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Wings

by Geek Mama
August 20, 2006

“Against the cold, and the sorrow.”

The woman gently presses the mug of steaming liquid into her hand. Tia Dalma’s strange eyes catch hers, and for a moment she wonders: Does she know?

But then, how could she?

Elizabeth does not drink with the others. The wound is too deep, too debilitating. Too well-deserved.

He would have stayed.

That look. That smile. That voice, uttering the one word: Pirate!

The last things she had of him. Gifts of a dead man.

But she hears the question Tia Dalma asks, and the others making their replies. Is it possible he is not gone entirely? She can barely fathom it, but manages to say her Yes.

After that, there is the shock of Barbossa, and a gradual lightening of spirits among the others. They have a goal. And they have hope.

Is it possible?

*

The next few days are filled with activity as they make preparations. Elizabeth helps, tight-lipped and heavy-eyed. Will looks at her askance, but she cannot bring herself to explain. Not yet. There is a distance set between them that has nothing to do with proximity.

She works hard during the day, but at night she cannot rest. She dreams instead.

She sees Jack, straight and calm, fateful laughter in his eyes, touching his lips. He would have stayed. The shackle on his wrist denies him the chance to prove it. Denies him the chance to meet his death as a free man. She has done that to him, she with her fears and doubts, her determination and her ruthlessness.

I’m not sorry.

Pirate!

She tries to run but, as is often the way in dreams, she is not permitted to move. She must watch as the horror rises up to claim him, seizing, tearing, crushing him where he is chained to the mast.

She is chained too.

And she is a liar. The sorrow howls, echoing through her soul.

When she manages to wake, heart thudding, her cheeks are wet with tears. She stares into the blackness of the warm night, the damp air smelling of wood, vegetation, and sweat. Will moves, reaches over and takes her hand in silence.

*

Tia Dalma’s people grieve for Jack.

“He save them,” the woman tells Elizabeth. “Long ago, they destined for the slave market. Jack save them from that, and fall foul of that little man, Beckett.” She spits the name, like a curse.

“Will told me Beckett was the one who branded Jack a pirate.”

Tia Dalma nods. “Brand him, yes, and burn the Pearl. But Jack, he won’t be beat by that little man, make a deal with the devil himself. Almost worth selling his soul, the sight of his Pearl being raised from the depths. The fire, she make them both free, for a while, Jack and his Pearl.”

“He was a good man,” Elizabeth says, and is surprised at the amusement in the sidelong look she gets in return.

“Oh, he good in lots of ways. But Jack Sparrow still a man.”

*

The terrible dreams continue the same until their last night with the witch woman and her folk. They will sail with the morning tide.

“Sleep. You sleep, girl. You troubled, but there’s no need.”

Elizabeth stares. “You don’t know.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But you sleep.” Tia Dalma reaches up to brush the tangled hair back from Elizabeth’s forehead with small, soft fingers.

And when the dream comes, later, it is not the same.

She still must watch, but this time Jack turns away, his focus is on the shackle, and he is struggling with it, wild-eyed, teeth set.

Bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger…

She wants to laugh, or weep, but suddenly the deck is tilting under their feet, and there is an ominous rumbling. A cannonball, then a coconut roll past a fallen lamp between them.

An oil lamp.

Jack draws his sword and strains to catch the lamp with his sword’s tip. She finds herself holding her breath – he is too far from it! But no, he finally has it, swings it up and shatters it against the mast to which he’s chained.

Elizabeth can feel the oil dripping and spilling, a slippery chance at freedom.

It doesn’t come easily, even then. She wants to shout, Hurry! Hurry! though she can see he is doing his utmost, straining, cursing, determined, ignoring the pain, and finally the blood as he succeeds in foiling her designs.

But even as he looks with satisfaction on his naked wrist, the monster rises behind him.

He turns to it, and as he does so it roars, the sound deafening at this distance (she’s heard it before, from the longboat, where it made her heart freeze), spewing filthy slime, an odor the like of which should not exist outside hell… and his hat!

There is a slight pause, the pulsating mass of flesh and teeth waiting as its seemingly insignificant foe picks up and restores his headgear.

Captain Jack Sparrow.

“Jack!”

Half awake, she knows she whispered his name. The dream is fading as he lifts his sword with a feral light in his eye, and she groans aloud, but her eyes open to blackness and a mere echo of gallant, defiant words.

Hello, beastie!

“Elizabeth?”

It’s Will. She turns toward him, scrabbling for his hand. It grips hers, tight.

“Are you all right?”

“Y-yes,” she whispers, calming. “Yes, I… I think I am.”

“Was it another nightmare?”

A nightmare. “No. A dream, I think.”

“Oh. It’s all right then.”

“Yes. It’s all right.” Sleep is taking her already, the kind that has eluded her this week past. She clings to the waking world briefly, no longer afraid, searching for words that will comfort them both, and finding them, at last. “There were no chains this time, Will,” she murmurs. No chains. “There were only wings.”

~.~

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