Chapter 25

                                    

                                          
They sailed through ice. Ice so cold that their skin turned pale and red, and frost coated their hair as icicles formed on their clothes and blood stopped flowing through their bodies.
 "Why don't that Obeah woman bring Jack back the same way she brought back Barbossa?" Pintel asked. 
"Because Barbossa was only dead!" Tia Dalma exclaimed. "And I had the life's blood of him descendant, the heart of the sea. Jack Sparrow is taken, body and soul, to a place not of death, but punishment. The worst fate a person can bring upon himself stretching on forever. That's what awaits at Davy Jones' Locker. 
"Yeah, I knew there was a good reason," Ragetti insisted as Cora and Will shivered over the charts. 
"These can't be as accurate as modern charts." 
"Actually, they be more so," Cora corrected him. "For they lead to more places. We ain't be the first to try and take Sao Feng's charts. These be legendary charts. See," she said as she put her hand over Will's and spun the circles to reveal a message. 
"Over the edge, over again," Will read. 
"And..." Cora continued as she spun the circles again and ran a finger across the new message. 
"Sunrise sets. Flash of green." And then Will was on his feet as he was handing over the maps to her father. "Do you care to interpret, Captain Barbossa?" he asked.
"Ever gazed upon the green flash, Master Gibbs?" her also frozen father asked. 
"I reckon I seen my fair share. Happens on rare occasion. The last glimpse of sunset, a green flash shoots up into the sky. Some go their whole lives without ever seeing it. Some claim to have seen it who ain't. And some say..." 
"It be signalling when a soul comes back to this world from the dead," Cora finished, rather bored of Gibb's dramatic explanation. "Father and I saw it once." 
"Aye, me Cora. And to see a soul returned has an interesting effect on one's own soul," Barbossa said as he brought his daughter under his arm in an attempt to warm her up. "Trust me, young Master Turner. It's not getting to the land of the dead that's the problem. It's getting back." 
Will was handed back the charts as they sailed onwards through the ice. Into a cavern of pure darkness that spat them out on a sea that was so still it be a mirror of the sky above them. A sky that was speckled with more stars than once could count and more constellations than any could name. it was as if they were sailing on the sky, on those constellations and on those stars.
And under those stars, two people who hadn't spoken in a while began speaking.
"How long do we continue not talking?" Will asked as he approached Elizabeth, but she simply glanced at him before turning back to stare at the black horizon. 
"Once we rescue Jack, everything will be fine," Elizabeth said softly. 
"And if we rescue Jack and nothing happens? What becomes of our friendship then?" 
Elizabeth picked at her nail a little harder as her jaw tightened. "Are you sure your lover will have no objections to our friendship?" 
"My lover?" Will asked with furrowed brows before he followed Elizabeth's gaze to where Cora was standing with her father as they read over the charts again. "Cora?!" he chuckled despite the sour taste in his mouth, especially after what he said next. "Elizabeth, aside from keeping my bed warm, Cora has no influence on my life. What issue do you have with her?" 
"I don't have an issue," Elizabeth snapped.
"Clearly." 
"I think you are the one with the issue if you didn't even tell me that you were sharing a bed with Barbossa's daughter!"