PotC fic -- And All of Them True
"Same story, different version. And all of them true." Elizabeth asks Tia Dalma a question, and gets an answer. Jack/Elizabeth kind of.
Spoilers for DMC only, warning for possibly disturbing content.
Jean-Merlion might a been thirteen the day he ran. Might a been. It was 1733 and I’m certain of that. It were summer and freezing, a tropical storm blowing in off the Gulf of Mexico, lashing houses and ships with rain, winds driving the rain almost horizontal, blowing the river into the streets in great chocolate waves. Lots of nobodys disappeared.
Maybe Jean-Merlion drowned. Maybe one of those big downed trees hit him and carried him off downstream, turning and turning in the current. Or maybe the river threw him up on a barricade of debris with the bodies of goats and hogs, retching dirty water and shivering in the rain. It might have been.
Only thing for sure, nobody saw Jean-Merlion ever again in Nouvelle Orleans. Might have been somebody like him sometime, somebody handsome and assured, some white man who spoke English and had an English name, a ship’s captain for the British East India Company. But by then nobody remembered Jean-Merlion at all. Why should they? Slave boy not worth remembering, drowned like a housecat in a storm nine year ago.
It were some other boy took passage on the Acadiana, some boy named John who sold hisself for passage. It were some freeborn boy from Fort Condé what took an iron to him own left shoulder to get the brand off, burning blank over whatever symbol had been there, a bland empty patch of puckered skin, a burn that might have come from anywhere. That were the second time of three he were branded.
Best not to ask what he traded for passage, Miss Swann. You beautiful. You can guess. Three kinds of ways to go to sea. Passenger, crew and captain’s whore. He play the cards he got, same as you, only marriage make selling your body more expensive.
This other boy, he were more than beautiful, with great sooty eyes and a mouth made for kissing. Pretty as a girl, he were, with skin the color of café au lait like they say in Nouvelle Orleans. Maybe his grandmother come from Africa, chained hand and foot and she work the rice and sing old songs. Maybe his mother were a high yellow prostitute in a whorehouse with an iron balcony, kept by a sailor man. Maybe it’s true that his grandfather were a French nobleman exiled for dissipation and madness, and maybe that madness carry on. Or maybe none of it’s true. Except the part that he was beautiful.
And maybe he fall in love, love as old as time. Maybe he fall in love with the sea.
She carry him where he want to go, she make love to him gentle. Maybe she’d already marked him, and reach her arms far upriver and carry him on her strength down to the sea with all the fury of the storm. Maybe she call him beloved, and know him for hers.
Whatever happen, she not forget him. But sometime she need some help, too, Miss Swann, and that where you come in. She knows you hear her whisper in your dreams at night, knows you’ve dreamed of mist and black flags since your blood flowed. Old magic, sea magic. Tit for tat, my granny say.
Or maybe it some other man I talk about, some Englishman with fine manners and a fine ship, a bright young honest man who work for the Company and know that you just work enough, you win. Some good man who taught himself to figure and trace the shapes of the stars, who know better than to whistle up the wind. Who think he leave the past behind him.
Nothin’ ever behind, when blood call out to blood, when he have everything in his hands and his kinfolks calling out to him in chains, locked neck to neck in the dark. But you don’t need that part of the story, Miss Swann. You seen the marks, and you seen that brand.
You dream them, and you wonder what might have happened if you had.
Will you dare the weird waters at world’s end to bring back wicked Jack and him precious Pearl?
Feedback is greatly appreciated!
Spoilers for DMC only, warning for possibly disturbing content.
Jean-Merlion might a been thirteen the day he ran. Might a been. It was 1733 and I’m certain of that. It were summer and freezing, a tropical storm blowing in off the Gulf of Mexico, lashing houses and ships with rain, winds driving the rain almost horizontal, blowing the river into the streets in great chocolate waves. Lots of nobodys disappeared.
Maybe Jean-Merlion drowned. Maybe one of those big downed trees hit him and carried him off downstream, turning and turning in the current. Or maybe the river threw him up on a barricade of debris with the bodies of goats and hogs, retching dirty water and shivering in the rain. It might have been.
Only thing for sure, nobody saw Jean-Merlion ever again in Nouvelle Orleans. Might have been somebody like him sometime, somebody handsome and assured, some white man who spoke English and had an English name, a ship’s captain for the British East India Company. But by then nobody remembered Jean-Merlion at all. Why should they? Slave boy not worth remembering, drowned like a housecat in a storm nine year ago.
It were some other boy took passage on the Acadiana, some boy named John who sold hisself for passage. It were some freeborn boy from Fort Condé what took an iron to him own left shoulder to get the brand off, burning blank over whatever symbol had been there, a bland empty patch of puckered skin, a burn that might have come from anywhere. That were the second time of three he were branded.
Best not to ask what he traded for passage, Miss Swann. You beautiful. You can guess. Three kinds of ways to go to sea. Passenger, crew and captain’s whore. He play the cards he got, same as you, only marriage make selling your body more expensive.
This other boy, he were more than beautiful, with great sooty eyes and a mouth made for kissing. Pretty as a girl, he were, with skin the color of café au lait like they say in Nouvelle Orleans. Maybe his grandmother come from Africa, chained hand and foot and she work the rice and sing old songs. Maybe his mother were a high yellow prostitute in a whorehouse with an iron balcony, kept by a sailor man. Maybe it’s true that his grandfather were a French nobleman exiled for dissipation and madness, and maybe that madness carry on. Or maybe none of it’s true. Except the part that he was beautiful.
And maybe he fall in love, love as old as time. Maybe he fall in love with the sea.
She carry him where he want to go, she make love to him gentle. Maybe she’d already marked him, and reach her arms far upriver and carry him on her strength down to the sea with all the fury of the storm. Maybe she call him beloved, and know him for hers.
Whatever happen, she not forget him. But sometime she need some help, too, Miss Swann, and that where you come in. She knows you hear her whisper in your dreams at night, knows you’ve dreamed of mist and black flags since your blood flowed. Old magic, sea magic. Tit for tat, my granny say.
Or maybe it some other man I talk about, some Englishman with fine manners and a fine ship, a bright young honest man who work for the Company and know that you just work enough, you win. Some good man who taught himself to figure and trace the shapes of the stars, who know better than to whistle up the wind. Who think he leave the past behind him.
Nothin’ ever behind, when blood call out to blood, when he have everything in his hands and his kinfolks calling out to him in chains, locked neck to neck in the dark. But you don’t need that part of the story, Miss Swann. You seen the marks, and you seen that brand.
You dream them, and you wonder what might have happened if you had.
Will you dare the weird waters at world’s end to bring back wicked Jack and him precious Pearl?
Feedback is greatly appreciated!