Infinite 01 - Infinite Sacrifice

removing her.
    “I’ll be back if I find no ten-year-old, female, full helot bound to this residence.”
    “Ephor!” I call out, “Where are you sending the mothakes?”
    He smiles suspiciously. “The kings have been generous enough to grant them their own colony of Tarentum. They’ll be able to live amongst their own kind. It’s what is best for them.”
    Kali jumps into Ophira’s arms when he leaves, and Ophira says, “We’ll never let them take you.”
    Ophira looks at me and, for the first time in a long while, speaks to me directly. “How much time do we have?”
    “I don’t know, a week?”
    Ophira gives Kali a push. “We need to talk. Go play.”
    Kali, looking thrilled we’re talking to each other, runs off.
    “Alcina, we could send her to live amongst the helots.”
    I consider this. “But the only helot we trust is in the Citizens’ Army. Can she be left at ten to fend for herself?”
    “I could always take her and get another home to work in.”
    “That means you’d have to bring her with you, and they would want her full helot papers, which we don’t have.”
    Ophira shakes her head. “She is too young to marry.”
    “We might have no choice.”
    We both sit down in frustrated silence.
    ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
    A week later, the ephor’s back, looking greatly displeased. We’ve prepared her for this day and where she’ll be going. She must have been scared, but she didn’t want us to feel guilty.
    She even says in her cheerful voice, “This will be good for me. I can’t wait to be with people my own age.”
    We pack her bags, hug her, and I tell her, “You will come back. This is your home, and we’ll send for you as soon as we can.” I take out the dog-skin cap I’d been saving and place it on her small head. “This was your father’s.”
    That causes a lone tear to stream down her cheek, but she sucks back any others. “I’ll be fine. I love you, Mother.” She gives me another hug and turns. “I love you, Ophira.”
    Ophira’s a mess of tears. Kali gets onto the cart stoically, waves to us with a gleaming smile, grasping her bag. When she disappears down the hill, I turn to Ophira, and we cry in each other’s arms.

Chapter 9
    Months later, one of my more loyal helots comes yelling, “An enemy’s invading Sparta!”
    Ophira rushes with me over the mountains and into the city to hear more on the situation. The same steel-eyed ephor who took Kali away is standing in the middle of the square. Women, children, and old men are gathered, desperate for news. The rest of the normally crowded city streets are deserted—the calm before the storm.
    “This is an emergency,” the ephor shouts to the worried crowd. The marble statue of King Leonidas looms above. “The majority of our army is engaged in Crete. Pyrrhus has taken this vulnerable time to attack. It’ll take days for reinforcements to get here. The only defense we have is the Citizens’ Army and agoge. We have merely slaves, young men, and boys to rely on now.” The crowd surges, but the ephor screams louder, “Sparta’s sending all of its women and children to refuge in Crete.”
    Furious uproar rolls over the crowd.
    A woman among us stands up and shouts, “Don’t let them take us away! So we survive? We’ll have nothing to come back to!”
    Everyone cheers and rallies behind her.
    I call out, “Spartan women! If we send our sons off to die for Sparta, then we must stay and die for Sparta too!”
    Ophira stands up with me in the pulsing crowd, fists hammering toward the sky in unyielding patriotism.
    The ephor gets up to speak again. “Our brave women of Sparta, we should have known you would not be taken from your city! Let us all stand together and fight!”
    We watch the Citizens’ Army march into the center square in their thinner, simpler armor. Theodon walks beside important leaders in the front. He nods slightly in our direction but stands stoically at the arm of his commander.
    His leader speaks. “Women of Sparta, we commend you for your allegiance. The enemy is fast approaching with numbers tripling the forces we have at our disposal. With no fortifications we need to dig deep trenches immediately, all around the city entrances to keep their elephants at bay.”
    “Elephants?” Ophira looks at me anxiously.
    I stand up again and yell, “To our spades!”
    The crowd pours like a flooded river out of the square and to the large cart full of shovels. Each woman picks