Thrown Through Time

Chapter 14

Eirik quietly sat down beside her, but she noticed that he left a little more space between them than usual.

"I'm not from here," she said. "I don't know if I'm from an alternate universe or if I've just traveled through time and I'm from the future. I don't know. All I know is I went to bed in my apartment one night and I woke up in the middle of nowhere, here. The family I was staying with when you and your brother took me, had found me and let me live with them because I had nowhere else to go. That blue haze you just saw, I saw it after I woke up here. I didn't create it. I don't know what it is for sure, but it could have been my only way back home."

He was quiet.

"I know you probably don't believe me. And it's fine if you want to think I'm crazy, but I swear, I'm not a witch. The reason I know things is because they've discovered what caused the plague in the future. And we can save a lot of people if you just believe me. If you don't, a lot of people are going to die."

"You think everyone should get a cat?" he asked.

"If it's possible." she said. "The plague is something caused by a tiny biting bug that lives on rats. If we can eliminate the rats as much as possible, we could probably avoid the plague altogether. If not, I do have one other thing I can try, but you have to trust me."

"Ulriech and my father will be harder to convince," he said.

"I understand." she nodded. "I need to gather berries."

"You're hungry?"

"No!" she said. "It's for medicine!"

He sighed and got to his feet, following her to a nearby berry patch where she pulled up her skirt and began filling it with berries.

"I need more," she said, even though her skirt was full of them.

"More?"

"We need to have the women gather as much as we can! It's important!" she said, carrying what she had back to her house.

"I'll spread the word," he said. 

Within two days, Sophie had enough berries. She had several men hew thin slabs of wood that she could lay the berries on and stack up out of the reach of any rats that might come looking for them. Her entire house seemed to be full of berries.

"Are you going to dry them?" Eirik asked.

"I'm going to let them mold," she said.

"We can't eat them if they mold!" he exclaimed.

"It's not the berries I need!" she snapped. Why couldn't he just trust her? "It's the mold itself!"

She had always loved chemistry and had spent a lot of extra time in the lab when she'd been going to school to become a pharmacist. But having a state of the art lab to grow penicillium bacteria and trying to grow it on berries were two completely different things. She knew the concept, but had no idea if it would work in real life. She checked the berries every single day, making sure they stayed moist. If they dried out, her plan would fail.

When Eirik showed up to her house with two more kittens, she squealed with delight and took them both. They were from the same litter as her own kitten and were a bit more wild, but they were more than happy to finish off a dish of milk between them.

"I told Sabine I'd bring her one if we found any more," she said.

He watched her on the floor, petting them while they lapped at the milk. "Should we bring both and let her choose?" he asked.