White and Black Pearls 1 - Seven Pearls

Chapter Six


Jack was a strapping young lad in his later teenage years when he was given his first permission to captain the Wicked Wench in his father’s state of temporary illness. He had begun to fill out nicely, though wasn’t quite done yet, and had abandoned the simple dress of brown slacks and a tattered gray shirt for black slacks and a more comfortable white shirt with billowing sleeves. His hair was thick with dreadlocks starting to form and most of his braids were gone; he kept it all out of his face with a red bandanna and a buckled belt about his waist to holster his sword and gun together properly.

The wind that whipped through his hair and cooled his warm skin that night was a blessing; the sun had been baking hot all day and he was weary now, though he tried not to show it. All he could think about was a nice bottle of rum to finish off the day and a deep, drunken sleep he wouldn’t wake from for hours.

When he saw somebody moving below on deck, he frowned and tilted his head slightly. He’d ordered all but the necessary men below deck to rest, because they had big raiding plans for tomorrow and they were closing in on the vessel Jack had decided upon for their newest pirating escapade. ‘Oi, you there,’ he called out. ‘I gave orders for rest.’ He didn’t want to, but if he had to show a man his place Jack would do it. In his father’s absence Jack was the captain, and a captain couldn’t just let his crew ignore orders and do what they pleased or else that captain would soon find himself at the hands of a mutiny.

The person on deck stopped and lifted their head, pulling back the hood covering their face. Jack froze as the Wicked Wench’s deck was suddenly lit up with a soft glowing light. ‘Celestiana,’ he breathed.

After their second and last encounter together, Jack had spent several months sleeping on the deck of the Wench, in hope that she would return to him. He lost a lot of weight, his remaining baby fat disappearing, but he’d also gotten rather sick from it as well, until it reached a point where his father had forbidden him from sleeping out on the deck any longer. The boy’s heart had been broken. For the first year he’d kept up some kind of hope that what they’d shared together aboard the Wicked Wench had meant as much to her as it had to him, waiting eagerly for the day that she would return to him and they could spend time together once more. As the months drifted by, however, his hope had soured; it became desperation and quickly moldered into detachment and anger. He’d decided after a year and a half that she had just been toying with him and his feelings, and whatever he might have once felt for her he certainly didn’t feel it now and she’d obviously never felt it at all. Why shouldn’t she toy with him, after all? She was not human; she was not a creature that had to live with human consequence and emotion. Jack had probably just been a trifle or some kind of momentary entertainment and she likely did that sort of thing with anybody she pleased upon whim, on ships all over the globe.

‘Jack Sparrow,’ she said calmly from below, moving towards the stairs and mounting them with fluid steps along the floorboards. Her gaze lifted up to him as she walked across the deck and stopped before him. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips. ‘You’re as tall as I am now,’ Celestiana remarked pleasantly. ‘And your jaw has a man’s cut to it rather than a boy’s. You’re becoming a fine man.’

‘What do you want?’ Jack tossed out defensively without taking his hands off the wheel. He couldn’t, however, take his eyes off her either.

She was plainly taken aback at his tone and remark as she looked at him, and her brows twitched just slightly into a small frown. ‘What manner of greeting is this?’ she asked slowly, the gentle chime in her voice gone.

‘It’s a rather logical one,’ Jack offered in retort. ‘I want to know what you’re doing here and what you want. My father isn’t well enough to deal with your trifling meetings right now.’ That was another sore point with Jack; in the year and a half of silence from her, he knew for a fact that she’d come and visited his father at least once. If she could visit him, why couldn’t she visit Jack too?

‘Trifling,’ she muttered softly as the crease between her brows deepened. ‘Jack. I didn’t come here to see your father.’

‘Oh?’ He couldn’t remove the flippant tone from his voice had he wanted to. ‘You came to visit the crew then, perhaps to seduce and string along somebody else? I think good old Larry is below deck, he could sorely use some company with soft skin and pretty words. Why don’t you try him?’ The slap that stung his cheek immediately after he said it caused him to take a step back. ‘What was that for!’ he barked.

Her eyes were most definitely a golden color as they crackled with deep fury. ‘How dare you say such things to me,’ Celestiana whispered hotly. ‘What nonsense have you gotten into your head to ever think you could insult me like this?’

Jack rubbed his cheek once where he’d been smacked, rather sure that there was a red handprint on his face right now. ‘Don’t play coy games with me,’ he tossed back at her. ‘I’m not a boy any more. I get it; you’re some magical being who can do whatever she wants and I was just some passing fancy of yours. You don’t have to pretend like you were ever really interested in me. I’ve gotten over that and I’ve gotten over you.’

It was Celestiana’s turn to take a step back. She appeared genuinely shocked and hurt, and for a moment Jack’s stomach tightened as he considered the possibility that he was wrong, but he quelled those guilty feelings with another assurance to himself that he was just some pathetic human she wasn’t interested in. Remembering the months of sitting alone wearily upon this very ship’s deck and longing for her, and remembering the heartbreak he’d suffered at her hands made it easy to deal with the way she was looking at him right now.

‘So this is what you really think of me,’ she finally said, her voice tempered but barely. ‘You think I’m some wicked being that sticks her fingers into the hearts of men across the world and wiggles them about until they fall for me, before ripping their hearts out and moving on to the next escapade?’

‘I couldn’t have phrased it better myself,’ Jack said honestly.

‘Jack Sparrow you’re a fool,’ Celestiana breathed.

That uncomfortable feeling returned in Jack’s stomach as her anger melted away and he could see woe written plainly across her face. She was either a most skillful actress, or he truly had just caused her pain. But he was right, wasn’t he? Why else would she make him feel so strongly for her and then not come back to see him for this long? He felt a very agonizing ball of ice starting to form in his guts as she turned her back to him and lifted her hand to her face. Was she… weeping? He swallowed hard but couldn’t bring himself to move towards her.

‘I let you be, because I didn’t want to interfere too deeply in your life,’ her words carried to his ears even though they were uttered in a whisper and she wasn’t facing him any longer. ‘I wanted to give you plenty of chances to experience everything you wanted and possibly decide for yourself if you truly felt as strongly for me as I do for you, or if it was just child’s love. I wanted you to know the temptations of everything else in the world and possibly fall for another woman if that’s what was meant to be, so that I wouldn’t eclipse your life and rob you of the destiny you would have chosen were it not for my interference.’ Her shoulders squared then as she turned round to face him once more. ‘I suppose I’ve gotten my answers, though not in the form I’d expected,’ she remarked. ‘I was wrong to think that anything could come of you. What a fool I’ve been. I knew better but I tried anyhow; no better than him, I am…’ She shook her head, letting that trail of information stop without elaborating which “him” she was referring to. ‘Then I guess this will be our final parting Jack Sparrow.’

He’d been stuck standing there with his mouth open as what she said made perfect sense and he felt suddenly like a very big, very loud and very stupid braying jackass. ‘No!’ he blurted while releasing the wheel, reaching out and grabbing her shoulders, pulling her close so that her body was pressed up to his. ‘Don’t go!’ Jack begged, his arms wrapping tightly around her. Why was it that every time he saw her he found himself begging her not to leave? He grit his teeth when he found that she did not lift her arms to embrace him in return. ‘Please,’ he pressed breathlessly.

Finally her hands lifted and she returned his embrace. ‘We are both fools,’ Celestiana breathed against his chest.

Jack leaned down then and lifted her chin the same way she’d lifted his so long ago, and this time when their lips met in a kiss, he was no longer left fumbling and feeling awkward. His kiss was firm and sure as he closed his eyes and took another step forward, causing her to step back. Jack continued to move forward along the deck until he had Celestiana pressed up against the mizzenmast. The soft, almost needy sound that came from her as his tongue pushed to enter her mouth made a wash of tingling pinpricks flood over him.

That morning, as the sun rose up above the horizon, Jack sat upon the railing in front of the helm, with his legs dangling over the front. It was the same railing he’d hidden behind when he’d first seen Celestiana but this time he wasn’t hiding, he was sitting proudly atop it, and she was sitting beside him. His expression was deeply satisfied and calm as he tightened his grip on her shoulder, keeping his arm tightly around her. When the sun was finally up, he turned to say something to her, but paused as his eyebrows arched. ‘You’re… different,’ he muttered.

She smiled and nodded slowly. ‘In the day my skin is bronzed and my cloak is lighter. In the night I’m pale and my cloak is black. Day and night, sun and moon,’ she murmured. ‘Do you dislike me like this?’

Jack shook his head no. ‘I like you in any form,’ he mumbled softly, before frowning slightly. Saying such romantic things was unfamiliar to him but it didn’t feel too uncomfortable.

‘Jack,’ she continued in a soft voice, ‘Do you really want to do this?’

He was quiet for a while as he stared out over the ocean and the wind kicked up, helping to dry away some of the remaining beads of sweat still rolling down his throat and chest from earlier. At last he said, ‘I don’t know. You were right in that it is foolish for both of us to pursue this. I’m a human, mortal… and you’re… not.’ Jack turned his head and kissed her temple. He knew what the safe and right thing to say was, but just couldn’t bring himself to say it. ‘Whatever you and I pursue… in any reality or any strain of destiny, do any of the paths lead to the both of us being happy?’

‘What do you mean?’ she breathed. There were several things Jack could be talking about specifically and Celestiana needed to know which it was that was helping Jack to close his heart right now, because she certainly couldn’t come up with anything that enabled her to close her own.

‘If you and I decided to try and find happiness with each other,’ Jack elaborated, ‘as the years passed, I would get old and you would stay the same. I wouldn’t be able to give you everything you would need, and then… eventually, some day, I’ll die. Will you still be happy then? And then there’s the other problem. I’m still just a human. I can’t keep up with you in everything you do, and my love of the seas binds me to this ship. You couldn’t spend all of your time here on the Wicked Wench with me either, I know you couldn’t. How would that work out?’

She pursed her lips tightly. ‘You’ve thought about this, before I even came here.’ Her hands clasped tighter on her lap as Celestiana bowed her head. She had to admit that she’d thought about it too; she’d been thinking about it for the last ten years. ‘I know you’re right.’ Taking a deep breath in, she let her shoulders sag. ‘But I can’t give you up Jack, and I can’t believe I’m saying that.’

‘I know the feeling,’ he whispered.

Their gazes locked. Silently they were each asking the other, “What do we do?” but neither had the answer. ‘If you ever talk to me again like you did last night,’ Celestiana breathed, ‘I will make you suffer like you’ve never imagined.’

Jack smiled and leaned in, kissing her on the mouth without answering.

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