Fleeing the clutches of her disreputable relatives, Sera Livingston has made her escape to Australia's Outback. Disguised as a boy, sharp-tongued Sera searches for her sister but is attacked by bushrangers. Thievery becomes her only chance at surviv...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The Outback, Australia, June 5, 1851
A five-foot-two petite form sat on the edge of the coach seat with a crumpled newspaper dangled between dirt-crusted fingers. From the flimsy hat and worn clothes, everything about him was the picture of an orphaned boy traveling for work. A servant hired to be the bag boy for the pompous rich couple. He was filthy, bony, and unwashed. An unrefined, vermin of the streets who would barely get a glance, which is why.... the guise was perfect, since the boy in the coach was in fact, a woman.
Sera reread the worn-out paper. She had torn it off the New York Tribune when she was hiding away in the dingy streets of New York, waiting for her boat to leave the port. The headline read: WANTED: MISSING GIRL. She kept the crumpled article as a souvenir of her victory, yet now it only taunted her.
Her eyes shifted over the absurd portrait of herself in a high-collared dress with ridiculous frills and her usually big rebellious round eyes were giving a wide-eyed glare from having her portrait done. The severe tightly pulled back chignon that her grandmother's lady's maiden had strategically braided and pinned up to perfection, had been in utter disarray. Sera remembered that day all too well.
She narrowed her eyes and curled her lip at the paper in her hands. That pompous devil Sera detested to her core had wanted a portrait of her and her grandmother dragged her to the parlor kicking and screaming. The old hag had been shockingly strong in her hold. Her uncle had been there lurking in the corner watching in contempt. She had been forced into the most uncomfortable contraption she had ever seen. She had to sit on a stool with an odd device stationed on the back of it. It was a long pole with two red fluffy-looking balls at the tip. When she had sat down in it, her neck sat between the two red balls and positioned her in an uncomfortable and stiff position. Sera had to sit there for far too long, cramping as the odd man with the strange wooden box with a round brass metal sticking out of it took a picture of her. Looking at it now, Sera looked as if she had sucked on something sour and was ready to spit it out at the man behind the daguerreotype.
"What a torturous day that had been," Sera muttered at the torn paper with its ink starting to fade.
She sighed and slammed her palm down with the paper in hand, hearing a harsh whipping sound her hand had made at the contact with the seat's interior. The other occupants, a pudgy thickly bearded man and his portly red-faced wife who had hired her, scowled, but she paid them no mind and instead crumpled the paper in her fist and shoved it behind her into the seats worn cushions. The coach lurched back and forth and the driver shouted that their destination was a day away.
Sera gave a painful gasp as her bruised and battered body jolted against the coach's rhythm. A particular spot on her shoulder blade caused her to cringe and wrap her arms around herself. Her stomach growled loudly and her chapped lips breathed out a dry strangled breath.
