though. Got a feeling I'd be more comfortable back here."
Forcing herself to look down, she saw Pintel had positioned himself behind Jack, his chest wedged onto his back, an arm awkwardly bent over Jack's waist so as not to touch any skin but not rest on anything below his belt. A last bit of English modesty tapped on her brain before she unbuttoned her vest and threw it into the clothes pile. She actually felt a few degrees warmer removing her shirt. It clung to her head, having suddenly gained the weight of a house, but she pulled it off and flung herself onto the ground in one swift motion. In nothing but her trousers, she scooted into Jack, using his chest to conceal her bare breasts.
"Can I look now?" Ragetti asked.
"Very well," she sighed, kicking her boots off and setting her head down on Jack, covering him as much as she could. When he woke up and saw her, he'd kill her for sure, she thought, but it wouldn't matter. All that mattered now was that he lived.
"A bit ridiculous, ain't it, poppet, someone as skinny as yourself providing warmth?"
"Decidedly ridiculous," she said, smiling at Pintel's voice. Without him, it would be too much like lying naked with Jack on a private beach, and the thought of that…stirred her.
"Come on, Jack," she whispered to him, braving the impropriety enough to graze the side of his face with her fingers, avoiding his cut. "Don't die. Wake up. Wake up now."
A/N: "I sing of arms and of a man" comes from The Aeneid. Please let me know if it's not clear that this is a big island and everyone is on different ends of it. Please read and review! I updated fairly quickly. Don't get used to it! I'm so anxious to post what all I've already written. The gist of it is, they are still in the Locker, but there is more to it. I figure it would change depending upon Davy's mood/Beckett's control. Think of the desert we see in the movie as only a part of it. They've sailed and ended up on a very large, very wild island. I hope that was clear. Also, this is a little bit on the quirky side for me, so love it or think it a cheese-fest, let me know!