Beth Winter (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} bwinter) wrote in ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} potcfest,@ 2007-10-05 07:03:00 |
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The King and the Queen (Prompt #48)
Title: The King and the Queen
Author: Beth Winter
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Elizabeth, Calypso
Disclaimer: Disney owes all but Elizabeth's hairpins.
THE KING AND THE QUEEN
There is a useful thing when you sing a pirate song: you can sing it for as long as you want. The verses are countless, and each singer makes up more. That's why pirate stories never end, because you can always follow the cabin boy clinging to a raft or the girl left on the shore, who mourns and cries and then finds another sailor to steal her heart.
When the Flying Dutchman disappears under the horizon, Elizabeth doesn't cry. She waits instead, and it's only minutes, not months, before a dinghy from the Pearl cuts through the surf. She's not staying on the shore.
By the time the night crests and heads towards morning, the ships have been moored and one can walk all around Shipwreck Cove with a dry foot, if one doesn't mind walking over a rope once or twice. Barbossa taught her how to do that, among other things.
She stops at the prow of the Empress, and she knows that there is a cabin empty, with a soft bed and a door that locks. She has not spoken to Tai Huang yet, but she has a measure of him. They have fought side by side, and he has called her captain. He's not one to go back on his words, so the cabin is hers. Empty, now, because the women who slept at her feet are celebrating with the rest of them, where the only lights in Shipwreck Cove burn in the tower of decks and broken masts.
Elizabeth wonders how she feels about that. She has not had servants since Port Royal. She has grown used to dressing herself, but the Empress is different. Being the Pirate King is different, and she makes a note to ask Teague if the title is hers to keep. It feels like it is, because the battle is over and Teague bowed to her when the Pearl made landfall.
She shivers in the chill that comes with the tide. Throws her hair back, and a pin hits the deck, silver and sharp like a knife.
A small crab sidles up to it. The white pincers make no sound as they touch metal, or maybe the sea and the wind take the sound away. Elizabeth follows the crab with her eyes, across the deck and up the side, to a small hand that looks black in the moonlight.
"You be the King now," says the woman who is not Tia Dalma this night.
"Aye." Elizabeth thinks she should bow like Barbossa, wave her hand like Jack, but she's at the edge of things, and each moment without moving is one more moment to think.
The crab skitters up an embroidered sleeve, pulling itself up by the seaweed that hangs from pearl buttons. It climbs Calypso's head and settles down there, between two of its siblings, an ivory crown. The pin is nowhere to be seen.
Calypso smiles, and it's Tia Dalma's smile. I know something you don't. "Could be Queen."
Elizabeth shrugs, then, and she feels like falling.
"Why you not?"
And that is the first moment she thinks about it, thinks beyond the next moment and the next move and the next page of the story.
"Because the Queen has to trust," she says. "You can punish, later, but first you have to trust."
"You don' trus' people."
"Pirate." Elizabeth has to smile. "And now I'm the Pirate King."
The tilt of Calypso's head is slow, like the tide moving. "An' I should trus' you?"
The King and the Ferryman, Elizabeth thinks. The last time the two were united in purpose. She thinks she understands.
"You have to trust someone."
"I trusted love," says Calypso, and she smiles. "Fool me. Fool him."
It feels like a test.
"We take a chance," says Elizabeth. "We take a chance when we sail the seas."
"The seas, they be mine."
And in that, Calypso is right. No longer bound, she is the monarch of the seas.
As if speaking to a lover.
"The seas." Elizabeth steps forward, her boots touching the full skirt, her hands reaching for the other's. Same embroidery, pearl and silver. "They are ours."
Calypso tastes of salt, and wind, and knows far too much about opening buttons. The small fingers strip skin and flesh and bone, and all that is left is breath that is lost. The captain's cabin on the Empress is empty, and the bed is soft.
Later, Elisabeth thinks she'll have to add a new verse to the song.
Title: The King and the Queen
Author: Beth Winter
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Elizabeth, Calypso
Disclaimer: Disney owes all but Elizabeth's hairpins.
THE KING AND THE QUEEN
There is a useful thing when you sing a pirate song: you can sing it for as long as you want. The verses are countless, and each singer makes up more. That's why pirate stories never end, because you can always follow the cabin boy clinging to a raft or the girl left on the shore, who mourns and cries and then finds another sailor to steal her heart.
When the Flying Dutchman disappears under the horizon, Elizabeth doesn't cry. She waits instead, and it's only minutes, not months, before a dinghy from the Pearl cuts through the surf. She's not staying on the shore.
By the time the night crests and heads towards morning, the ships have been moored and one can walk all around Shipwreck Cove with a dry foot, if one doesn't mind walking over a rope once or twice. Barbossa taught her how to do that, among other things.
She stops at the prow of the Empress, and she knows that there is a cabin empty, with a soft bed and a door that locks. She has not spoken to Tai Huang yet, but she has a measure of him. They have fought side by side, and he has called her captain. He's not one to go back on his words, so the cabin is hers. Empty, now, because the women who slept at her feet are celebrating with the rest of them, where the only lights in Shipwreck Cove burn in the tower of decks and broken masts.
Elizabeth wonders how she feels about that. She has not had servants since Port Royal. She has grown used to dressing herself, but the Empress is different. Being the Pirate King is different, and she makes a note to ask Teague if the title is hers to keep. It feels like it is, because the battle is over and Teague bowed to her when the Pearl made landfall.
She shivers in the chill that comes with the tide. Throws her hair back, and a pin hits the deck, silver and sharp like a knife.
A small crab sidles up to it. The white pincers make no sound as they touch metal, or maybe the sea and the wind take the sound away. Elizabeth follows the crab with her eyes, across the deck and up the side, to a small hand that looks black in the moonlight.
"You be the King now," says the woman who is not Tia Dalma this night.
"Aye." Elizabeth thinks she should bow like Barbossa, wave her hand like Jack, but she's at the edge of things, and each moment without moving is one more moment to think.
The crab skitters up an embroidered sleeve, pulling itself up by the seaweed that hangs from pearl buttons. It climbs Calypso's head and settles down there, between two of its siblings, an ivory crown. The pin is nowhere to be seen.
Calypso smiles, and it's Tia Dalma's smile. I know something you don't. "Could be Queen."
Elizabeth shrugs, then, and she feels like falling.
"Why you not?"
And that is the first moment she thinks about it, thinks beyond the next moment and the next move and the next page of the story.
"Because the Queen has to trust," she says. "You can punish, later, but first you have to trust."
"You don' trus' people."
"Pirate." Elizabeth has to smile. "And now I'm the Pirate King."
The tilt of Calypso's head is slow, like the tide moving. "An' I should trus' you?"
The King and the Ferryman, Elizabeth thinks. The last time the two were united in purpose. She thinks she understands.
"You have to trust someone."
"I trusted love," says Calypso, and she smiles. "Fool me. Fool him."
It feels like a test.
"We take a chance," says Elizabeth. "We take a chance when we sail the seas."
"The seas, they be mine."
And in that, Calypso is right. No longer bound, she is the monarch of the seas.
As if speaking to a lover.
"The seas." Elizabeth steps forward, her boots touching the full skirt, her hands reaching for the other's. Same embroidery, pearl and silver. "They are ours."
Calypso tastes of salt, and wind, and knows far too much about opening buttons. The small fingers strip skin and flesh and bone, and all that is left is breath that is lost. The captain's cabin on the Empress is empty, and the bed is soft.
Later, Elisabeth thinks she'll have to add a new verse to the song.
