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vector:
the compass direction in which a ship moves
Kalé stands guard at the cabin door, an impassive Cerberus
for her own particular hell. Elizabeth thinks she reads judgment
in his eyes, but he moves aside and allows her entrance. She steps
from the moonlit deck into a darkness that already carries his
scent. It has been an eternity measured only in hours since she
summoned him back. Her eyes adjust, but her heart does not. She
feels the cold, steady pain there intensify until she is frozen,
unable to move, purpose and direction lost.
His silent form on the bed pulls her. Elizabeth steals the distance
between them, a thief intent on a prize she cannot name. She lowers
herself carefully beside him, fearful that he will wake, knowing
she will stay until he does. Kalé has undressed him, pulled
the bed cover to his chest although the night air still holds
the kiss of the sun. His face framed by the unrestrained wilderness
of his hair, he looks both older and younger than she has ever
seen him. The planes of his face are angled and sharp, more finely
drawn, but there is a new softness around his eyes in sleep.
Elizabeth shrinks, her body pulling into itself, recoiling from
the memory of what she saw when she first held him in that forsaken
empty place. She thinks that the evidence of her betrayal, blood
and torn flesh, will lie forever beneath his living image for
her; a haunt, a specter that whispers her betrayal. His breath
moves gently now, body unscathed by death’s hand and bearing
only the script his life has written.
She wonders again what brought her here. She should be answering
Will’s hurt and confusion, not her own, not Jack’s.
Should be at the side of her future husband, but her place there
is more uncertain than ever. Will has turned towards another promise,
perhaps another love, and she finds she sees the truth of that.
Sees it but cannot yet accept; she is filled with a desolation
so deep, so vast she fears she will wander in it forever. When
she lifts her eyes to Jack’s face, he is watching her, eyes
glittering in the dim light with something more akin to fever
than the predator’s fire she remembers.
“’Lizbeth. Not real, I know it; a dream, another sin
to pay for.” His voice is a hoarse whisper born of a place
that does not bear imagining. Elizabeth reaches for him then,
cups his face and smoothes his hair; he is warm, too warm, his
skin heated parchment beneath her fingertips. She finds a wash
bowl and cloth at his bedside. Kalé must have thought to
wash him clean of any traces left by the merciless void in which
she found him. She bathes his face, his chest, hoping both to
cool his flesh and erase her guilt. His eyes close and he breathes
in deep, seems to seek the reality of this. When he opens them
again they hold her face with wonder, with something she thinks
might be love; terrible things that pierce her soul in a way his
hatred never could.
“Not a torment, you are here, I’m here, what did you
do, Lizzie, tell me how, what did you do?” His voice is stronger
but still a raw chant, still not his. She hears the fear it holds
for what his return may have cost her; feels herself shatter again
at the sound.
She strokes his face with a gentleness she did not know she possessed,
finds it hiding somewhere between shame and forgiveness. She is
not certain whether that forgiveness is his, or her own, but thinks
it may be meant for both of them. “Sleep now; sleep.”
He raises a shaking hand and covers hers, echoes her words. “Stay,
love. Stay. I might have stayed, but you came, you took me....”
His eyes hold something warm, for her, but her heart splinters.
She does not know if he speaks of her treachery or her rescue,
and neither choice can make her whole again. She waits until his
eyes close, his breathing slows. Kneels beside his bed, and rests
her head on arms that have nothing left to hold. She dreams of
the wind, strong and sure, filling the sails of a ship that moves
unerring on its course; dreams her feet upon its boards, her eyes
on that horizon.
~.~
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