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A faint, distant echo sings through the darkness. Indistinguishable words fill the air around me. I turn around again and again but the black veil blocks me view. I try to push it aside but me hands aren’t listening to me.

Wait! Are me eyes open? Are me hands moving?

I try to take in a deep breath but my chest feels like it’s being gently crushed.

Am I dying? 

The echo grows louder and suddenly a white light pierces through the veil. I instinctively try to move towards it but my body won’t listen. I sense that my limbs are still attached to me but I can’t do anything with them.

Move! Move! Move!

My body ignores my cries but surprisingly, the light responds. It grows bigger and soon it’s all around me. The light pierces through the holes of a woolly blanket made up of pieces with many shapes and sizes. All of them moving in the same direction at a slow pace like a leaf carried by the current of a lazy stream. Tiny pieces of the woolly blanket fall on me face and the impact leaves an icy sting.

It’s snowing! Where am I?

The indistinguishable echo reveals itself to be the ship’s continuous creaking as the sea gently tosses it from side to side. I raise my head and look at me-self. I’m wrapped in a cocoon of furry blankets with a pile of loose skins lying on top of me. I grit my teeth and try to summon the strength to break free but my bonds refuse to let me go; a caterpillar that failed to escape its cocoon.

A blurry image comes between the clouds and I. A mixture of colours dance in front of me as they fall into place to reveal a hairy face; Ragnar’s face.

“Chief! How are you doing?”

My lips feel attached to one another. When I finally get them to separate, its me tongue that I now have to detach from the roof of my mouth. 

“Hold on,” Ragnar says. With one hand, he brings a satchel of water close to my mouth and with the other he lifts my head. “Drink it slowly.” I try to do as he says but I’m powerless against the rushing river flowing me mouth and down my throat. Ragnar quickly shifts the satchel to reduce the river's flow, making things easy for me. He moves the satchel away and asks, “Better?”

“Thank you, Ragnar.”

He gently sets my head down. 

“Now, how you feeling?”

“Get me out of these things.”

“You sure about that? Its freezing out here. If I take these off of you, I ain’t giving them back.”

“Could you at least help me sit up?”  

He does so with ease and after that, he asks, “What’s the last thing you remember?”

My mind flashes pictures of the night we were attacked. “Tumak fighting against the natives,” I reply.

“Well, at least your head seems to be fine. You really gave us a scare, Sif.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“A whole night and half a day. I envy you.”

“Why do you say it like that?”

“Because you haven’t seen what we’ve seen. If those were natives, then it's best we get out of here before more of them show up and before more of our own become like them.”

“What? What do you mean ‘our own become like them’? Have our own abandoned us again?”

“They didn’t abandon us, Sif. Whatever those black-eyed strangers did,” his voice breaks as tears stream down his face.

“Whatever they did, it turned our own into one of them. Anyone who was scratched or bitten turned into a black-eyed stranger. We had no choice. We killed them. And killed anyone else who showed the signs of changing.”

No! No! No! This can’t be happening. "Take me to them.”

Ragnar looks puzzled.

“I want to see their graves and pay me respects.”

“There are no graves.”

“You didn’t bury the dead?”

“They turned to dust! Apart from those who chose to die before they changed.” 

“Then show me those graves.”

Once on land, I use Ragnar as a walking staff. In the camp, most of the huts that were made when we arrived are now over shadowed by the black smoke rising from their ashes.

Word travels fast that the chief is alive and on land. By the time we get to the wooden gate most of the tribe is behind us. A few of our own begin to mourn. Outside the walls, stones mounted upright, like small pillars, are all that is left to indicate where our brothers and sisters now rest. The grief shoves me down to me knees despite Ragnar’s attempts to keep me standing. 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Ragnar says.

That's what you always say, brother. But..

“Then whose fault is it?” Tumak asks from among the crowd that spreads out to give him way. “From the moment she became chief, our tribe has seen more and more of death! She is cursed, and her curse is affecting the entire tribe.”

“My sister isn’t cursed!”

“Then, she is the most unlucky chief I’ve ever seen.”

The loud silence weighed heavily on me. Not even Ragnar could argue with Tumak.

I’m the one with the problem, no one else. The tribe shouldn’t suffer because of me.

“I have never been forced to kill my own kind,” Tumak continued, but this time he was talking to the tribe. “Yesterday was a first, and I fear we will have more days like it until something is done.”

 It's time for a new Chief.

“And what do you propose we should do?” I ask him as I rise to me feet with Ragnar’s help.

“We need a…” 

A heavy buzzing noise fills the air, cutting Tumak off. We all raise our heads to the skies and see humans, or at least, what I think are humans, with wings like those of dragon flies strapped to their lower backs. Sparks and colours surround their wings and hair, but two women stand out from the group. Their colours remind me of a rainbow.