White and Black Pearls 1 - Seven Pearls

Chapter Sixteen

Their eyes met, and even though this was a reunion after two sisters being parted for longer than the lifetime of most men, there were no smiles or tears of joy. Tia Dalma stepped aside out of the doorway of her home, and Celeste entered. The door closed behind her, and the pale woman stopped in the entrance, looking about the small shack silently for a while before adding in a whisper, ‘You’ve kept yourself busy while sealed in your human form.’

‘Indeed so have you,’ Tia Dalma – Calypso – challenged, her expression unpleasant.

A curtain of silence slipped between them as the witch woman moved about her home, arranging trinkets and tidying the mess of magical items strewn about as though her sister was not standing in the entrance of her home watching her.

Celeste finally resolved to take a seat on top of a stuffed leopard, frozen in a roar well beyond death and now no better than furniture.

‘Have you come to make noise at me about Jack Sparrow?’ Calypso finally asked when there wasn’t much more she could rearrange. Her back was to her sister as she traced her fingers along the edge of a cracked wooden bowl.

Celeste closed her eyes and leaned back slightly as though stabbed through the chest with her sister’s words. ‘No.’

‘Then you’ve come for only one other thing.’

‘Yes.’

‘You can’t have them back.’

Celeste’s eyes opened wide. ‘What!’ she barked.

‘I said you can’t have them back. They were traded to me, the trade was fair; the pearls belonged to Jack Sparrow and now they belong to me. You have nothing I could want to ever convince me to give them back to you.’

‘But they’re useless!’ she argued. ‘Three of the ten pearls were lost into the sea; one is still Jack’s… what good does six of ten do for you!’

Calypso’s eyes flashed dangerously as a smile pulled at her lips, her yellowed teeth a chilling sight to Celeste who saw the smile as more of a bearing of fangs from a predator. ‘All in good time sister. All in good time.’

Celeste trembled visibly as she stared at her younger sister. ‘You can’t possibly intend…’

‘Intend what?’ Calypso interrupted darkly. ‘Intend to plot and plan against my very own sister to trap her into a life of torture and sorrow just as she’s done to me!?’ She approached Celeste quickly, leaning down and staring into her face with the intensity of a woman scorned who had years to think about it and develop every possible repayment she could conjure up.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Celeste whispered.

‘It was completely like that!’ Calypso yelled, grabbing one of the knives off her table and holding it against Celeste’s throat though it would do no good; it still felt better to threaten her anyhow. ‘You ruined the loving relationship I had with that man and now I will do everything in my power to ruin yours!’

‘It’s already happened!’ Celeste screamed back suddenly, losing her composure. She stood, knocking the leopard on its side, which tipped over a small table and sent several jars and bottles crashing to the floor. ‘Davy Jones is hunting Jack to the ends of the Earth, his time is up – he’s going to be thrown into the locker and that’ll be the end of my love and your chances at freedom will be doomed!’ Her eyes were red-rimmed and her lips trembled as tears threatened. ‘It’s done Calypso. There’s no changing it now. I’m about to lose my Jack and you’re about to lose the only way you had to return to your true form. This wouldn’t have happened if you’d never given him that compass.’

‘This wouldn’t have happened if you’d never given Davy Jones the secrets to imprisoning me in this body!’ Calypso fired back, though it was only in a whisper now as devastation was clear on her face.

The witch woman began to pace around her small home, and Celeste fell silent, standing still with her head bowed in deep, utter sorrow.

‘No,’ Calypso said suddenly.

Celeste lifted her head and wiped a tear away before it could fall, with a small sniffle. ‘No?’ she asked tiredly.

‘No,’ Calypso affirmed. ‘This won’t be the end. I’ve worked too hard for it to be the end. Hector!’

A frown creased Celeste’s forehead as she stared at her sister, unable to think of any way in which the woman intended to keep Jack – Pirate Lord of the Caribbean – from going to the locker, especially with Davy Jones being the one trying to do it. The woman’s head lifted and she gasped with a start when she heard the sound of somebody moving upstairs in the shack. She had thought they were alone. Hector… there were hundreds, thousands of creatures with that name on this planet… but there was only one that Calypso could ever have given two thoughts about. She gasped loudly as Hector Barbossa came down the stairs.

‘You,’ Barbossa said suddenly, his eyes narrowing. The humor in his face drained as he tipped his head to the side. ‘I know you.’

Celeste shook with rage. ‘And I know you,’ she hissed out through her teeth.

Calypso laughed in amusement as her two guests stared each other down. ‘Calm yourselves,’ she said with a shake of her hand. ‘You’re working for the same side now.’

‘So you really were tossing and flinging us about at sea on Jack Sparrow’s behalf,’ Barbossa uttered, some of the amusement coming back with a disbelieving cough of a laugh. ‘I had myself convinced he couldn’t be that lucky.’

‘Still your tongue before I send you back to where you came from,’ Celeste said in a soft but threatening voice.

‘There’ll be none of that, now. It took a great deal of work to bring Barbossa back… it’s going to take even more to bring Jack back.’

Celeste turned to her sister then, appalled. ‘How!’ she demanded, throwing a hand in Barbossa’s direction. ‘Him?’

‘Him and then some,’ Calypso agreed with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. ‘Dry your tears sister, Jack Sparrow might be going into the locker, but he won’t be there for long; we’re going back to get him.’

‘We cannot enter the locker!’ Celeste retorted desperately. She didn’t want to ruin any chance they had to bring Jack home, but she also couldn’t have her hopes lifted with foolish plans that wouldn’t work, it would just add to her mounting agony.

‘You cannot, gods cannot,’ Calypso nodded. Her smile peeled across her face again. ‘I am not a goddess at the moment,’ she added in a lilting voice. ‘I am but a simple human that can travel into the locker at will and pull dear Jack out with a pluck of my fingers and the help of this captain and Jack’s crew. When Jack has been taken by Davy Jones, his shipmates will return here for the safety and shelter I can offer them, plagued and pursued by the men of the East India Trading company and the haunts of their own sorrows. It is then that I will usher them into this plan and attain their agreement to go and get Jack.’

Celeste stared at Calypso then, her mouth open. She tried to come up with some reason why this plan had no hope, but couldn’t – there was a chance that her beautiful Jack Sparrow wasn’t going to be lost to her forever. No, better than a chance… Calypso was the one pulling at the strings of this thread of destiny, and she knew what she was doing. She was going to have her Jack returned to the world of the living, all she had to do was wait.

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