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The Only Rules That Matter: Afterlife (TheCorsair, Madam Mim)

“Red Jenny is a murderer, John.” Jenny protested. “She's a murderer and a thief with few scruples and no mercy. I put her behind me long ago. I don't..."

“She’s a pirate,” Jack replied, pulling her close. “Wild and free, able to think outside the rules and do what she wants.”

She pulled back, gesturing at the sea chest. "I don't know," she said after a few minutes thought. "What exactly would they do?"

His response was an exaggerated shrug as he staggered across the room. “Lie. Chest. Steal.” There was a click as he unlocked the chest, and a thump as he opened it, and then he held her sword in his arms. “Whatever they want, love. Whatever it takes, to get what they want.”

He staggered close, pressing the hilt into her hand. “I don’t have a plan yet, love,” he whispered, hands caressing her hips as he murmured into her ear. “But I’m Captain Jack Sparrow, and I get what I want. I take what I want.” His lips caressed her throat, leaving little bites in their wake. “We take what we want, love. “

With that he pushed her back against the bulkhead, tongue pushing between her lips and he kissed her with a fierce hunger. “Red Jenny takes what she wants,” he gasped, tugging at the laces of her bodice. “What do you want, Hong Zhenni? What do you want right now?”
 
Jenny scowled and shook her head at John's estimation of what a pirate was. Piracy had been a trap for her, an obstacle, or so she told herself at least. It was both affirming and dismaying to hear from her husband's own mouth that it had been that way for him, that it was more than just her assumption that going back to see had freed him from the responsibilities she had labored under for so long. He staggered over to the chest, suggesting they do whatever they wanted to get what they wanted. That is, in order to defy the Powers and the natural order of the universe to keep Nat Sparrow and his son alive.

"John no..." But there was no strength behind her protest. She didn't refuse the sword when he pressed it into her hand, didn't drop it or declare boldly that this part of her life was over. Jenny had envisioned herself tossing the weapon from her, scolding her husband for such a suggestion until he backed down, shame-faced and apologetic. But the hilt was warm in her hand. Guī guó was its name. Homecoming. She had seen this sword as a tool to bring her what she wanted, to bring her home.

Jack pushed her back against the bulkhead, tongue pushing between her lips and he kissed her with a fierce hunger. "Red Jenny takes what she wants," he gasped, tugging at the laces of her bodice. "What do you want, Hong Zhenni? What do you want right now?"

Something hidden deep in her soul flickered to life at the epithet and pulled her against her husband. Jenny carefully used the tip of her sword to cut away Jack's shirt in one fell swoop before pushing it off his shoulders then dropping the weapon to the deck. "I want the life eternal that I was promised."
 
"I want the life eternal that I was promised."

There was a deep sorrow in those words, and pain. John froze for a moment, desire washed away by heartache, and then he pulled Jenny into an embrace. “I know, love,” he murmured. “And if it weren’t for me, you’d have it now.” His hand was gentle as he touched her cheek. “You could still have it, you know. The rest of the family’s waiting for you, in Fiddler’s Green. And Anne tells us time’s different there, remember? It... it wouldn’t be that long, to you at least, before I joined you.”

There was a selfish streak in him, one that was glad she’d joined him and grateful she stayed. The decades - more than a century now - aboard the Pearl would have been long and weary by himself. But he was here because he’d screwed up royally in life, and because he was earning a second chance. Jenny didn’t need one. Will had confirmed that, and Anne as well. And if you couldn’t trust your own daughter who was an angel as well, who could you trust?

“But I know you love, and you’re too stubborn to go without me.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Especially since I don’t have the best record of making it home on time anyway. So we need to help our boy Nat.” Stooping, he picked up the fallen sword and placed it on the table. “And we’re going to have to be clever, if we want to find a way to save his life.”
 
She hadn't meant for it to sound the way it had sounded. Jenny had meant that she had been promised this eternal life with John doing basically whatever they pleased, though more and more the past few decades the Powers had decided that the pair of psychopomps were their direct subordinates. It hadn't sat well with her, being bossed around even more than they already were. And another part of her ached for Fiddler's Green and for whatever came after, longed to rest at last, felt guilty that her family waited for her there still and hadn't moved on because of her. Fidddler's Green was, after all, just a way-station for those souls who hadn't been sailors or died at sea. Jack would come with them, of course, when they all moved on together; they who had died at sea weren't prevented from joining their loved ones, after all, and he had weighed in at the Green so very, very long ago. And that was how John had taken it. He had heard how much she missed her parents, her brothers, their children. He touched her cheek gently and she closed her eyes, focusing all of her willpower on not clinging to him and sobbing out her woes. She had burdened him with that enough already; no need to make him think she resented him for her choice, even if she sometimes did.

"It would be that long to you," she pointed out gently, hugging her husband all the more tightly. "And I made a decision and a promise."

"But I know you love, and you're too stubborn to go without me." John chuckled and shook his head.

"Well, what sort of woman would I be if I didn't keep my promises?" Jenny demanded, putting her fists on her hips. "Besides, got to keep you out of trouble, haven't I? Keep an eye on you, make sure you stay focused and your chin distinctly free of tentacles."

"Especially since I don't have the best record of making it home on time anyway," he conceded. Jenny made a noise of irritation but let it lie. Even all these many years later it was still a sore spot for her. "So we need to help our boy Nat. And we're going to have to be clever, if we want to find a way to save his life."

"You're the clever one," Jenny shrugged, throwing herself into a chair and uncorking the bottle of rum. "I'm just stubborn and make you go through with things that's all." She took a pull straight from the bottle and passed it to Jack. "We could try and get them on a technicality? Or challenge Death for Nat's soul? I hear he likes games, and I've gotten rather good at cards."
 
Jack took the bottle, and then a long pull from the bottle. “I think it’ll have to be a technicality,” he decided, wiping his mouth. “Because, as far as challenging Death goes..?” He shruggedand took another swallow. “I think Will is Death. Or maybe we are?” Another shrug. “I’m still not clear on that, really.”

He took a final swig, and handed the bottle back. “It’d help if we knew more about how death works, really. How it’s decided, I mean. Is there a Death, who plans all of this? Or is there just circumstance, things that immortals like us shouldn’t tamper with? And if that’s the case, then what makes those decisions.” He snorted. “I mean, the Bible’s full of times when Death gets cheated, isn’t it?”

He stroked his chin, allowing himself to be pleasantly distracted by the view of Jenny’s breasts in her half-open search. Maybe she was a little saddened by this talk if Fiddler’s green, but God if he didn’t still want her right now. “I faked my death a time or two when I was still alive,” he murmured, thinking out loud. “Maybe there’s a way we can fake Nat’s death?”
 
"I think Will is Death. Or maybe we are?" Jack suggested with a shrug.

"Well if that's the case and it comes to beating him at a game, I know for a fact that a century of practice and he's still shite at majong." Jenny took the bottle back and took a long pull. She hadn't been drunk, properly drunk, in decades. God how she longed for the oblivion of blackout inebriation. But temperance was a virtue, and she didn't think they had enough rum on the ship to get her as drunk as she wanted to be. Jack mused over the nature of death and Jenny shrugged.

"Sure," she said, taking another swallow. "But those are through the intervention of God Himself. Last I checked, He was a bit too busy to bother with the likes of us."

In truth, Jenny in her darker moments wasn't entirely certain there was a God. Not the way the Bible had described, anyway. They had dealt with gods, plural, of other faiths and regions of the world. And there was Anne, proof of angels, and of course the Powers. But Capital-G God Almighty had yet to show Himself to them. She still clung to the faith of her childhood, of course, as a source of comfort and absolute truth in a world she was increasingly discovering was not the way she had thought it to be. Surely He was just too busy, as ruler of the Universe and Beyond. The gods they had met were lesser gods, with adherents of weak faith, and were flawed and all-too-human, more tulpas risen from the imagination of primitive peoples than actual gods. Her God was an awesome God, creator and ruler of the universe entire; He didn't have time for little pissant misadventure schemes like this.

"I faked my death a time or two when I was still alive," Jack murmured thoughtfully. "Maybe there's a way we can fake Nat's death?"

"In a way that would fool Death itself?" Jenny raised an eyebrow, taking one more pull from the bottle before passing it back to her husband. "That'd take a fair amount of black magic, that would." She ran her fingers along her scalp, pushing her mass of hair away from her eyes in order to think a little better. "It might work...if maybe he did die, but we brought him back?" She looked at Jack, unwilling to admit the attractiveness of the khol smeared around his eyes. "Stop his heart, then restart it. It satisfies the debt."
 
“It might work...if maybe he did die, but we brought him back?"

Jack took a long pull from the bottle, and eyed his wife thoughtfully. “Tell me more, love,” he promoted, enjoying the way the candlelight sparkled in her green eyes and struck burning highlights from her hair. “What are you thinking?”

“Stop his heart,” Jenny suggested, leaning in conspiratorially, “then restart it. It satisfies the debt."

“That it does,” he agreed, taking another drink, “that it does.” He drummed his fingers on the table, thinking. “And that minds me of something, love. There’s wizards in the West Indies - houngans and bokors, they call themselves - that make something they call zombie dust.” A last swig, and he handed the bottle back. “It can kill a man, and make his body walk as a servant. And they can make an antidote as well.”

Grinning, he caught Jenny’s wrist and pulled her onto his lap. “Black magic,” he said, brushing her hair aside so he could nuzzle her neck. “Just like you suggested, although they’d say there’s more’n two colors in the world.” Still grinning he kissed her, tasting the alcohol on her lips. “Fancy a trip to Haiti, love?”
 
Jenny's mouth opened in protest when her husband mentioned the West Indies, but she refrained and allowed him to explain. "Zombie dust, hm?" She took a swig, frowned, and peered into the bottle. "Jack...why is the rum gone?" One hundred and eleven years she had known this man, and yet this was the first time she had ever called him Jack. Then her mind latched onto what he'd said and she looked up. "Magic, you mean?"

"Black magic," he replied with a grin, pulling her onto his lap. "Just like you suggested, although they'd say there's more'n two colors in the world."

"But I didn't mean..." The protest died in her throat. Something came back to her, something from years ago, from China. Seek...me...out... A sudden longing gripped her heart. It was a longing to save her boy, a longing to bring him fully back into the world of the living. More than that even, though she wouldn't admit it to herself, was the longing to cross the dark, dead seas and seek out that thing that had curled itself around her soul. Before she could say anything more, Jack caught her up in a kiss and she held his face in her hands as she returned it.

"Fancy a trip to Haiti, love?"

Red Jenny grinned and nipped at his lip. "Set a course, Mr. Sparrow. Give the old girl a sense of urgency and she should make it by sunrise."
 
“We’ll be making port in Jacmel,” Captain Jack said, turning the ship’s wheel slightly. “Word is that Haiti’s a bit disorganized right now, which is good for us, but the north’s not too friendly to whites. Which is bad for us, since we’re pretty white, but you don’t get much further south without crossing over to Santo Domingo.”

Word, of course, referred to the supernatural charts and log books aboard the Pearl, which kept up to date with changing conditions in the workd’s ports And allowed them to navigate the tides and currents of Oceanos, making feats like sailing from the Nirth Sea to the Caribbean in a single night easy. “Finding a voodoo doctor’ll be easy enough, of course. The harder part will be finding one worth the name. We’ll need this to work right, if we’re to bilk the Powers, after all.”

Soon enough the ship was moored in the harbor, occupying a berth that no galleon should have been able to occupy. But the Pearl was no ordinary ship, not any more, and two smugglers crewing a smaller craft made a more convincing story than two smugglers crewing a galleon. “Name?” asked the bored dockmaster, a wiry black man with a shock of iron grey hair.

“Captain Jack Sparrow,” Jack replied, “master of the Black Pearl.”

“Jack... Sparrow...” the dockmaster recorded, without a trace of interest or recognition.

“‘Scuse me, mate,” Jack interrupted, peering down at the page. “There’s a Captain there.”
 
Jenny rolled her eyes and shook her head as they made their way across the docks. "You need to learn to let it go, love," she admonished with an amused little smile, taking his arm as they entered the township proper. There was a certain swing in her hips, now that they were on dry land and in their new-old clothes. Hong Zhenni clearly agreed with her. "I mean, you can go by your name again; if they don't recognize your name, you can't expect them to recognize you as captain."

This was a bit of smug prodding on her part. They'd been in a book shop a few weeks ago and had found a book entitled The Historie and Crimes of Red Jennie: Marauder of the Orient. Although Jenny refused to acknowledge the fun she had had as Red Jenny, the positive aspects of the experience, it had been quite a feather in her cap to find her own history on the shelves. Captain Jack Sparrow had had several volumes dedicated to his life, though of course the authors had without exception gotten it wrong and conflated the adventures of their son, granddaughter, and great-grandson with the original Captain Jack Sparrow's, making him sound truly larger than life. It was no wonder he seemed more children's bedtime story than historical figure anymore. She had bought the book immediately, of course, and had been immensely pleased that she had been taken seriously as a woman and a pirate, though she was credited with some things Bohai had done as captain after she had returned home.

"So, how are we to find this real-life voodoo doctor?" she asked, looking to him expectantly. "Do you keep a list in your back pocket?"
 
“You need to learn to let it go, love," she admonished with an amused little smile, taking his arm as they entered the township proper. "I mean, you can go by your name again; if they don't recognize your name, you can't expect them to recognize you as captain."

“I told him I was a captain!” Jack replied, waving his arm back in the direction of the docks. “Captain Jack Sparrow, I said! Master of the Black Pearl! He doesn’t have to recognize me as the real Jack Sparrow, but I told him I was a Captain!”

“So,” Jenny asked, changing the subject before he got worked up more, “how are we to find this real-life voodoo doctor? Do you keep a list in your back pocket?"

“All the voodoo doctors I know,” Jack replied, “died a long time ago. Well, except Calypso of course, but I don’t think she’d help us out with this one - it doesn’t seem like the sort of rule she’d bend, you know? So we ask around.”

-*-

Asking around, it seemed, meant visiting taverns to Captain Jack Sparrow. And not just any taverns, no. He passed on the reputable-looking ones, full of decent-looking black folk drinking moderately and laughing. Instead, he made a wobbling beeline towards the drabber, dingier dockside taverns, the ones with a mixed-race clientele of shabby, rough sailors.

“That one,” he finally declared, drawing up short and wobbling a little as he pointed. It was a ramshackle affair of split timber and shingles, squatting near the beach. “That’s the right kind of dive. We’ll find smugglers and pirates there, the kind of folk that would know a voodoo doctor willing to do work with not too many questions.”

Grinning, he swayed and rolled towards the curtain of a door, and slid it aside. Blinking to let his eyes adjust to the dimness within, he smiled a broad smile. “Rum!” he called, holding up a small purse so it clinked. “And another after that.”
 
"Calypso," Jenny snorted, shaking her head a little. "Like I'd accept her help anyway." Jenny still hadn't forgiven Calypso for calling Jack to Hyperborea, for giving her husband a taste of the seafaring, adventuring life he had chosen over his family for far too long. In addition, she was a false god. The two had an icy relationship at the best of times.

If Jenny had had Jack on a leash (didn't that sound like a fine idea?) the result would have been more like keeping a bumblebee on a string than anything. He veered toward this tavern or away from that one, stopped occasionally to talk to someone without telling her he was going to stop and necessitating an exasperated U-turn on Jenny's part. The reputable taverns were naturally the ones he gave a wide berth, as though afraid he would be sucked in if he got within a ten foot radius of their thresholds. Some of the grubbier ones pulled him toward them temporarily, but he always stopped short of going in and continued on. Going on an adventure with Captain Jack Sparrow, Jenny decided, would have been maddening if you didn't have all the details. It was a wonder Will had stayed sober through the whole thing.

Finally he pointed to a squat little shack held up more by twine and hope than anything else. Jenny followed him in, immediately feeling the male gaze upon her that she hadn't felt so intensely since her days as a tavern waitress. And even then, that had been with her father watching over her. There was no Michael here to stop them now. Still she walked and carried herself comfortably, refusing to let it get to her. She was Red Jenny, after all! She didn't need her father or her husband to look out for her! If anyone dared put a hand on her, she'd cut off that hand herself!

"Make it two," she called after him, sitting down next to him then leaning in. "So what do we do?" she asked in a low voice. "Wait for someone to approach us, or just go around asking 'excuse me, could you point me to the nearest voodoo man'?"
 
“Here you go,” the barkeep grumbled, not even bothering to oil at him as he thunked two clay mugs down. His attention was fully on Jenny, and Jack felt a thrill of jealousy and guilty pleasure at the way the man was undressing her with his eyes. It made him remember the wild dream - was it a dream? - aboard the Pearl, watching Jenny fuck two men while she watched him fuck another woman. Would it be as hot in reality..?

Shoving the guilty thought away, he downed half the rum at one go. “Bit of the first, but if the second,” he replied, wiping his mouth with a shirt sleeve. “Voodoo isn’t exactly hidden here, but the good doctors like you to be discrete. Or, at least, they did last I was here.”

He downed the rest of the rum, and waved his mug for a refill. As the large black man poured the rum, Jack laid a coin on the table. A Spanish real, gold glinting in the candlelight. “Maybe you can answer a question or two.”

“Maybe,” the barkeep grunted, reaching for the coin. Jack’s hand reached it first, concealing the gold.

“Got a little problem,” he said, smiling. “A run of bad luck. I’m looking for a doctor who can help me out with that.”

“No doctors here,” the big man replied. “Not for whites, anyway. Try maybe Santo Domingo.”

Jack withdrew his hand again. This time, there were two coins. “It’s really important, mate. It’s powerful bad luck.”

“For you,” the barkeep replied, reaching for the coins and scowling as Jack covered them again. “But I give you some good luck, yes?”

“Sure,” Jack grinned.

“You can walk away, white man. Just leave the gold.” Behind them, Jack could hear chairs and benches scraping as patrons began to rise. “And the woman.”
 
Jenny was content to stay quiet and let Jack haggle with the barkeep. She had never been allowed on land when she had sailed with Qing Shih's fleet, so this was one part of piracy she had never gotten familiar with. In her real life she had never needed information from shady characters in shady bars. But then the bar tender told Jack to leave the gold and her, and that was a language she understood. She too heard the chairs scraping behind them, but paid it no mind. They were Red Jenny and Captain Jack Sparrow: between the two of them they had enough skill and dumb luck to get out of anything.

"Or," she said slowly, cocking her pistol and laying it on the bar with her finger on the trigger, "if you're going to waste our time we can just blast your face off before your friends here have a chance to lay a finger on me." She smiled pleasantly and laid her other hand on the hilt of her sword. One thing she could say about the Chinese was that their weaponry didn't change style very often at least. "And we can just cut up the rest of them."

As though just noticing that they had stood and were advancing, Jenny turned and looked at them. "What do you say, lads?" she asked, maintaining her friendly tone as she picked the pistol up to aim at the barkeep and drew her sword to train on them. "Friendly chat or a night that ends in blood, and not ours? Your choice entirely." They were outnumbered and likely outgunned, but if she couldn't think of something then surely Jack would.
 
“Well,” Jack laughed as everyone hesitated, watching Jenny and her finger on the trigger. “I’d certainly expected more hospitality than this.” With that he reached over the bar and grabbed a fresh bottle of rum, uncorking it with a flourish and refilling his tankard. The barkeep bristled But, eyes trained on themuzzle of Jenny’s pistol, said nothing.

“But then, I expected the lot of you scurvy dogs to recognize us, in account of us being famous. And if you had recognized us, you’d have thought better of it.”

“And who are you?” sneered a man who looked like he professionally opened coconuts by crushing them with his hands.

“Why, she’s the pirate queen Hong Zhenni,” Jack replied, gesturing at her with his mug. “And me, mate? I’m Captain Jack Sparrow.”

“Jack... Sparrow...” repeated the huge man.

“Uh-uh,” Jack corrected. “There’s a ‘Captain’ in there.”

“The Americans hanged Jack Sparrow, twelve years back,” the bartender retorted, then flinched as Jenny’s finger tightened on the trigger. That had been a rough one for them. The execution had been botched, and the lad - a genuinely bad man, but still family - had twitchedand jerked for some twelve minutes as he slowly strangled at the end of the rope.

“Hanged?” He forced a grin. “Mate. I’m Captain. Jack. Sparrow. Hanging doesn’t stop me.” He made a show of scratching his throat as he drank his rum. “But I do need a bokor, because me and Baron Samedi need to have a parlay.”
 
The barkeep bristled at Jack's brazen claim on the rum behind the bar, but she raised her pistol a fraction of an inch to square it between his eyes. When he introduced her as a pirate queen she smirked and tilted her head a little.

"Charmed, I'm sure."

"And me, mate? I'm Captain Jack Sparrow." When Jack gestured with a flourish she groaned internally. Even if the latest Captain Jack hadn't been publicly executed, the name didn't carry as much weight as it once had.

"The Americans hanged Jack Sparrow, twelve years back," the bartender retorted, then flinched.

"Are you calling us liars?" she demanded as her finger tightened on the trigger just a hair. "Think carefully before you answer." A jagged flare of anger and grief ripped through her heart.

Jonathan Sparrow VI had been a bad man: he had murdered children, raped and enslaved women--sometimes in that order, sometimes the other way around--and sent innocent men to their deaths. He had stolen men, women, and children from Africa and sold them into bondage, sired no fewer than twenty-seven bastards around the world, and sometimes tortured animals for the fun of it. In his twenty-four short years he had been a disgrace to the Sparrow name and even Jenny, who had often found it in her heart to forgive terrible sins for the sake of family, had known that a hanging was the least of what he deserved. But she had watched the boy dance and dangle for what had felt like hours before they could finally take him to the ship, eyes protruding and swollen, blackened tongue hanging out in death just as they had in the end. They had explained who they were, and he had told them of his life and of the few happy moments in it, and how he had come to this end. Knowing of his sister, his childhood sweetheart, his mother, his best friend who had died in his arms as it seemed all Sparrows were doomed to experience, made it harder to listen to his panicked shrieks as she walked away from him across the sands of the Locker, back to the ship.

"Hanged?" Jack grinned that impish grin of his. "Mate. I'm Captain. Jack. Sparrow. Hanging doesn't stop me."

"He and Death are old friends," Jenny confirmed while Jack drank his rum. "And he has no need to fear that which will never come for him."

"But I do need a bokor, because me and Baron Samedi need to have a parlay."

"Won't have anything to do with you if you drink all that," Jenny teased with an impish smirk, glancing sideways at her husband. The smirk dropped when she looked back to the bartender. "Captain Jack here asked you a question. I think you'd best answer, before I lose my patience. You know what they say about redheads and patience." She hated that stereotype, but it sometimes made a good threat. "And you need to back right the fuck up, my friend," she snapped, bringing the point of her sword to the throat of a man who had taken half a step toward her. The tip of the blade traced lightly from his throat up his face and came to rest on his orbital bone. "Be a shame to lose those pretty eyes." She smiled warmly before looking back at the bartender expectantly.
 
Jack grinned at his wife’s display, once again remembering how she’d taken command of a rowdy crew of Chinese pirates and bent them to her will. She protested, constantly, that it had been the will of the Lord in making her an instrument in His hands. But ‘the Lord’ didn’t teach you to handle a sword like that. “So. What’s it to be?”

The barkeep looked uneasily at the pistol. “Only one willing to deal with a white’s Mama Lovelle. And she’s crazy.”

“I can work with crazy,” Jack relief. “Hell, some of my best friends are...”

“Dangerous crazy,” the barkeep corrected. “They say she keeps the skulls of her former lovers, to speak with the dead.”

Jack shrugged. “Minute ago, you were planning on robbing me and raping my wife. What’s it to you?”

“I don’t want her coming back here and killing me!”

“Fair enough.” Jack took a second bottle, and stuck it into his belt. “You tell us where to find her, then, and we won’t mention your name. Deal?” He lifted an eyebrow. “No pressure, mind. But Hong Zhenni looks like she’s getting bored not killing you.”

-*-

“That went well,” he declared, once the ramshackle tavern was well behind them. “Follow the beach a half-day’s Wall, and look for the hut near the rock that looks like a skull. And we didn’t have to kill anyone, or even pay for anything.” He patted the bottle. “And, in case we need it, we’ve got an offering for the Baron.”
 
"I still think you should've let me kill him," Jenny complained, "for the impertinence if nothing else. I mean, we let him get away with threatening to rape me! What kind of a message does that send?"

She had, in fact, been getting bored with not killing anyone. Not that she would admit that to John or even to Jack, but some primal rage inside her had wanted to turn the barkeep inside-out for the threats he had made. She spat and looked down the dark beach.

"A rock that looks like a skull," she sneered. "Bit cliche, don't you think?" She shook her head and looked back towards the docks. "So what's our headings, cap'n? Are we walking through the night, or heading back to the Pearl and setting out in the morning?"
 
"I still think you should've let me kill him," Jenny complained, "for the impertinence if nothing else. I mean, we let him get away with threatening to rapeme! What kind of a message does that send?"

“The kind that’s worse than getting killed,” Jack replied. “Clearly, he thinks he’s tough. But he got stared down by a skinny white guy and a woman. We crushed him, Henny. All of them. And by morning, they’ll be telling some mad story about how a dozen men were in there holding them at swirdpoint.” He turned and walked backwards, tapping his head. “Psychology, that is.”

Jenny spat, clearly unimpressed. "A rock that looks like a skull," she sneered. "Bit cliche, don't you think?"

“Always is,” Jack replied. “Psychology, again. Get folk thinking you’re evil and dangerous and mysterious, and they’re a lot less likely to argue or fight.”

She shook her head and looked back towards the docks. "So what's our headings, cap'n? Are we walking through the night, or heading back to the Pearl and setting out in the morning?"

“Back to the docks, of course,” he laughed. “Walk a half-day’s walk? Not likely.”

-*-

The Pearl made good time, cutting a half-day’s walk down to an hour of sailing. She could have done it in less, except that he’d reefed the sails to make sure they didn’t overshoot. Not that he was too worried about that. “After all,” he remarked as he peered through his spyglass, “how many rocks that look like skulls could there be?”

After a moment, he considered his own words. “No, scratch that. Fool question, really.”

Opening his spyglass again, he surveyed the coastline. “Oh. Well, that’s just cheating.” Rolling his eyes, he handed the glass over to Jenny. “Have a look if you want. It’s painted.”
 
Jenny looked through the spyglass and laughed. "I like this Mama Lovelle already!" Having recovered from her earlier mood, she led the way down the gangplank once they dropped anchor and looked around. After a moment she spotted a little hut hidden among the treeline and jerked her head toward it.

Mama Lovelle answered before they had even knocked, leaving Jenny with her fist at face height. "You're late," she said sternly to the pair before standing aside to let them in.

Mama Lovelle's shack was much as many other witch doctor huts that Jack had seen, and the only one Jenny had. It reminded her distastefully of Calypso's swamp shack, with its dim lighting, dried herbs and mushrooms and whatnot hanging from the rafters, and jars of unidentifiable somethings covering every surface. The air was pungent with burning incense and herbs and the fire in the grate made the tiny room stifling. Walking back out into the tropical heat would have felt like stepping into an English winter. The witch doctor settled herself back down at the tiny scrubbed wood table where a tarot reading was already laid out with the cards turned over. She gestured to the chairs across from her.

"Sit, Jack Sparrow and Red Jenny," she said before pouring some tea. "Come and ask me what you have traveled far to ask." With an uncertain glance at Jack, feeling nothing like the fierce pirate queen she had been an hour before, Jenny obeyed.

"We've come for...well, I don't exactly know what it's called," she said, glancing to Jack for help. "It's a way to create the dead, then to raise them to life again."
 
“Plenty of ways to create the dead,” Mama Lovelle chuckles, sipping her tea. “Both of you know that well, I can see.”

“Well, yes,” Jack replied, taking a seat. “What we’re looking for, though, is a way to make it not be so permanent.”

“Kill a man, and bring him back?” She considered that. “Difficult. But not impossible.” She picked up a green glass bottle with a lead weight hanging inside from the stopper. “Expensive, though.”

Jack snorted. “Of course it is. How does it work?”

“There’s a certain powder I can grind,” she replied. “Blow it in a man’s face, and he dies. Then you can catch his soul in a special bottle I can make. Three days later his body will rise, mindless and obedient.”

“A zonbi,” Jack scoffed. “That’s not what we’re looking for.”

“A zonbi, yes,” she smiled. “But that is what the soul bottle is for. The body must taste salt to be free of your control, and then the bottle unstoppered and held to his lips. Then soul and body come together once more. Like this!” Jack jumped as she clapped her hands together and cackled.

“You’re remarkably open about this,” he remarked. “Most mambos I’ve dealt with...”

“Mambo? Pah!” She spat at the sound. “I’m a bokor, Jack Sparrow. And old enough to remember you stealing a nun away from the convent my parents forced me into.”

“Right, then,” he replied, not bothering to correct her. It was, he reflected, a sign of how strange his life had been and his afterlife was that her age didn’t even surprise him. “How much?”

“No money, Captain Jack Sparrow,” she answered as he reached for his purse. “I’ve no taste for blood-cursed gold. My price is different.”
 
Jenny jumped when the witch doctor clapped her gnarled hands together suddenly, then scowled. Jump scares were cheap tactics, and she had never liked them. She hadn't liked them as a child when her father had yelled suddenly at the climax of a scary story, nor whenever Ion had snuck up on her to make her scream, and she didn't like them now. Her estimate of Mama Lovelle dropped several notches, and then several more when Jack scoffed at what she had offered them. She had never heard of a zonbi, but it sounded like some awful sort of purgatory. Certainly not what she had in mind for Nat.

Then she mentioned the nun stolen away from the convent.

"You must have been quite young indeed," she said conversationally, slowly turning her head to look at Jack. "But then again, so was he. How lucky she was to have him whisk her away from a life of religious drudgery."

There were a good many things that Jenny still prayed for the strength to forgive her husband for, and Angelica was one of them. She didn't mind the stories conflating her husband and her son; it would be silly to get upset about something like that. But Jack's adventure to that convent had, in her mind, sealed his fate when it came to the sea. If Angelica the pirate's daughter hadn't shown up out of the blue two years after Anne had died, baby in tow, claiming that she was Jenny's daughter-in-law, then perhaps Jack would never have gone back to sea to support them. Perhaps Joan would have grown up with her father instead of her whore mother, and would have had a chance at a normal life. Perhaps her eldest son and very first grandchild wouldn't have both died far too young and so far away from home. Certainly Jack had had his own agency and made his own choices, but still she couldn't help but think that perhaps without Angelica, he would have made different choices. Better choices.

"Right then," Captain Jack replied. "How much?

"No money, Captain Jack Sparrow," the bokor answered. "I've no taste for blood-cursed gold. My price is different."

"His soul is already on lend," Jenny said firmly, "and mine's spoken for. If you don't want gold, we've got nothing physical to give. Favors, however." She nodded. "Favors are something we're both very good at."
 
“Favors, yes.” The bokor licked her lips. “Good payment, that is. Seems like a favor each from the likes of Jack Sparrow...”

“There’s a Captain there,” Jack interrupted.

Mana Lovelle glared at him. “From the likes of Captain Jack Sparrow and Red Jenny...”

“There’s a Captain there, too,” Jack interrupted again, grinning.

“From the likes of the Captains Jack Sparrow and Red Jenny,” she repeated sharply, “one of whom should know better than winding up the bokor who’ll be doing the two of them a favor in return.” Leaning back in her seat, she eyed Jack with a challenging expression.

“Mama Lovelle,” Jack laughed, “my whole life has been an exercise in ‘should’ve known betters’, and I came out just fine.”

“Except for the part where you sail under a curse because of a deal with Davy Jones,” she countered.

“I said fine, not perfect,” he replied with a shrug. “But what’s the favor?”

She laughed. “I’ll keep them for now. Who knows? I might make your list, one day.” With that statement, she tamped tobacco into a battered clay pipe and lit it with a coal. “But I’ll need you to fetch ingredients as well.”

“Ah. Shopping.” Jack leaned back in his chair. “What do you need?”

“Not too much,” she said, sucking at the pipe. “I’ve most of what I need here. But I’ll need a glass bottle, and graveyard dirt, and three nails from a coffin.”

“That’s all?” Jack asked, surprised.

“That’s all,” she agreed. “Mind you, The nails have to be pulled from a coffin. Don’t just bring me any old nails, not if you want this to work.”

“Fine. We’ll probably need to wait until dark, just so we don’t get noticed. But it shouldn’t be too hard.” Jack rose. “C’mon, Jenny. Let’s go scout out a likely...”

“No,” Mama Lovelle stared.

“...place, and what do you mean no?” Jack asked, looking down at the bokor.

“I mean,” she replied, “that I need Captain Jack Sparrow to fetch it all. You’ve some experience in robbing graves, I understand. But Red Jenny stays here.”

Jack laughed. “You don’t trust us?”

“Not in the slightest,” she replied.

“And why not?” Jack demanded.

“Because,” Mama Lovelle replied. “You’re Captain Jack Sparrow.”

Jack opened his mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again, and closed it. “That,” e finally said, “is an excellent point.”
 
Jack continued to wind up Mama Lovelle and Jenny gently stepped on his foot under the table. She didn't care whether she was called Captain, and pissing off witch doctors was never a good idea and was quite probably how he had gotten himself into a number of sticky situations when he was alive. Mama Lovelle seemed to agree.

"Mama Lovelle,” Jack laughed, “my whole life has been an exercise in ‘should’ve known betters’, and I came out just fine.”

Jenny coughed, caught between a noise of disbelieve and incredulous laugh. "Alright," she said in a tone which clearly indicated that it was certainly not alright. "If you say so."

Once again she and Mama Lovelle seemed to be in agreement. Jack apparently counted having his soul enslaved as fine but not ideal. Clearly they had some talking to do once they were back aboard the Pearl.

She needed surprisingly little, and they were things that were fairly common. Hell, the grave dirt and coffin nails could even be got in the same place. Jenny slid her chair out to leave with her husband, but stopped when Mama Lovelle refused to let her go. She was being kept as collateral.

"Grave robbing?" she yelped, but her alarm went unnoticed. Terms were agreed to and plans were made, and by the time everything was settled the sun had set. Jack would have enough cover to get what they needed.

"So tell me," Jenny said once he had gone, "how do you come to know so much about Captain Jack?" She pulled a deck of cards from her pocket and shuffled them, dealing for each of them. Cards helped pass the time when she was in one of her increasingly frequent moods, and she could feel such a mood creeping up on her again. She was starting to feel like the whole world knew her husband better than she did, and that he didn't care about that. "Other than being in that convent, that is."
 
Mama Lovelle cackled at Jenny’s question. “How could I not know? I’ve an eye for such things,” she tapped her forehead at that, “and I’ve lived a long time. Nearly as long as you, Red Jenny. Nearly as long.”

Leaning back in her chair, she studied Jenny closely. “I’ve read of his exploits in the broadsheets, Red Jenny. My sisters gossip about him on the winds, and the loa whisper of him on the night roads. That’s how I know of him. And of you.”

She leaned closer. “Hong Zhenni Hai Dao Huang Hao. Not so well known here, but the Middle Kingdom remembers you.” She smiled knowingly. “You have secrets from your Jack as well, don’t you? Things you’ve never said of your time with Ching Shih.”

Laughing, she sat back. “But the spirits saw, and remember. As do the dead.”
 
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