The bodies piled up. They were laid out in the courtyard to gather flies and be dealt with later. Or so I was told. There was something deep within me that longed to run to them, but I couldn't. I couldn't get away. Even if I did what would I do when I got there? What would I do when I saw Hector Barbossa's cold body with wide, glassy eyes and a twisted, broken neck? And his crew… his entire crew… Tears slipped down my face and on to my pillow and I couldn't seem to stop. There was a pain inside me that would have gone some way to explaining my tears if it weren't for the fact that it felt so far away. It was buried inside my chest but dulled as if someone had covered it in layers of sand before putting it in there. I knew where it was and how it should feel, I just couldn't quite get to it. I wasn't sure that I wanted to get to it. It felt like it would be far too much.

But… why was I feeling this for men I hadn't known? When I closed my eyes I felt like I could see them all, but that couldn't be real. I hadn't been able to glimpse the faces of the majority of them, but with my eyes shut I knew them all. The doctor had told me to rest and I was glad. George was coming over later with some kind of medicine, but for just now all I wanted to do was sleep. Not just because I was exhausted from what had happened at the hanging, but also because I hoped I would dream of something useful.

I closed my eyes and the faces of the men I had never known appeared to me. Fighting it was no good and if I was going to get any sleep then I would have to push past them. The more of the motley crew I saw, the drowsier I became until finally- after a short, bald pirate and a taller, slimmer pirate with a wooden eye had smiled at me- I saw the face of Hector Barbossa. He was animated, no longer dead and I felt an odd mix of relief and fear.

"Begun by blood," he said. "By blood undone."

The darkness around me lightened until I could just make out a dimly lit cave full of treasure. I saw the medallion, covered in blood. I heard something rattle behind me and turned to see a movement in the shadows. Will. It was Will. I knew he was the key to all of this. A shiver ran through me and everything else melted away until it was just me standing in that cave alone. I glanced at my hands and found the bloody medallion sitting there. The hand that held it was nothing but bone that gleamed in the moonlight. I knew instantly that it was Will's blood on there. I looked back up at an open chest that lay on top of a mountain of treasure in front of me. I had to approach it. When I looked down in to the chest I saw it was full of medallions just like the one I was holding. I dropped it in and my hand became flesh once more. Those pirates- the ones that had just been hung- were supposed to be immortal, that medallion made it so. The dread that filled me up grabbed my heart like an ice-cold hand and squeezed. It was enough to wake me up.

Begun by blood. By blood undone.

Judging by the light in my room, I hadn't been asleep for long. The sun hung low in the sky and was close to setting. I wondered how far away George was. I climbed out of bed and walked towards the window to stare at the rooftops of Port Royal. I shivered. Was I going mad? Too much of my dreams had seeped in to the real world for me to ignore it. But I couldn't work out what to do or who to talk to about it. If I spoke to the wrong person they would think I was deranged and that would be it for me- the insane have never been treated well. Or maybe I'd be burned at the stake for witchcraft, as dreaming things about people you've never met wouldn't go down too well with anyone.

The way I saw it, there were only one of three possible explanations. The first was that, if Will had never existed or had died as a child as everyone told me he had, then these pirates were still immortal and would rise from this hanging to wreak havoc on Port Royal. Perhaps these dreams had been sent to me as a warning so that I could save everyone I loved? My second theory was that the pirates were not immortal anymore and had died at the hanging, which would mean that Will was out there somewhere. The final theory was that these dreams really were a result of madness or witchcraft, in which case my future looked bleak. There was only one way for me to know for certain which of these was the most likely. I had to go to the courtyard and see if those dead bodies really were dead. And I had to go alone. I arranged my pillows so that it looked as if there was someone sleeping in my bed and made my room as dark as possible. I didn't want to raise any alarms if James or the doctor or George came to check on me before I was back. I opened my door and found my chambermaid, Ellie, standing outside. It looked like she had been placed out there to watch me, guard me.

"Oh, Miss!" she jumped when my door opened. "I wasn't expecting… the doctor said that you weren't feeling well and…"

I smiled at her. "It's okay, Ellie," I told her. "Is my brother back from the hanging?"

"Yes. Do you want me to fetch him for you?"

"No, it's alright," I smiled. "Can you just go and tell him that I'm resting and I don't want to be disturbed? I just really need some sleep. I'll speak to him tomorrow."

"Of course, Miss," Ellie said and scuttled away to do so. I waited until she had gone and took off down the corridor in the opposite direction. I thought it was less risky for me to sneak out through one of the back doors of the house than to try and get out of the front. Once I was out of the house I knew that I would be fine provided that I didn't run in to George at any point. I considered trying to find Rebecca, but decided that two of us sneaking off would double the chance of our absence being noticed. And, on second thoughts, looking at the (possibly undead) corpses of a pirate crew may not have been the best thing for a young child.

By the time I reached the courtyard at the Fort the light was fading fast and the moon was beginning to peak out from behind the horizon. I stopped at the edge of it and caught sight of where the gallows stood solid and silent now. The noose swung in the dying light. I braced myself and looked down at the shapes lying on the floor. There were so many of them. None of them moved, but I felt like I was disturbing them. Maybe I would be. Maybe there were all just lying very still until the opportune moment to resurrect themselves and pillage my town. I took a deep breath and stepped out. I picked my way around the bodies as quietly as I could. Some of them were lying face up, some face down and none of them had been laid down with any care. They were sprawled out, limbs askew. They had just been thrown from the gallows the second they'd died and left there. They could, quite easily have been asleep. I hovered by a few and looked down at their faces. The first few had their eyes shut, but they were pale and their necks were twisted. When I saw the first body who still had his eyes open I had to look away. It was horrible to be looked at by someone who couldn't look back at you.

I decided to look for Hector Barbossa specifically. He was their Captain. He was the only one whose name I knew and my reaction to his death was the only reason I was standing here in the first place. I had to pick my way over several of them before I found him at the edges of the group. That seemed wrong somehow, as if he should have been in the middle of his crew. That was the correct place for a Captain to be. He was lying on his back, eyes open and staring at the sky. I made eye contact with him and shuddered. There was a long time where he stared at me, but didn't see me at all. I cleared my throat. I wondered if he was actually dead or just playing dead and actually immortal, as he was in my dreams. "Hello," I said, feeling a little foolish. He didn't flinch. I felt bold enough to crouch down beside his head. "Mr… er,… Hector… um, Captain Barbossa?"

There was a long silence where I waited and studied him for any sign of immortal life. "Well," a man's voice said. I screamed and sprung away from the body in front of me to stare and whichever one of the undead pirates might have spoken to me. None of them moved and from the shadows I heard a soft laugh. I looked up and squinted at the shape that stood there. "You know they can't hear you, right love? They're dead."

"You," I whispered as the dark haired pirate I had freed from the jail stepped forwards.

"Captain Sparrow," he reminded me, although I hadn't forgotten, how could I? He took off his hat and bowed to me. I couldn't tell if the bow was genuine or a way of mocking me. I didn't really care. "If I remember correctly, I owe you my life. Isabelle, isn't it?"

I nodded, slowly. "What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?" he countered. "What's the Commodore's sister doing talking to an entire crew of dead pirates after sundown?"

"I was… checking they were dead," I admitted and it sounded so ridiculous out loud. He didn't laugh at me this time. He took a few steps forward.

"And why wouldn't they be?"

"There was a curse…" I stopped. Why was I telling this complete stranger something that I wasn't able to tell my own brother?

He wasn't even smiling anymore- just looking at me as if I was the most frightening and interesting person he had ever met. "What do you know of the curse?" he asked.

"Nothing," I replied honestly. "What do you know of it?"

"Heard it was a blood curse," he shrugged. "Placed on old Aztec gold. God knows how they managed to lift it."

"So… so the curse is real?" I stammered. Captain Sparrow nodded.

"Must have been recently lifted too," he narrowed his eyes at Barbossa's body. "Taken them almost a decade." I stared down at Barbossa's body. He was definitely dead. Recently dead and recently mortal. I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. "Are you alright, love?"

"Recently lifted?" I repeated. Captain Sparrow nodded. "How do you know that?"

To my great alarm, he pulled out his pistol. I would have stepped back if it hadn't been for my fear of putting my foot through the corpse of Hector Barbossa. My mouth dropped open and I wondered whether or not I should scream for help. "No no no," he said hastily, seeing my alarm and quickly pointing the pistol in another direction. "It's alright. I just… This pistol has one shot. And I was saving that shot for ol' scraggily beard over there," he gestured towards the corpse behind me. "I was waiting until the opportune moment once the curse had been lifted, but it looks like you lot beat me to it."

There was a bitterness in his voice that intrigued me. I studied the sudden hardness in Sparrow's eyes. "Is that why you're here?"

"What?" he seemed a little thrown by my question.

"Is that why you're here," I repeated. "In this courtyard? Some kind of revenge? Or to check they're really dead too?"

He wrinkled his nose. "Bit of both," he decided. "I suppose I was checking to see if he was really dead and maybe kick him around a bit too."

I laughed. "What did he do to you?"

Sparrow put his pistol away. "Doesn't matter," he said shortly. He'd closed down again and I felt a little frustrated by it. I felt like I had been close to something.

I let the silence drag on in the hope that he would say something else. He did not. "I freed you," I said. "Why would come back to Port Royal? Did you ever even leave?"

"Ah," he said. "Yes. I did leave, but then your darling brother got a hold of my ship. Now it's just sitting in the harbour and I'm going to take it back."

"It's a trap," I blurted out. What the hell was I doing? James would go mad if he heard me revealing Navy secrets like this. "That's the whole reason they kept that ship in one piece, so that people would come looking for it."

He stared at me. I regretted what I said, but not for the reason that I probably should have. I regretted it because for a moment it looked as if my words had absolutely crushed him. Then he blinked and it was gone. He shook his head, "Nothing I can't handle, I'm sure."

I narrowed my eyes. "I didn't free you just for you to end up back in that cell again."

"That's a good point," he mused. "Why did you free me?"

"I don't know," I said honestly.

"You know a very peculiar selection of things, love," he said. "You know an odd amount about a curse that a girl like you should never have heard of and you know absolutely nothing about your own actions as you were enacting them." He paused. "What's your story, love?"

I frowned, felt myself prickle with unease. "What's yours?" I retorted. "You show up in Port Royal looking for a ship. Completely on your own. Get caught. Then I free you from the gallows only for you to show up again a few weeks later on some desperate mission to claim a ship that you have already been told has been set up as a trap. It's madness."

"Or…" he countered. "Is it brilliance?"

"You will get caught again," I told him. "Probably tonight. Do you really think this Port is so poorly defended?"

He raised an eyebrow. "You show an awful lot of concern for my safety. I'm flattered. But I think I'll be alright, want to know why?"

I narrowed my eyes. "Why?"

"We've been alone here for quite some time now and you haven't raised an alarm, which tells me that you have something to lose from being here just as much as I do. So, I think I'm safe for tonight, don't you?" I said nothing, but glared at him. He looked me up and down. "I do, however, still owe you my life. So if you wish to tell me exactly what dangers you might be putting yourself in here, I could see what I could do to help."

"Trust a pirate for help?" I scoffed. "I'm not a fool."

He sighed. "Very well." He turned his back on me and began to walk away. I was already furious with myself. This pirate clearly knew about the curse. He potentially held every answer that I'd ever been searching for. He had proved that there was a curse and that curse had been lifted recently. That meant that Will's blood had been used to lift the curse not that long ago, which meant he had been alive not that long ago. Was he still alive? Had he been alive when I had gone looking for him on the day of my brother's ceremony? Why would my friends keep that from me? Would he be known to Captain Jack Sparrow? I watched the pirate walk away from me and realised that I couldn't let him go. Not yet. Not until I had found William Turner.

"Wait!" I called after him. He turned and I started to walk towards him. He waited. I felt my stomach twist horribly with the risk I was about to take. "If I tell you… you might think I'm mad."

"I might," he nodded. "But there's also a very good chance I'll think you're brilliant. It's remarkable how often those two traits coincide."