White and Black Pearls 1 - Seven Pearls

Chapter Seventeen

‘It’s happening,’ Calypso said softly. For once, there was no cruel point to her words when she spoke to her sister.

Celeste was standing upon her sister’s rooftop, staring at the sky with a distant look on her face. Her lips were parted and her hands were folded together over her chest as she stood there, and her body was entirely vacant of any seeming life. Her heart, her eyes and her mind were elsewhere, watching Jack’s final moments closely.

As the Kraken’s tentacles soared up high on either side of the Black Pearl, bringing its sails and masts down like toothpicks under the weight of trees, she watched. The kiss shared between Jack and Elizabeth might have hurt Celeste’s feelings, but it was not a romantic kiss, and that besides, there was no way to hurt her any deeper than she was suffering right now, watching her beloved succumb to his doom.

‘Bugger bugger bugger bugger bugger bugger…’ Jack uttered as he tried to free himself from his shackles and the Kraken lifted itself up above the water, opening its gaping mouth wide to swallow Jack up. ‘Come on, come on…’ he hissed as he poured oil on his wrists to free himself. When he was free, he turned about with a smile at his success, but paused when he saw the gaping maw of the Kraken before him. Its roar was loud and deafening, and when his hat landed on the deck at his feet, he arched his eyebrows and leaned down, picking it up. ‘Oh,’ he said pleasantly, putting his tricorne on and wiping some of the Kraken’s slime from his face.

He looked over at the Kraken again, and watched as it began to lean forward, its gaping mouth filled with hundreds of sharp teeth all waiting to pull him down into its mouth and swallow him whole. ‘Hello, beastie,’ he declared while taking a step towards the Pearl’s rail and lifting his sword high. Jack lunged forward as the Kraken closed in, and with the groan and crunch of the Pearl’s deck shattering, the Kraken’s mouth slammed shut, with Jack inside.

Celeste’s eyes went wide and her jaw trembled as her mouth opened wider.

Within the Kraken’s mouth, Jack thrashed, piercing something with his sword in the darkness… but the last stinking, thrashing moments of life had passed as it began to tighten its mouth around him, the hundreds of teeth closing in. ‘Celeste…’ Jack gasped out before the teeth all slammed shut from every angle, snuffing out his life in an instant. The Kraken sank back down into the depths of the water, dragging the remains of the Black Pearl with it down into darkness.

On board the Flying Dutchman, Davy Jones bowed his head slightly in a silent nod to Celeste, who he knew would be watching this. Her sorrows, while great for now, were finally at an end – she would no longer have to suffer as he did. ‘Jack Sparrow,’ he uttered, ‘Our debt is settled.’

Celeste’s eyes finally became bright with the light of life as she returned to her present body upon her sister’s roof. She sucked in a shuddering breath, unable to even bring herself to scream, and collapsed. She would have hit the rough rooftop, but she was caught easily in the arms of Barbossa, who lifted her with surprising gentleness and glanced over at Calypso for a suggestion of what to do with her.

‘Bring her to the bed,’ Calypso said with a wave of her hand. ‘She won’t wake for a long time; she’s paralyzed with love lost. We have work to do.’

‘Aye,’ Barbossa said with a grim nod, carrying the frail-seeming woman down below and into the very room he’d been spending his nights in, laying Celeste out on the bed. He paused to simply stare at her, however, as Calypso moved along behind him and down the stairs to start working on her conjuring and potions. Barbossa couldn’t help but wonder as he stared at her, how it was that Jack Sparrow had ended up with such a lucky and unlucky lot in life all at the same time. After all this time, he knew a good deal of the story between Jack and Celeste, but hadn’t believed a word of it until he saw her for himself. ‘You’ve just got to trust me,’ Barbossa murmured, an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach. Seeing her, or any woman, struck down like this with sorrows so deep wasn’t something he liked much at all. ‘It’s alright. He’ll be back. He always comes back.’

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