The air bit at my cheeks as I rode, rough and tired, through the bitter cold. Snowflakes clung to my coif, their chill seeping through to my scalp. My hair, fair and tangled, poked out in strands beneath the wool. I looked a mess—I felt worse. Hunger gnawed at me, the kind that hollows a man out slowly, and my bones ached with the weariness of too many sleepless nights. I was young—sixteen or seventeen—but in that moment, I felt ancient. Riding through the winter fog on an old nag that smelled of damp hay, I was a pale ghost on horseback.
And then the gunshot came.
The sound cracked the stillness like a whip. My horse—or donkey, really, but I liked to think of it as something grander—jerked into a speed I hadn't thought possible. My stomach lurched, my head snapped back, but I held on. Barely. Behind me, three men rode hard, their shouts carrying over the wind. Bandits, by the look of them. Their faces were hard and hungry, like mine, but meaner. Always meaner. My heart pounded, not just from fear but from the sudden rush of motion. Funny how desperation makes the feeble strong.
That moment still haunts me. The cold, the hunger, the sound of boots pounding against frozen earth. But it was only the beginning.
Now, before I lose you, let me go back to where it all started. My family—well, we were poorer than a church mouse in a broken cathedral. There were nine of us in all: seven children, my mother, my father, and one on the way. My father was a farmer, or so he called himself, but truthfully, he was just a man losing a fight against the land. Our fields were barren more often than not, the winter frost like a thief stealing every last bit of hope. My mother, though, she was beautiful—a kind of beauty that softened the sharp edges of our lives. She held us all together, even when the seams of our family were fraying.
We lived in a drafty little cottage in the English countryside, the kind you'd imagine from a Christmas tale. Tiny Tim's family had it better than us, though. At least they had a roof that didn't leak. My father hated the old bus parked out back—said it was a useless contraption—but we kids loved to climb on it, pretending it could take us far away. Anywhere but there.
It was in the middle of this bleak existence that I first heard about the golden eggs.
Three of them, they said, each as big as a man's head and worth more than a king's ransom. Some stranger came through our village with tales of ships sailing to America, where the eggs were rumored to be hidden. Most dismissed it as nonsense, but me? I couldn't stop thinking about it. Golden eggs. Enough wealth to save my family, to fix our broken lives.
I told my father I wanted to go. He laughed, then grew angry. Said I'd die before I even reached the shore. My mother didn't say much at first, just shook her head. But later that night, she came to me, her face soft in the candlelight. She pressed a little diary into my hands, told me to write everything down. "If you go, make it worth something," she whispered.
The next morning, I was gone.
I won't lie to you. I wasn't noble or brave. I was desperate, and desperation makes thieves of us all. When I reached the docks, I realized I couldn't pay for passage. That's when I saw him—a man about my size, drunk and careless. He was clutching a satchel, and in it, his papers and coin. I didn't mean to hurt him, but I couldn't let him stand in my way. A few quick punches, and he crumpled like wet parchment. I stole his name, his berth, and his future.
And so began my journey to America, chasing a dream of golden eggs. I was leaving behind my family, my home, and any shred of innocence I might've had left. The cold sea air burned my lungs as the ship sailed away from England, and I found myself clutching the diary my mother had given me. I opened it to the first page and wrote:
"This is the story of a liar, a thief, and a boy trying to save his family. My name—or at least the one I wear now—is Samuel Wright. And this is how it all began."