Part 1-5

There are two kinds of eldest sibling born into the world. The first kind of eldest sibling runs wild, with unhinged front doors at night and hills begging to be crested during thunderstorms. But the second kind of eldest sibling is tethered much closer to home, and brunts the slew of hard work, chasing around their younger brothers and sisters like a chimney sweep after soot. Margot Kesslewood was a sticky mess of both kinds of eldest sibling out of a happenstance affair not suitable to talk about at the dining table.

Born to a time when children passed away fast as fruit flies, her parents were shocked at their luck. Perhaps it was the salty breeze off the Lonely Sea or garden fertilized by seagull droppings, but unlike the other children who lived scattered around Porttown, no little coffins were ever made for the Kesslewoods. All ten of their children, whose names were so common you forgot the first one on hearing it by the time you heard the last, grew up hearty, aside from reddened cheeks and noses, the occasional broken little bone, and once a rather nasty evening of upset stomachs that dirtied every bowl in the house.

To everyone in Portown, they were a truly lucky family.

And while none of the Kesslewoods ever wished an ill thing onto one another, Mr. and Mrs. Kesslewood weren’t at all prepared for roosting that many chicks. Mrs. Kesslewood’s temperament was better suited to the upkeep of succulents and not nearly two dozen hands all prying at her heels. Most days she ended up exhausted, squeezed out like a lemon and just as sour. Because in the end, any slim fortune they’d worked keeping on dwindled further each year.

But Margot got to be the first kind of eldest sibling for a while, and with her younger siblings never minded anything at all, because adventures were normal in the lives of the Kesslewood children. Out their bedroom window raged the Lonely Sea, and a shoreline of sand strewn with bits and bobs worthless to any adult, and priceless to many children. On festival days, they cut out paper masks and wore their tackiest clothes and not a single person cared with all the dancing going on. Slithering its mossy fingers nearer, the Neverwoods loomed beyond their windows, and made for bedtime sheets strung up with twine into stuffed forts, where eerie stories were told on blustery nights.

But the scariest story was one they listened through doors when their parents thought them busy, of overdue taxes and making their own bread and socks with holes other things they never found much of a bother. The eldest siblings understood literally what that all meant, and the younger ones understood by ending up with fewer toys and scrimper meals. Yet despite prying up floorboards and digging up the backyard, no treasure lay buried anywhere to try and get their parents to talk without yelling and remember to kiss one another on the cheek/ The children, unless told they were lacking, wanted nothing at all to change.

But change did arrive winter, like an unlucky undertow dragging everyone beneath it.

Margot wondered if they’d used up all their luck when the youngest child hit ten years old because that was when Mrs. Kesslewood boarded a ship to see a relative with an inheritance, got very ill, and died. It was also the first time, aside from little white lies like if she took an extra cookie or did her chores before school, that Margot Kesslewood made up the biggest lie of her life, and ended up like the second kind of eldest sibling.