Prologue

The ship rocked gently as it coasted along the sea, surrounded by the shimmering of moonlight mingling with its own reflection. Ten souls were upon the ship, but it could well have been abandoned for all the sound they made. It was a sound, well-built ship, but there was a feeling about it that suggested it could have easily rotted away in an instant if it were so inclined.

The moonlight undulated across the hull. The name Mary Celeste, painted in white across the hull, had an almost ghostlike glow in the dim light.

The deck creaked.

Two figures, both females, darted across the wooden decking, clutching rucksacks. The elder was about thirty years old, a slender woman with dark hair and frightened eyes. The other was a girl of about six, her hair tucked beneath a scarf: a small, luminous child.

They slipped into the yawl boat, then lowered into the water. Whenever the ropes or pulleys creaked, they froze in apparent terror for several seconds, hardly daring to breathe, then continued with their task. When the boat floated of its own accord in the water, they untied the ropes and let the little boat drift. The Mary Celeste continued on, uncaring of the two escapees, and once the ship was far away the smaller craft's oars dipped into the sea, propelling it far away from the nightmare life on the ship had become.

* * *

"Why did we leave, Mama?"

Sarah Briggs continued pulling on her oar, moderating herself to match the child's strength. She sighed: a lonely, rattling sound. "The men were not well, Sofia, we left to protect ourselves."

"But Papa-"

"He was the worst of them!" Sarah snapped. "Did you not see, the madness creeping into his eyes, his mind spinning away from him? That madness would have seen us drowning like rats for imagined sins, Sofia."

"Why?" The little girl spoke with no confusion, no defiance, only meek curiosity. "What made them go mad, Mama?"

Sarah closed her eyes, wishing she had talked Benjamin out of captaining the ship in the first place. Now her inaction had stolen the lives of her husband, her nephew, and possibly herself and her daughter.

"Remember that your father said the Mary Celeste was once a pirate ship?"

Sofia nodded eagerly, eyes wide. "He said it was called the Amazon. I remember."

"Yes, it was. It was so called because most of the crew were women."

"For the woman warriors?"

"Yes. It was attacked by a ship of the British Navy and captured. The captain placed a curse on it."

Sofia's smooth brow creased with sudden confusion. "Mama, curses don't exist, Papa said so himself."

"And look where it got him," said Sarah bitterly. "They exist, child, almost more than you or I, and can work terrible things. The curse was that no man would ever sail aboard the Amazon and survive the experience."

"They changed the name to avoid that curse, didn't they." It was not a question. Sofia chose strange times to be insightful, and this was one of them. Sarah nodded.

"Yes, they did. But it didn't change things- that curse is woven into every board and rope of that ship. It began affecting the men the hour we left harbor, and has been worsening since. And they are such men, Sofia, that their madness would kill us as well."

"Mama, we are far from any land. We are dead anyway."

Sarah clenched her jaw, her eyes glinting with an iron will. "We will live. Even if I have to hail a pirate vessel to save us, or drink seawater and risk madness, I will bring us through this."

Sofia said nothing more. She knew her father had gone mad, and that so had Andrew and Gottlieb and the others, but now she feared that her mother had, too.