For centuries, across the globe, treasure hunters have sought out sunken, buried, lost and hidden treasure. Some do it as a hobby, others as a job, and some, like Bell and Ash, simply fall into it. Of course, there are people out there who would claim that Bell and Ash were chosen for this quest more than two thousand years ago. But that is another story. And this is just the beginning…

June 2017, somewhere in England

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CHAPTER ONE

The Girl in the Chair

 

Every night Bell dreamed of flying. Sometimes she would be soaring like an eagle on a distant thermal. Other times, her wheelchair would have rockets that lifted her high above the ground, the town laid out below her like a patchwork quilt. Effortlessly, she would dip and glide in that magic half-world between sleep and waking, delighting in a sense of adventure and freedom that had been stolen from her in the four and a half years since the robbers came.

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Every day Bell dreamed of inventions. She sketched out drawings of fantastic machines and wheelchair modifications, the mechanics of which were beyond her understanding, yet somehow she knew that if she just dreamed it, then one day they would come true.

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She pored over books on maths and science and engineering because these, she knew, were the key to eventually making those dreams a reality. Her mother sighed when Bell returned home, day after day, with a heavy bag full of dry textbooks borrowed from the school library.

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“I thought I could do something with your hair,” said Mrs Collins, hopefully.

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“My hair’s fine,” Bell mumbled, flattening out the pages on the kitchen table, pulling her notebook of ideas from the pocket at the back of her chair.

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“We could look at some magazines,” suggested her mother as Bell fell into the diagrams and possibilities of a not-yet-imagined future. “Maybe try out a new hairstyle?”

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“Sure,” said Bell but she was only half listening so her mother started to leaf through the glossy magazines by herself, sighing occasionally to encourage her daughter to look up.

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If only Bell could be more like other people’s daughters, thought Maggie Collins, as she did, night after night, month after month.

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But of course, Bell was not like other people’s daughters. She knew this. For one, she had wheels instead of legs. And two, she showed no interest whatsoever in the kinds of things that Maggie thought girls her age should be interested in.

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She got up and stood behind her daughter, still hunched over the kitchen table, deep in thought. She took hold of Bell’s thick red bunches that sprouted on either side of her head like lush horns, cascading to her shoulders in two auburn waterfalls.

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“What about if we gave you some layers, maybe something a little more grown up?” she suggested tentatively. “I mean, you are nearly thirteen. Maybe something a bit more like your friend Emma’s hair? Now she’s a very pretty girl!”

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Bell kept reading.

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“And perhaps we could go shopping this weekend, pick out a new outfit for us both.”

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Bell stubbornly remained lost in the pages of her book. She had long since learned how to tune out her mother’s endless fussing. It had started four and a half years ago, when the robbers came and changed everything.

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Now she acted as if bad things lurked around every corner and Bell had to be protected from them all. Sometimes, Bell felt like screaming: just leave me alone! Sometimes she imagined taking the brakes off her chair and flying full pelt down a steep hill with no thought to how she was going to stop. Just to show her mother that she wasn’t a little doll that needed to be tucked away in a box in case she got damaged.

She was already damaged, Bell knew, so get over it!  

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Bell hated the fact that after the robbery they’d all moved house, to a specially adapted place in a quiet neighbouring village and now, instead of being able to walk to and from school with her mates, it took them half an hour in the car (mainly because her mother drove the car the way she lived her life: super-nervously). Bell hated the fact that, after the robbery, Mrs Collins had given up work to ‘look after’ Bell. She hated the fact that her mother wouldn’t allow her to do anything dangerous or exciting or adventurous. But what she hated most was that her mother wouldn’t allow Bell to be anything anymore – anything except the girl in the chair.