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Chapter One

Iplaced the little horse on the palm of my hand. It just about fit. The birch wood was smooth when I ran my finger over its back, worn to a silk-like sleekness by my hour with the sandpaper. I held it up into the gray October light from the workshop’s window and spun it so I could regard it from all angles. It had a beautiful symmetry, and despite the head not being much larger than my thumb, I had managed to give the horse a sort of… well, cheeky expression, I supposed. Yes, with paint this one would make a little boy or girl very happy on Christmas Eve.

I set the horse aside on the tray, ready for the layer of paint I would give it when I had enough wooden figures to bring out my cans. With the next piece of wood on the table in front of me, I tilted my head. It was just a square with raw axe-cut sides for now, but that didn’t mean I could make it into anything. I needed to feel the inspiration, for the wood to tell me what shape it wished to be.

“What’s that one telling ya?” Helena asked from her chair. When I gave her a narrow-eyed look over my shoulder, she shot me that insolent grin that seemed to color her eyes a shade even greener than they usually were. She liked to mock my process—just as I liked to mock her sorry attempts at our suppers. She was a remarkably bad cook for a country girl, but a good sport about it.

“I don’t know yet,” I said as I picked up the wood and spun it in my hand.

“Make a horse,” she said, letting her sewing sink to her lap. “All the little ones love a horse.”

“I just made a horse,” I said and nodded at the tray with my pert little filly.

“And we’ll surely sell more than one horse this season.”

“There’s still two months.” I turned the wood in my hand again. “I have time to make more, but I don’t think this one’s a horse.”

“Do a pig then. One of those great fat ones with a curly tail.” She pointed her thimbled thumb at the door to the store. “Kids love those too. I’ve heard their squeals when they come in.”

Helena had a point there. Children did seem drawn to any animal, living or carved—and I loved making them. In fact, they were my very favorite toys. Well, apart from dolls, but I considered those their own special category. They fetched a better price. With their pretty lace dresses, I could charge double that of a painted horse or dog, but that wasn’t my true reason for my preference. It was the soulfulness of a doll that drew me to it. A doll was an imitation of a human, and thus I could give it any emotion, any story I wished.

“It’s not saying oink either, then?” Helena asked when I kept staring at the wood.

“I don’t think so.”

I tilted my head to the other side, but it still wasn’t speaking to me, so I put it down on the table. “How’s the clothing for the Svensson order coming?” I asked Helena. She held up her sewing—a doll’s lacy apron. She was considerably better at sewing than cooking, and that would have been cause enough to keep her around, although my true reason for giving her the position as my housekeeper was Alma living right next door.

I was squinting hard at another piece of wood—oak this time—hoping this one would give up its secret, when the bell chimed out in the shop. I rose with a sigh. It always happened when I was the most concentrated. I shouldn’t be annoyed, though. Without customers, I would have to close the shop.

It was Mrs. Sundberg on the other side of the counter. Her gray hair was covered by an equally gray shawl dotted even darker by big, fat drops. The pewter clouds had finally let go of the rain they had held onto since this morning.

She looked down over my clothes, and it wasn’t the sawdust and wood shavings that made her frown, but rather the fact that I was dressed in a men’s shirt above my men’s pants. As a grandmother of eleven, she had been in my store on a dozen occasions, and every time, I had worn the same thing. Still she felt the need for that little nose wrinkle of disapproval. A good thing pretending ignorance had become habit for me.

Her eyes fixed on my braid which hung in front of my shoulder. “You’ve got a little something there,” she said, pointing at me with a finger crooked from a lifetime of housework, wrinkled from hours of laundering.

I brushed a hand along my braid, my fingers encountering a wood shaving stuck in the hair like a blonde corkscrew curl stuck to my own dark locks. I stuffed the shaving into my pocket, that little tailored convenience reserved for men—and the few women who, like me, dared to dress like one.

“You ought to marry, Miss Selander,” Mrs. Sundberg said. “Then you could watch the store while your husband’s in the workshop.”

I smiled—from amusement, but I pretended politeness. I was the best toymaker in Norstad, and the idea that by marrying me, a man would somehow gain my skill was funny. I had carved my first wonky horse at five, made my first toy for sale at ten. There was no one better around here. In truth, I doubted there was anyone else in Sweden—man or not—who matched my talent.

“What can I help you with?” I asked, schooling my face into a pleasant inquiring. “Another model train, perhaps?”

Mrs. Sundberg shook her head. “No, it’s Anna’s birthday. She won’t want a train.”

“A doll then?”I asked because I knew Mrs. Sundberg’s traditional attitude toward toys—dolls for granddaughters, trains or horses for grandsons.

“Oh yes,” she said with a smile that very nearly looked genuine. “A doll would do very nicely.”

“For when?”

“Two weeks from now.”

I pulled the ledger to me, removed the lid of the inkwell, and dipped the pen inside. “How would you like the doll to look?”

“Like a baby. Anna’s going to be a big sister again soon. She likes to play mommy.”

I scribbled that down. “In a smock? What color?”