Page 74

Alma frowned. “To be fair, that’s as likely to happen in the human world as under Alfrun’s mountain.”

“Yes,” Helena said, “but what happened to Caligula? What happened to Gustav the Third?”

“They were murdered,” Alma answered.

Helena grinned at us. “Right.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

We didn’t make any more stops, and we arrived back in Norstad two days after we had been escorted out of Alfrun’s mountain. The hours of daylight we had spent poring over the book. The long nights I had stared at the dark clouds above the swaying treetops, unable to sleep even when it had been my turn under the blankets.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Lilja. Not that I wanted to. I wondered how cold and hungry she was, if she truly believed I would come back for her. Perhaps it was the magic of the bead on my wrist, but I thought a lot about us together too. The weight of her head on my shoulder, the softness of her skin beneath my palm. The heat in my chest when she whispered in my ear. I let myself ponder the future, imagined her on midsummer night with flowers in her hair.

Darkness had just fallen when I turned onto Storgatan. We helped each other carry everything into the house. There was no reason to unpack because we would be making the journey back soon.

Alma pulled me into a hug. “I’ll make up a story for my father why Lilja isn’t with us.”

“Thank you.”

Helena set to lighting fires in the ovens. I grabbed two spinning tops from my shelf and drove the horses and the sleigh back to Jonsson’s. “Can I borrow all three again in a couple of days?” I asked after I had handed a top to each of his daughters. “Lilja had to stay up north, and I want to go get her back.”

“Of course. Anytime for you, Selma.”

I walked back through Norstad. My very bones felt weary and my eyes stung. Near every window was lit and behind many were moving shadows. Chattering voices and the scent of cooking hung on the air. Heat and light and food. All simple things. All things Lilja didn’t have.

Back at the house, I went to the workshop and stared at my bench. How to even get started? It seemed so daunting. A doll that exceeded Stali’s in beauty. I went to the parlor and stood in front of the bureau. Even broken, the doll was masterful. I picked up the head which had been parted from the body by Alma’s blow of the candlestick. One side had been smashed, but the other was so perfectly shaped I couldn’t imagine ever creating anything as exquisite.

I startled when Helena took my arm. “You need to sleep first.”

“I don’t have time to sleep. Lilja’s waiting.”

She pulled at me. “You won’t be at your best if you’re not thinking clearly, and perhaps the right design will come to you in a dream.”

I relented because she was right. I was in no state to create anything. In my bedroom, I changed into pajamas. My entire life until Lilja, I had slept alone, but my bed felt achingly empty. It was only pure exhaustion that kept me from lying awake.

It was still dark when I woke up the next morning. No ideas had come to me in my dreams. My sleep had been dreamless, and I was grateful for it because some dreams were nightmares and my thoughts of Lilja in a dungeon were already grim enough.

After a hot cup of coffee, I grabbed my axe and went out back. Dawn was painting the sky above the neighbor’s roof a deep, darkest blue. The hazel tree had stood here my whole life, planted by Father when he had built the house. A few winters ago, it had lost a large branch during a storm. I had stored it in the shed ever since to dry out, and it still lay waiting for me to make something out of it. I could have gone out to Gustafsson’s to ask if he had any hazel wood, but this was faster. Besides, I liked the idea that the wood I was using was entirely mine.

I lugged the branch outside, and as I set to chopping it into smaller, manageable pieces, I thought not about Lilja, but the ones who had hurt her. It felt good, letting out my fury at them all. Alfrun, Vemund, Stali, Hrafn. Myrkvida, Lilja’s father who wasn’t her father at all but a monster who had stolen her and kept her so long she didn’t even remember her life before.

The axe blows summoned Alma and Helena who peered out the kitchen window. When I had my pieces—one for the head and one for the body of about the same size and the smaller ones for the limbs—I removed the bark. In my workshop, I placed them all on top of the oven to warm up

Alma was at the kitchen table with the elvish book, one of my uncle’s empty notebooks, and a pen. “We need a plan,” she said when I sat down across from her with the bowl of oatmeal Helena handed me.

“For the symbols?”

“For everything. The design. Clothes, hair, ornamentation.” She drew a rough sketch of a doll on the first page of the notebook, then placed two ovals in the middle of the face. “We already know the eyes,” she said, writing green gems above them.

“What about the clothes?” I asked.

Helena ladled a gluey scoop into her own bowl. “I was thinking a dress embroidered with flowers in all colors. Poppies, bachelor buttons, buttercups, daisies, and so on. On a midnight blue cotton, perhaps? Like the night sky.”

Alma pointed at her with the pen. “That’s brilliant.”

“Can you emulate their stylized patterns?” I asked Helena. “That intertwined design?”

“I can sure try.”