Chapter Text
It was a fine gown, simple in the colonial way and well-made, the gown of a merchant’s wife or daughter, no doubt. The color was a muted rose, shy and demure. Barbossa laid it out over the chair next to his and looked at it while he drank. He’d fitted one of Chevalle’s drawings of Peg into a small frame, and he sat that out beside the gown, and thought about his sweetheart.
The business he’d begun with Chevalle was finished; they’d lined their pockets and taken a number of ships as they made their way back into the Caribbean. It was time to rest awhile; to make repairs and gather provisions. Hurricane season would be on them sooner rather than later. Chevalle was already making his way across the Atlantic. Perhaps. Barbossa mused, he could return to Nouvelle-Orleans and persuade Peg to come north with him. They could lay low along the coastal region of the American colonies, taking a merchant vessel now and then to keep the men sharp…
He considered, reaching out to toy with the sleeve of the gown. She’d be pretty in it, nearly as pretty as she would be out of it. He wondered if he could persuade her to do away with her modest kerchief. She had the collarbones and shoulders of a goddess. Perhaps on the morrow he would leave the inn and walk the streets of Tortuga to find her a necklace to wear, something dainty and fine.
The candle guttered; Barbossa yawned. Jack chittered from across the room and curled up in the empty recesses of his discarded coat. Rum-warm and drunk, Barbossa pulled his shirt off for sleeping. There, in the privacy of his room, he did something no other living person would ever see him do: he lifted the little picture of his sweetheart to his lips and bade her good night.
She came to him as he drowsed in his chair; rose up from the table where he’d envisioned her and drew him along behind her to bed, gently smiling, pink and white and soft.
ccccccc
The weather turned. Storm clouds rolled on the horizon.
A narrow band encircled her pale, broad wrist, midnight black, unbreakable. He reached for Peg in his dreams, skirting the moonlight, catching her hand in his. She stirred, black and silver, a pale opalescence.
I cannot cross o’er, she whispered. Hector.
Water rose around him, tearing the bed from its bolts, setting the bedclothes to float. Peg’s hair billowed out around her, inky tresses becoming one with the water, her pale, sleeping face glowing in the midst of the darkness.
Her eyes flew open, and he choked back a cry at their dead, hazy appearance.
Help me.
Barbossa was nearly up and out of his bed before waking. Awareness dawned in stages. There was the edge of the bed, the twisted bedclothes. There was the door to the room he’d rented, the mirror on the wall. He settled on the side of the bed and tried to order his breathing, wiping at his damp brow with an unsteady hand.
The warm Tortugan night was filled with sound, with music and traffic and the voices of men and women arguing and bartering and loving. He pushed himself to his feet and padded across the rough floor to the window and opened the shutters to look out. He could see the harbor from his vantage point, and could nearly make out the dark shape of The Black Pearl against the water.
Black water.
He shivered, sweat drying cool on his skin despite the heat. He rubbed at his arms briskly, and drew in deep the salt air and the scent of cookfires and torches and all the countless souls that claimed space on the island.
He turned his back on the window, intent on lighting a candle, and stopped dead.
Something assailed him, a sense memory, the memory of cooked fish and spice and smoke, of bitter herbs and the weight of magic in the air. The candles sputtered to life spontaneously.
Tia Dalma. Calypso.
“Didn’t think ye’d come to see me when I were awake,” Barbossa said, as if he weren’t standing stark naked in the center of a seedy inn’s second-best room with bad dreams haunting him. “Reckoned ye’d be caught up with reclaimin’ yer godhood an’ all. Rum?”
Tia Dalma slinked forward, hips swaying, and looked him up and down, smile full of dangerous promise. “Who say ya awake?”
He snorted and retrieved the bottle of rum he’d left on the table by his pistol and baldric. “Who says it matters?” he retorted.
She declined his offer. “Mebbe it don’t.” She was barefoot, and the varied ragged hems of her dress and petticoats were wet. “Mebbe ya live a hundred year and not feel da t’ings I make ya feel when ya sleepin’.” She turned, expression unreadable in the dim light. “Tell me ya dream.”
Barbossa laughed. “Ye hardly came all this way and went to all this trouble t’hear about Hector Barbossa’s dream.” He took a swig and set the bottle down firmly. “Why?”
She lifted the picture of Peg from the table and regarded it tenderly. “Ya dream about ya woman.”
“An’ that’s no surprise.”
She cut her eyes at him. “It were no happy dream. How she look?”
“Sleepin’,” he retorted, reaching for his shirt and pulling it over his head, wishing for armor. “Talkin’ in ‘er sleep. Then the water came and she drowned.”
Tia Dalma studied him, head tilted. “What she wear?”
Barbossa squared his shoulders. “Nothin’.”
A fight broke out in the street below. Tia Dalma went to sit on the bed and watched him coolly as he struggled with his trousers, her toes wiggling. He huffed and turned his back to her, aware there was no way for a man to look dignified when pulling on his breeks in front of deity.
“Wait,” she commanded, and was there, only the arm she wrapped around his waist was Margaret’s arm, and the hand she lay over his heart was Margaret’s hand. “Wait,” she whispered in his ear, and it was Margaret, his Peg, and his body knew it even as his mind quailed.
“Leave off yer tricks,” he said, and his voice was not as steady as he would have liked.
“Show me how it was,” she said, pressing her long form against his, spare, soft breasts against his back. “Show me the dream.”
He jerked in protest, but she held him tight. “Show me,” she growled, in a voice low and dangerous, like dark clouds before a storm.
His eyes were tight shut. “Naked and on the bed. She slept on ‘er side. Her hand lay on the sheet between us.” His eyes flew open. “There were a bracelet. Thin. Made of some black stone, an’ I knew it wouldn’t bend or break.”
Tia Dalma released him, and when he turned to face her, she was herself again, expression fierce. “Dey plan to find da sunken city,” she spat. “Dey t’ink to walk da streets an’ raid da temple. My temple.”
Barbossa pulled his waistcoat over his shoulders and worked the buttons. “An’ what does Margaret have to do with it?”
She considered him for a moment, and reached down to retrieve his sash where it had fallen on the floor. It pooled in her hands as she weighed it thoughtfully, then stepped close.
“Da city ya name Atlantis were a shinin’ pearl, da mos’ beautiful city dat ever were an’ ever will be,” Tia Dalma said, looking up at him, reaching around his waist to secure the sash, cheek close to pressing against his chest. “She were a mighty city, powerful, an’ all da riches of da land and sea were laid at her gates.” She looped the sash around him once more, pressing close, strong, smooth arms and shoulders gleaming in the candlelight. “Da people were a proud people, an’ forgot whose generosity an’ love gave such a bounty. So da sea rose up an’ took Atlantis and all her people. Dey wept as dey sank, fearful of da rising water, an’ cried out to da gods, an’ pulled down da temples stone by stone to build a tower and save demselves.”
She released him, and he felt suddenly bereft. “What happened?”
Her soft, fond smile chilled his blood. “Dey went to my temple, small an’ humble. My priestess stood at da door, an’ killed all who dared desecrate dat holy place.” She gave a little shrug. “An’ Atlantis fell.”
“Why tell me this?”
“Dat bracelet ya see on her wrist be a relic,” she replied, “Dat relic, borne by a drowned man or woman, carried on a sunken ship, will open da gates of Atlantis.”
A chill crawled up his spine. He set his jaw against it, forceful, willing it to be so. “Margaret lives still.”
“Ya not da only cast-away soul I catch wit’ my net, Barbossa.” Her uncanny eyes glowed. “Ya woke for da second time wit’ da sound of tree frogs ringin’ in ya ears. What sound ya t’ink ya woman heard, as I carried her along da shifting currents, her ears like two seashells, her eyes like pearls?”
She lost her life, then, fighting with Rackham. The sea took ‘er, and gave ‘er back. I knew, and was loath to face it.
Ah, Peggy.
A great sorrow assailed him. “Why?” he asked plaintively. “Why bring ‘er back, Dolly? There be no love lost between you and I. Countless souls are lost to the sea every day. What do ye mean to do with ‘er?”
Tia Dalma stepped forward, and lay her hand on his shoulder, and with that single touch a thousand memories flooded to the surface: memories of his rebirth, of hot sultry nights and endless, quiet days, while mind and reason stitched itself together again and his body woke to hunger and need that could, at long last, be satisfied.
“Ya my champion,” she soothed. “Ya t’ink me so ungrateful? So cold and uncaring?” Her fingers carded through his beard, and came to rest against his heart. “She been searchin’ a long time for ya, heart an’ soul, just as ya be searchin’ for her. Ya her destiny.”
His eyes prickled. He growled and made to shake her off, but she held him close and soothed him with the slow caress of her hand on his chest. He drew a slow breath and released it. “The relic. What’s to keep ‘er from takin’ it off?”
“It tie ‘er to Atlantis, and to da sea,” Dalma said sadly. “It take away da gift of life I give her, should she walk da land. Only at da altar of my temple can da spell be broken, and her be as she was. I cannot help ya, an’ I know ya heart hardens when ya t’ink of an accord wit’ me. Dis form of mine and dis form of yours be always bound for dat spark of life we shared. Ya will do dis for ya love, and destroy da relic to save da life she been given.”
“Did ye plan this all those years ago, when she saw ye in Virginia Colony?”
“Da sea ain’t da only salt water dere is,” she said, caressing him idly. “Da tears call to me, an’ I go, for dere be many lost souls who cross da ocean to dis New World.”
The reminder of her immensity struck a fearful chord in him. “The charts of Sao Feng lead to Atlantis,” he said. “Not that I’d suppose ye’d tell me where to look for ‘em.”
“Go to Nouvelle-Orleans and find Jack Sparrow,” she said, and lifted up his belt from the back of the chair. His expression made her smile, and she stepped close to buckle it around his waist. “Take ya woman to the sunken city and break her manacle on the altar in my temple. Be forewarned; take nothin’ from the city, or else ya fate be as hers.” She studied his face as she cinched tight his belt, and lay her hand on his cheek. “How easy it were to forget how quick da mortal life be.” Her thumb brushed against the edge of his moustache, her dark eyes held him in thrall. “How hot da blood runs. Ya heart beat fast for me, Barbossa.” She ducked her chin, looking up at him through her lashes, hand lowering to rub slow over his heart. “Just as fast, I t’ink, as it do for ya woman.”
His mouth opened to argue, to put her away from him, but she was Margaret again, tall and spare and so dear to his heart. She leaned in and pressed her mouth to his and he was lost; starved as he was, so long bereft of the feel of her, the taste, the scent, that he crushed her to him with a fervor that would have hurt her had she been real.
He pulled back and Tia Dalma was there, smiling fondly, eyes glinting at him like the moonlight on dark waters.
Barbossa awoke, and swore fervently.