Chapter Text
Seán wasn’t really sure where he was. Life was nice; they lived on a plot of land, growing their own potatoes. Sometimes, if they were lucky, they could sell the extra potatoes too.
The money always seemed to disappear. Always around the time he came.
The scary man.
Sasanach, his mother said, would come after a long time and then it was gone.
Then something was wrong.
The potatoes tasted funny and his brothers and sisters got very sick. He wasn’t right too. Deep down, he felt like something was eating him from the inside. Whether it was hunger or something else he couldn’t figure out. The scary man came and started shouting at his mammy and daddy. Then they were leaving.
He was hungry.
They were on a ship. A cold, cramped, smelly ship.
His daddy fell asleep and must have been really tired, because he didn’t wake up, even when they docked. Seán didn’t know how long they were on the boat until it docked, only that there were more scary men when they did. They spoke like the Sasanach. But differently. They were arguing loudly.
It was the first time Seán had seen his new home, at least that’s what his mammy said it would be. It looked okay. It was nice but not as nice as home, at least before everyone got sick and hungry.
The men had stopped talking and were moving towards the ropes attaching the shop to the dock. Something in Seán told him that he had to run. So he did. Shouts sounded behind him but soon he got lost in a large crowd and found himself being sucked along.
The crowd led him into a building, it was packed, bodies and cases all crammed into one large hall. People were all around him, loud and talking differently. They all looked different too.
Then he found a lady, she looked like him; dark hair, pale skin and the hollow face that Seán saw more often than ever in the years prior. She spoke like him too. Said for him to stay with her and she’d act as his mother. She’d get him a new life.
Meiriceá.
That’s what she said it was called. It sounded nice. It felt nice to say.
The people were anything but nice.
They took him from the lady and started to poke and prod at him. Then they started whispering. Different men brought him out of the room and to a desk. The man behind the desk seemed angry at him. He was shouting and pointed at Seán.
Seán couldn’t understand.
He was crying.
He wanted to be home.
Soon he was being led through a door. It was the wrong door. Everyone was leaving with smiles on their faces and looks of hope through the door opposite. No, he was being led back to the docks. Back to the ship.
As he was being dragged he saw a boy, the most beautiful boy he’d ever seen in his life. He was blonde, a round, bright face with bright blue eyes that made Seán feel like he was back in the sea at home.
Before everything changed.
When he could just swim and swim and never worry about a thing.
The boy reminded him of that.
As quickly as he saw the boy, he was gone. The boy being pulled off the dock by a fretting mother and Spot being pulled the opposite way, back into the ship.
He was hauled onto the ship and shoved down into a cramped room full of people like him. The hollow face and empty eyes made him think of the blonde boy again.
Seán found a corner in the room to sleep in. As he closed his eyes, he thought of the boy and home, with all his siblings and Mammy and Daddy. Free to live life with everything they could need.
He never made it home.