This Land is no Stranger by Sarah Hollister (good book recommendations .TXT) 📕

“She said you were here to kill the devil.”

Brand didn’t understand. In the far corner of the room stood a children’s bed, more of a divan really, piled with pillows and a stuffed toy gorilla. She crossed to it and impulsively laid down. Her mind shut off as she listened to Hammar’s footsteps receding down the stairs.

5.

Varzha Luna remained motionless and expressionless, as if she were still standing poised on the cold tarmac of Drottninggatan. She listened to her captors talk and tried to identify who they were. The bearded one went off on a rant about money.

Their plan was to auction Varzha as a virgin. The men who kidnapped her seemed to believe she would bring in an astronomical sum. The bearded one, Liam, groused about their paltry cut of the proceeds. He pronounced himself ready to have Varzha immediately.

The one called Mattias responded. “This gypsy girl, I don’t feel one way or another about her. But JV has placed her in my care, and told me that anyone who messes with her will answer to him.”

“This is a lousy business,” Liam stated, his tone bloated with self-importance. “We could sell her now, five or ten times a day! Add up the numbers!”

Varzha thought of the other victims, the ones who had disappeared. Her friend, Lel. Another kidnapped girl had been cut badly on the face when she spat at a man trying to force her. Afterward dead by her own hand.

The shades were drawn on all the windows in the room where Varzha sat. It was the first stopover after the journey out of Stockholm. The fading sun threw snow-reflected silhouettes against the blinds, making eerie, troll-like shadow figures.

“She looks pretty enough,” Liam said, “even with the white face.”

“Yes,” Mattias said,” turning to look at Varzha. “Pretty now—but later, no. She is the best age. Untouched. Soon she’ll get old and dry up like all women. Then I wouldn’t touch her with your dick, much less mine.”

Varzha knew the face that stared back at her when she looked in the mirror, the dark eyes of a kalderás Romani, the thick braided jet black hair. She had long understood that most gadje barely recognized brown-skinned Romani as fellow humans. We are “others,” she thought, something apart, not deserving of respect.

Exceptions existed, a few gadje who had shown kindness to Varzha and her brother. The fashionable woman who befriended them, with the palest white skin, so thin she looked like a boy. She brought gifts with her, candy, warm sweaters, blankets. The gifts were really small bribes, Varzha recognized, in exchange for the numberless photographs the woman took.

Even so, kind as the woman was, Varzha fell back on the ancient Romani attitudes toward gentiles. How far could she trust them? What might they want in return?

Varzha held herself apart, showing herself only when she sang.

In her youth the villagers called Varzha “chirola chei,” bird girl. She flew like lightning through the muddy lanes of her Romanian village, commandeered horses, and rode on the back of goats. From early on she was able to whisper the language of animals, gathering them around and coaxing their love.

Family and clan wrapped her in a protective cocoon. Her stern father, a well-respected musician, her beautiful mother—they were always there, shielding her from harm. No cousin, no uncle, no neighbor had ever dared to bother or molest Varzha as she grew up. Plus there was  Vago by her side, happy-go-lucky Vago. They were inseparable.

Always, Varzha sang. For the family, for the clan, for herself. From the earliest days of childhood she sang the mirologi, the graveside laments of her people.

Then came the horrific attack when Varzha was ten, the murders, the catastrophe that changed everything forever. Her parents dead, Vago beaten senseless, the cocoon stripped away. She learned the terrors of life all too well. In the aftermath, a man wearing small spectacles and a long brown overcoat arrived, a kindly man, who had taken them on the long journey to Sweden.

These other men who held her captive now, or thought they held her, who would seek to sell her as if she were a cow, they were simply stupid believers in their own lies. They didn’t know her, didn’t realize what Varzha was capable of. Not a bird girl anymore, but more an eagle intent on vengeance.

She knew Mattias would never touch her—he had too much to lose—but she was unsure of the bearded one. His gaze rested hungrily on her, then always darted guiltily away.

Since she couldn’t do anything about it until the time came, Varzha sat motionless.

The two men who had approached Varzha while she sang for coins outside of Åhléns believed they were taking control of the situation. Varzha didn’t resist. She played her role well. This was the whole idea, this was the plan. She intended for the gadje traffickers to take her. She made no protest. Leaving her brother Vago behind was the difficult part.

After Mattias and Liam made off with Varzha, a third man had been waiting a few blocks away, in a van with the engine running. He drove, maneuvering them out of the congested city center. Varzha had tried to keep an exact track of the route they took, but became disoriented almost immediately. She was lost.

The van had no windows and no seats in the back. She was shielded from the front driver’s compartment by a curtain of heavy plastic. They had driven through halting traffic to the highway, then out of town by either the E4 or the E18, Varzha thought—to the north, anyway. She feared the coast the most, afraid that they would leave Sweden on a ferry in Kapellskär and her life would become immediately much more difficult.

“Nobody touches her,” Varzha had heard Mattias tell the other two more than once. She learned their names. Liam, the bearded one, and Nils, the young driver.

The repetitive scrape of the plastic curtain against the van’s interior wore