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Drabble Challenge: Misery
October 12, 2005

By Honorat
October 15, 2005

~ Answered Prayer ~

He is not dead yet—although surely it is only a matter of time. They cannot mean to let him escape.

The pain is like the bright strike of a sword against his wrists where the cords cut as he fought them in mindless terror. But the fire that burns and burns in his mouth. Oh God, he cannot endure it!

Still he runs, fighting through thick jungle stench, hot and sweat-slicked, coated with biting flies. No man any more—just a panicked animal.

Suddenly the twisting vines and clutching thorns release him, and he stumbles to his knees on hot white sand. He lifts a tear- and blood-stained face to the sea. The sweet, salt sea. The sun-bronzed, shining sea.

He holds out his hands to her. Mother and lover. Home and sanctuary. But he cannot rise. He has been able to eat no food for days, to bear to drink only a little water. He has lost too much blood. His sight blurs, and he crumples in a knot of helpless misery.

Why should he even try to live? They have stolen his only gift—those precious, liquid, golden words. They have ripped away his language, his song, his communion with the human world and left him with only a meaningless scream. One of God’s dumb beasts.

What hope is there for him?

He lies on the sand, praying for death, staring into the pitiless blue heavens until he is sure he sees the angels’ wings. They are blue and gold, a richer hue than any of earth.

“Mercy!” he begs silently, although he can only whimper now. He holds out a shaking arm.

And a voice answers him, “Wind in the sails.”

By Honorat
October 16, 2005

~ Unequal Shares~
Companion piece to Answered Prayer

Jack has seen him in the dim, guttering candlelight as the plaintive songs of minstrels waft on rum-redolent air. Sometimes his eyes glisten with unshed tears. Sometimes his hands clench into knotted fists. Other times his lips curve in that wondrous childlike joy and his fingers tap. And there are times he rises abruptly and leaves the tavern, and they do not see him until the Pearl is about to depart.

So when they discover the violin in a passenger’s cabin, Captain Sparrow does not add it to the swag in the holds, for sale in the next port. Instead, when he joins Mr. Cotton at the helm that evening, eager as always for the moment he will be completely in communion with his ship, Jack spares a moment to hold out the worn, black case.

He watches, a small smile chasing itself across his lips, as the man raises bewildered eyes to his captain. Not equal shares this time. Life has already dealt this man an impossibly unequal share. This is a gift.

With a flourish, Jack flips open the latches and raises the lid.

The instrument glows in the last light as though fire burns at its heart. Reverently his silent crewman runs sea-roughened fingertips over the ebony neck. When he looks up again, some of that fire has lit in his faded blue eyes. Mr. Cotton reaches out a hand to touch his captain’s arm, and Jack feels the weight of the man’s parrot settle on his shoulder.

As Mr. Cotton lifts the case from Jack’s hands, the parrot shifts its claws, a brooding, approving presence beside Jack’s ear. He hears its heavy beak clacking as it preens along the string of beads dangling in his hair, one at a time. For once, he does not swat the animal away. They will observe the truce.

That night, as the darkness slips her arms around the Black Pearl, the captain catches the faint strains of music floating back from the bow. Longing and loss, loneliness and love. The pent up songs of years of silence.

Jack holds his Pearl a little closer, remembering.

For the first time, he hears Mr. Cotton’s voice.

~.~

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