Only a few days after they’d been taken, the girl was pulled from their stowing place and taken elsewhere on the ship. She died, screaming. She screamed a lot that night. Sometimes it was muffled, sometimes not. The boy didn’t know how or why or where at the time. He could just hear the screams. It would scar him forever. When the screaming stopped suddenly, the lad held his breath and waited. A splash. He knew her body had been thrown overboard.
A soul for the great sea witch.
  The other boy died days afterwards. He went pale and grey and thin like the ghouls from the scary folk tales the people from the lad’s village tried to scare children with to get them to behave. He tried not to think about those scary stories. Instead, he guessed the other boy hadn’t taken to the conditions of life on the ship or had eaten bad food. He knew some folks didn’t handle change well, especially when the change had been that forced. Years later, he’d learn the other boy’s condition had been more like the scary folk tales.
Another soul for the great sea witch.
  He didn’t ask what had happened to either of the other kids. He learned early on that if you ask questions, you get beaten. He’d learned that the hard way—the same way he learned scars never faded, that they acted as lessons for the future.
  The young boy slaved on the pirate ship for so long that he lost track of how much time had passed. The days were strange out at sea, and sometimes he didn’t even go up into the light or into the dark, depending on shifts. Like that, a long time passed. His body grew less frail and weak. It became less easy to manhandle, and the pirates knew that. It was time to move him on—to sell him, get the money, and start again.
  The boy, likely well into his teen years then, was moved onto a different ship. One just as vile and from the same pirate group. This one had room for a lad his age, and they were just as ready to beat submission into him and make sure the questions were kept beaten out of him. They’d killed the previous youngster this way—too fierce with a punishment. Someone died, you got them replaced. He knew it would be the same if he died. He’d just be another soul sent to the sea witch. So, he refused to die. The lad knew within days on that godforsaken ship that he wouldn’t die on it, just like he knew he wouldn’t die on the last one.
   His soul was his.
  Among these villainous pirates, he plotted his escape. He planned and imagined it as he worked and as he lay in his stinking hammock at night, plotting until it became impossible to fail. It was just a matter of timing. The lad waited until their crawling eyes stopped observing him as much. He let them believe he’d resigned himself to the ship. He got older. The lad became one of the crew who killed and stole from merchants. He became one of the crew who crept onto land and into homes and stole other children from their beds. He saw them kill and attack the children, never learning why they bothered kidnapping the children if they were just going to kill them anyway.
   He wondered why they’d never killed him.
  The lad learned what happened when the pirates stole girls. And the weak boys, too. Lots of screaming, sometimes muffled, then finally a silence and a splash as the corpse was thrown overboard.
   Another soul for the great sea witch.
   Sometimes, they made him watch, wouldn’t let him cover his ears with his hands or turn away to stop from seeing. They smirked and laughed and told him to join in. The boy threw up each time, and they laughed harder, pushing him out of the way and saying he didn’t deserve to join in if he would act like that. He didn’t want to. He never wanted to. He learned how to tune inwards, to see but to become blind. The lad ran through his escape in his head instead, trying to ignore the screams.
  When the time came for his escape, all the boy knew was how to sail, steal, and kill. And drink. They got him into drinking pretty early, which he grew to be glad for. That way, he could hide the things he couldn’t stand. As tough as the lad got physically, he was still the young boy from Eire, the land of magic, old tales, laughing people, and music, and the place people worked hard to make an honest, modest living. Somehow, this boy from the land of magic managed to survive the rough months and years on the streets of a shitty port and on just as shitty ships until he slowly made his way far to the east. He hoped they’d never find him there. The years passed as he worked a boring but honest life aboard simple ships, hauling cargo and supplies and delivering them. Eventually, he found a land he wanted to stop at. Hizen, in a region called Hié. There, he became a hunter and a workman, doing chores and physical work for people in return for payment. Less money and less drink, but it was enough for him. By this time, he’d become a man. And all he wanted was to be the man he could have been if he hadn’t been stolen.