REDO ALL OF MY LOVELY READERS!!!! I HOPE ITS IMPROVED AND PLEASE DONT SHOOT ME AS I COME OUT NERVOUSLY FROM BEHIND THE COUCH FOR NOT UPDATING IN AGES... ITS NOT MUCH BUT EXPECT THE PTHER CHAPPIES SOON!!!
Wind on the Seas
Bella's POV
The familiar smells of my home town seemed to be permanently burned into my nose. Everything that I had ever known was here. I had grown up here; my friends still lived, fought, stole, and died here, in this very place. Family graves were all that remained of my past in Cheapside, London. In the year 1803, people were still after me.
My name is Bella, or Isabella, Swan. My ever so beautiful (catch the sarcasm?) town was one of the most dangerous places to live in all of Britain. I'm seventeen years old, and my birthday is September 13th. At present, it is somewhere around May, I think.
Everything was here, but… I was going to have to leave it all behind, and could probably never face it again. I couldn't stay here anymore, not after everything that had happened. When my parents had died sometime back during that bedamned January night, I had been kicked out into the streets. That was three years ago, when I was fourteen. At one point, I had finally fallen in with a gang of street kids that quickly became my family, or, at least, the only thing that even came close. At least, until the unthinkable had finally happened. Me, the best thief among us, was caught stealing.
Pathetic, I know, but it's the very bland truth. Last week, I had stolen a noble snob lady's necklace. When she discovered the theft, she apparently had hired agents to find me, because that damn stupid necklace, with its pearl and gold enamel inlay warped into beautiful and intricate spiderwebs, was some kind of treasured family heirloom. For the past couple of days, I had been on the run, hiding in street gutters that ran with unpleasant substances that I won't subject anyone, including myself, to have to think about, or on high rooftops, even once in the enormous cathedra, crouched under some of the worn, incense-smelling church pews to avoid detection. My friends all knew where to find me, and usually once a day Jesse, Josh, Mary, Nancy, or Charlie would show up with some food and we would talk for a while, updating me on the latest gang activities in the surrounding area. Inevitably, though, they always had to go, leaving me alone to face my boredom head on.
The hired bastards were still after me, and although hiding in drainpipes that reeked of old rot, or on top of some old biddy's rich, noble roof had kept me safe for a while, my luck was eventually run out, and I would take part in a fatal fight, where my inept clumsiness would probably prove to be a fatality to aide in my demise. The first thing I did when I discovered the two huge, burly men following me was to sell the necklace and then high tail it out of town, at least for a while.
My decision was made. Staying in the town that had raised and weaned me was much too risky, for me and all of the others concerned. I was going to leave, despite my unwillingness to drop all that I had gained in the past few years for one of my own stupid, clumsy errors. I would disguise myself as a boy, then book passage on a British warship, or just a meager merchant, to get me to America, where I could start fresh. When I finally got there I would decide what to actually do with my life.
At this particular moment, I was curled up on a worn rooftop, perched precariously atop the sliding shingles coating the slanting structure, my knees hugged up to my chest as I curled myself into the fetal position (and there's not that much of me to curl, believe me). My chin rested heavily on my knees, conveniently located directly under my face, and my mind was running at ninety miles and hour.
Staring over the rooftops as the city lights winked at me and darkness fell in velvety waves, I sighed, uncurling from my crouch, and disappearing in fast fading shadows, riding on the winds of fate, wherever they may take me.
The knife glistened wickedly in my clenched hands as waves of long, mahogany hair fell to my feet in the dark, narrow alley, feather light and dejected looking. My whole body was tensed, almost rigid, with my dark chocolate eyes screwed up tight as I felt the pain of my hair being currently ripped free of my skull against their will. Come on, hair, now is not the time to mess with me. You are being cut, so deal with it! I had clenched my teeth together so hard that I heard them creak and groan in protest. Unfortunately, there was no possible way on this earth for me to pass as a boy with long wavy hair. Passing as a boy with short dark hair wouldn't be much easier, but it would definitely prevent some undo suspicion (well, I guess it's not totally undo suspicion).
As I finished putting myself through some pretty unbearable torture, (a.k.a. pulling hair out by the roots) I sighed. A few hours before, while it was still dark when most people were sound asleep in their beds, I had literally run into a fully loaded clothesline (glory!) and snatched some boys' clothes. Now, I inspected my prize: long, dark black trousers, an almost white shirt with cut off sleeves fraying at the shoulder, and a dark midnight black vest, with brass buttons coming down the front. Not too bad, I thought to myself.
Using a broken piece of mirror that I had found when I, ahem, stepped on it, I inspected my new haircut. It was choppy, uneven, and unruly, with a length of about an inch long. My "bangs" (short spikes that stuck up in the front of my forehead in a widows' peak) glinted with light that shone from the weak sunlight that was starting to peak wearily out from behind Blackfriar's Bridge, and I was able to clearly discern my auburn highlights that glittered throughout my mangled hair in the colors of an autumn night. All in all, I still looked too pretty for a boy, although I do know that I'm not exactly beautiful, but what the hell, I'd pass off, as long as I was careful.
The only downside was that, well, guys don't have, you know, chests. So, I quickly slithered out of the old, incredibly ragged and ratty brown trousers that had come down to my knees in tatters, exchanging them for the new black ones, which definitely were an improvement in my extremely limited and nonexistent wardrobe. Then on went the vest, which I had to lace seriously and uncomfortably tight, which made it difficult to breathe, and finally on went the white shirt after removing my old, of course tattered, navy blue one.
Once I finished changing, I took my old clothes, as well as scooping up what was left of my hair sitting in the dirt, still dancing in a slight breeze, though not very happily, it seemed, and dumped them unceremoniously into an old tin garbage can a few feet away. I then took my knife and stuck it back into its tooled, leather sheath, which I had carefully placed inside my vest ouch ouch ouch, and finally set off, bare feet barely leaving a whisper behind me in the dirt, the air only slightly stirring, leaving dear old Cheapside behind. Warily, I crept down the old, familiar side alley to the great bridge, stopping to take one last look behind me at the one and only place that I'd ever called home. Maybe one day I'd return. Maybe not.