Apprentice To The Sorcerer

Pardon my French. No, really.

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The ship’s wild pitching woke me. I nearly tumbled out of bed when my muscles tensed in wakefulness. I was alone in the cabin. Through the leaded windows I could see an angry grey sky almost totally obscured by walls of water. We were in a storm.

I rolled out and found the chamber pot. After using it I felt much better, but the wild motions of the ship made me ill. Worried that we truly sailed into a tempest, I staggered for the door. My weak muscles barely obeyed me. I kicked over a pile of my clothing and my pipes skidded across the boards.

Well, just the thing I needed. Did I have the strength?

It wasn’t until I had the hatch open and I felt the strong breeze on my legs that I noticed I wasn’t exactly dressed. I wore a shirt that could only belong to my brother, but nothing else. Sheets of water drenched me. Vaguely I could see Jack at the helm and the crew desperately controlling the sails.

Using the brief moments the footing turned level, I made my way up to the aft of the ship. The wind blew across my pipes. I clutched them to my chest, put one hand on the rail and held on for dear life. A sense of responsibility washed over me as I stood there, trembling and panting like a hunted deer. I had to help get this storm under control before it sank us.

I raised my instrument and began to play. The spirits came out for me, swooping and diving around the ship like children playing in the ocean. In moments they coalesced into a single creature, forming a protective dome. My eyes widened in awe. My playing nearly faltered as I saw the thing coming at the ship.

The cyclone seemed enormous. It blotted out the sky as it bore down on the Pearl, whistling and raging to beat the devil. I watched as it bounced off the dome of wind spirits and shattered. Instantly, the sea lost its anger. The wind died. I slid down the rail, shutting my eyes. If I hadn’t come out we might all have perished.

I didn’t have to open my eyes to know Jack was the one picking me up. He smelled like that dark oil he liked so much, and the slight tang of molasses. His strong arms carried me back to the cabin, where he sat me in a chair. “Here, Lizzie,” he said, throwing a sheet over me. “Hold this up around you.”

Obedient as a dumb animal, I held the sheet up to my body. Jack bent over me, reached underneath my covering, and began unlacing my sodden shirt. His nimble fingers didn’t even graze me once as he tugged the garment free. I noticed he hung it up instead of throwing it in the floor, like he might have done with something that belonged to him.

“You’re close enough to my size,” Jack said, going to his wardrobe. “At least for a shirt,” he amended. “The breeches would be too big at the hips and thighs I think.”

Weaving in and out of awareness, I drifted. I only paid enough attention to Jack’s effort to dress me in regards to my modesty. When he finished he lifted me back up, put me back in his bed. Sleep tugged at my eyelids again.

Jack forced me to wake up enough to drink grog. I tried to fight him but he kept shoving the cup up to my face. “You’ll drink it if I have to make you,” he growled.

I drank. Soon enough I lay flat on my back, tucked into the softness of a Jack-scented heaven. I thrust my face into his pillow and relaxed. But I felt cold, almost numb.

I heard Jack walking to the hatch, then a sharp whistle. Seconds later he began murmuring to someone. The hatch shut and I felt Scorby jump onto the bed. She was warm and soft. She nuzzled my cheek before settling down beside me, cradled in my limp arms.

The clatter of metal told me Jack had decided to remove his pistol and cutlass. I cracked my eye open. He stripped his sodden shirt, throwing it across a chair. His scarred, tattooed chest gleamed with water. I watched his muscles bunch and twist at his waistline as he removed his sash. They rippled when he raised his arms to undo his scarf.

Jack was a living sculpture of pain and purpose.

Jack knew.

Terror for my situation beat past the days of opium, reminded me in a long, drawn out scream of horror that I’d been discovered. The rules had changed while I slept.

He didn’t notice my sudden shift into panic. Standing there, half naked and wringing wet, he shook his head like a dog. A fine spray of water filled the air. Scorby sneezed and the tip of her tail twitched in irritation. He smiled at her, his eyes sliding up automatically to my face. When our gazes met I turned to liquid inside, from lust or fear or possibly both. I never allowed us to keep eye contact for long, not as Lei.

“What big eyes you have,” Jack murmured.

“I’m not the wolf,” I said, speaking clearly for the first time in days.

“Like hell,” Jack growled. “You have to get over your modesty, me luv, and pay homage to the predator you are.” He turned his back on me, striding over to his wardrobe again. When he dropped his breeches I stared full-on at his muscular arse, amazed. I wondered how and where he got the privacy to have this section of his anatomy darkened by the sun.

Jack tugged on another pair of breeches. Glancing down, he noticed I’d filled the chamber pot. With a yawn he bent down, picked it up and went back out on deck. The sight of him coming back through the hatch, hair completely down, shirtless, barefoot, back-lit by the grey sky, made me shiver anew. Casually graceful, he struck his foot out behind him and closed the hatch.

I patted Scorby as I watched Jack start going through his maps.

“Why did Tia Dalma call you by your assumed name?” he asked, thumbing through a book and not looking at me. “Gave me a start, that did. I thought Weatherby had an illegitimate son and that I might’ve been wrong about who I had.”

“I don’t know why she did it, or how,” I confessed. “I certainly had no previous contact with her.”

Jack let a snort of amusement escape. “Tia has powers we’ll never fathom,” he said. He pulled out a map and began tracing his fingers over the edge of it. The single lantern and the weak light from the windows allowed me to see the old, black powder burn on his hand fairly well. With a delicate flick of his fingers, he slid a paper out of his book and onto the table. Holding his place, he flicked the lid off the travel inkwell and thrust a quill into it.

I couldn’t see what he wrote from my position, but I watched the way his hand and arm moved.

“Why did you say you’d tainted me?” I asked him, thinking of our conversation on deck my first week on the Pearl.

Jack didn’t miss a beat.

“Lizzie dear, if you can’t figure that one out it’s best if I don’t tell you.” He continued to write, but his lips were smiling. “I can just go on tainting you at leisure.” He tossed the quill down haphazardly, shut his book, stowed the map and left the paper he’d been writing on to dry. “Which I intend to do anyway, so I suppose it’s moot.” He smiled that smile, leaning back on the table while he looked down at me. “Now, when do you want to have the inevitable conversation about leaving me for the Kraken?”

“Never,” I said.

“I’d allow it, but I think it has to be discussed. It has a festering quality. Parlez maintenant ou à jamais silencieux.”

“I didn’t want to do it.” I clenched onto Scorby’s fur reflexively.

“That was exceedingly plain, luv,’ Jack said. “Anything else?”

“What are you going to do to me for it?” I gritted my teeth. “The only thing fair is to kill me.”

Jack snorted. “You have a flair for the dramatic, don’t you Lizzie? And you’re arrogant too if you think I was in your shackles longer than a few minutes. I’ve weaseled my way out of more than one pair you know.”

“But, but you went down with the Pearl,” I whispered.

“Aye, and down the gullet of Jones’ beastie,” Jack agreed. “Bienvenu au ventre de la bête. But I wasn’t dangling from the mast.”

He approached the bed. “I’m not asking for an apology, so you can forget that. I told you once before, didn’t I? I admire people who get things done, who do whatever it is they have to do.”

“Then why bring it up?” I cringed away from him as he knelt beside the bed.

“So you would know and you wouldn’t think on it.” Jack walked to the foot of the bed and promptly climbed into it. I lay frozen as he slid under the blankets. His head hit the same pillow I slept upon. “You’ll never be a good pirate with that conscience,” he said into my ear. His arm draped over my waist and tugged me closer. “Amour ruse,” he breathed.

“Why are you speaking to me in French?” I asked, desperate for a distraction. The very softest bits of my body seemed to want to glue themselves to the hardest parts of Jack

“Why not?” Jack tucked his nose near the back of my neck and inhaled me. “Mon eau dangereux, mon Elizabeth. Je veux plonger dans vous.”

My dangerous water. I want to dive into you.

“Emportez-moi dans votre inondation.” Jack wrapped my hair around his hand.

Sweep me away in your flood.

“Jack, you’re scaring me,” I said. “Even if I wasn’t sick I wouldn’t be sure of this.”

“Menteur. Menteur et pirate.” Jack let my hair slide out of his hands. “I take your protests to mean stop,” he said. “You’re going to have to be clear.”

“Stop, then,” I said shakily.

“That wasn’t hard, was it?” Jack settled back into simply lying behind me. He left his right hand on my hip though, hovering on the very edge of the shirt he’d put me in. My bare bottom felt the heat and burn of his pelvis acutely.

Suddenly, I very stupidly realized Jack knew French. He’d understood every bit of my illicit conversation with Peter. He had heard me declare I thought Jack an excellent captain. I resolved not to take his education for granted ever again.

“Are you warm now?” Jack asked.

“Yes, thank you,” I said.

“Tis a pleasure to warm you,” he murmured. “You don’t have to go back to the men’s flop you know.”

“You mean I’m allowed to leave?” I pressed the question, remembering his claims to Mokulu that I would be allowed to return below.

“You feel I’m marking territory?” Jack’s fingers slid back and forth over my clothed hip in maddening circles. “You’d feel correctly. You are mine.”

“You’re so sure of that,” I snapped.

“Lizzie, you were mine the moment I allowed you on the Pearl, you just didn’t know it.” Jack let his hand ease upwards, traced the curve of my waist. His light touch made me tremble inside. “But there are degrees of ownership. You’re in me crew, lawfully, a pirate under Captain Jack Sparrow. You’ve chosen me three times now, did you know that? Once when you opted for joining me crew over sailing with the Envoy’s captain, the second time when you chose me over Peter Blood, and the third time when you returned to me ship after your debacle with William. You want to be here, apparently.”

“I do want to be here,” I confessed. “But-.”

“You don’t know if yer Lei or Lizzie,” Jack finished for me.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“I can clear that up. You’re neither and both.” Jack reached up to stroke my arm. His touch sent a multitude of sensations over my skin. “And while I insist upon rights to you, I don’t cotton to slavery. I’m not keeping you here against your will, not even in my bed where I would dearly love to have you.”

“You can get what you want from anyone,” I said. “I’ve seen that for myself. Man or woman.”

“True, but I want you.”

I couldn’t help the tremor that shook me.

“I want you spread underneath me,” he went on softly, lowly, still caressing my arm. “But I admit this is very pleasant as well. I haven’t lain with a woman in nearly two years.”

“So you pay for this sort of thing?”

“To laze about in a bed?” Jack laughed. “It’s usually afters, Lizzie.”

“So your answer is yes.” I persisted.

“Very rarely is visiting a whore anything but immediate gratification,” Jack said patiently. “They don’t want a man hanging about and I assure you, a man doesn’t want to hang about either. This,” he wrapped his fingers around my wrist, bringing it behind me to rest my fingers on his hip. “This is different. This isn’t about instant gratification.” He let me go. I tried to pull my hand back and he prevented it. My fingers splayed for purchase and found the sharp bone of his hip. “This is about enjoying the feel of a real woman.” He put his own hand back on my hip.

We lay there in this strange position. I felt his heartbeat moving the blood in his body, felt the slow but gradual acceleration of it. My breathing came erratically now, in fast, desperate puffs.

“I’ve always wanted you, Lizzie-beth,” Jack said in my ear. “When you wrapped your arm around my shoulders to dress me, I knew I wanted you. Staring at me, angry, spitting fire, you were glorious. I thought about taking you with me. I would have.”

“You couldn’t,” I choked out. “You had to make an escape.”

“Aye, and that was the only reason.” Jack leaned in. His nose brushed past the curtain of my hair and touched my neck. “The smell of you alone gave me enough reason. You were soaked from the sea. Then I bent over you and you were soaked inside. And I was there but a moment.” He dragged his closed lips over my nape gently. “You knew who I was, didn’t you Lizzie? And you’d never seen me before in your life.”

“I- I did know,” I confessed.

“And you know so much about me, as much as anyone can know,” he went on. “You’ve read of everything concerning me.”

“What’s your point, Jack?”

“My point?” Jack covered my hand with his own, holding me pressed to his hip. “Must I have one? I’m perfectly content to rattle on about nothing, like I usually do.”

“Your buffoonery is nothing but an act,” I hissed, upset with him. “It confuses people, takes them off guard.”

“And gives me an advantage.” Jack chuckled.

“And you’re educated but you pretend otherwise,” I accused.

“Too much book learning is unhealthy,” Jack replied.

“Book learning my arse!” I twisted, rolled to face him. “Every man on this ship thinks you’re some kind of wizard, and I’m inclined to believe it myself!”

Jack retreated, lying flat on his back as I leaned over him in a nervous furor. I put my finger in his face, right under his nose, and shook it. “You showed me my star! You gave me those pipes! You knew I could call the wind! Tia Dalma didn’t put that sigil over your door, you did! No matter what you get yourself into, you get right back out. Nothing sticks to you, Jack, nothing! If someone rolled you in honey and threw you to a termite colony, you’d come out best friends with the termites. The honey would tighten up your locks and give you a skin treatment!”

Jack burst out laughing. “Me own brand of luck, luv, what else could it be?”

I snatched my finger away from his face, realizing I almost had it up his nose. My left leg straddled his right, grinding my nethers right against his thigh. “God, Lizzie,” he said, staring up at me, smiling. “You take my breath away when yer angry.”

“Don’t change the subject,” I huffed, trying to retrieve my leg. Jack clamped down on me.

“Ah-ah,” he chastised. “I think you have a good idea here.”

Scorby jumped onto the floor, tail erect with displeasure. Our movements had disturbed her. She stalked to the hatch and lay down with her back to it, observing us with cool disdain.

I fought him, determined not to do anything he might want, if only for a moment. I gasped as he rose up over me, pinning me to the bed with his body. Lazily, he caught my wrists and forced them to either side of my head. Our lower bodies tangled tightly in the blankets. I tried to wriggle out from under him. Jack’s eyes darkened to near black. I froze as a hardness grew against the junction of my legs.

I had felt Will before, but not like this. Will had quickly moved my hand away from him, professing it wasn’t proper.

Jack shoved against me. I gasped at the bright flash of pleasure the pressure caused. He looked like a beautiful beast poised over me, dominant and thinly controlled. His dark eyes swallowed me whole.

“Better if you lay still, luv,” Jack rasped.

The smell of him intoxicated me. His own musk gave the oil he wore an incredible strength. I felt afraid, excited, lustful and curious all at once; amazed I had the power to push Jack’s limits.

“Why d’you have to look at me with those big, frightened eyes?” Jack said softly, almost whispering. “Don’t you know I wouldn’t hurt you, Lizzie-beth?”

His question stung my eyes.

“When have I ever harmed a hair on your head?” he went on, voice quiet and low. He let go of one of my wrists, trailed the back of his hand down my bruised cheek. “I’m sorry he hurt you, Lizzie, truly I am. Now your outsides match your insides; all torn up and aching. Running you through would have been kinder than denying your name.”

“I deserved it Jack,” I protested, feeling the water leak from my eyes. “I hurt him.”

“He hurt himself.” Jack pulled me into his arms and lay with me, cradling my head on his pectoral muscle. “I read your letter, luv, and it couldn’t have been clearer.”

“There must be something wrong with me,” I said, clutching Jack’s shirt. “I should have wanted that life. I should have wanted it. I didn’t. I was bored. I was stifled.”

“Oh Lizzie, don’t say that,” Jack soothed. “Why believe that life is the better one? Why believe there’s something wrong with you for wanting more?” He stroked my hair gently, going from crown to tip over and over, lulling me. His heat and strength relaxed me, assured me of safety. “Go to sleep now, don’t think about it anymore. You have a place here on the Pearl even if that place isn’t this bed, you savvy?”

“But are you Jack, Captain Jack, or Captain Sparrow?” I asked, fearful of the answer.

He chuckled. “A quandary for my little swan,” he murmured. “Tell you what, dearie, I’m captain when we work and Jack when we play. This would be a lot simpler if you didn’t think I was a sorcerer you know.”

I fell asleep on him, unable to answer. He could play dumb all he wanted to, but I knew the truth.