Apprentice To The Sorcerer

British,” Jack grunted, waving us to stay still. His head peaked out of the shrubbery for a moment before drawing back. “Four. Looks like a regular patrol camped too far out.”

“What now?” Blood crouched beside him. “I don’t like killing unless it’s needed.”

“You’re in the wrong vocation,” Jack muttered, but I knew he shared Blood’s sentiment. Jack wasn’t the sort to waste life, not these days. I believed his lesson of putting Will on the Flying Dutchmen had taught him something about himself.

“Do you have your medical bag Lei?” Jack asked quietly.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Would you possibly be needing any herbs for it?”

I stared at him in confusion for a moment. Then, the light dawned. “Night blooming Jasmine,” I said.

All but Jack and Peter gave me strange looks as I got to my feet and walked out of our cover.

The soldiers instantly got to their feet upon hearing me. Muskets pointed in my direction, they called out a demand for name and business. “Alastor MacDaniels,” I shouted in as close an approximation of a Scottish brogue as I could manage. “I’m a physician. I’m looking for jasmine.”

“Jasmine the plant or Jasmine the lady?” One man asked, chuckling, but no one lowered their rifles.

“You look a mite bedraggled to be a doctor,” the tallest man said.

“I’ve been from the coast of Nova Scotia,” I answered, reaching into my bag. “Got passage on a schooner at Halifax and made my way here.” I pulled loose a bag of candied ginger Cook had traded to me for rosemary and dumped it inside some of Tia Dalma’s tin of sleeping powder. The candied surface took the powder very well, and I thought it probably glistened like sugar. “Look here,” I said. “You gentlemen obviously have been here awhile. Y’ tell me where I c’n find night blooming jasmine and I’ll give you my candied ginger.”

“Give it here,” the smallest man demanded. I threw him the bag.

“Well?” I said. “I dinna have all night, gentlemen. I have a companion with a vurra serious case of melancholy that needs tending to.” As I spoke the ginger passed to every man.

“Have to get help somewhere else, Scotsman,” the leader said gleefully. “We couldn’t tell night blooming jasmine from a pickaxe.”

Fifteen seconds later they were all asleep, collapsed on the spot where they had stood taunting me.

“Are they dead?” Blood asked me, looking into my eyes hard.

“Asleep,” I answered.

“With what?”

“Magic,” I replied, half in jest. No one in Jack’s crew laughed.

Jack emptied each soldier’s flask over them and put their empties in their hands. They looked like they’d simply drunk too much and fallen unconscious. He motioned us to follow him around the fallen men.

We moved with surprising quiet, considering we traveled eighty-four strong. Mokulu stayed close to my side as we traveled, his big hand coming down to steady me the moment I looked unsure of my path. I felt grateful for his presence. He was so large, so fearsome I hadn’t a thought to my safety once he joined me.

Jack brought us to a heavily wooded area. We watched as he got his bearings, aligning himself to a tall spruce and walking in a peculiar sort of zigzag perpendicular to it. From his stopping point he took out his compass, checked it, and walked backward. Even to those of us accustomed to Jack’s peculiar ways, this looked odd.

Suddenly, Jack turned and pointed to a large lump that jutted out of the barely lit hillside. We obediently followed him to the mass of vegetation. He took out his cutlass and slashed until we could see a gigantic rock. “Lads, behind this rock lies the treasure of Thomas Veal,” he said. “He and four others came here with stolen gems from the court of Charles the Second.”

“How do we get in?” Blood eyed the rock doubtfully. “That’s too big to pick apart in six months of teams and shifts.”

“We don’t get in this way.” Jack sheathed his cutlass. “We walk around the entrance and go in from the secondary mouth. Problem is, it’s buried in rubble. It’ll take us all night to open up the first phalanx of stones. After that we’ll need to get the chest and put the rock back.”

“Why are we putting the rock back?” Blood didn’t pretend understanding, and I liked that about him.

“Because we don’t want anyone to know we took it,” Jack answered. “Veal had mates that escaped the noose, a whole ship of conspirators. They will want this booty. The only reason they haven’t yet come for it is because they still think Veal is alive, guarding it.”

“I take it Mr. Veal is no more?” Blood said.

“The earthquake that buried the cave also buried Thomas Veal,” Jack said. “But news of the quake wouldn’t yet have reached the others.” He turned and walked away. After a moment, we followed him.

It took us every bit as long to clear away the rock as Jack said it would. Jack led us past signs of the cave’s use as a home, scattered crockery, tattered leather, straw for bedding, and finally, the skeleton. Veal had died of hunger or suffocation. His clean skeleton showed no signs of blunt trauma. While the others followed Jack to the chamber the treasure was stored in, I dismantled Veal’s remains and stored them in my pack. I wanted to study an undamaged skeleton.

I had only just finished when Jack and Blood returned, each carrying a side of a medium sized sea chest. We filed out and began piling up rock we so patiently once labored to remove. By the time morning light touched the sky we were back in longboats and headed to the Pearl.

As his usual manner, Jack opened the chest with a bullet in full view of everyone. His booted foot came off the deck and kicked open the chest. Cut diamonds, brilliant at dawn, sparkled at us.

“There are one hundred and two of us,” Jack announced. “Each man gets an equal share. Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Crowley will do the counting.”

We put in a lazy sail down the outer coast as our fortune got a tally. Each quartermaster got a bucket. He and Crowley divided the stones into two sizes, halving each collection. They exchanged halves, giving each bucket an equal amount of stones in equal sizes. Taking the number of men and the number of stones into account, they began making piles inside an emptied monkey-box.

Each man received fifty four diamonds. I let mine fall into a cloth sack and tied it to the necklace that held my pipes. The air of celebration on the two ships felt giddy. I felt very glad for my fortune, but I didn’t want to be rowdy about it. I wanted time to reflect on what I might do with my wealth. I had enough riches now to settle an island of my own somewhere if I wanted, like Blood wanted.

I took the skeleton of Thomas Veal down to the galley and got the old stew pot I’d had Jack bathe in. While everyone celebrated on deck I would soak the bones clean in water and barium salts. They had been picked of flesh long ago, but I didn’t feel comfortable leaving them so…organic.

To conceal what I did, I placed the vat and the bones underneath my sleeping platform, taking the old supports out. I informed cook I was doing a medical experiment and needed his vat and that I’d return it later. Still happy over his wealth, he didn’t murmur a word of protest.

I went to sleep listening to the excited voices on deck and the splashing of water against the ship.

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Blood traded Jack a diamond for the ransom of Miss Bishop and sailed on to Boston. A vote passed among us that we would instead sail back to Port Royal. Many of us had families and friends there and we could unload some riches there with ease. Jack hinted we might have to sail on to a large city to effectively trade stones for more spendable gold. We agreed to sail to Morocco after Port Royal, taking Jack’s word on a dependable black market.

The closer we got to Jamaica the more I fretted. My wealth could improve my father’s quality of life, which hadn’t been as nice as before the East India Trading Company interrupted. Too, a single diamond would go a long way to improving Will’s business. He could have new equipment, a new shop, even assistants. The more I thought about it the more I knew I had to go back to land.

The bones of Thomas Veal cleaned up nicely. In between shifts and meals I changed out the water, using sea water instead of our precious drinking supply. The skeleton turned nearly white as paper. I scoured cook’s vat and returned it to him with thanks. He grunted, shoved it under a table and waved me out of his work area. I had a feeling my popularity with him would continue to fall until I gaffed him another squid. For a pirate he could be a right ponce.

In Cuba I purchased an awl, a small hand drill, a length of chain and a pair of expensive cutters. By the light of a lamp while everyone else slept, I drilled into the bones at top and bottom, attaching every piece securely to its neighbor. We were passing Port au Prince when I finished the fully complete, fully articulated skeleton. I put him back in my pack in order not to have him spook my mates. They were fairly adjusted to a supernatural life, being Jack’s crew, but I felt it best not to push it.

I went out on deck to enjoy the night.

Feeling the pull of my star helped to calm me somewhat. I walked around the guns, checking for the order of things. We ran a tight ship but carelessness seemed an inevitability of nature.

I nearly walked into Jack. His dark shape didn’t move even when I came up on him so suddenly, but his eyes opened. I barely caught the glimmer of them in the moonlight.

“Good evening Lei,” Jack murmured, “Or is it morning yet?” His hands were positioned strangely on his knees. He sat cross legged. I remember him holding such a position on Isla Cruz when we dug to uncover the chest of Davy Jones.

“It is two in the morning,” I confirmed. “And good evening to you, captain.”

“Always so formal with me you are,” Jack said softly. “Sit down, boy, and share a bottle.”

Once I had settled beside him, Jack unwound from his odd stance. He passed the bottle back and forth between us several times. “Gibbs tells me you can do more than command wind with those pipes,” he said.

“So far I can change the temperature around me,” I said. “I’d like to try more but I’m afraid I’ll upset the crew.”

“On any other ship that might be a concern,” Jack replied. “These lads have seen quite a bit. They all think I’m a sorcerer anyway.”

“Aren’t you?” I said without thinking.

Jack looked at me out of one eye. “Do you really think that, Lei?”

“Sometimes,” I admitted.

“So you think I am a sea-bound Prospero?” Jack chuckled. “That wasn’t why I told you to read The Tempest.”

“Are you sure?” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the apple I’d been saving. “No disrespect, Captain Sparrow, but you seem very magical to me.”

“And yet you are the one wielding the magic,” Jack pointed out. “Give me that apple and a knife.”

I handed over both.

“You would normally cut this apple in half here,” Jack said, placing the knife across the green skin vertically. “I’m going to cut it here.” He held the knife horizontal and sliced into the fruit. He handed me both halves. “Do you see how the flesh is marked inside?”

I tilted one half to the moonlight. I could see a star in it, along with seeds.

“You always cut a certain way, you never see anything new,” Jack said. “All I’m ever doing is showing you where to cut that you haven’t thought of before.”

I said nothing, merely handed him the other half of my apple and began to eat. Who would have guessed Jack had the makings of a teacher? He could make a lesson out of anything he wished. He’d taken my apple and used it to show me he wasn’t special for knowing a different way of doing something. But he’d failed. The fact that he had the intelligence and the instinct to teach me this way made my estimation of him even higher than before.

“How’s your rib these days, lad?” Jack asked, bringing me out of my thoughts.

“Very much improved,” I admitted gladly. “Another week or two and I’ll be good as new.”

“Any problems with Gihr?” he asked, rapid-fire.

“No. He has finally accepted me or shut up, I don’t care which.” I offered Jack a piece of candied ginger untainted by sleeping powder. Jack placed it in his mouth and leaned back until his spine touched a gun. “Captain,” I said.

“Yes?” Jack looked at me.

“When I play the pipes, do you see anything?”

“No.” Jack considered me carefully. “What do you see?”

“Blue, flame-like spirits.” I put ginger under my tongue and took a swig of rum. The combination pleased me. “They don’t have faces, just the shape of a body.”

“The Persians call those djinn,” Jack said. “I don’t know what they were called to the people who made those pipes.”

“You can sit here and talk to me like this and still claim not to be a sorcerer?” I said, feeling a bit displaced. “You’re the one I come to for knowledge. You seem like you know everything.”

“I suppose that makes me a sorcerer,” Jack relented. “But that would make you the sorcerer’s apprentice, wouldn’t it?”

“I’d like to think I’d be a worthy one,” I answered, unsettled by the truth of that.

Jack sighed softly. “Boy, you have to get over your unusual regard for me. You think more of me than I do, which is saying much.” He grinned sheepishly into the darkness before looking up into the stars.

“May I be candid?” I took a bracing gulp of rum.

“With me, always,” Jack said. “I candidly encourage you to be candid.”

“Sometimes I get a glimpse of your star,” I said. “It’s bigger than anything I’ve ever known. It is only natural that I see you the way I do.”

Jack looked down at the deck. His long, knotted hair fell forward, obscuring me from the view of his profile. Slowly, he reached into his coat. Fisting a small object, he held his hand out to me. “Then, Lei,” he said softly. “How do you see her?”

I looked at yet another scrimshaw of myself in feminine form. I felt a pang as I remembered my hair flowing freely down my back, as in the portrait. My own eyes stared back at me, wide and black and far from self discovery. The juxtaposition flowed through me, making me shiver. When could I ever have looked like this except for when I’d-.

How did I see myself? An eternal question to be sure, yet a question that feasibly had an answer.

“She’s innocent only in experience,” I said quietly. “She’s frightened and repelled by whatever she’s seeing, but she’s also curious. She’s willing to be hurt to accomplish her goals, and willing to hurt others. She doesn’t know enough to understand avoiding pain.”

I ran my fingers over the etching, felt each patient, careful stroke that made the channels of my likeness. “We’re coming up on port soon,” I said. “Is this another gift?”

“It’s for William, yes,” Jack said, taking the piece of ivory back. “I can’t very well wander into his section of town though. But if he sees the Pearl he’ll come to me. He’ll want to ask me if I’ve seen her.”

“So you’ve changed your mind about taking his prize, given the chance?” I had deliberately not thought of this, not after the second day of sideways thinking about it.

“Did I imply that?” Jack threw me a sideways grin. “Sorry. No, I’ll still take his bonny lass given the chance.”

“Then this gift is edged,” I surmised. God help me if Jack ever figured out who I was. He didn’t specify what he would do with me, just that I’d belong to him. If he wanted me on his ship I could do little to escape it as Elizabeth Swann.

“It won’t cut him if he doesn’t hold it against himself.” Jack tucked the ivory away. “You see what I’m saying, lad? You can’t make a map in uncharted territory by filling it in as you go, on the march or on the sail. You have to stop, get your bearings, record what you’ve seen and move just a little farther on.”

“I’m not sure I understand the analogy,” I confessed.

“Love is an uncharted territory, Lei,” Jack said patiently. “Wise people who love each other compare maps, savvy?”

“But how do you know she’s not sailing back around to him?” I argued.

“Young William and Miss Swann don’t sail under the same star.” Jack closed his eyes. “While I may not know the inner workings of either of them, I know the pull of a pirate. Miss Swann had every right to be born on the deck of a ship while William probably was born on the deck of a ship. Funny ol’ world.”

“Everyone has different stars,” I said mournfully, taking a drink of his rum.

“Are you sure of that?” Jack asked softly.

“It stands to reason,” I protested.

“Does it?” Jack’s eyes pierced me. “If everyone has a star must they have it alone?”

I thought about that. Maybe some people did share stars. How would they know if they did? I only knew I had a star because of Jack; it was Jack the Sorcerer’s first lesson of magic. “Maybe not,” I relented. “But why would I have come to that conclusion first?”

“Either the instinct of being correct or the arrogance of man,” Jack answered gently. “We all go about thinking ourselves unique, don’t we?” He took the bottle back and drank deeply. His slender body shivered a single time as he set the container down between us. “The first thing I taught you was the existence of your star, and the second that everyone had one. Now you have to understand you might have to share. Sharing a star isn’t a bad thing. It keeps you from being lonely.”

I thought he made it sound better, explaining it that way. There were people out there I could always relate to, always understand. I might have to search for them, but I wouldn’t regret knowing them. “Have you ever met a person you shared a star with?” I asked, thinking the closest thing I probably had was Jack himself.

“Yes.” Jack smiled sadly. “She’s trapped in a prison of her own making now, where I can’t reach her. It serves as a warning to me.”

Now, I shivered, but not from rum. “What sort of warning, sir?” I asked. It pained me to think of Jack in love with someone.

“A warning not to let time slip through my fingers,” Jack said with a wry smile. “If I had acted as I wished I might have her now.” Jack went back to staring up at the sky, his eyes soft. “But she is quite unreachable.”

“I’m sorry,” I offered. I felt terrible for getting Jack back into a low mood. I loved his animation, his cocky dance through life and hard times. Only rarely did I see him like that anymore.

“Don’t be sorry Lei,” Jack murmured. “You had nothing to do with it.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t empathize,” I muttered.

Jack turned to me. Even in the cold moonlight I could not mistake the warmth and compassion in his dark eyes. “Never think I’m silent because I feel you don’ have the intelligence for my words, and never assume I’m goin’ to put you in a place and keep you there.” His voice, low and gentle, carried the conviction of his words with power. “I’m your captain, Lei, this is true, but I’m also your priest, your judge, and your guardian. If me own roles are so varied, why could yours not be also?” He threw an arm around me and tugged me to his side briefly, but gently, mindful of my rib.

“You’re a good lad,” Jack said.

No, I’m not, I thought miserably. Jack’s faith in me, his praise, made my lie come to life in a vulgar way. He enjoyed my company and it was a lie. I wasn’t Lei Trapezia, I was Elizabeth Swann.

His causal, masculine embrace only sharpened my loss. Trapped in this role I would never know the warmth of his skin in intimacy. But if I told him, I would lose him. I felt like weeping.

“You look very sad,” Jack commented. “You don’t think you’re a good lad?”

“No, I don’t J- captain,” I said, stumbling over my words.

“And you don’t want to say why?” Jack went on.

“I’d rather not,” I whispered. “I won’t deny you my story if you demand it, but I’d really rather keep my ghosts locked away.”

Jack gave me a short squeeze on my shoulder and got to his feet. “I’ll not demand a thing,” he said, filling me with relief. “But Lei, I have to remind you; ghosts can’t be locked away.”

With that I sat on the deck alone.