The Fifth Doll

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  “Matrona.” He picked a nail out of a heavy leather satchel hanging from his belt. A faded depiction of a rearing stallion marked the bag’s front. He’d only just begun nailing together planks of wood, but Matrona thought he might be making a headboard. “Roksana is with the midwife today. Unless you needed something made?”

  “I . . . No, Pavel. Do you know when she’ll return?”

  Pavel set his hammer down on his work and pulled a measuring stick from a pocket at the back of his pants. “I’m not sure, but you’ll find her there.”

  Matrona nodded her thanks and backed away from the workshop. The midwife didn’t live far from Slava’s home. She was so old that most of her patients visited her for routine checkups, instead of the other way around. That izba would offer her no sanctuary.

  Matrona glanced up at the sun. Slava—and her mother—would have discovered she was missing by now. Surely the tradesman had returned home.

  However, as Matrona came around the Zotov izba, she saw someone heading up the main path. The gray beard, the broad back, and the towel still slung over his shoulders instantly identified him as the tradesman.

  A yelp suffocated in Matrona’s throat as she flashed back behind the izba, her blood pounding enough to make her dizzy. Their village was so small; it was no secret that Roksana and Matrona were close friends.

  He knew exactly where to look for her next.

  Mouth dry, Matrona ran straight into the wood, keeping the Zotov izba at her back. She was breathless by the first tree. Her legs grew light as she ran over the uneven forest floor, passing a narrow brook and ducking beneath tree limbs that all looked similar to one another. She ran until her chest and thighs ached, until the energy left her stride.

  She slowed, pulling at her collar to relieve the heat building beneath her dress. Turning around, Matrona searched for Slava, but he wasn’t there. Only the quick skittering of a gray shrew as it scrabbled across the forest floor. That and . . . the sound of a blacksmith’s hammer?

  Picking her way carefully, Matrona moved in as much of a straight line as she could. Before long, other noises of the village reached her ears: the beating of a staff against rug, the creaking of a bellows, the occasional crowing of a rooster.

  She focused on the bellows and hammer, then the steam churning from the brewery behind the smithy. The two buildings were on the east side of the village, not far from the pottery. But she had entered the western wood.

  She looked over her shoulder, but there was no obvious point at which the wood had changed. Just as it is with the south-and-north woods. The strange loop surrounded them. Matrona suddenly felt wooden and hollow, as if Slava’s fingers were encompassing her, pressing. Suffocating. The enchanted wood swallowed the village whole?

  Matrona paused at the edge of the east wood, placing a hand on a twisted hornbeam. How was she ever to leave? How did Slava leave? There had to be a way, for she had seen him set off with his empty wagon and return with it loaded with goods. Was there a break in this eternal perimeter, or would she have to pry the answer from Slava himself?

  Slava. Matrona rubbed gooseflesh from her arms. If only her mind were still comforted by the blissful peace of ignorance.

  Shying a step back into the wood, she searched for Slava, but this corner of the village was empty save for a couple of children. She worried her lip. Turned toward the hornbeam and knocked her knuckles against it, half-expecting the trunk to turn to smoke beneath her touch. But no, the wood remained solid.

  “What are your secrets, Tradesman?” she whispered, stepping away from the tree and over the grass that cushioned the village from its surrounding forest. You know mine, but when will I learn yours?

  She shuddered and crossed her arms over her chest. Hopefully never.

  Her run had made her weary. She walked slowly, contemplating where she should go next. What to do? She was so weary, even her senses grew exhausted.

  “Matrona!” yelled a man’s voice, and Matrona startled from her thoughts long enough to see Boris Ishutin, the granger that Roksana had favored years ago, tugging two goats behind him on lengths of rope. He waved an arm. “Slava is looking for you!”

  Matrona froze, and Boris turned his back to her, looking down a footpath. Matrona recognized Slava immediately and choked on her own tongue.

  He’d seen her run into the wood. He’d known it would spit her out here.

  Matrona fled farther into the village as Boris—the fool!—shouted to Slava. Her legs protested the new exercise, but Matrona pushed them, fleeing behind a shop, looping around an izba. Slava must have seen her—there was no way he hadn’t. Matrona’s heart grew too large for her chest. She couldn’t breathe.

  The scent of smoke strangled her gasping breaths even more. The pottery, just ahead. Squeezing her hands into fists, Matrona ran into it, thanking Saint Michael when she saw Jaska repairing a pottery wheel. The only other occupant was Mad Olia, who sat in an old chair against the right wall, gently rocking herself.

  “Jaska,” Matrona called, a hoarse half whisper.

  Jaska glanced up from his work and, upon seeing Matrona, stood so abruptly, he scraped his shoulder against the edge of the wheel. He winced but replied, “What’s wrong?”

  “Please.” She rushed to his side. She’d never stepped so far into the pottery before. “Slava is looking for me. I can’t face him. I don’t know what he’ll—”

  “Slava?” Jaska’s dark eyes glanced between Matrona and the wide opening to the pottery. His hand on her elbow cut off her words. “Come with me.” He pulled her toward a narrow door near the kiln and tugged her through it as her name rang through the pottery, carried on the rich baritone of the tradesman.

  Chapter 8

  The fresh air in the narrow space between the pottery and the Maysak house struck Matrona with a strange chill. Slava’s voice rang in her ears. Had he seen her flee through this door, or only toward the pottery?

  Words bubbled up her throat—We have to move quickly, he’s just around the corner, I’m so sorry—but within half a breath’s time, Jaska pulled her around the nearest corner of his home and to the cellar doors. He pulled one open and stepped onto the narrow wooden stairs leading into the darkness below. One tug on Matrona’s elbow was all the encouragement she needed to follow him. She winced at the loudness of the door shutting behind them. Darkness flooded her vision, reminding her too much of the second doll.

  She almost tripped at the bottom of the stairs, but Jaska steadied her, and once her feet found the dirt floor of the cold cellar, a few words finally made it to her lips. “I’m so sorry.”

  “What does Slava want?” Jaska asked. He still held her elbow, and in the coolness of the cellar, she could feel the heat wafting from his skin the way it would from a kiln. Sunlight trickled through small spaces between the planks of the cellar doors, none wider than half a finger, and her eyes began to adjust to the shadows.

  “I . . .” Her tongue turned leaden in her mouth. The secrets danced within her, pressing, begging for escape. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  Jaska shook his head, turning from her for a moment, walking to the nearest stone wall and back. The Maysaks were a large family, but their cellar was no bigger than anyone else’s. The scents of mice and mildew hung in the air, and the muffled noises of people and birds occasionally filtered in through the cracks in the doors.

  Matrona felt his eyes on her before she saw the faint glint of choked sunlight in them. “You’d be surprised. Believe me, I can keep a secret.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not a matter of trust, Jaska! He threatened to—”

  Some of the sunlight snuffed out as a body approached the cellar door. Matrona froze, but Jaska grabbed her hand and tugged her to the back of the small space, opening the door to a closet Matrona hadn’t noticed. He thrust her in gracelessly just as the cellar doors creaked open, then shoved his way in behind her and pulled the door shut, careful not to let it close too loudly.

  The closet was just
wide enough to fit Matrona’s shoulders, and just short enough to force Jaska to bend his head down ever so slightly. He pressed his face to the doors, peering through the crack between them. The faintest sigh passed from his lips. Matrona held her breath, trying not to think of his arm pressing against her arm or his feet spaced between hers. Only a few more inches and they’d be body to body.

  Chiding herself without words, she listened. The steps coming down the stairs were not heavy enough to be Slava’s. A few jars shuffled on a set of shelves, and then the feet returned up the stairs. The light between the closet doors vanished as the cellar was shut once more.

  “My father,” Jaska whispered, and Matrona relaxed into the corners of the closet. A dim slice of light illuminated his grim expression, and she wondered if Afon had just retrieved a bottle of kvass. Matrona knew little of the relationship between Jaska and his father, but the man had never been around on the occasions she’d watched the younger Maysaks.

  Still, Jaska didn’t open the closet doors. His eyes lingered at the crack. “I’m sure Slava saw us,” he continued. “What does he want with you?”

  Matrona pinched her lips together, too many words boiling in her throat.

  “Matrona,” he whispered. “What happened that day, at his house?”

  “Dolls,” she croaked.

  He pulled back, smacking the back of his head on the closet ceiling. “What?”

  “Dolls,” she repeated. “The tradesman’s house is full of dolls.” She knew she sounded mad, but if anyone could tolerate madness in the village, it was a man who had been raised alongside it. “He has a room full of them. Wooden dolls, only with smaller dolls nesting inside them. They’re painted to look like us—the villagers. I have one, you have one, my father has one. So many dolls. All of us are in there.”

  He shifted in the darkness, and she wished he would stoop enough for the sliver of light to reveal his reaction.

  She swallowed and steadied herself. “I returned a paintbrush. I saw them, all of them. Tried to open my father’s and left. He acted so strangely after that. And I went back. I went back to his house”—she was breathless—“and he told me I had to replace him. Slava. That I had to take care of his dolls because I had seen them. Because he was old. They’re connected to us, Jaska.”

  The way she issued his name made it sound like a desperate cry. Jaska held very still, listening. Matrona straightened as best she could.

  He tried to lift an arm, but there wasn’t space, so he dropped it. “I don’t understand.”

  “They’re connected to us, somehow,” she whispered, suddenly aware of the silence settling in the cellar. “Witchcraft . . . I don’t understand it. But he made me open my doll. After I removed the first layer, everyone knew my . . . secrets.”

  Her face burned, and she thanked the darkness, though the close walls made the air sweltering. Steeling herself, she asked, “How did you know, Jaska? Who told you those parts of my . . . thoughts?”

  He went so still, he could have been a carving. Even his breaths barely registered to Matrona’s ears. “I . . .” He paused. “I’m not sure.”

  “Everyone knew instantly.” Words flowed from her like water. “And three days later, I opened the second doll, and it brought up such darkness inside of me. Torture rolling around my head, torture I put there from the time I learned to think.” She couldn’t explain it any other way. “It hit me right before you found me. And it’s been three days. He told me I had to come back after three days, but I don’t want to go back.”

  She leaned against the closet’s back wall, ignoring the splinters poking through her dress. “It sounds mad,” she whispered, “but it’s true. It’s all true.”

  The quiet between them grew stale.

  Matrona pushed against the closet door until it opened. She couldn’t do this without seeing his face. Without knowing if he thought her mad. The cellar air felt cool when she stepped out. She eyed the cellar doors, listening.

  Jaska stepped out as well and closed the closet doors. “I’ve heard worse.” A weak smile touched his lips. “And no one else believes you?”

  “I’ve told no one else. He forbade it.”

  Jaska drew a long breath through his nose and released slowly through his mouth. “I don’t know Slava well.” It seemed as if he wanted to say more, but any further words died in a low sound in his throat. “These . . . dolls,” he spoke carefully, “they’re why he wants you?”

  She nodded.

  “As what? An apprentice? To take over this sorcery?”

  The word sorcery prickled the back of Matrona’s neck and sent a new burst of energy through her weary limbs. She tried to study the shadows of the young man’s face. “You believe me?”

  “I don’t have a reason not to.”

  For a moment, Matrona tried to imagine those words on the lips of her mother, or Feodor. It was impossible to envision it. “But it’s so far-fetched.”

  “Not if you pay attention.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jaska shrugged, hesitated. “Have you ever noticed . . . how content everyone is?”

  Matrona’s lips parted slightly. She thought of her mother, her father . . . Feodor pacing in her front room, lecturing her for the suffering to which Slava had subjected her. “I can’t say I have.”

  “They are.” He rubbed the back of his head with a hand. Noticing the glove over his fingers, he pulled it off, then did the same with its match. “So . . . complacent. Or how everyone is born here, and everyone stays. There’s no . . . mingling with other towns, save for the goods Slava brings from them.” He, too, eyed the cellar doors. “Aside from your sister’s disappearance . . . nothing bad ever happens.”

  “What do you mean?” Matrona wrung her fingers. “What sort of ‘bad’ things would happen, Jaska?”

  The potter pulled away from the closet, shaking his head. “I don’t know.” He paused. “Things my mother says.”

  Matrona frowned. Mad Olia had a lot to say, and most of it was nonsensical, if it could be understood at all. Like bad poetry spoken underwater. But, Matrona conceded, were she my mother, I would try to make sense of it.

  The cellar doors creaked again, and Matrona’s hands tightened into fists as she waited for the doors to open. They didn’t. A trick of the wind, perhaps.

  “I don’t trust him,” Jaska murmured after a long moment.

  “Slava?”

  “Mm.”

  “Why? Because of what I said?”

  He shook his head again, watching the cracks between the cellar doors. “Because he’s . . . different.”

  “Different how?”

  “Look at him, Matrona. Listen to how he talks. He’s different.”

  “I hadn’t spoken to him much before . . . this,” she confessed. “But yes, he is. Dragon house and all.”

  He turned from the crack. “Dragon house?”

  Matrona flushed. “It looks like . . . Never mind. He’s a sorcerer, he has to be. If only you could see the dolls—”

  “I’m not surprised. Makes me wonder about the others.”

  Her spine stiffened. “Others?”

  Jaska didn’t answer.

  “Who else do you not trust?” Who else should I not trust?

  He shrugged and leaned onto one leg, tilting his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

  “Jaska—”

  “Pavel.” The name struck her chest like a hammer. But there was nothing off about Pavel. Matrona knew him well. “Ole—” he continued, but the name cut clean between his teeth. Still, Matrona had heard enough of it.

  “Oleg?” she repeated, skin heating. “Oleg Popov?”

  Jaska ran a hand through his unkempt hair. “I didn’t mean to say it.”

  “What is there not to trust about Oleg?” Her betrothed’s father? Her heart raced.

  “I don’t know. Intuition. I have no good reason to suspect him of anything, Matrona.”

  “But then why—”

  “The horses, I gu
ess.”

  She paused, stared at him. “Horses?”

  “He and Pavel have both asked me to paint white horses on their pottery. Both have white horses in their homes. Dozens of them. I’ve asked why, and neither will answer beyond admitting to a fondness for them. I don’t know. I thought it was strange.”

  “That two men happen to like horses?”

  “White horses, specifically? I’ve never even seen a white horse.”

  She licked her lips, listening to the cellar doors in the silence that fell between them.

  Jaska shook his head. “Like I said, I have no reason.”

  Matrona pursed her lips.

  After a long moment, a soft chuckle sounded in the potter’s throat.

  “What’s funny?”

  He glanced at her. “The excuse. I used to say that to you when you stayed over. You’d ask why I misbehaved, and I’d say I had no reason.”

  The memory surfaced easily in Matrona’s mind, and she felt her chest flush at the reminder of how young Jaska was, and how foolish her own mind could be.

  Jaska looked around the cellar, but didn’t move toward its doors. “What if you went, Matrona?”

  The words struck her like the point of an awl. “Pardon?”

  “If you went to Slava. Opened the . . . third? Doll.”

  Matrona shook her head. “I . . . I can’t. He’ll break me. If only you knew what opening those dolls meant . . .”

  “I have an idea,” he murmured. “How many layers are there?”

  Matrona paused, stretching her mind to remember. He’d said there were five, hadn’t he?

  She didn’t speak the number, but Jaska continued, “What can he do that’s worse than what he’s already done?”

  “I can think of a few things.” She was being too easy with her tongue. Her mother would have shared hard words for the comment, but Jaska was unruffled.

  “He’ll hurt you?”

  Matrona pondered. “I . . . I don’t think Slava would physically harm me.” Such a thing was unheard of, outside of parental discipline. Would the tradesman dare do anything that would leave a mark? Something Matrona could use to accuse him? Or would his attacks be solely supernatural?