Here's another chapter for you guys, just finished the entire first movie, moving on to DMC now. The chapter breaks were really hard for me to do properly for this one so ive ended up with 6 semi-long chapters. So...here's chapt 3
Chapter 3
Elizabeth changed into the beautiful, plum dress and minutes later the girls walked out of the cabin. Jessica led Elizabeth to one of the cabins adjacent to the captain's quarters. It had been transformed into an elaborate -as elaborated as a cabin on a cursed ship could be- dining room. A long table, set with gold trays and bright silverware, covered most of the room that was linked to the captain's quarters by a single wooden door.
Elizabeth sat next to Barbossa, who was also sitting. Jessica leaned against the wall, crossing her arms. Food was set out on the table, including a giant pig. Elizabeth daintily cut a piece of the pig on her plate and used her fork to eat it. Jessica smiled as Barbossa laughed at Elizabeth.
"There's no need to stand on ceremony, nor call to impress anyone," Barbossa said, "you must be hungry."
Elizabeth looked at Barbossa, then dropped her silverware and stuffed her face with the meat. She then rapidly grabbed at the food on the table. Jessica's eyes widened at the immediate change in Elizabeth. Barbossa poured some wine into a silver goblet and handed it to Elizabeth.
"And the wine next," Barbossa said.
Elizabeth took the goblet and gulped down the wine.
Elizabeth then went to pick up a piece of bread, but stopped as Barbossa held up a green apple.
"And the apples, one of those next?" Barbossa said.
Elizabeth dropped everything in her hands and looked at Barbossa.
"It's poisoned," she said in shock.
Barbossa chuckled and Jessica was suddenly interested in the conversation.
"There would be no sense to be killing ya, Miss Turner," Barbossa said.
"Then release me, you have your trinket, I'm of no further value to you," Elizabeth said.
Barbossa took the medallion from the folds in his clothes.
"You don't know what this is, do you?" he asked Elizabeth.
"It's a pirate medallion," Elizabeth said quickly.
"This is Aztec gold, one of eight-hundred-eighty-two identical pieces they delivered in a stone chest to Cortés himself. Blood money paid to stem the slaughter he wreaked upon them with his armies, but the greed of Cortés was insatiable. So the heathen gods placed upon the gold a terrible curse, any mortal that removes but a single piece from that stone chest shall be punished for eternity," Barbossa said.
"I hardly believe in ghost stories anymore, Captain Barbossa," Elizabeth said.
Barbossa and Jessica both smiled.
Jessica was surprised and confused, Barbossa never told anyone who came aboard the ship this, they usually had to figure it out for themselves. As was Jessica's case.
"Aye, that's exactly what I thought when we were first told the tale, buried on an island of the dead what cannot be found, except for those who already know where it is. Find it we did, there be the chest, inside be the gold, and we took 'em all. We spent them and traded them and frittered them away on drink and food and pleasurable company. The more we gave them away, the more we came to realize: the drink would not satisfy, food turned to ash in our mouths, and all the pleasurable company in the world could not slake our lust. We are cursed men, Miss Turner, compelled by greed we were, but now we are consumed by it," Barbossa said.
Jack the monkey started to screech wildly and Barbossa moved to calm him, taking his eyes off Elizabeth. Jessica's eyes widened as she saw Elizabeth take a knife from the table and conceal it in the folds of her dress.
"There is one way we can end our curse," Barbossa said petting Jack and handing him the gold piece.
Barbossa started to walk back toward Elizabeth, Jack hopping on his shoulder.
"All the scattered pieces of the Aztec gold must be restored and the blood repaid," Barbossa said.
Jack jumped from his shoulder and started running.
"Thanks to ye, we have the final piece," Barbossa said.
Elizabeth's face went white, "And the blood to be repaid?"
"That's why theres no sense to be killing ya," Barbossa said, "Yet."
Elizabeth's eyes widened in terror.
"Apple?" Barbossa said holding out the apple.
Elizabeth knocked the apple from Barbossa's hand, drawing out the knife she started to run, Barbossa chasing her around the cabin. Barbossa caught her arm and Elizabeth turned and stabbed Barbossa in the chest with it. He stood there looking at it and then pulled the knife out.
"I'm curious. After killin' me what is it you're planning on doing next?" Barbossa said.
Elizabeth gasped and, eyes wide, started to back out of the cabin. Jessica smiled at Elizabeth's reaction, feeling a little sorry for her, and turned to Barbossa.
"Captain?" Jessica said.
Barbossa chuckled menacingly,"I'm fine, she'd have been better off in here than out there, but it'd only be fair to be lettin' her know what she's gotten herself into."
Jessica nodded, grinning slyly and then went out the doors to the cabin to see Elizabeth's reaction to the crew. Elizabeth was running around the deck screaming as she encountered the undead, cursed pirates, one of which was chasing her. The pirates weren't exactly skeletons, but were very close. They were like skeletons with bits of rotting flesh and tattered and torn clothes on them, as if they had been dead and decaying for years.
Jessica not-so-fondly remembered her first encounter with the pirates. She had already been a scared, nervous mess after thinking Will was dead, she had wandered out on deck at night. She had seen the pirates, and, in her youth, had nightmares about it for a long while before she finally didn't mind it anymore. Jessica looked down at the space below the stairs leading to the helm, there, Elizabeth crouched with Jack screeching at her. Jack was also like the pirates with tufts of rotting fur hanging off his bones. Elizabeth got up and darted from under the stairs to the doors. Barbossa -who had come to stand next to Jessica- caught her as she tried to run past him.
"Look!" he said turning Elizabeth around. "The moonlight shows us for what we really are. We are not among the living so we cannot die, but neither are we dead."
He spun Elizabeth back around to face him.
"For too long I've been parched of thirst and unable to quench it, too long I've been starving to death and haven't died. I feel nothing, not the wind on my face, nor the spray of the sea, nor the warmth of a woman's flesh," Barbossa said advancing to Elizabeth -who was backing up- with every word.
They were both in the moonlight now, Barbossa had become the same as the crew.
"You best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner," Barbossa said. "You're in one!"
Barbossa uncorked a bottle of wine he was holding with his teeth and started to drink it, but all it did was go flowing down his bones to the deck below. Elizabeth gasped and ran back into the captain's cabin, Jessica following her.
Jessica found Elizabeth huddled in a corner of the cabin.
"Are you alright?" Jessica asked Elizabeth, sliding down to sit beside her.
"Yes. A little shaken, but otherwise I'm fine," Elizabeth said quietly.
Jessica smiled, "I did try to warn you, but Pintel and Ragetti came in as I was about to."
"Oh. How have you lived on this ship knowing the pirates were like that?"
Jessica laughed.
"I did have nightmares for a while when I was younger, but I've learned to deal with it. The men are the same, they just look different, and I know they wouldn't harm me, I'm too valuable to them."
Jessica cut her last word short, knowing she had revealed too much information about herself and family that could ultimately drive away Elizabeth's trust.
"Valuable, how?"
"I-I don't know, but I figured I must be or they would have killed me or left me on that ship. They would have no use for me," Jessica covered herself.
For the next two days Elizabeth and Jessica became closer, friends more than prisoners. Elizabeth refused to go outside the cabin, so Jessica brought food and drink for her when she could. Jessica still had to work on the ship, but otherwise stayed with Elizabeth. On the second day Ragetti and Pintel brought Elizabeth above deck, Jessica saw they were anchored at Isla de Muerta.
"Oh,no," Jessica muttered, running to Elizabeth's side.
They were tying Elizabeth's hands together.
"What are you-?" Jessica started to ask, but Barbossa came up and she distanced herself.
Barbossa swept Elizabeth's hair off of her neck and put the medallion around it. Barbossa and the crew climbed into the long boats -Jessica and Elizabeth with Barbossa- and started to row for the island. The crew rowed to the island, Elizabeth unaware of what was going to happen.
The crew arrived and everyone got out of the boats into the cave. Inside the cave there were mounds and mounds of gold, silver, and bronze everything. Pots, pans, goblets, coins, pictures even, anything anyone could ever imagine of wanting. Jessica was amazed at the sheer numbers of everything, all this gold, the pirates had plundered it all. They were unloading all of the valuables they had pillaged from Port Royal and were throwing it into the piles.
"Ten years of hoarding swag," Jessica heard Pintel say.
"And now we finally get to spend it," Ragetti said.
Jessica walked away as Elizabeth was pushed up to a mound of stone and gold items that formed an island with water around it on which sat a huge stone chest. Barbossa stood by it as Elizabeth was pushed beside him, Jessica following. Jessica stood next to Elizabeth, who was in hysterics by now, she'd convinced Barbossa that Elizabeth "trusted" her and that she would be calm with her close. Barbossa stood slightly away from the chest.
"Gentlemen, the time has come! Our salvation is nigh! Our torment is near an end!" Barbossa yelled.
After each statement the crew replied with a "Yeah!"
"For ten years we've been tested and tried, and each man jack of you here has proved his mettle a hundred times over," Barbossa gestured to the whole crew, "and a hundred times again!" Barbossa rallied.
Jessica looked up to a spot just above the entrance to the cave and thought she saw someone moving.
"Suffered I have!" Jessica heard Ragetti yell.
Barbossa turned to him.
"Punished we were, the lot of us! Disproportionate to our crimes. Here it is," Barbossa said kicking the cover of the chest off with his foot.
"The cursed treasure of Cortés himself," Barbossa said running his hand over the many gold pieces that lay in the chest.
Jessica looked up at the entrance of the cave again, she could have sworn she saw something move!
"Every last piece that went astray we have returned, save for this!" Barbossa said savagely pointing to Elizabeth's neck where hung the gold medallion.
Jessica saw gold coins slide off the ledge they sat on at the entrance, she knew someone was definitely there.
"Eight-hundred-eighty-one we found, but despaired at ever finding the last," Barbossa said.
His words were lost to Jessica as her focus was on the entrance. Who was it? Were they here to help or was it even a "they" or just one person? Jessica's thoughts were soon pushed away.
"And who among us has paid the blood sacrifice owed to the heathen gods?" Barbossa said.
"Us!" the crew exclaimed.
"And who's blood must yet be paid?"
"Hers!" came the crew's reply, followed by some viscous gestures.
Jessica's anxiety rose with each word.
"You know the first thing I'm gonna do when the curse is lifted?" Barbossa said.
The crew laughed.
"Eat a whole bushel of apples," Barbossa said mostly to Elizabeth.
Barbossa forced Elizabeth to bend over the stone chest, he grabbed a rusted dagger that had been lying in the stone chest and held it up for the crew to see.
The crew started chanting together, "Ho!"
"Begun by blood," he said. "By blood undone."
Whoever was going to save or hurt them, they'd better do it now Jessica's thoughts ran. Barbossa yanked the medallion from Elizabeth's neck and grabbed her hand. Barbossa pushed the medallion into her hand and ran the dagger along her palm, cutting it. Elizabeth gasped, unable to pull her hand away as Barbossa still had a firm grip on it.
Elizabeth looked down at her hand, "That's it?" she asked shocked.
"Waste not," Barbossa said.
He curled Elizabeth's hand around the medallion, covering it with her blood. She fought him as he tried to get her to re-open her hand, finally having to pressure her forearm to open her hand. The medallion dropped into the chest hitting the other coins. Barbossa released Elizabeth and Jessica moved to Elizabeth's side.
Jessica and Elizabeth watched as the crew stood there, apparently waiting for some dramatic change.
"Did it work?" asked one of the crew members after a long silence.
"I don't feel no different," Ragetti said.
"How do we tell?" Pintel asked.
Barbossa rolled his eyes, cocked his pistol and shot it all in one motion. Jessica looked at Pintel who had a bullet hole in his chest.
"You're not dead," said a crew member.
"No," Pintel said laughing.
"He shot me!" Pintel said after realizing what Barbossa had done.
"It didn't work," Ragetti said disdainfully.
"The curse is still upon us!" a crew member yelled.
Barbossa looked at the dagger and then back at Elizabeth. Jessica had a feeling something bad was about to happen, she wished for Elizabeth that she had never lied about her name.
"You, maid! Your father, what was his name! Was your father William Turner!" Barbossa yelled angrily shaking Elizabeth.
"No," Elizabeth said her voice acquiring a mocking tone.
"Where's his child! The child that sailed from England eight years ago," Barbossa said picking up the medallion from the chest. "The child in whose veins flows the blood of William Turner. Where!"
Elizabeth's face had a smug look on it as she kept silent. Jessica flinched as Barbossa struck Elizabeth across the face, knocking her down the back of the little island. Elizabeth lay on the edge of the island near the shallow water, out of everyone's view but Jessica's.
Jessica turned from looking at Elizabeth, back to Barbossa.
"Did you know she was the wrong person!" Barbossa yelled at her.
"Aye," Jessica said smugly.
"Then why didn't you tell me? Why?" Barbossa yelled.
"I guess you've failed your crew again, Captain," Jessica said in fake-pity.
Barbossa struck Jessica down next to Elizabeth, Jessica blacking out. Before she knew it a hand clamped over her mouth, she jumped seeing Elizabeth and... Elizabeth grabbed the medallion Barbossa had mistakenly let fall next to her. He motioned for them to follow him into the water. Jessica hurried Elizabeth into the water, following her. She knew they only had minutes before Barbossa would notice they were gone.
As Jessica and Elizabeth swam to the edge of the water Jessica could hear the crew arguing with Barbossa. Jessica followed them to the long boats were.
"Grab the oars," he said. "All of them."
Jessica, dazed at what was happening, or rather, who was in front of her, picked up all the oars she could carry and got into one of the boats, helping Elizabeth in. He rowed them out of the cave, Jessica, not wanting to seem weak, started to help row. They laid the oars out in the water as the cleared the cave. Jessica saw a ship with two masts ahead, and that's where they were going.
He helped Elizabeth up, then Jessica. As soon as the three were standing on the deck the crew came up. One stood out to Jessica from the rest.
"Gibbs!" Jessica exclaimed happily.
"Not more pirates," Elizabeth said disdainfully.
"Welcome aboard, Miss Elizabeth," Gibbs said.
"Mr. Gibbs?" Elizabeth asked.
"Hey, boy, where be Jack?" Gibbs asked.
"Jack? Jack Sparrow?" Elizabeth and Jessica said at the same time.
"He fell behind," he said.
"We can't leave him! Where is he? Jack doesn't just fall behind. We can't leave him, you can't imagine what Barbossa will do if he finds out Jack is alive! We have to wait!" Jessica exclaimed.
"Sorry, Miss Jessica, but Jack be the one who told us to keep to the Code, and keep to the Code we will. I don't like it any more that you do," Gibbs said turning away.
"Weigh anchor! Hoist the sails! Make quick you divvies!" came a woman's voice from the helm.
Now he, Elizabeth and Jessica were on the deck alone. Jessica couldn't hold herself back any longer, she didn't care if Elizabeth was there.
"Will!" Jessica exclaimed running to him.
She placed her hands on his shoulders, warmth spreading over her body as she kissed him, releasing what she had held in for eight years. Will slowly placed his arms around her waist. She wished that kiss could have lasted forever, when their lips met it was like cannon fire.
"That's for making me think you were dead for eight years," Jessica said pulling out of the kiss.
Will embraced her and she returned his embrace, placing her head on his chest.
"Jessica," Will said softly.
"Will, I-" Jessica started.
"I thought you were dead," they said at the same time.
"You first," Will said softly.
Jessica sighed.
"I- that day...Will I thought I'd never see you again," Jessica said softly.
"I thought the same when I woke and you were gone," Will said, his voice soothing Jessica.
Will ran his hand through her dark-brown hair that fell to the middle of her back. She buried her face against Will's chest, trying to forget those horrible feelings.
Will then seemed to notice Elizabeth standing there, watching them. Jessica moved to his side, Will placed his arm around her shoulders.
"Elizabeth, this is..."
"I know, Jessica," Elizabeth said.
Will looked confused.
"Will, we were prisoners aboard the same ship," Jessica said laughing.
"Will, we know each other," Elizabeth said. "I know you and Jessica were friends until you were separated the same day we picked you up adrift."
Jessica then remembered Will's claim from earlier.
"Will, where's Jack?" Jessica asked, looking up at him.
"How do you know Jack Sparrow?" Elizabeth asked.
"First, tell me how you know Jack," Jessica pressured, not wanting to tell Elizabeth.
"He saved me from drowning then threatened to kill me," Elizabeth said.
"Aye, that's Jack all right," Jessica said.
"You didn't tell her?" Will said to Jessica.
"No because I didn't think it was relevant, nor necessary at the time."
Elizabeth seemed confused.
"Tell me what?" she asked.
"I never told you my last name, my name is Jessica Sparrow. I know Jack because he's my brother."
Yeeeah, I'm sure by the title that you would have guess she was related to Jack somehow, I mean, who wouldn't? Anyway, chapt 4 coming soon.
Oh, and hopefully my story is less confusing by now, seeing as the first chapt wasnt very good...at all...what so ever... so hope my writing skills have improved since then XD