I stared at her, looking for the hint of a smirk or a smile that would show me that Rebecca was joking, but she stared back at me with a seriousness in her eyes that I couldn't ignore or brush off. I started to feel sick. My palms were clammy. This was utter madness. Of course it had been a dream. Maybe it had just been so long since I had been a child her age that I didn't remember what it was like to make things up that you really truly believe in, because there was something in her eyes that scared me a lot. It wasn't just the seriousness there, it was more than that, is was desperation. This was something she needed me to believe. "Wake up," she whispered and the world around me flickered momentarily. Then there were footsteps on the deck outside. Running. Urgent.

The door to the Cabin was wrenched open and Rebecca stepped back from me a little. The drawing of the medallion fell to the ground between us. I don't know who I was expecting to open the door of the pirate ship, but I was surprised that it was George. I felt an odd rush of something when I saw him. Like relief, but colder. Five other Navy Officers stood behind him. When he saw me I noticed a glimmer of fear in his features. He crossed the room and grabbed my shoulders. "Isabelle, are you alright?"

"What…?" my voice escaped as a whisper, my words a few moments behind the rest of the conversation and directed completely at Rebecca.

"You're very pale," George continued. "Do you need to sit down?"

There was a silence and I focused on him. His concerned, friendly face. His familiar green eyes. His grip on my shoulders. Firm. Solid. Real. This was George. My George. Everything around me became a lot more solid. George was here. I was here. It was all here. Everything was as it should be.

"I'm fine," I replied, although the moment I did the words sounded like a lie to me. "Just felt a little faint, that's all. Probably the heat."

I expected George to let go of me, but he didn't. I wanted him to. He looked over at the other men that had come in with him. "Give us a moment," he ordered. "Take the girl."

Rebecca didn't move, but the officers did, which struck me as odd because I thought they were of the same ranking as George. Why were they following his orders? One of them tried to take Rebecca by the arms, but she snatched them away with a defiant, "No!"

"Rebecca, it's okay," I said gently. She frowned. "I'll be right out, just wait for me outside."

She went, reluctantly, but refusing to be escorted, her little head held high. I smiled. The door closed and I looked back at the man holding me. Too close. He was too close. "George?"

"What are you doing in here?" he asked me with a calmness I did not trust.

"Looking for James," again, I lied to him. It was automatic. Why? George was my friend. Right? He glanced around the Cabin.

"Here?" he questioned. I tried to shrug, but his grip on me was too firm.

"Someone told me he was here."

"Who?"

Why wouldn't he let this go?

"I'm not sure, George, I didn't ask his name. Does it matter?"

"No," George said in a way that made me wonder if it was as obvious when I was lying. He looked away for a moment.

"Please let go of me," I said. "I'm fine now, honestly."

He looked back at his own hands on my shoulders as if seeing them for the first time. "Oh," he said. "Sorry. Of course, of course." He let go and I breathed a little bit easier. "I'm just so worried about you, Izzy. You seem to have been a little ill since your brother's promotion ceremony. I just hope you're back to your usual self soon."

My brother's promotion ceremony. He was right, that was when my life felt like it had started to unravel and come apart at the seams. Why? Had something happened there? It was the first of my strange dreams I think… but… This was not possible. No, not probable. It was too impossible for me not to be affected by it. My dreams had never been stronger and more vivid than they had in the last few weeks. Since my brother's ceremony. Had something happened to me before it? I struggled to remember. Everything since the ceremony and the ceremony itself was fairly clear in my mind and easy to remember, but the days before that? They were hazy, as if they had been years ago, not weeks. I glanced down at the picture of the medallion and called it up from the depths of the memories of my dreams. Sometimes, further into the dreams it was covered in blood. Why? Whose? I had never searched for the reason, in my dreams I already knew, but outside of the dream… nothing was clear. It's so hard to hold on to a dream in the cold light of day- all they want to do is hang back in the shadows.

George was looking at me. I'd been silent too long. "Let's go!" I said brightly. "I don't want to be late for the hanging. Biggest one we've had in a long time."

George smiled back. As he turned to leave I stood on Rebecca's drawing, covering it briefly with my foot before a swift flick sent it fluttering under the desk we were standing beside. I assumed that nobody would find it and if they did there was no way that they would link it back to me or Rebecca. How could they? It made me nervous, but I doubted that there would be anyway for either of us to sneak back in here and get it back. I would probably never stand on this ship again. There was a sudden heaviness in my chest that I did not quite understand. George held the door open for me and I stepped out to find Rebecca instantly by my side. I picked her up. "Time to go," I told her walked down the gangplank with her balancing on my hip. She looked worried and felt tense.

"The medallion," I whispered. "What does it do? Is it cursed?"

She smiled a little, said "Yes," very quietly in my ear. It didn't come as a shock or even a surprise, more as a conformation. If it didn't shock me then it was a knowledge I had gained from my dreams and if that was the case it was something I knew instinctively, deep down. And if I knew that, I would know the rest. Somewhere. Somehow. I had to get it back. Maybe it was something to do with-

I stopped where I was and stood still for a moment. The blacksmith's, Mr Brown's, stood in front of me looking as it always did- just another shop that blended in with the ones around it. But not to me. To me it stood out against the rest of the grey stone buildings. It stood out as something that was wrong, missing from my life. Will. I had woken up on the morning of my brother's promotion ceremony certain that I knew a man called Will and everyone I knew and loved had told me that I was mistaken. Now, here stood my only real, concrete, physical link to him. The dirty, grimy, smoke-filled, noisy shop where I had thought he worked was real and suddenly I was sure that Will had to be too. Because the Will in my mind, as faint as he may be, was not the boy that they told me had drowned. How could he be? If he had died as a child, why was he an adult in my mind? A real, living, breathing man.

But why would anyone lie to me?

Was I just going mad- taking a few dreams and the fantasies of a little girl far too seriously?

George had caught up with me. He stopped where I had stopped and stared at the shop with me. I studied his expression. Would George lie to me? Would he think I was mad? "Are you alright?" he asked me.

I nodded. "It was Brown's that made the sword for my brother, was it not?" I asked, testing him.

"Yeah," he shrugged. "I think so, why?"

His eyes didn't move from my face. There was a small smile on his lips, but it was not unpleasant, just curious. I smiled back. "Just checking, I must remember to thank him properly."

George nodded in agreement. "That's good of you. You could send him something later; we don't want to be late for the hanging."

I paused for a second longer and was glad I did because the door opened. The boy who stepped out was not Will. I shouldn't have expected it to be, it was Charles Adderson, the same boy who had delivered my brother's sword to Governor Swann and who everyone had told me was Mr Brown's apprentice. I was sure that it should have been Will. The longer I stared at the blacksmith's the surer I was that something was wrong and something was missing. Will. It had to be him.

I walked on, George falling in to step beside me. I was desperate to talk to Rebecca alone, but there was no easy way of removing George from this now. He would probably be with us all the way up to the Fort. Perhaps I could tell him? …No, George would think I was mad. Maybe I was. Maybe talking to him about it would help. I was as certain now as I had been the morning of James's ceremony that William Turner had existed and survived in to adulthood. But why would anyone lie to me about that…? Unless something truly horrible had happened… Horrible enough for me to forget it and everyone else to pretend that it had never even happened in the first place. For now, it seemed, I would have to try and work it out on my own. I ran through as many thing as I could from my dreams, but it was hard to remember what was important and what wasn't. I needed something else. I started feeling dizzy. For a second I thought I was going to be sick. It wasn't a dream. Rebecca's voice echoed in my head so loudly that I had to actually glance at her for a moment to check that she had not spoken. She looked back at me, silent and wide-eyed. It wasn't a dream. She smiled and, with a sudden and unprecedented rush inside me, I smiled back. Suddenly, somehow, we had a secret to share. I let it settle deep in my chest.

I took my place next to James. He was standing on a platform at the back of the crowd in front of the gallows with Governor Swann and Elizabeth. It seemed unusually hot considering there was a slight breeze in the air. I glanced down at Rebecca to check that she was okay with all of this. Her head was turned and her eyes were fixed on the procession of prisoners that were making their way from the jail to the gallows. I could hear the rattle of their chains in the silence of the crowd. As the drums started to roll my skin prickled. It was probably the heat. James bent down to pick Rebecca up so that she could see better, obviously proud of her apparent interest in the proceedings. I saw a few faces in the crowd glance back at her, everyone was still so nosy about my mysterious little girl, but she took no notice of them. The line of prisoners reached the foot of the gallows. Something moved behind me and I turned around to look back in to the shadows. Nothing. I must have been mistaken. I looked back to where the first prisoner was making his way up the steps to the waiting noose. His large-brimmed, round hat caught my eye and something scuttled behind me again.

I glanced at the people around me to see if they had heard it too, but nobody flinched. Hangings were such high entertainment and this was such a large number being hanged that a small scuttle in the corner would never be noticed. The man in the big hat reached the top of the gallows and was turned around to face everyone. As he did so, something brushed against my ankle and I looked down. There it was. Something else from my dreams. A small monkey was holding the bottom of my dress in his tiny, little fists and looking up at me with big, sad eyes. I stared down at him and he let out a small whimper. "No," I whispered, as if I could somehow translate monkey.

I looked back at the gallows, where the first prisoner's name was being read out, "Captain Hector Barbossa." I knew it before it had been said.

"No," I said again.

My brother looked at me, "Isabelle are you alright?"

"No," I shook my head. George came out of nowhere and put a strong hand on my shoulder. The moment he touched me I started to feel weak.

"You're shaking," he said. There was growing concern around me now, but it was nothing compared the panic that was caged inside of me. I took a deep breath and fixed my eyes on the man about to be hung. I knew what he would look like, but still, I needed to check.

Yes.

There he was. Hector Barbossa. I knew him, I didn't know how I did, but I had never been more certain of anything. I was also certain that this wasn't right. That Hector Barbossa was not meant to die today. And neither was his crew. It wasn't a dream. I had to talk to him. Maybe he would know something. I tried to spring forwards, into the crowd, but as I did so my foot connected with something hard in front of me. Something that I was sure hadn't been there before and, if I hadn't known any better, had been the foot of someone around me trying to trip me up. I went flying from the platform where we were standing and smashed headfirst off the stone floor of the Fort. There was a moment where my vision was gone. It came back fuzzy and confusing and things were difficult to hear. I looked around, scrambling for something real to hold on to. The monkey chased an apple in to the crowd. People surrounded me, their faces a concerned blur. Rebecca was the only one who wasn't looking at me in shock. She knew. It wasn't a dream.

George's face loomed out of nowhere and blocked her from my sight. He moved all the hair from my face and I felt my head start to sting. James knelt down on my other side. "Izzy," he put an arm under my shoulder to help me sit up. "What's happened? Are you alright?"

"Um," I raised my hand to my forehead and saw that it was shaking. "Yeah."

"You don't look it," he said. "I think we need to get you to a doctor."

The beat of the drums from the gallows started to speed up. I glanced back at where the gallows were, but couldn't see them through the crowd that was now towering above me. "No."

"It's okay," James said soothingly. "Don't worry about missing this, you've fainted and you've hit your head and you need a doctor and some rest. I will take you home."

I shook my head. "James, no."

"You're bleeding," George said gently and then looked over me to James. "Don't worry, I'll take care of her. You can stay here and make sure this carries on and I will take her home."

I let George help me to my feet. I looked around for the monkey, but he was gone. Standing up, made me extremely dizzy. George's arm was firmly around me for support and he started to walk me away from the gallows.

The drums sped up once more and Hector Barbossa's sentence was read to the crowd. I pushed myself away from George for a moment and ducked behind a pillar. The drums came to an abrupt halt. I vomited on the stone floor. The trapdoor opened and I heard the roar of the crowd that signalled the end of Hector Barbossa's life.