Only the Worthy by Morgan Rice

their mouths, shoving each other aside, punching, elbowing, blood landing
in the grain. It was a brutal competition for survival—and it happened once a
day. The guards always left the hatch open long enough to watch, grinning down
at the spectacle, then slammed it shut.
    Royce had told
himself he would never participate in that mosh pit. Yet after a day his hunger
got the best of him and he dove in with the others, grabbing a handful of grain
just as another boy tried to pry it from his hands. They fought over it
briefly, until Royce yanked it away and the boy moved on to some other place.
Royce gulped it down immediately. It was crunchy and tasteless and it hardly
nourished him. But it was something. He learned his lesson, too—the following
day he would try to grab two fistfuls, and ration it.
    It had been a
grim existence down here, one of survival, day after day of watching for the
hatch to open, grabbing whatever food he could, and retreating back to his
corner. He had seen too many boys die; he had tolerated too long the perpetual
stench. He had watched as too many bullies roamed the hold, predators, waiting
until other boys appeared too weak to fight—then pouncing on them and taking
whatever meager possessions they had. It was constantly unsettling.
    Royce barely
slept. He was troubled constantly by nightmares, images of being stabbed in his
sleep, of floating in a coffin in a sea of blood, of being engulfed by the
massive waves of the ocean. These, in turn, morphed into nightmares of Genevieve,
of her being raped by the nobles of the castle, of his arriving too late to
save her. Of his brothers and family back home, their house and fields burned
to the ground, all of them having moved on, having long forgotten him.
    He always woke
in a cold sweat. He did not know which was worse these days: to sleep or to
wake.
    On this day,
though, as Royce woke, he immediately sensed something was different. He felt
his stomach dropping more severely than usual, heard the crashing of the waves
against the deck more strongly, heard the high-pitched whistling of the wind,
and he knew right away that a storm had come. And no normal storm. But a storm
that might change everything.
    Panicked
shouting came from somewhere high above, followed by the sound of boots running
across the deck, more urgent than before, and a moment later, to Royce’s
surprise, the hatch was thrown open. It was never thrown open this early in the
day.
    He sat up,
alert.
    Something was
wrong.
    He stared at the
open sky, such a luxury these days, and saw it was thick with dark, angry
clouds, moving too quickly; he saw rain lashing down, so severe it was
sideways. He did not even need to see it—the sound hit him first. He stared at
the open hatch but did not see several strong hands opening it, as usual.
Instead, it had opened by itself—yanked up by a gust of wind.
    Royce watched in
amazement as the hundred-pound wooden hatch suddenly lifted, all by itself, and
went spinning and flying into the air, as if it were a child’s toy. He gulped.
If winds could do that to something so heavy, what could they do to a man?
    Indeed, the
sound of roaring winds drowned out everything, a sound so intense that it
struck terror in him even far below. It sounded as if it were tearing the ship
to pieces. As he watched, a plank of wood went flying up into the air, right
off the deck itself.
    Suddenly, his
stomach plummeted, as the ship dropped and there came the crashing of an
enormous wave against the hull. He felt as if he had dropped fifty feet. He was
amazed the ship did not capsize.
    Royce looked at
the other boys, their faces finally visible in the sunlight, all of them
appearing full of hope to see the sky—yet also full of terror at the storm.
Freedom finally sat right before them, a chance to climb up, to go above and
get out of this hellhole.
    Yet none of them
dared move. All sat frozen in terror of the storm.
    A heavy rope
suddenly flew down into the hatch,