Early in 1773, an influenza pandemic ripped through the mountains of Telemark.

Folk retreated to their homesteads, the only way to escape the contagion. Wrung with anxiety, Liv waited word from her kin. Her three married daughters bore through, and their husbands. None of the precious little ones fell ill, to her great relief. Not in the first wave, anyway.

Tragedy struck her cousin's family, though. At Åkre farm, widower Såmund caught the flu, as did his four single adult children, still living at home. Margit and Aslak survived, but Torbjørn and Aslak's twin Torbjørg and their father succumbed to influenza's dreaded companion, pneumonia.

At twenty-six, Aslak was left with a lease on a rather unproductive farm. He hired himself out as a laborer, and lived in the outbuilding of whichever farm hired him on.

Fair Anne had her second child that year, a girl she named Liv. Mormor Liv braved the journey to help at the birthing. She felt a giddy catch in her heart just to hold that babe and know they shared names, a link between generations. It gave an added sparkle to her love for the fuzzy-headed little girl. But Little Liv caught the influenza, too, and within the week the helpless newborn died.

"Dear God," Liv wept, "can't your angels keep watch better than this? 'When the sun sets on my last day—' But my poor babe hardly had a first day before the sun set on her!"

Little Liv would have been one year old when Fair Anne, still grieving, bore her first son, and named him Torjus, honoring her father, just as Sigrid had done. Liv's son, now nine years old, made his nephews call him Big Torjus. He called Sigrid's son Torjus the Middle, and Fair Anne's, Torjus the Bald.

In 1775, Margit had her first child, and named him after her father-in-law Olav.

In 1776, Sigrid bore her first daughter whom she named for her mother-in-law Åsne.

After a visit to Fair Anne at Loupedalen, Liv stopped in at the Brunkeberg churchyard. She stood a long silent moment beside Torjus' grave, then moved on. "I have seven grandchildren now, sweet Egeleiv," she told the gravestone of her cousin. "But I won't soon pass you up. Your Knut has five children. Gunnhild's third and last child was stillborn, but Rannei has three now. I'm still three behind you."

She rubbed a hand along the stone. "Tell me, Egeleiv, is there more to existence? I know your body crumbles beneath this dirt before me, but somehow I feel you live on. Did Torbjørn and Torbjørg return to your side when they died? In some realm do you rock my own dear little Liv? Or Gunnhild's poor babe? Do you mingle with my mother Anne, with my grandmother Gunnhild, with my dear Torjus?"

The memory of Torjus still rang in her heart, but like an echo from far away. Halvor's presence loomed solid and warm and of infinite comfort.

Liv sighed and rose to her feet. At the age of fifty-four, she felt slung between two worlds – the one filled with folk still here, living, breathing, laughing, working late into the evening, and the misty realm of those who had gone ahead on a path she would follow as surely as night follows day. With a tremor in her voice she sang, "When the sun sets on my last day, Up to heaven help me find my way. Over the starbridge, lead me home."

prompt: tremor

BEHIND THE SCENES

No cause is reported for the deaths at Åkre in1773, but there was a world-wide pandemic of influenza that year. The records don't say where Aslak lived after the tragedy.

Aslak's older brother Knut was living at a farm he'd bought: Dalen.

His sisters Gunnhild and Rannei had married and moved away.

Now all that was left was Aslak and his older sister Margit, who never married (and ended up a pauper supported by the community).