Infinite 01 - Infinite Sacrifice

push Borga off my blanket with my foot, and she shakes her tail in upset. Folding my blanket, I bring it over to Una.
    “That is your mother’s blanket,” she says, shaking her head.
    “I want you to have it.” Tears brim, burning to be released. “Thora will always give me a new one, but he looks like he won’t give you a thing.”
    She nods and accepts the blanket. “I will take good care of it and give it back when I make my own.”
    She bends forward, gives me kiss on the forehead, and wraps her strong arms around me. She turns and pats Borga on her back, sending her running to me.
    She tries to laugh. “I’ll see you at the festivals.”
    I see her brave smile as she walks out. I crumple into a ball and cry, causing Borga to get worried and poke my face with her wet beak.

Chapter 8
    That night, as if the blood money Ragnar left behind is cursed, Thora runs into my lonely dugout and cries, “Erna’s sick!”
    I hurry into the side room, where Thora brought her bed away from the rest of the family. There lies little rosy-cheeked Erna, crying with a deep sweat, her glassy eyes rolling closed in delirium.
    Thora picks her up, trying to console her as I ask, “What can we do?”
    Thora frets. “I have pressed all the herbs Hela taught me and made it into a liquid, but she won’t drink it. Oh, I wish Hela was here!”
    She brings her free hand up to her lips in worry.
    I take a spoonful of the green liquid and try to put it into the child’s mouth, but she keeps turning her head and screams louder. Thora puts her lips to her head and says, “She’s burning up!”
    Inga enters in her long shift dress with her palm out. “Let me.”
    Thora, holds the child tighter, but when Inga keeps her arms out, she passes the clinging child over. Inga takes the spoon of liquid from me and holds the child down. Erna clenches her mouth tightly, but Inga pinches her nose and waits until the child is running out of breath. Erna gasps for air as she pours the medicine in quickly. Erna swallows and chokes, then lets out a piercing scream. Thora grabs her up immediately but thanks Inga, who nods and goes back to her bed.
    I sit up with Thora, who holds Erna all night. Sometime after she takes the medicine, Erna falls asleep and the flush disappears from her little face. Thora finally relaxes and falls asleep, feeling the worst is over. I see the sun breaking through the terrible night and go out to my dugout when I hear Thora scream, “She’s gone! She’s gone!”
    I spin around to see the pale and limp child in her arms. Thora screams, clutching her to her body, “My little nymph! My little girl!”
    Rolf and Inga run in, and Rolf attempts to take the child away from her, but she fights him hard and runs off into the fields we used to dance in. I find her with Erna laid there on the ground as if in deep, sweet slumber. Thora is picking the wildflowers around her and laying them about her beautiful baby. I say nothing to her and help her pick all the flowers in that field, and we conceal her with them. Rolf comes, takes Erna away that night and brings her into the village for Hela to prepare for burial. Thora doesn’t come out of her house for months. I try to keep myself busy doing Una’s chores, exhausting myself so that I’ll fall asleep instantly instead of thinking about the sorrows of my life.
    I walk out of my dark dugout and look out on the low fog surrounding the farm and resting between the surrounding hills. Looking up I see a giant rainbow starting from our farm but ending in the far woods. It has such vibrant colors it hurts my eyes to gaze upon it, compelling me to follow it to see where it leads. I run out, jump the fence like I watched Gunhilda do, and dart to a deer path at the edge of the woods. I let the bushes sting me as I whip past them and have to concentrate on the ground since I’m moving so fast. I trip on a loose stone and go rolling into a large clearing. When I look up from the ground, I see the rainbow glowing all the way from the canopy of the trees to the dried pine needle ground below. All around me, I see different shapes and sizes of mushrooms. But there, sitting on a large red-and-white-dotted mushroom in the very center, is Erna. Erna, wearing a large, coned, red hat, giggling and eating the mushroom she’s sitting on.
    “Erna!” I call out and run to her, but the rainbow vanishes and so does the dream.
    I wake up in the still darkness and almost drift back to sleep, but I