Infinite 01 - Infinite Sacrifice

many shake their head disapprovingly at me. The man who took me comes forward and shoves me out of the way. He bends down, grabs the soiled blanket out of the chest, and throws it in a heap on the ground. He closes the lid, carries it on his strong shoulders, and leaves the gathering. The man with the large helmet shouts again, and no one replies. He takes his sword out and points it toward the dark woods behind them.
    A fair girl begins to sob. I follow the sound and see a slight girl looking at me with tears in her shining eyes. Another man steps forward wearing the same cloth as our churchman back home. He speaks to the helmeted man and approaches, opening a small purse at his side and handing him coins. The churchman comes to me, smiles, and points to the young girl. She stops crying and walks up at the request of the churchman. The girl puts her slender hand out to me, but instead of taking it, I run back to get the blanket in the road. The girl comes to me and bends down with a sweet smile. My eyes are drawn to the slight space in her front teeth. She folds the blanket, as filthy as it is, and holds it close in her arms. I follow her back to her farm.

Chapter 2
    Her farm is right outside the village with many other farms up the road. Every farm has a fence surrounding each property and outbuildings. We pass a well where she brings some water up for me to drink; it tastes clean and cold. As soon as she reaches a workhouse, she pushes the blanket into a bucket of water and begins scrubbing vigorously. I look out to the cattle grazing beside a long curved-roofed building and turn around to see small horses running in the warm wind. A little dog comes up and jumps on me, knocking me down. The girl shakes the water from her hands and helps me up.
    She points to her chest and says, “Thora.”
    I repeat it to her. She then points to my chest with a small smile and I say, “Liam.”
    She says it strangely, like it’s a heavy word. I try to say it again so she’d say it right. She looks at my dirty shirt, points to the stains, and then lifts it up over my head. She cleans me from head to toe with a cold, wet cloth and I begin to shiver when the wind blows. As soon as she puts the shirt into the tub, she takes a shirt down from the line, and places it over my head, warm from the sun. It touches my ankles and hangs over my hands. She laughs, rolls my sleeves up, and goes back to her scrubbing. They have every kind of animal I’ve ever seen at market. Every direction I turn something is flapping, chewing, grunting, braying, scratching, running, or jumping. She hangs the blanket and shirt on the line and I watch as the water drips off the corners.
    She leads me across the dirt path to the center, where a long wooden house stands, much larger than our houses at home. The roof is twice as high as ours, with a huge open fireplace crackling in the center. There is no chimney, only a gaping hole in the roof. A thin layer of smoke hangs in every room, making me cough. Thora brings me to a back room where a wide oven sits on the ground. She takes a loaf of bread cooling on the stones and pulls off some to give to me. As I stuff the fresh bread in my mouth, she leaves and returns with a rug that she flattens out on the stamped ground. She lays on it, puts her arms up under her head, and closes her eyes. I wonder if she’s going to sleep now, but she opens them and points for me to lie down. I do as she did, and she sits crossed-legged beside me and begins talking.
    Every day, she talks and talks to me, and slowly I begin to understand her. I follow her everywhere and actually feel like I can’t breathe when I wake up and she’s already gone off with her mother. Her family sleeps together on a raised bed beside the open hearth. There are other people on the farm, but they live in the half-dugout buildings. They are the workers and take care of most of the hard chores on the farm. These workers are all grownups and never talk to me. Thora always brings me food after her supper and tells me stories as I fall asleep beside the oven, curled in my mother’s blanket.
    Sometimes I’ll wake, screaming for my ma. Thora will rush to me and lie bedside me on my rug and tell me stories of strange things that live in this land. She tells me of the dark elves who live underground with corpses and come up only at night to play tricks on humans. They are cunning, quick, and wonderful stone-and-metal carvers. She says they are horribly