The Fifth Doll

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  “Matrona? Are you all right? Do you need something to drink?”

  Matrona dropped her hands, blinking spots of color from her vision, and saw that Jaska was much closer now, crouched on the other side of the butter churn. She wanted to slump over that half-formed butter and weep.

  “I can’t go back,” she whispered, a sob slicing through the sentence. She pressed a knuckle against her lips and shook her head. What would Slava do if she told?

  Jaska’s brows lowered, narrowing his dark eyes. “Go back where?”

  Matrona shook her head again. “Maybe I should rest.” She stood from her three-legged stool. It toppled over behind her, and she wavered, blood rushing from her head.

  “Slava’s house?” Jaska stood up beside her.

  Matrona froze. Eyed him. Did he know? Heart racing, she searched his face, hoping for an answer.

  He licked his lips. “That’s where I found you, Matrona,” he said, as though she had forgotten. He spoke with deliberate enunciation. Much the way he spoke to his mad mother. “Did he feed you something strange? What were you doing there?”

  He didn’t know. No one knew. Matrona closed her eyes for a moment, letting the dizziness subside before she opened them again. She pressed a hand to the wall and leaned into it. “Just a visit,” she managed.

  Jaska’s eyebrows eased a fraction. “Let me help you to the house,” he offered, turning slightly so Matrona could take his elbow.

  Matrona stared at that elbow, the gray sleeve of his shirt pushed up around the crook of it. No one else had offered her support, had they? Her father hadn’t offered to lift her from bed; her mother hadn’t helped her climb into the cold bath. Feodor rarely touched her, and even Roksana . . .

  “I don’t think anyone is home,” he added, “if you’re worried about—”

  “Have you ever wanted to . . . escape?”

  Jaska’s proffered elbow drooped. “What?”

  “Escape. Leave.” She peered out the back doors of the barn, beyond the pasture, to the tree tips of the wood to the south. She could open no more dolls if she merely disappeared, the way Esfir had. The humiliation would become moot if she surrounded herself with new people in a new village. Perhaps she’d even find a man better suited to her than Feodor, if God had such a plan for her. Running would cast her as a terrible daughter, especially after Esfir, but if this was the only way to protect her family from Slava’s game . . .

  “The village?” Jaska’s voice sounded softer.

  She nodded.

  “Are you unhappy here?” he asked, but closed his mouth awkwardly around the last word. Rubbed his jaw. He was a witness to Matrona’s struggles, just as every other person within the walls of the wood was.

  “I’ve never left. Not once.” Matrona turned her attention to a loose thread on her sleeve. “I wonder if I were . . . what it would be like.”

  “I’ve wondered myself.” A dry chuckle escaped his throat. “I thought to, once, with Kostya.”

  Her eyes met his. “To leave?” A cool pang of something like sadness plucked within her.

  He nodded, once. “A couple years ago, when Mama was especially bad, and my father . . .” He didn’t finish the statement. “We headed south. Didn’t tell anyone. Strapped our packs on and ventured through the wood. We walked maybe half a day before we turned back.”

  “Why?”

  Jaska’s forehead crinkled as he thought. “I’m not sure. I just . . . felt compelled to go home. We both did. Wouldn’t do to leave the care of our parents to Galina and Viktor, besides.”

  Matrona’s gaze fell to the butter churn. South. What lay south? Or north, or east, or west? Only Slava would know. No one else ever left the village.

  Would he search for her if she left, or would he choose someone else?

  “Matrona!” Her mother’s distant voice formed the name, perhaps from inside the house. She must have just returned home. Matrona’s skin prickled, and she pushed her heavy body off the wall.

  Jaska frowned, glancing behind him, though he would not see the house from where he stood in the barn. “I should go. I have no desire to cause more trouble for you.”

  Matrona nodded. “Please. Out the back gate.”

  He took one step toward the back doors of the barn before hesitating and looking back at Matrona with dark, calculating eyes. But Matrona’s mother called out to her again, and he turned away, quickening his steps, disappearing into the day.

  The ache in her back and head drummed a steady rhythm of encouragement. She could leave. Stow away in another village until things calmed down and Slava moved on. Then she could come home, if she wanted. Feodor might even wait for her.

  Matrona hurried out the front of the barn and made it halfway across the pasture before her mother appeared at the back door. South. She would go south, as Kostya and Jaska once had. She’d seen Slava’s wagon head south before, so there had to be something in that direction. Perhaps she could find the wagon tracks and follow them.

  Matrona glanced over her shoulder, but Jaska hadn’t left so much as a shadow in his wake. She frowned, but held to her conviction.

  Tomorrow morning, she would go.

  Chapter 6

  In the shadows of night, the darkness reared up with a blistering vengeance.

  Ugly, filthy girl. The slick voice stirred her from restless sleep.

  Her mother’s voice murmured, My other daughter would have worked harder. My other daughter would not have embarrassed me so. She would not leave when life grew difficult.

  A child’s voice cried, I’m not pretty like the other girls. My brow is too thick and my cheeks too wide. I’ll never be pretty like them.

  Matrona sat up in bed, shivering with a chill she couldn’t feel. “Stop,” she whispered.

  Who would kiss such worked hands? The low, feminine voice crooned. The tone lightened, mimicking her own voice: All I’m good for is milking cows and beating rugs.

  “Stop,” she repeated again, louder. Serpents coiled around her chest, thinning her air. Her head pounded, and her palms went slick with perspiration.

  Useless.

  Vulgar.

  Coward.

  Vagrant.

  Clumsy.

  The way you look at him—

  I cannot help how I feel! Matrona shouted back, her thoughts piercing the oily venom far better than her own voice did. I cannot change the leaning of my heart any more than I can move the sun in the sky!

  The darkness stirred and lashed out once more. Stupid girl. You never get anything right. Remember all your failings? Your struggle with arithmetic. Your clumsiness with the milk. Cream, spilled every—

  Enough! she shouted, wincing against the stabbing in her forehead. The muscles in her legs and abdomen tightened like sinew drying in the sun. I was a child, and I tried my best! I learned it! And I cannot be held accountable for every misstep. Be gone!

  Aloud, she said, “You will not have power over me.”

  The voices shifted, reverting to her mother’s. You have humiliated me before the village—

  Matrona did not let the words finish. I am a good and virtuous woman.

  The darkness sneered. You are—

  I am a good and virtuous woman, Matrona repeated, clutching fistfuls of blanket in her hands. I have strived to be good all my life, and I have succeeded. You cannot take that from me.

  A glimmer of warmth sparked in her heart, loosening the serpents, and Matrona realized she believed it. She believed her counterattacks. She had strived to be wholesome and upright, since she was a little girl. Not because her mother demanded it, not to impress her father, but because that was who she wanted to be.

  The darkness hissed, and when it addressed her again, it did so in the young child’s voice. You are—

  “I am beautiful,” she whispered, and the storming shadows dissipated into clouds of ash, drifting away from her thoughts like the remnants of a bad dream.

  Matrona took in a deep, shuddering breath and opened her e
yes, searching her moonlit room. She listened, waited, but the voices did not return.

  A smile pulled on her lips. She wiped tears from her eyes, rested her head on her pillow, and fell into the most peaceful slumber she’d ever had.

  The third day, Matrona awoke with bones of iron instead of lead, a headache that tapped instead of pounded, and clear vision that only spotted when she moved too quickly. She headed out to the pasture early to do her chores, before her parents had awoken for the day, though the neighbors’ cock had already crowed twice. If she finished the work before she left, her parents wouldn’t have reason to seek her out until she was miles away.

  Despite the lightness of her heart, her hands trembled as she milked the first cow.

  She stared into the pail, watching shots of milk splatter against its base and sides, puddling where she directed it, slowly taking the shape of the bucket. Unable to form itself. Unable to escape.

  The third day. Slava would be expecting her.

  She squeezed the teats harder, and the cow turned her head to eye her with one heavily lashed brown orb. Matrona rested her head against the coarse fur as her hands moved up and down in their familiar rhythm, building on callouses she’d developed as a child. Matrona breathed in the crispness of the morning and the scent of the pasture that clung to the cow’s hide. Her mind had been quiet since waking, its detrimental thoughts unheard as she washed and dressed and milked. Still, she couldn’t go back to Slava’s abode. Wouldn’t.

  Slava cared deeply about the dolls, didn’t he? That was why he made them, why he kept them, and why, for some reason, he wanted Matrona to watch over them in his stead. Surely he wouldn’t destroy the dolls for the sake of bending her to his will. He might twist a few in anger, but eventually he would give up, wouldn’t he?

  Matrona leaned back, listening to the rhythm of falling milk. “I don’t know what he’ll do,” she whispered, and the cow turned back to her feed.

  She milked in contemplation until the right side of the cow went dry, then moved her pail to the left. Not for the first time, Matrona tried to imagine her lost sister working beside her. She’d be about Jaska’s age. Matrona wondered if Esfir would have the same black hair Matrona did, or if it would be lighter, more like her father’s. A strong jaw or a slim one. Surely she’d wear the strong Vitsin brow.

  What would it have been like to have Esfir’s companionship throughout childhood and adolescence? To have someone else draw her parents’ attention, especially her mother’s? Matrona couldn’t help but wonder if these recent events would have happened had Esfir not mysteriously vanished from her cradle.

  The milk stopped, and Matrona leaned back against a sore spine. If putting distance between herself and the tradesman didn’t resolve the situation, then perhaps Feodor could intervene. The Popov family was well respected and held sway over many in the village. Of course, she would need to tell Feodor about the dolls, and she wasn’t sure he’d believe her.

  Her hand trembled as she picked up the full pail and carried it to a clean, empty barrel. She glanced back at the barn’s open doors, picturing Jaska between them, remembering the way he’d stood before her as she held the churn in her hands. His proffered elbow and his soft words, so different from . . .

  She blinked hard. Feodor. Jaska didn’t matter. She’d humiliated herself enough for one lifetime, hadn’t she?

  Her father came out to tend the small herd, pausing for a moment to watch her work, then nodding his approval when she met his eyes. The subtle gesture felt like warm tea on a tight stomach after two days under the thumb of that unyielding darkness. Hopefully he would still look at her kindly when she returned from her journey. She would have to come up with a story to explain her absence. Yet it could be a long while before she returned home—only time would tell.

  When her father left, Matrona quickly distributed milk and cream and hurried to her room to gather her things. Her mother had taken to the laundry, and so Matrona helped herself to the kitchen stores, choosing that which would last the longest in her pack, enough for a few days. She pulled on her sturdiest shoes and vacated through the pasture, trying to keep her walk casual, though her muscles itched to run.

  She followed the path toward the butchery, where it would turn south toward the wood. The grasses made Slava’s wagon tracks hard to find, but she thought she saw their direction and traced them into the wood, to a wide place between the trees. Uneven patches of wild grass gave way to moss, clover, and old, trampled foliage. She filled herself with several deep breaths to calm her nerves as she moved farther and farther from the village. Usually only the hunters delved into the wood, but Matrona had played among the roots and trunks as a child. It was not long, however, before she surpassed the distance she’d dared to travel in her youth.

  Oddly, the aspens grew tightly together, forcing her to choose a path around them. She hesitated a brief moment, for no wagon would be able to pass between them, and there was no other route the tradesman could have taken. Had she guessed his entry point wrong? She worried her lip as she picked her way through sun and shadow, pack bouncing against her back. She thought of the glares of the village women, her mother’s open palm against her cheek, and the dark swirl of her own self-loathing. The memories propelled her forward.

  After another mile, the trunks loosened, and Matrona paused by a crooked hornbeam to catch her breath, resting her hands on her knees.

  The wood was absent of the sound of people; only the soft noises of busy insects and hungry birds greeted her. There was nothing to fear here, especially while sunlight still infiltrated the canopy formed by the trees. The earth beneath her feet was relatively flat, veined with brooks and goatsbeard. Were she to venture deep enough into the wood, she’d likely see a stray sika deer or a wild ass, perhaps even a pig, but nothing that would harm her. Still, were the trees to break for a road, she would thank every saint she could name.

  So she walked, savoring the absence of people, focusing on the sounds of life around her—songbirds and grouse, shrews and red squirrels. She walked with her arms folded at first, but the exercise loosed them, and soon Matrona found herself picking her way over fallen branches and large stones, careful with her balance. She paused once more to gain her bearings—and was surprised to see that she was just outside a familiar glade with foot-crushed grass and a tall, triangular boulder in its center.

  She paused, glancing behind her. No, that couldn’t be right. This looked like the children’s glade, on the other side of the village. The north side, and she had walked southward. There was no way she could have circumvented the village to arrive here. Then how . . . ?

  She trudged forward, through the glade—it had to be one that looked similar, for Matrona’s route had never faltered, else the direction of the sun would have warned her. The symphony of insects hushed a little, and the noises of people milling about and working pricked her ears. She held her breath as the wood opened up to the village. The north side.

  She’d walked a straight line, yet somehow managed to loop around to the opposite side of the village.

  Her thoughts instantly turned to Slava.

  But I’m not the first to delve into these woods. The game hunters frequented these trees far more often than Matrona did. They would have noticed the strange—what to call it?—loop from one side of the village to the other. Jaska and Kostya would have noticed it. Jaska would have said something.

  Unless . . .

  Matrona touched her stomach, the place where the seam would have been were she one of Slava’s wooden dolls. Slava had said she would separate herself from the village. Did that mean she could see this loop when others couldn’t?

  Knees buckling, Matrona dropped to the forest floor and stared up at the sun. It all connected. There was no other explanation. Which meant one thing.

  Matrona would never be able to escape.

  Chapter 7

  Matrona would not give in to Slava’s demands. If she could not run from the village, she would hide
within it.

  Fatigue dug at her body as she passed through the children’s glade. She ate a bit of cheese to assuage her hunger.

  Her mind reeled. What would Slava do when evening came and went and the night stretched long and she still did not approach his door? Would he come for her in her own izba? What excuses could he possibly make to her parents?

  Could she claim sanctuary at the church? Yet it would only be a matter of time before her own hunger drove her out.

  As Matrona passed by the candle maker’s home, something on the path froze her feet in their steps.

  Slava.

  He approached her family’s izba from the main path. He strode with purpose, a towel slung over his shoulder, perhaps from whatever work had been occupying him before this jaunt. Like a mouse, Matrona skittered around the corner of the candle maker’s home, her neck flushing. Her pulse beat in her ears. Slava did not look her way. She drew in a shaky breath.

  The appearance of the tradesman solidified in Matrona’s mind what she had already suspected—if she would not go to him, he would come to her.

  Running her hands over her braid, Matrona took in her surroundings. The Demidov izba sat a short ways from her, and Lenore Demidov squinted at her from the window. Matrona pushed off from her hiding place and bolted west, daring to cross the path behind Slava before stowing behind another izba.

  Roksana. She’d go to Roksana’s. Her mother would give her an earful for missing a visit from the most important man in town, but she would rather face Toma Vitsin than Slava Barinov.

  The sun beat down as she hurried, and her lungs seemed unable to pull in enough air to sustain her once the Zotov izba came into sight. She forced steadiness into her pace, again checking over her shoulder as she approached the front door. Blotting her forehead with the edge of her sleeve, she knocked and waited. Knocked again.

  Licking her lips, Matrona walked around the izba to the small workshop behind it, drawn to the beating of hammer against nail. Roksana, however, was not within. Only her father-in-law, Pavel, who glanced up the same moment Matrona glanced in.