Chapter 1 - THE SHIP NOBODY WANTED
By the time the auctioneer called Lot 47, almost everyone in the room had stopped paying attention.
The abandoned steamship sat half-sunk at the edge of Greyhaven Harbor, black with rust, streaked with salt, and leaning slightly toward the water as if exhausted from the effort of staying upright.
No engine certificate.
No active registration.
No crew.
No insurance.
No useful cargo listed.
To everyone else, it was scrap.
To Eliza Ward, it was the last thing in the room she could afford.
She stood near the back wall in a faded brown dress that had been repaired so many times the seams looked like handwriting. Her boots were worn through at one heel. In her coat pocket were seventy-five dollars.
Every dollar she had.
Her mother was dead.
Her father had disappeared at sea nine years earlier.
The boarding house wanted rent by Monday.
The factory where she stitched canvas bags had closed the week before.
Seventy-five dollars was not enough to save her.
But maybe, she thought, it was enough to buy something no one else wanted.
The auctioneer raised his hammer.
“SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLARS! ANYBODY?”
Nobody moved.
Then laughter rolled through the room.
A man near the front shouted:
“That wreck isn’t worth five!”
More laughter.
Eliza pushed through the crowd.
“I’LL TAKE IT!”
The room went quiet for half a second.
Then exploded again.
The auctioneer stared at her.
“You?”
Eliza marched to the table and pulled out the money.
Five.
Ten.
Twenty.
More crumpled bills.
Coins.
She slapped everything down.
“All seventy-five.”
The auctioneer looked at the pile.
“That’s your last money, girl.”
Eliza’s jaw tightened.
“Then sell me the damn ship.”
The crowd howled.
The auctioneer hesitated, perhaps waiting for someone sensible to rescue the moment.
Nobody did.
He lifted the hammer.
“SOLD!”
The wood struck the block.
Eliza grabbed the ownership paper before anyone could change their mind.
A man laughed as she passed.
“Enjoy your floating coffin!”
Eliza did not look back.
She walked directly to Greyhaven Harbor.
The ship was worse up close.
Its name had nearly disappeared beneath rust and salt.
MORNING STAR.
The gangplank sagged under her weight.
A rotten board snapped beneath her boot.
Eliza gasped, grabbed the railing, and hung over black harbor water for one terrifying second.
“Come on…”
She dragged herself up.
Kept climbing.
The upper deck groaned under the wind.
Broken glass glittered near the wheelhouse.
A gull exploded from an open hatch and nearly stopped Eliza’s heart.
She reached the main door.
Locked.
She kicked once.
Nothing.
Again.
The old wood split.
Eliza shoved through.
Inside smelled of mildew, coal dust, and dead seawater.
She moved deeper.
The ship creaked around her.
Every sound felt like a warning.
Then—
CRASH.
Something metallic slammed below deck.
Eliza froze.
“What the hell…?”
A strange light flashed through cracks in the floor.
Not lantern light.
Not sunlight.
Blue-white.
Shimmering.
Alive somehow.
Eliza dropped to her knees.
She pulled at one loose board.
It would not move.
She grabbed a broken iron hook and pried.
The plank came free.
Light spilled upward.
Eliza gasped.
She tore away another board.
Then another.
The glow grew brighter.
Her face changed.
Disbelief.
Shock.
Then something almost wild.
“Oh my God…”
Below her was something impossible to understand at first glance.
Something hidden.
Something shining.
Something no auction inventory had mentioned.
Eliza started laughing.
Then crying.
Then laughing harder.
She reached both hands toward the opening.
“OH MY GOD! THAT IS MINE!”
Her voice echoed through the dead ship.
She looked around at whatever waited below.
May you like
“All of it is mine!”
And deep beneath the rotten floor of the Morning Star, something answered with another flash of light.
