Author's Note: I hope this one will be better than Banner's of Plenty. I might stop that one all together. I'm not quite sure about the authenticity of all the facts so if you find anything wrong please tell me. There's nothing I hate more than reading a novel and being able to tell that the writer didn't do any research beforehand. Enjoy!

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My naivety at the time strikes me so that I can barely breathe. It tears at me, clawing like a mother bear protecting her young, ripping out the very fragments of the world around me and the currency of what I am worth then leaves me to tend to an invalid body in this new existence, or die while watching my life essence pour out before me.

This life is not mine and I lay no claim to it. This life could belong to Chung Po Tsai or to Ching Shih, but it is most definitely not mine. The possession of a life to call mine ended shortly after childhood. If this life that I am living belongs to anything in the world it would be the sea. The sea may not have bore me, but it captured me and enticed me in sights and horrors not fit for the female eye, and wrapped me up so that I no longer wish to leave anymore. The sea adopted me and one day surely it will claim me too.

I was born to a relatively poor family in an isolated part of England, a farmer’s daughter. From the time that my mother’s breast milk began to wain I accustomed myself to the throb of hunger and my father’s never-ending talks of prices soaring and value plummeting. Whenever I asked Mother why Father grew so much wheat, yet we never got to eat any of it she would respond:

“There is barely enough wheat to sell and not enough to eat. This farm is the most important thing in the world to your father. Do you want father to be unhappy?”

No, no I do not want father to be unhappy. At least that’s what I remember thinking. If Mother were to come alive from my dreams tonight and ask the same question I would take Father’s hunting gun and shoot a bullet right between his eyes.

I lived in that small farm with my previous family until the winter of my tenth or eleventh year. Time becomes a big lake filled with ripples after life goes on long enough, never knowing exactly where the water came from.

The details of that night during the winter of my tenth or eleventh year stand out in that lake like a rich merchant ship armed my the king’s navy that can never be overlooked. In a way, I consider that night my conception; the day I was introduced to the basics of a life I could call my own. Everything before the night when the men came in, in their stage couches and carriages with brass handles is a horrid nightmare.

Father had been acting differently that day, I remember. He didn’t work on the field as long and sat by the small fire sipping heated water. My mother and I were huddled by the same fire watching the little white puffs our breath made in the air. The snow from outside was soaking through the old wood making the fire even more precious. There came a knock from the door so soft against the screaming wind that I barely heard it. Father heard it the loudest of all of us and while racing to open the rickety door spilled the water.

There were two mustached men outside dressed in the lavish clothing of townspeople that I had only heard of in Mother’s stories. I looked up to these people like aristocracy.

“Come in, come in,” Father said eagerly as he ushered the men inside. One was stout and wearing a handsome powdered wig, while the other was thin and had his natural hair.

“Is that her, there?” the skinny one looked at me huddled on my mother’s lap. “She looks skinny as a stick.” His accent was rough and southern, as I later identified.

“After a good meal she’ll fill out. Poor girl can barely get a meal a day around here,” Father joked.

“Very well. She sweeps at least, doesn’t she?”

“Oh yes, sirs! She’s very obedient, listens to whatever a man says.” Despite the cold, sweat was forming on his forehead.

“What’s her price?” asked the stout man, “Fifty pounds is too generous. Twenty pounds and her monthly pay sounds good enough.”

“Yes, yes! Very.”

The hold that my mother had on me had tightened almost reaching suffocation. The men walked over pulling me away from her hold as she screamed and started hitting them, telling them to let me go. Father pulled her back and slapped her, sending her to the wall, making it rattle and shake even more dangerously. I didn’t scream as they held me by both wrists that left red hand prints for weeks after, or when they carried me into the blizzard, the cold rendering me immobile.

Without a word we were in the carriage and it set out going farther away in half an hour than I had ever been in the entire course of my short life. If it hadn’t been for the ice crested on the windows or the cold I would have taken this opportunity to look out at the scenery, but all I could do was sing myself a lullaby and stay as close to the men’s expensive fabric as possible. I chose to forget my mother’s face.

I don’t remember falling asleep or ever waking up. All I remember is getting off the carriage finding myself in the world of fairytale. Glorious green grass covered part of the front yard in elaborate and enticing patterns. Rose bushes and other unknown flowers were found ever so often frozen in this winter wonderland. And the people! So many of them! I had never seen so many humans in one place before.

“Move it, girl,” the thin man said to me, snapping me out of my trance. “ I don’t want to be seen to long with a filthy servant girl.”

Servant girl? The survival instinct that was dormant awoke and reminded me too late that I was supposed to be scared. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know who these people were or what they wanted from me. Were they kings, or angels, or devils? The tears started build up in my eyes.

“Oh John!” one man from the crowd walking towards the mansion with a beautiful woman at his side shouted out, “A servant girl! Those peasants are taking over the city, I say!”

The stout man now labeled “John” replied humorously, “A dozen per pound!”

John led me frantically to the gate trying to conceal me as much as possible. A woman was waiting there, dressed in substantially plainer clothing took me by the shoulders and pushed me through a door a few feet away from the golden, fancy one.

“Don’t be slow!” she hissed, “You reek of forest! Anne, give the girl a bath and set out her clothes. The idiot doesn’t know a thing.”

Anne, a girl only a few years older than me, wore the same uniform as the older woman terrorized me. She had plain brown hair that came down to her upper back tied back in a pony tail with a piece of string and equally plain brown eyes. This girl would be my savior.