Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7

 

~ Part 1 ~

8th May, 1685

We are three days from Tortuga, where we will re-provision and attempt to turn a profit on some of what was taken from the Charybdis eleven days ago. I am eager to be rid of it; the crew has been uneasy, and the weight of coin in their pockets may settle their nerves.

There are some of them who have expressed a wish to be lightened of all we acquired from that ghost ship. Several want me to put off the survivor, the boy Sparrow, when we dock. Still others press to know when I will offer him the articles to sign. I have no answer for either camp, for this is not a decision I will make lightly. The lad has a knack; he’s not put a hand to the lines nor a foot to the decks wrongly since he’s boarded. I see ability in the boy, ability that some of my men fifteen or twenty years his senior will never hope to have.

Yet still I have not offered him a place in my crew. He loves the sea but not the sword. Sailor the boy may be, but a fighter, I fear, he is not. Turner gave him a bit of a trial; he assures me Sparrow knows the sword well enough, but harbors a dislike for using it. My quartermaster tells me this is not a weakness in a man, and I remind him that it is a liability in a pirate. What amusement I find in so accomplished a killer as Turner waxing pacifistic, I keep to myself.

Turner is the other reason I am undecided on whether Sparrow will stay or go. My quartermaster has become uncannily fond of the boy, and there is little doubt in my mind that if I set the lad on land and bid him God speed, I will lose Turner as well. He was forced by circumstance to leave his own child. I think he will not easily be parted from this one. And I am not so foolish as to let such a crewman as Turner go without careful consideration.

I have given myself ‘til we reach Tortuga to make up my mind.

N. Yearwood, Captain

………………………

Bill Turner stared at the flickering patterns the lantern cast across the ceiling of his tiny almost-cabin, lying on his back in his hammock, one arm stretched to rest just above his head, and waited. It was approaching midnight, and the quiet in his quarters endured.

He would have liked to take that as an encouraging sign, but the last few nights’ experience had taught him better. Bill had been learning a great deal lately.

The subject of his education slept sprawled in the little space’s second hammock, one arm and the opposite leg dangling haphazardly off their respective sides. Bill could only assume Jack employed the same talent that kept him aloft in the Beacon’s rigging, as light and sure as a spider on its silk, to keep himself from tumbling out of his bed at night. Whatever it was, it seemed to be involuntary, as reflexive as drawing breath. Maybe it was simply the utter and complete absence of any fear of falling. Jack had no fright of heights whatsoever. Nor of storms, as Bill had learned three days prior when they failed to outrun a squall, and Jack had gone about helping trim the canvas with a rather maniacal grin of enjoyment on his face, which hadn’t washed off even when the portside rails dipped into the waves and they’d all gotten vivid belts of bruises where their safety lines bit tight ‘round their waists. All of them except Jack, who hadn’t bothered with a line, and was damned lucky he hadn’t ended up with a bruise or three of his own when Bill found out afterwards.

Jack hadn’t even looked all that concerned when Bill had him backed up against the bulkhead, cursing the air blue eight inches from the younger man’s face and assuring Jack that Bill would, so help him God, beat him like a redheaded stepchild and drop his skinny arse over the side himself if he ever pulled anything that fucking stupid again.

There was no wrath, no trial, no challenge that man or ship or nature could throw at Jack that Bill didn’t see the young man face fearlessly.

Rather, it was a faceless fear that was Jack’s lone, unrelenting torment.

For a week after his rescue from a ship that had become little more than a floating coffin, Jack hadn’t slept. And when he finally slept, he dreamed. Though that word was, in Bill’s opinion, grossly inaccurate. One night had seen half the crew brought down on them by Jack’s screams before Bill could wake and calm the boy.

A hitch in breath that wasn’t his own opened Bill’s eyes, which he’d closed with no true anticipation of sleep. He lay unmoving, listening.

There came another tiny gasp, and another, and then a thin, keening moan. The loose, sprawled body shuddered once, violently, and curled itself into a ball, like a fist clenching.

Bill swung himself soundlessly from his hammock and moved to stand beside Jack’s. He combed long hair out of Jack’s closed eyes, and ran a thumb lightly over the fretful furrows in the boy’s brow. “Shhh, Jack. Just sleep.”

Jack mumbled something, coiling in on himself more tightly, his fingers knotting in the hammock. Bill closed his hand over Jack’s, feeling the white knuckles quiver with tension. For a moment, Jack’s whole body tensed, and Bill held his breath, waiting for the wave to break.

That moment stretched out, and then Jack sagged, the lines of his body loosening. The fingers clenched beneath Bill’s hand uncurled, just a little, but he waited until he felt them go completely lax to break the contact. Bill remained where he was until he heard Jack’s breathing turn soft and steady, and then he straightened with a relieved sigh.

Bill eased back into his own hammock, and this time made room in his bed for fatigue. He found the heaviest weight in his body had moved from his chest to his eyelids, and they closed much easier for it.

By a quarter past midnight, Bill was sound asleep.

………………….

When the lethargic murk of satiation began to ebb, she roused, with old blood on her tongue and new sounds in her head.

This place was different.

She knew before her eyes opened that she was not where she had been, because there had been made silent and here was full of sound and movement, shuddering down from somewhere far above her.

There had not smelled like this, either. At first, maybe, but not after. Not when she had crawled down into her resting place. The tips of her tail twitched, recalling the scent.

She must have slept for a very long time, because she was beginning to feel hungry again. It was not enough to drive her to move yet, though, and so she lay in her small, dark space, and listened.

So much noise. There must have been so many of them. Maybe more than there had been in the other place. She traced a claw under the curve of one breast, thinking on that.

Maybe more.

………………..

In the hold of the Northern Beacon, stowed with the rest of the plunder taken from the Charybdis, sat a long box, about the size one might expect guns to be stored in. It had been heavy, too; about the weight one would think a crate holding weapons might be. It had been carried carefully, care taken to make sure it wasn’t jostled too much in its moving, since jostling a box full of guns was never a wise idea. The men responsible for its relocation had been very careful. They’d been knee-deep in precaution. And, unfortunately, waist-deep in assumption.

Somehow, in the haste of looting, no one had taken the time to look inside.

…………………...


Cathleen was making short work of his buttons through an adroit and creative use of both fingers and teeth when Bill’s consciousness was fragmented by screaming. The dream actually hung on long enough for him to unceremoniously dump his wife on the hardwood floor in front of their fireplace as he bolted to his feet. Then it slipped away, and Bill woke to find himself thrashing free of his hammock.

“Jack!” he croaked out hoarsely, his voice even less awake than his legs.

Jack sat upright, stiff and still, save for the tremor coursing visibly through him. He gave Bill no reply, his breathing harsh and uneven as he tried to will his muscles out of their rigidity, the back of one hand pressed hard against his mouth to stifle the noises he’d woken himself making.

Then there were arms around him, and Jack gave in and let himself shake, because they felt like they were holding tight enough to keep all his bits and pieces from rattling apart. He discovered he was just a little too currently exhausted and recently terrified to bother with being humiliated, and if Bill minded at all that Jack had once again screamed the both of them out of sleep, he gave no indication of it as he tucked Jack’s head beneath his chin.

“’M sorry, Bill,” Jack muttered after a while. “I just…I can’t…”

“No, lad, you can’t,” the elder man replied gently. “They’ll go when they go, and we’ll just bide our time ‘til then. All right?”

Jack nodded his head where it rested.

“There you are, then. It’s all right now, lad. There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.” And he added, because he thought he was telling the truth, “I promise.”

 

On to Part 2