Marooned, 11

In Which Jack Sings to the Mermaids

by

Gloria Mundi

He thought he remembered an argument. A woman's voice, implacable, telling him to let go, to go back. Or had she been speaking to him at all? It had sounded nothing like Elizabeth. He liked the dreams about Elizabeth, and she sounded kinder than that. Nothing like Anamaria, either, though she was likelier dead, and thus able to speak in his dreams.

He remembered someone bringing him fire, and thanking them for it: but he could not remember who it had been. They hadn't done anything about his leg, damn it, and they hadn't brought him rum, or food, or anything to wrap around himself. But he supposed he should be grateful. He had fire.

But outside the circle of firelight the night pressed in on him. It had glowing blue eyes, all in a row. He could feel their cold assessing stare, sizing him up, finding him wanting. The strand was very quiet, beneath the ceaseless rush of the sea. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something move, but it stilled when he turned to face it.

He had never been alone for this long before. His voice, when he spoke, sounded weak and afraid against the echoing distance around the island. How far was he from land? The night drew his courage out of him, and mocked it. He dared not sleep.

After moonset, the fire burnt low. He crouched over it with a handful of spindrift and dried kelp, doling out fuel like a prisoner's meals. His damaged leg ached like hell.

The shadows between the flames leaned closer, like the shadows in the fog the day the Pearl went down. He swore at the shadows, but his voice was eaten up by the empty night.

The signal fires he built at the top of the island were made with green wood, which smokes fiercely when it burns. He remembered the rum, and Elizabeth, and her thousand-foot signal fire: that made him sing the song she'd taught him, and the sound of singing brought the mermaids out on the rocks at the end of the bay.

"No bloody Norrington coming to my rescue, now is there?" Jack addressed them. But then he wasn't a slip of a girl in her petticoat—though the linen of his shirt was wearing as delicately thin as muslin. And Norrington had been saving his lady-love from the clutches of a fearsome pirate captain, which didn't apply here.

Although, in a way, it did.

The mermaids giggled and pointed, and tried to sing along. Because of the smoke, he couldn't see them very clearly, but they were the dark-scaled kind, and they flopped around lewdly on the slippery rocks.

"Nasty creatures," said Jack, under his breath. "Get your scaly tails away." He had a vague memory of clawed hands and sharp teeth: but he had a great many vague memories, and he liked them vague. Some rum would help with that.

"Bloody Elizabeth!" he yelled suddenly, startling the mermaids back into the water. None of them saw him wipe his face, cursing.

"Smoke," he explained, to the air.

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