The Witch’s Boy essentially opens with two little boys who decide to take a raft out on the river and to the sea. Tragedy strikes and one of the boys dies, while the other is left behind. The boy’s mother, a witch, sews his dead brother’s soul to his body and so, Ned, finds words jumbled up when he reads and when he speaks. Despite this, he’s a good boy, brave and pure of heart. Meanwhile, a Bandit King comes along to steal the magic of Ned’s mother, because she has the only magic left in the world in a jar in her house.