Chapter 1
The docks were congested with people scrambling about as they tried to reach wherever their respective destination was. There were poor people, and there were rich people. All around, there were children darting about, mothers calling to their children to behave, and gentlemen standing around looking rather important but saying nothing. The day the Hartley family left England, the sun was shining, and the sailors were all quite optimistic about the journey ahead. As different people bustled around trying to get the rooms for all the important people set up and all their luggage aboard, there stood a young girl with eyebrows that shot straight across her forehead so that she always had the look of a girl who was thinking rather hard about very meaningful things. Her eyes were big and green, and her cheeks rosy. For a girl of only twelve years old, she was quite becoming----which was a fact that almost entirely eluded her.
This girl was called Bess, though if asked, she would give a different name according to the story that played out in her head at that moment. However, she was not a liar---far from it. It was quite a frank and truthful girl. There were many times in which her mother had permitted her to lie in place of an ugly truth---but Bess hated to even lie to a person about how a hat might look on them. It hurt her kind soul to tell anything other than the truth. This irritated her mother, but upon further reflection, her mother always found it to be something that wasn’t too terrible---as it proved that she could always trust her daughters opinions or statements because they were always the truth. Instead, Bess was a girl with a head full of wonder and eyes widened by curiosity.
She was always making up stories in her head---pretending that she was a pirate or a monk or even the captain of a ship. Today, she decided to be called Dahlia, for it reminded her of a girl who might have black hair and could breathe a fire so harsh that it could make the sun cry. All around Bess were her older brothers---Jack, Thomas, Clark, and Bennett. They were between the ages of seventeen and thirteen, and each had a head of dark, pitch black hair. Bess, however, did not have black hair. She had long, spiraling chestnut colored locks which had reddish hues in the summer. However, this was the only divergent characteristic in which she had, for if one looked closer, Bess had the same long nose and lazy smile as all the rest. Not to mention her emerald colored eyes, of course!
When the family was loaded onto the ship and Bess was roomed with her mother, she was sat down by her governess and given a stern warning to stay out of trouble. She was not allowed below decks, and would lose all of her respectability if she were caught down there. “Why can’t I go down there?” She wanted to know. But though she asked, everyone ignored her endlessly and she was forced to break the rule and go down there to find out for herself.
And that is where the story begins:
That night---with little Bess Hartley’s bed quite empty, and her mother’s bed quite full with an unconscious, and unaware mother lying within it.
