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Helena let her sewing sink to her lap. “What if each elf is uniquely vulnerable to a certain material? Elm killed Alfrun’s aunt. Maybe Alfrun’s own weakness is copper?”

“That’s a gamble,” I said. “The only evidence we have is her looking frightened.”

“But have you seen her frightened since?”

Helena had a point there. It was the only time I had seen something like fear in those unsettlingly pale eyes.

Working felt good. It kept my darkest worries about Lilja at bay. I made myself think of the good things, forced myself to feel the mite of hope in my heart that I could actually free her, imagined those thoughts flow through my fingertips and into the wood.

When I had finished hollowing out both halves, my back and fingers were aching. I stood. “Let’s go raid your father’s treasures.”

We all went next door. The store was empty. Not many people had money to spend so soon after the holidays. My uncle was in his workshop. I greeted him from the doorway. I didn’t dare go any further in case he saw the grief on my face. Alma had told him Lilja was staying with family in Eskilstuna for a bit, and I wanted him to keep believing that. For now at least.

Alma found the glass locket and the copy of Carlén. Helena and I watched her cut a piece of navy velvet in the right size and fit it to the locket’s silver back. With tweezers, she placed a lily-of-the-valley bloom on it.

“There’s room for another,” Alma said. “Which do you think?”

Carefully, I leafed through the pages that had the flattened flowers. Many were crumbled, faded, or simply unrecognizable, but not all. “The forget-me-not,” I said. “I like the blue.”

Alma’s smile was so soft my eyes stung. I pulled out the top drawer, intending to search for just the right ribbon. Helena joined me. She picked up a tiny pearl and held it between her fingers.

“What if we use seed pearls for the middle of the flowers?” Helena suggested. “To represent the sea.”

“That’s a marvelous idea,” Alma said as she placed the glass lid on the locket, sealing in the flowers.

I found a narrow silk ribbon in the same shade as the forget-me-not, and after a bit of rummaging around, I had retrieved three mother-of-pearl buttons. Another pretty addition that might call to mind the ocean. Alma roamed around a chest, and Helena set to sliding her pearls from her palm to a jar. I was about to close the drawer when something at the bottom caught my eye.

I picked it up and studied it in the light from the lamp. It was a silver pendant, a filigree design shaped like a three-leaf clover. Each leaf held a different symbol—a cross, an anchor, and a heart. Faith, hope, and love.

Not a very valuable pendant, but it was pretty. And the symbols… I loved the gentleness of all three. They all had such soul, and as I held the pendant on my palm, Lilja felt closer to me than she had since Alfrun’s soldiers had dragged her away.

I closed my fingers around the pendant.

Faith.

Hope.

Love.

They weren’t magic symbols. Rather, they were human because they all represented one thing—the ability to imagine and to dream of something better.

Chapter Thirty-Six

The next morning, after a fitful sleep but thankfully no nightmares, I had a torso in two parts and all the joints of the legs and arms. Perhaps I should start on the face, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The face was the most important part.

Instead, I got out my paint cans. The ones I had bought with Lilja. What color to choose? It didn’t matter because the symbols would be out of sight. It mattered to me though, so I chose red. With a thin-tipped brush, I painted the symbols on the curved, sanded surface of the torso’s interior.

Blowing on the paint, I regarded my work. It looked good, but writing, of any sort, wasn’t exactly my strongest suit. Alma hadn’t come over yet, and so I picked up the torso and the page where she had written our chosen symbols. “I’ll go to my uncle’s for a moment,” I told Helena who was frowning at the little dress in her hands. She nodded because her lips were busy holding a handful of pins.

Alma was behind the counter. “I need you to check my homework,” I told her as I placed the two parts of the torso down.

The book was already open in front of her, and she pulled it closer. Together, we went through each symbol, making sure I had the strokes just right. I did.

“Who do you think wrote it?” I said with a nod at the book.

“Whoever it was, they lived a long time ago. I’d judge it to be at least two hundred years old based on the binding technique.”

“They did us quite the favor. If it works, I mean.” My eyes filled with tears so fast that I had no time for a diversion.