White and Black Pearls 1 - Seven Pearls

Chapter Nineteen

‘I don’t suppose you could usher a favorable wind our way to help us along in our journey to save your man could you?’ Barbossa asked with amusement in his voice.

Celeste looked over at him blandly.

‘Ah. I thought not,’ he nodded, while coming up to stand beside her at the front of the ship. He looked up at the stars, cold but beautiful on the cloudless – and nearly windless – night in the frozen waters. ‘You’ve been rather hands-off this last while. Do ye mind me asking why?’

She lifted a hand, and in Jack’s habit, Celeste began to tug softly at one of her locks of hair while agitated. ‘I told him I would leave him alone. I vowed to myself that I would try not to interfere any more. That’s what I’m doing. It’s what I should have always done, actually, but now it’s difficult to get back into the habit of staying far away from humans. Whatever skies and weather you get, that’s that. Don’t expect my aide, ever.’ Her stare was intense and intent as she fixed it upon Barbossa. ‘Ever,’ she stressed grimly, as though she had some idea of what was on the man’s mind and what he was planning.

‘Yes… well,’ Barbossa hemmed. ‘I haven’t done anything as of yet that would even warrant expecting some kind turn of hand on your behalf, so it wasn’t as though I was expecting anything in the first place, missy.’

Celeste folded her arms before her chest and resumed looking out ahead of the ship, towards World’s End. Her head lifted after a few moments though, and she looked to the side, as though somebody had called her name. ‘You have my best wishes for the future Hector Barbossa,’ she said in farewell. ‘Beware Calypso.’ She disappeared then, without explaining her final somber warning to him.


‘Celeste!’ Davy Jones roared again over the rails of his ship, shaking his claw at the skies.

‘Quiet yourself,’ she shushed sharply. ‘Do you intend to alert the entire East India Trading Company’s fleet of my existence?’

Davy spun around to look at her, a desperate expression on his face. ‘My heart,’ he said urgently, moving towards her. ‘My heart!’

‘I know,’ she nodded. ‘It was only a matter of time, you knew this. I told you it would happen someday when you cut it out in the first place.’

‘Go get it back for me then!’ Davy bellowed. ‘They can’t harm you! Go get it and bring it here so that I can make it safe once more!’

‘No.’ Her answer was quiet but firm.

‘What!’ He lifted his hands, wishing to strike her, but lowered them once more. ‘Why?’ he asked in a wet hiss.

Celeste looked up into his eyes sincerely. ‘I’m not interfering any more,’ she breathed. ‘You know first hand what happens when I do. I won’t any longer. Not for you, not for Jack, not for anyone. Look at the results. You’re...’ She touched one of his tentacles, which made him pause and seemed to calm him some, feeling her caress. ‘You’re not the human of all those years ago, my sister is plotting and planning against me and our relationship is ruined, Jack is dead and has been suffering his whole life because of me… hundreds, thousands have died at your hand, which might as well have been my hand. The East India Trading Company is taking over the waters across the planet but wouldn’t have that ability without your heart, which wouldn’t have existed outside your body in the first place if I hadn’t helped you with Calypso in the very beginning. If I had never gone to see you that one night, this entire world would be a different place. My interference may as well be a curse upon all that accept my help.’

‘And in the battle that’s coming?’ Davy pressured. ‘What then? You made this entire mess, you have said as much yourself, but when it is all coming to a head and this turmoil is reaching its peak, that’s when you decide to sequester yourself away and keep your hands off!?’ His anger was plain in his voice. ‘You’re just as cruel as Calypso. Worse still, perhaps!’

‘David,’ Celeste breathed, closing her eyes and touching her fingers to her hair, curling and tugging one of the locks anxiously. ‘Don’t say those things to me. Please. I never meant…’

‘You never meant to ruin all of our lives so thoroughly that in our final moments the only person who can help us is the very person that put us there?’ Davy roared, his voice causing the very nails to rattle in their sockets across the Flying Dutchman. ‘You never meant to weave a tapestry of agony and sorrows so thick that its tendrils reached out and interlocked with the lives of every other person you’ve interacted with!? You never meant to curse us into a hell on Earth like none other!?’

Her mouth was stuck open as she stared at him in horror.

‘Go on!’ Davy Jones bellowed, pointing at the moon high in the sky. ‘Leave me be, leave all of us! Get off my ship, get out of my life, and disappear forever! I never want to see you again! If I ever find you during a Blood Moon I will personally try to sever your head from your body and rip every limb out of its socket! I will cut your belly open with my sword and slice all the way up your chest, digging your heart out in this very hand and ripping it to shreds!’ Celeste disappeared wordlessly, leaving Davy Jones alone on the deck of his ship, as every member of the crew trembled with fear below deck for what he was going to do to them when his anger needed an outlet. ‘RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!’ he roared at the skies, at the sea, at everything, picking up a full-sized cannon and throwing it overboard in his rage.

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