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“Why Mora?”
“Because she’d want to be close to the memory of Ronja.”
Taylor went to the carrier. “And you believe this horse will fix everything?”
The horse’s significance had never been lost on Linnea. Not when Ulla had pressed it into her hands—my mother said it’s magical—not when it shed a light during the darkest time in her life. But it wasn’t until Peter confessed how it came into Ronja’s possession that Linnea truly felt its worth, like the deep pulse in her body, still fighting to stay alive. “Yes.”
Part II
He watches slyly around you:
Impulsive, blame yourself,
If his flare in the dance crackles
On your spider-sparse tulle
When you hurry in the quadrille,
Yester, butterfly-light and warm,
His presumptuous arrows are aimed
Violently at your open heart.
— Anna Maria Lenngren,“Dansen,” lines 17–24
Chapter Four
Stockholm, Sweden
May 1968
Ronja
Ronja needed the Dalahäst. Now. Safe in her hands.
Damn you, Peter.
She dangled a bare leg over the side of the damp hospital bed. She touched the base of her skull and winced. Bandages and crusted pieces of hair. Dried blood. She looked at her clipped fingernails with their familiar sheen of black grease that may as well have been tattooed on. A draft from behind tickled her skin. She wore a thin, blue hospital gown, open in the back, a contrast to the battered cocktail dress she’d arrived in. Where did that go? Ronja drew her eyes tight, angered she’d passed out. Or was it the painkiller from the nurse that had knocked her unconscious?
What is the time! She needed to get out of here.
A hospital stint was not part of her original escape plan.
But she couldn’t flee without the horse. Ronja had connived its safekeeping into the hands of an American tourist situated in the adjacent hospital bed, lest Peter was hot on her trail. She cursed him again and feverishly examined the surroundings. Enclosed by curtains and a wall of seafoam green tiles, Ronja glanced up and flinched at a large, alien beam of light.
She planted her naked feet on the cold floor and ventured beyond the curtain into the unfolding scene: shuffling papers, clacking instruments on metal trolleys, a huddle of men in white coats, nurses with clipboards circling them. Orderlies in masks and hair caps bustled to and fro. A gurney squeaked by carrying a grimacing elderly man, rolling past two police officers in their long navy tailcoats and embossed caps, heads bent in conversation over a photograph.
What if it’s me? Short-winded, she slinked behind the nearest curtain.
“You’re awake!” A feminine voice, speaking English, spun Ronja.
The American! In rapid Swedish, she commanded the woman, “I need my belongings! I gave them to you, remember?”
“Sorry, my Swedish is terrible. You spoke English last night. I’m Molly. You never told me your name. I did what you asked, kept your things safe before you conked out.” She struggled to sit up. Her arm was in a cast. “I stuffed them at the bottom of my tote underneath my clothes.” She pressed a conspiratorial finger to her lips and said quietly, “But I kept the horse under my blankets.”
Ronja’s heart jumped to her throat, momentarily blocking her voice. “Hor—horse. The horse, my things. Fast. Please.”
