Let Nothing Ye Dismay
I. Candles
Jack perches in the rigging, looking down at the deck below, wondering if he dares slip down and forage for something to eat. So far, the presence of one agile young boy aboard such a fine and busy ship has been missed by the not-particularly-observant sailors, but he's not sure he can keep it up until they wash up wherever they do. Anywhere far away will do.
He expects if he's caught they'll put him to work, which he plans to avoid for the moment. Possibly they might throw him overboard, although he thinks he can probably talk his way out of any such drastic fate. He's always been best with his tongue. Which suggests another bargaining piece, but one that he would prefer not to use at this moment.
The stars have crept quite a ways across the sky, and he's hungry, but patience is a virtue. They don't keep much of a watch in the small hours of the night, and then he can slip below decks and raid the stores of biscuit and salt beef. There might be something tastier to be found with a more determined search. It will be Christmas in the morning, and surely that means some manner of feast.
The stars are bright as candles above, tracing familiar patterns across the sky. He's heard they're different in foreign parts, even the sky turning strange and new. He plans to be someone different, too. He likes the idea of new stars to shine on him, ones that won't know any stories to tell about him except the ones he plans to be in now.
Far below, someone on deck is singing a rather tuneless carol, praising the birth of a bastard child in a stable somewhere across the wide dark ocean. That lad had a king trying to kill him and all manner of other trouble when he was still a babe in arms; Jack doesn't have that many problems. And it all worked out in the end, in a manner of speaking, although perhaps less from the good Lord's point of view than from other people's. At least it made a good story.
There's no reason a good story can't begin here. He scrambles down the rigging, silent as a cat, the rope warm under his bare feet. It might be possible to get the door to the rum locker open and have himself a bit of Christmas cheer. For once, all things seem possible, as the wind fills the sails and speeds them through the night.
II. Presents
Will tries not to watch at the window. If there were ships coming into harbor, someone would come and tell them; there are enough women waiting for men who should have been back weeks ago. It's been a stormy winter, and all manner of things could have happened. He expects his father is tucked into port somewhere far away, drinking hot cider and thinking about his family.
At least, he likes to think it, which he tells himself is the same thing. His mother hasn't said a word about his father all day, although she's seemed cheerful enough, roasting a chicken and bustling about as if they were having company. It's hard to make the day merry with just the two of them, but Will feels that he ought to try.
He's made her a box to keep things in, carved painstakingly with the knife his father gave him a few Christmases ago in what seemed like better times. It took him a while to get the feel of how to join the wood, but he's pleased with the result, smoothed with a bit of leather and with slightly crooked holly leaves carved on the lid. He's not sure what she'll want to keep in it, but surely she must have some treasures of her own.
He keeps his in a bit of old cloth under his mattress: marbles and a pair of forbidden dice his father brought him, bits of bone and ivory carved in a hand not his own, some bits of string that seemed that they might be useful, a strange whorled shell and a shark's tooth. It's not that he really thinks anyone would take them from him, but a proper treasure should be hidden.
There's some part of Will that knows that these aren't proper treasures but the playthings of a little boy, and that someday soon will come the time when none of them are more to him than a touchstone for his pocket or a thing to put away on a shelf and smile at indulgently. It's the same part that knows that there's no sense in looking out the window or listening for a knock at the door, any more than there is in staring in shop windows at things he'll never be able to buy. There will come a day when it's time to be practical.
It's not quite yet, and his heart still leaps when there's a tapping at the door. He's telling himself he's a fool when he hears his mother cry out and turns to see her throw herself into his father's arms, her head bent against his shoulder.
Will climbs down from the settle by the fire and tries not to run to his father's arms himself, because he feels he's a little big for that now. "You almost missed dinner," he says.
"Well, I'm just in time, then," his father says, and kisses his mother on the cheek, setting her back on her feet so he can look down at Will. Will smiles up at him and pretends he believes the wistfulness in his eyes means this time he'll stay.
In the morning he'll give the box to his father, who surely has treasures enough to put in it. He has all year to make it up to his mother, and any number of Christmases to come. He tries to tell himself that he does with his father, too, but that same small voice tells him to be practical; there's not really any time to waste.
III. Festivities
Elizabeth doesn't miss the snow or the holly or any of the other trimmings of English Christmases that her maids sometimes talk wistfully about. She does, sometimes, miss the quiet of Christmas in the country, only herself and her parents and a handful of neighbors to share Christmas dinner and settle afterwards in front of the fire. Elizabeth remembers curling up forgotten in a corner of the parlor, a book across her lap, while her father and his friends talked about politics, and feeling perfectly content with the world, stretching out her toes toward the heat of the fire.
Christmas in Port Royal is a noisy series of parties and entertainments, with Christmas itself spent with the house filled with ball guests and decked with greenery until it seems hard to move. Elizabeth wishes she could retire quietly with a book, even if the weather is a bit warm for a fire. Instead she is talking politely to various nervous young men, none of whom seem to have any better topic of conversation than the weather.
It takes a certain amount of talent for boring conversation to talk about the weather in Port Royal, outside of the season for hurricanes. Elizabeth raises her fan in an effort to camouflage a helpless glance around the ballroom. There must be someone who can save her from expiring of small talk.
Across the room she can see Captain Norrington rather awkwardly examining a table laden with hors d'oeuvres. She considers attempting to cut him out of the crowd and put him in the position of having to ask her to dance. Even if his solicitude would be largely out of respect for her father, he has at least been places and done things that she has some remote interest in hearing about.
She is beginning to feel awkward around Captain Norrington, however, largely as a result of her father's approving looks and encouraging remarks any time the man so much as pours her a cup of tea. Elizabeth is aware that marriage is what follows this endless series of dances and afternoon teas, and will probably be less tedious, at least if the whisperings of her maids on that account are to be believed. Still, she's not sure she's ready to embark upon that voyage, if only because once started there's no return.
Eventually the night will end and it will be possible to retreat to her room, with or without a book, and throw the curtains open so that the stars can shine down and fill the room with silver light. She is too old now to believe her old nurse's story that for an hour the animals can talk, whispering wisdom to anyone clever enough to hear it, but she still feels there's a particular quiet to the hours when Christmas Eve turns into Christmas morning. It's a time for waiting for some long-awaited thing to happen.
At the moment, though, she's aware that she's keeping her would-be swain waiting. She smiles and lowers the fan and offers him her hand. He leads her into the dance, and she tries to forget her awkwardness in the steady patterns of the music, letting herself be led through the measures and ending just where she ought to be.
IV. Toasts
James is spending his Christmas in a tavern, which is as he wants it. There are no reminders here of any better life, or of anything he might once have wanted on Christmas Day. There's only rum poured out by the tankard, and a fiddler playing wildly off-key to accompany tuneless singing from the crowd.
"Happy Christmas," he says, and toasts the grimy wall. It fails to reply, which is also as he wants it. He can't imagine tolerating any company but his own.
There is the small but present chance that some of his former shipmates will make their appearance here, in search of some alcoholic substitute for Christmas cheer. He thinks he's still sober enough to make his escape in that case. He's not in the mood for anyone to try to reform him, or for that matter to be bought a drink out of pity.
Then again, a drink's a drink. Enough of them, and he imagines that self-respect can be drowned enough not to care where the next one comes from. He's still got money to spend on drink, although he's aware that at some future point it will run out. He's trying not to think about that, for which he finds that rum serves admirably.
No one here has anything worth singing about on this Christmas Eve. He supposes they're making merry in Port Royal; Elizabeth will be finding out if her blacksmith lover can learn the steps of a minuet. Probably he can, as clever a swordsman as he is. Credit where credit is due. Will Turner has put all James's hopes to ruin with all his customary craftsmanship and care.
Or, to be fair, Elizabeth Swann has. Credit where credit is due. James tries to think of her as a silly girl who will someday be sorry she disgraced her family in search of one of her storybooks made real. He tries not to think of her at all, and certainly not of how she looked standing between him and Sparrow, her cheeks flushed and her hair astray, her eyes full of heat and none of it for him.
"None for me," James says, and lifts his tankard in another toast to no one in particular. He may as well be maudlin; it's a proper night for it. Drunken sailors are singing about the infant Lord being born to save their souls, probably the one night of the year that they remember that they have them.
James thinks his is fairly well beyond redemption; he thinks he can feel the weight of every man lost in the hurricane, every familiar face found floating like the wreckage of his Dauntless in the surf, dragging him down toward a sailor's Hell. He may as well add drunkenness to the score. It makes it easier not to think about his final end.
"Let nothing ye dismay," he hums, and if he can get the barmaid to bring him another drink, he expects that nothing will.
V. Ships
"I should be going," Will says. They've escaped the party to the garden, where despite the lanterns there are pools of sheltering dark.
"I don't suppose I can walk you home," Elizabeth says.
Will smiles. "I don't think your father would believe I need your protection," he says.
"Likely not," Elizabeth says. She's not sure whether Will thinks the idea as laughable as her father would. Surely not, after she's fought at his side, and after he's trained her with the blade. It's only that Will hardly needs defending from any threat that's likely to be found between here and the blacksmith's shop.
"We shouldn't really have left the party."
"We are engaged," Elizabeth says. "And no one will miss me for a few minutes."
"Everyone's going home," Will says, but he doesn't urge her back inside. He stands looking at her in the lantern-light, his eyes dark, as if just the sight fulfills some hunger.
She can feel the same hunger making her sweat under her fine new dress, behind her neck and at the hollow of her back. It's a pleasant frustration, now that she knows there will be an answer for it in time. All the same, she wishes she could walk home with Will, and find some dark alley or quiet corner of the shop where they could tangle together in the hay.
"What are you thinking?" Will asks, and she feels her face heat. She's left her fan inside, and without it she feels naked. She looks out toward the harbor instead of off into the dark streets she will not walk down with Will tonight.
"I wish we could go down to the harbor," she says. "And get a good look at all the ships and try to guess where they're going."
"Nowhere tonight," Will says. "I expect everyone's well-content to spend Christmas Eve in some safe harbor."
"Of course," Elizabeth says, and now she wishes even more for the fan, because Will is frowning as if there's something that troubles him in her expression. "I'd be better content to spend it with you."
He smiles at that, and touches her fingertips with his own, which somehow manages to make her flush again. "Next year," he says. "And all the years after."
It sounds like the end of a story, and she tells herself it's a good ending. It's not Will's fault that she feels as though the story hasn't properly begun.
"Happy Christmas," she says. "You will be careful walking home?"
He half-bows. "I'll avoid all perils of wayward chickens and loose cobblestones."
"See that you do," she says, and he sets off out of the lantern-light into the darkness. It doesn't matter that she can't follow, Elizabeth tells herself. They'll sleep under the same familiar stars, and both watch the ships setting out in the morning, making sail for where the stars are strange.