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Upon one summer’s morning / I carefully did stray / Down by the Walls of Wapping / Where I met a sailor gay / Conversing with a young lass / Who seem’d to be in pain / Saying, "William when you go I fear you’ll ne’er return again" [Unknown]
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Jem’s half dead as he floats through the Thames; he waits for the river, with its murky waters and overpowering fumes, to finish the job. He’d never meant to stray so far from the others but by the time he’d realised, it was too late. Caught in a fit underwater, passed out, carried on a downward current up until the city — he thanks his stars the sun is not yet up and the boats that’ve docked near the riverbank are abandoned. A curious fisherman is the last thing he needs.
As he presses himself against the river wall, struggling to stay conscious (his tail’s bruised, he can barely stay afloat), he hears voices coming from the street above. There’s a woman speaking, her voice faint and distressed.
“Must you go, William? It's ill-advised and you know it.”
“Tess, I’m sorry.” a man — William, presumably — replies. “My hand is forced now. I have no choice. I'll be back within the fortnight, unharmed, I swear it.”
There’s a rustling and clinking.
“Tess, no, it's for your protection —“ His voice is familiar, Jem thinks he’s heard it before.
“You will take it.” The woman’s voice is firm. And louder. Footsteps; they’re approaching the dock. Jem panics and tries pushing himself back underwater but they see him before he can.
The woman has brown hair piled on top of her head and her blue dress (boxy, held up with panniers and petticoats, an altogether elaborate affair, Jem's cousin Emma had once laughed) is the same shade as the man’s eyes. He’s a sailor, breeches worn but clean, a chain with an angel dangling at its end clutched in his fist.
“It’s you,” he breathes, a look of astonishment on his face.
A storm, treasure hunters, a mangled wreck of a ship on the seabed - crewed by corpses. Tousled black hair floating dead in the water. Jem had pulled him out then, miles away and moons ago. Tessa, the man had whispered, coming alive, water hacked and coughed from his lungs, blue eyes flickering open. A strange man, aciridic at first, his cruelty perfected and ready on his tongue, an art. There is a curse upon me, he’d said later, realising Jem would meet his barbs with little more than indifference, even amusement.
“What do you mean, Will? Is it him? The one you told me about?” The woman — Tessa — asks, eyes not leaving Jem’s face. She’s beautiful, he thinks dazedly, her brows furrowed in worry and apprehension; no wonder her name had been the first thing to drop from the lips of a man halfway to Davy Jones: Tessa, Tess, the only dream that lingers past dawn. Yes, here is the sun rising, his heart failing — here she is, finally.
“Help,” Jem manages.
The last thing he hears before the world goes black is Tessa’s little oh of surprise as two pairs of arms reach out to grab him.