Authors note: This is my twist on Beauty and the Beast and if you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them so as to change it from the original.

Chapter one:

Merchants filled the streets on the coast of the old country and people, mostly men, bustled around to get their shipments loaded from the docks to the creaking ships that were waiting in the harbor for their captains to take their helms and delve them far away in to the sea for which their life was born and taken each day, of every week within the month of every year.

Women could be seen beyond the docks along the streets of the town buying and trading their goods to get more goods or food for that night’s supper or just because they had to have that newly imported silk that had just gotten off the boat that morning.

The sun was raising high in the sky getting ready to signal lunch causing the long shadows of the morning to disappear and cast their small shadows from the stores, buildings and houses of the town.

Yelling voices could be heard from the fishermen who were docked closer to the town trying to sell their fish as fast as possible. Hiding the best fillets for their valued customers or for themselves and their families.

The salty spray of the sea could be smelled from all over as young Bella Woods took all of this in. She walked around the streets looking at all the merchandise glimpsing up every now and then to look out towards the docking house where her father was.

Looking up at the sun, not bothering to ask anyone for the time she judged it to be around noon and knew her father would be out soon.

Inching her way closer and closer towards the docking house she could hear the usual conversations of the little old ladies who were buying their last minute produce or looking through the merchandise from the late ship that had docked not an hour earlier.

“How much for this strand Carl?” she heard a woman say.

“For you I will give a discount of twenty cents off.” She supposed the man named Carl replied.

A woman snorted next to her saying, “How much you want a bet that he is just saying that because her husband is failing!”

Bella hurried away. She did not like the gossip from the “magpies” that she called them. If they wanted something constructive to do then they should just stay home and take care of their own families that everyone else was talking about.

Sighing she came near the docking house and right at that moment saw her father talking to her sister’s fiancé.

They were walking towards her and when they came but just a few feet from her they looked at her at the same time, her father smiling and putting his arm around her shoulders saying,

“Bella! Good to see you! Young Rolfe is going to accompany us today. A little surprise for your sister!” her father said laughing.

She looked over at Rolfe and said, “Good to see you Rolfe.”

“You too Bella.” Rolfe said awkwardly hugging her while her fathers arm was still on her shoulders.

They walked along the road a ways until Rolfe then asked her, “So how is your sister?”

Smiling she looked over to Rolfe and said, “Everything and more that an expected-to-be-married young woman should be.”

Rolfe laughed and said, “I’ll take your word for that.”

They walked up towards the town house that Bella had known all her life. She looked up to its splendor and took in the three story building, with its stucco finish, the windows open with the sheers blowing trough and the newly painted shutters that were open and letting the welcoming breeze into the house. She could smell lunch wafting from the window, no doubt her sister had gone overboard again to make sure father was well taken care of. (And no doubt hoping that her love would be joining him.)

And as they walked through the front door, her sisters cry of surprise was all that Bella needed to know that her assumptions were correct.

As the entered through the front door Bella could see her sister standing in the doorway with servants rushing around to take any articles that the newcomers needed to be taken away. One took her shawl as two others took fathers and Rolfe’s hats.

Hope, her sister, rushed into Rolfe’s arms and they shared a very awkward kiss as he set her down and put his arm around her. Bella looked over at her father and saw that before he tried to turn his attention to the dinning room he was smiling.

Following him they all entered the dining room and took their usual seat. Hope next to Rolfe to the left of father and her, to the right. As they bowed their head for grace she could not help but to wonder where Adeline was, but all of a sudden she felt uneasy and unnerved as if something was going to happen. But then she had felt this for the past several weeks. As word of disaster was spreading from merchant to merchant and how word seemed to be spread about her sister’s engagement and the town’s uproar that she was last one left.

Yes, she was happy for her sister, but now the little ninnies were looking to her to find a respectable husband for her! Since she now was the last daughter of the prosperous merchant August Woods. Her sister Mary and brother Thomas were happily married. Her brother lived in the north way inland working as a jack of all trades with his wife. Mary had been married for a prosperous two years with one ten month old baby with another on the way, and her engaged sister Adeline of six months; and with Hope now engaged as well, she was last in line and was expected to carry on.

And it was deemed her duty to try and make a good match. Although her father always told them to marry for love, the town made a fuss to try and match their rich son’s with her sister’s they now looked to her after her brother began the family of its; what the town called their ‘devilish ways’, by marrying a lowly merchants daughter who dreamed of returning to her home country of the north.

And after that Mary had fallen in love with a sailor a year later on her eighteenth birthday, and with Adeline who fell in love with a prosperous smithy and then Hope who fell in love with another smithy who was veered in the society’s light somewhat better, for he worked for all the wealthy merchants of the town, while Adeline’s iron worker was only employed by Bella’s father and had comfortably stayed in his position.

Now it was her turn. And all the scorns that were made at her older siblings were now being taken back as the town realized that their last chance at seizing at her father’s dowry for her could now be fulfilled. So every week, new suitors came and she was required by the town’s unofficial rule to go out with the gentlemen and try and find her love that way.

She could remember her complaint’s to her father when she had officially come ‘out’ and for the first month she was bombarded by the many suitors. She had just gotten home from a disastrous one; because the man had done nothing but talk about himself and all of his accomplishment’s; though weren’t many considering he dwindled his money away in the taverns, but a suitor was a suitor to the town’s eyes and she had to at least go out with each of them at least once.

She had entered the parlour where her father was smoking his pipe and was reading by the fireplace. She knelt in front of him and rested her head on his lap like she had done when she was younger and said, “Please don’t make me go out any more!”

He had set his book down and lifter her chin with his hands and asked, “Why Bella? What happened?”

Sighing she said, “All he did was talk about himself! He never listened to me! And the entire time I was counting the minutes to go home!”

He chuckled and said, “My dear, I’m sorry. I feel your pain. But I promise you this, like I have promised your sisters and brother before you, you are not obligated to marry any of those young twerps they call ‘respectable men’. For I do not want your unhappiness with a man that you despise, I want your happiness with a man that you adore! So please, if not for my sake, for yours humor them, but know that when you find your true love, I will embrace him with open arms. For whoever makes you happy, makes me happy as well.”

And after that night, she slept with this knowledge and took it to heart. Although now she was now turning into the ripe age of sixteen and was now being considered an old maid; she looked for her true love, but knew, that if she was to find him, he would not be here in the city. Instead he would be far away, where she wished to be.

Bella was brought back with the clanging of the dishes and she started pilling her plate with the food that her sister had ordered to be prepared. As she was ready to eat the front door opened and in came Mary with Adeline wrapped her in an embrace.

Everyone turned to look at the two of them and Adeline said sobbing slightly, “The ship Odysseus has gone down. And Ray was aboard.”

Everyone looked to Mary who was shaking and sobbing. And Bella felt as if someone punched her gut. Mary’s husband was dead.