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Sunrise, hoe, sickle, heaps. Midday, bread, apple, water. Afternoon, wheelbarrow, manure, wheelbarrow. Evening, bread, cheese, bed. Sunrise, hoe, sickle, heaps...

He spent a whole year working as best he could in those fields. Ethan had grown used to the presence of Enya and Brodh in his life and had almost completely resigned himself to the fact that no one would come there for him. He had also resigned himself to the idea of ​​running away. After all, how far would a child be able to go without provisions and protection? What had become of him in the six years that passed before he met them, Ethan began to forget it little by little.

Enya was a sweet failed mother, it was understood that her greatest wish was to have a child and now that wish had finally come true. Brodh, on the other hand, was a drunkard who beat them regularly because he was frustrated by the hard life that Fate had entwined for him. He left the child with some beautiful memories on his back and arms using an olive branch. Fortunately for Ethan, throughout that time he and Enya supported each other like a son and a mother do.

He did what he could, the little one, to help in the work of the countryside owned by a wealthy landowner whose name he did not even know, but he knew that he was employed by a certain Lus-Ayenne. The main tasks they reserved for him were to sink the hoe into the ground, plant the seeds, mow the weeds and sometimes the grain, go and fill the wheelbarrow with fertilizer. But for Brodh, whatever Ethan did was never enough. He always had to do more and so the little one tried to do his best to eat and avoid being beaten.

And winter came.

A year and a half after his arrival in that hut, Enya fell ill with typhus and was soon bedridden. Morven’s doctor, after a long journey from the city, warned them that very rare medicinal herbs and the constant use of balms and compresses would be needed to keep her alive. Healing that went far beyond their very narrow possibilities, and so Brodh resigned himself to the idea of ​​seeing his wife slowly fade away. Ethan had learned that although he treated her like an object and nothing more, deep inside, under the deadly mixture of anger and discontent to which he used to add massive doses of alcohol as more logs in the fire, Brodh loved her. In a twisted way, sure, but he cared about her.

And that evening came.

Only Enya and Ethan were left at the hut, Brodh getting drunk somewhere as usual. Outside, a great storm had broken out, making the wooden walls of the hut tremble. The thin spruce, mud, and thatch roof looked as though it would be blown away in a few moments.

“Ethan, kid, come here,” Enya said in an almost imperceptible voice. She was under a mountain of lambskin, on lying her side to try to breathe as best she could.

Ethan did not make her repeat it. He approached and she, with very little force, put a hand on his back and pushed him to her to embrace him. It was a pile of bones and Ethan knew the time was almost there.

“You have to do something for me, kid. Please grant this last wish of mine.”

“Enya…” His voice trembled. “Mother, anything."

“You have to escape. You have to get out of here. I want you to have a better life than this. I don’t want you to end up like Brodh, my precious one. I see it in your eyes. You have a great fate in front of you. I understood it already when I found you crouched in that basket that shines in you a special light, the strength to survive the bad things that fill the hearts of people today. Your life has not been easy so far but you have been brave and survived. All those misadventures, the being abandoned, the hard work, the beating of Brodh, did nothing but make you stronger. Growing up like this you become like my grandfather, my little one, I’m sure. You become like him…” she said in a slow, uncertain, trembling voice and with too much effort. Although Enya was sensing the imminent arrival of the end, no tears crossed her face, on the contrary she smiled with narrowed eyes. “You have to promise me, Ethen. When I’m not here anymore you have to escape from this cursed place. Promise.”

“I promise you, mother. I’ll do whatever you ask” Ethan replied, relentlessly starting to cry. He had really grown fond of Enya in that short time. The woman had saved his life, she had welcomed him and fed him, and he was there whimpering helplessly. “I can’t do anything to help you. Nothing… Nothing but watching you as your soul slowly goes away.”

“Thank you, Ethan. Hold me a little longer” she said very softly, closing her eyes.

Ethan was crying. He should have been brave, he promised himself, but he couldn’t hold back the tears that were now starting to wet the lambskins.

It was sudden. A tremendous jolt and the door swung open. At the door an enormous black figure was illuminated at times by lightning which, at the same time, showed how violently it was raining. It was Brodh.

The man staggered his way into the small shack, evidently drunk. “What’s going on here? Ah? What are you doing next to my wife, you rat?” he asked confusedly, approaching, shaking and bringing the bottle to his mouth. He continued to drink. “Get the fuck out of her, mangy, you mustn’t touch her” he said, moving even closer.

Brodh took Ethan by one arm and lifted him away from Enya’s feeble grip. Brodh looked at the kid with his terrible half-closed eye and sent him flying against the wall. He looked at Enya and an unpleasant, malignant grimace was drawn on his face. He turned and walked over to Ethan.

“It’s your fault, do you know?” he said taking another drink break. “You lousy rat! Everything has gone down the drain since you arrived! There is no bread to put under the teeth and Enya has taken the typhus. It’s your fault, I tell you!” He screamed and, reached Ethan, gave him a kick in the stomach that made the kid slam violently against the wall once again.

The taste of iron and acid in his mouth led Ethan to believe he was going to throw up his guts at any moment. The pain was tremendous, as if all his guts had burst, as if his ribs had shattered.

Brodh gave him another kick and then another.

The child gasped and shivered as he squeezed the hit points with both hands. The tears had not stopped for a moment, always for the pain but now it had turned into physical pain. Enya’s illness disappeared from his mind for a moment, but he continued to think about death. To his own, this time. I’ll die. I’ll die in this stinking shack. I’ll die killed by a drunkard. In the end, maybe it’s better. I’m so tired... I don’t want to suffer anymore.

“I’ll kill you, rat! You’re cursed! It’s all your fault!” said Brodh not only drunk and violent as usual. He was different. Anger and frustration had turned into sheer madness.

He was there ready to kick Ethan again when Enya’s arms wrapped around his leg. She had used what little strength she had left to prevent her husband from giving Ethan the coup de grace. “Leave him, Brodh. Now that’s enough, leave my son alone.” The words came out with difficulty.

Brodh made an expression that terrified Ethan to the point the kid hoped never to see such a grimace again in his life. Brodh threw his head back, his one eye wide open, and, as if he were the worst of devils, he frowned, and drool dripped from his crooked and trembling mouth as if in a nervous spasm.

“He’s not your son!” Brodh growled at his wife. Then he turned to Ethan: “Look what you did, you damn rat, you turned my wife against me!” He started to go to meet him, but Enya held him back.

It was an instant. Ethan was nearly eight then, but he understood for the first time what it meant to love someone, what it meant to give one’s life to save someone else’s, what a real mother was willing to do to protect her child.

Enya looked Ethan straight in the eye. She closed them and smiled. She took a glowing ember from the fire, which was almost dying, and stuck it in her husband’s calf. Brodh began to scream like a madman and fell back holding his leg, the stench of burnt flesh and hairs spreading quickly through the air.

“Now is the time, son” Enya said with a smile again, despite the fact that she was falling limply to the floor as if that gesture had cost her everything, despite the fact that the hand that had grabbed the ember smoked burnt.

Ethan stood up with shaky legs. He had just promised her. He looked at her one last time. Crying, he came out of the hut and started running. Slow at first, then faster and faster. The terrible pain in his stomach seemed to give him more energy. The storm was at its peak, and it was terribly cold. Each drop seemed to cut through the skin of his face like a razor slash. He didn’t turn around even once. Not even when he heard, from the now distant hut, Brodh scream that he would have hunted him down and killed him.

That woman, Enya, had saved his life again, for the last time. She had given herself up for him. Goodbye, mom, he thought through his tears.

-

How many days have passed? Fifty? A hundred? More? I don’t know. I don’t remember. I don’t know anything. I feel cold. I feel cold and I’m hungry. I’m thirsty.

He did not even know how he found himself in the alleys of one of Morven’s harbour districts. He did not even keep a memory of what happened on the way between the hut in the countryside of the capital and the city. Ethan experienced loneliness for the first time in his very brief existence. He felt as if inside his chest, in his heart, there was a world, a world of his own. A huge world full of wonders. In that world, however, he was alone and all the beauty that existed was covered in gray and rain. It was raining all the time. Was it raining or was it tears?

He managed to protect himself from the winter cold by covering himself with a thick sheepskin that by pure chance and luck he had managed to steal from the cargo of a merchant ship, the Compass Rose, docked at Morven’s wharf. He ate the heads of fish on the verge of rot or the bread, crumbled and hard, that he could find in the garbage. He drank the few drops of rum or water he found on the bottoms of glass bottles. He could not continue like this, he had reached the limit, reduced to a skeleton. Skin torn and cracked from dehydration.

-

It came slowly, punctuated by hunger, thirst and beating and whipping of noble citizens of the beautiful Morven, the day when he collapsed on the floor and accepted his fate. Escaped from the hut with that demon to die in an even smellier alleyway. I would have preferred to pass away with Enya and instead I’m alone. I’m alone in this world. I... I have no one. I’m a stray dog. I’m alone and I’m going to die. Alone. Brodh was right. Yes, I’m nothing more than a rat, a cursed...

“Boy, are you still alive?” a voice boomed in front of him. “Boy, are you alive? Ah, Ilker! I really think this one has died of hunger. What a pain. I’m sorry to see the brats die like that.”

Ethan couldn’t move. He just grunted as his throat was too dry to be able to utter complete words.

“Ah! For Cohar sake, boy! You’re alive.” he exclaimed happily and starting to laugh.

Ethan didn’t understand why he was laughing. He didn’t have the strength to lift his head and look at that laughing man.

“Boy! Listen to me carefully because I won’t repeat it more than once” he began. The man faced him by bending his knees and placing his forearms on them. “Name’s Deniz, I come from Al-Fedar. I’ve a ship of my own and a proposal for you. Tell me, do you want a house? A family? Do you want to go to sea? You’ll venture to places you have never seen, you’ll experience cultures, foods and legends that you have no idea exist. You’ll risk death from storms, pirates and merfolk at sea, bandits, thieves and beasts on land. However, you won’t miss the moist warmth of wooden planks you can call home, food, beer and rum, or a group to call family. So, tell me, boy. Do you want to join us?”

“Ahrr! Are you sure, Deniz?” someone else asked.

Ethan grunted.

Deniz grabbed the little skeleton firmly. “I like you, boy. You’ve the right spirit. Can you tell me your name? If you have one” said the bearded giant with a smile as, in the company of a man with a long black moustache, he carried him in his arms out of the dark alley of his life.

Ethan tried as hard as he could and stammering in a hoarse, almost absent voice, he finally made it: “E-Eth-Ethan.”

“I knew the story of an Ethan. Good name that one. But you don’t look like him to me. You are scrawny while he was a brave hero. Got it! You will be Ethan, yes. But Ethan the Scrawny” he concluded even more smiling, while the child began to glimpse a large green sailing ship. On one side the name stood out in gold: TIBURON.