This Land is no Stranger Sarah Hollister (best biographies to read .txt) 📖

became a series of bad choices and failed attempts at reform.

Like some virus, her mother bestowed the dark gift upon Brand next. Her life turned into the same sort of mess as her mother’s. So it goes, Brand mused, on and on forever. Until someone breaks the chain.

How much did her own grandmother know about poor Elin’s doomed fate? Did Sanna and Folke know their true lineage or had they been spared from the ghosts of the past? An unimaginable fantasy broke into her thoughts then. Brand pictured herself consumed with fury, wielding her Glock automatic as a sword. She would be the one to right the wrong. She would transform into a vengeful angel screaming down on Loke Voss. It was a strange, alien vision, but a pleasurable one. She tried to reject it, but it found a home in her exhausted, disordered brain.

A flash of paranoia hit her. Could this be why the Dalgrens summoned her to Sweden in the first place? Sanna and the others, making up a cabal, using her as their cat’s paw. No, no, she reasoned. But the concept had such power, such vividness…

Hammar returned to the Saab. Preoccupied, Brand didn’t notice his coming. She was surprised when he opened the car door. He took one look at her face and knelt down beside her.

“Are you all right? Jesus, you look…” He left the sentence unfinished.

Brand remained seated, staring out toward the desolate churchyard. “I want to go to Västvall,” she said.

20.

“Is that the town?” Brand gazed down at a farm village at the bottom of a deep valley.

“Yes, that’s Västvall,” Hammar said.

Earlier that afternoon at the churchyard, Brand had told Hammar about her great-aunt’s account of the Nordic Light arson. She had tried to be matter-of-fact, but her throat had a catch in it during the telling of the tale. They stood together, leaning against the Saab in the church parking lot. A cold wind blew. Advancing storm clouds piled in the west.

Hammar responded readily to Brand’s account. “You know, you could fly home and forget about this whole business. It’s not up to one person to right the wrongs of history.”

“They don’t want me in New York, either,” Brand had reminded him. “Right now I’m without a country.”

“Evidently, from your reception at the Ljusdal polisstation, the authorities here would like to be shut of you. There might even be fireworks at your departure.”

Brand smiled ruefully. “And signs reading ‘Yankee go home’.”

“Well, you disturb the Swedish peace. It’s always a celebration when an American busybody takes her leave.”

“They won’t be rid of me easily.”

“No, I didn’t think so. But listen, I’m serious. You should leave off, pack your bags, return home. It wouldn’t be a failure, only a reasonable decision. I see deep waters ahead for you.”

“Being reasonable isn’t my strong suit,” Brand said. “I feel as though I’ve got to follow this thing through. But I certainly wouldn’t blame you for deciding it’s not your battle to fight.”

At that, Hammar had placed his hand on Brand’s arm. “The evidence is in,” he said. “It’s clear you need someone to look after you.”

Brand felt a twinge of irritation over the comment, perhaps because of the truth of it. A typical male sentiment, after all. Hammar’s soft smile managed to disarm her. With elaborate politeness he had opened the driver’s side door of the Saab.

“Unless you’d consider the strange idea of the owner driving his own car?”

    “I’ll drive,” Brand said, climbing in. “You navigate.”

“To Västvall, then,” Hammar said. “Voss country.”

They had left the church behind and drove west on empty highways, climbing into a wild upland region Hammar referred to as the fjäll.

“‘Fell’, is how you would say it in English,” he said.

A half hour later, on their approach to Västvall, the road ran fairly straight, a gradual incline with snow-laden pines on either side. All patches of blue sky had disappeared. A few random snowflakes floated suspended in midair, pretty portents of more to come. The turn-off to the village allowed for a good view from the top of a hill.

Brand counted four farmhouses scattered on the downside of the slope, with good spreads of land in between each of them. They were built in the same style she had seen at the Dalgren homestead, two-storied and homely looking, with square windows set in their small peaked gables. Everything was painted falu red. Stock pens, loading ramps, and gnarled wooden sheds clustered around the structures, everything looking sad and deserted.

Hammar pointed towards the hillside behind them. “There’s more farmland up there, meadows for grazing. In the summer the cows were herded further up the mountainside. A young girl, a fäbodjänta, stayed with the cows, a cow tender, you could say. Fäbod is the word for the houses up there.”

“Fah-bawd,” Veronika tried.

Hammar smiled. “There were small compounds built of logs. The cow tenders lived in them for the summer. You’d hear their songs echoing up and down the mountains. Something like a Swiss yodel, but more romantic, poetic. She called the cows home.”

“Sounds like a great summer job,” Brand said. “Where do I apply?”

“Heavy work,” Hammar said with a sideward glance. “Milking those cows, churning butter.”

“I’m familiar with all that,” Brand answered.

“There are probably more houses on the property,” Hammar continued. “Down below, a few grand lodges exist, homes for the modern-day family members, hidden off in the woods. And that makes up the entirety of Västvall.”

There was something moody about the look of the village, sunk in the darkened upland valley. It was as if the sun never penetrated and the mighty Scandinavian light finally had to retreat in defeat.

“Even today, the locals around here honor the old traditions,” Hammar said. “On Saturday nights the young fools in these little villages get drunk and make raids on each other. The town in the next valley over is always enemy territory. They get into brawls or race their cars. Everyone laughs it off as simple country innocence.