The Fifth Doll

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  Feodor glanced up the path. “Are you off to see Roksana?” he asked. “I should recommend you stay away. Madness can only beget madness.”

  The advice chafed at Matrona. She tried to ignore it. “No, my legs just need exercise. And Slava asked to see me. His izba is my destination.” Best to stay with as much truth as possible. Matrona’s head hurt too much to keep up with lies today.

  Feodor raised an eyebrow. “Again?”

  “You’ve been speaking with my parents.” She couldn’t remember discussing Slava with him.

  “I am perpetually speaking with your parents.” He started up the path, and Matrona walked beside him, noticing he didn’t offer her his arm, or reach for her hand. Were Jaska in his place, wouldn’t he have done so?

  He continued, “I spoke with Jaska Maysak yesterday.”

  Matrona kept her eyes forward and prayed away any color that might rise to her face. Feodor didn’t need to use the surname, as there was only one Jaska in the village, just as there was only one Feodor and one Matrona. Yet the addition added a sort of formality—a distance that perhaps, to Feodor, made Jaska seem more a thing than a person. People often spoke of the Maysaks that way.

  “Oh? Another cracked jug?” Matrona winced at the feigned nonchalance. Of course he would expect her to know about Jaska’s . . . revelations.

  Feodor detected it. “Are you really unconcerned? Do you expect me to be?”

  Matrona glanced to him. “Have I given you good reason to be concerned, Feodor? You know where my loyalties lie.” But do I? she wondered—a thought that sent a cold pang through her chest.

  Feodor rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Trouble, the lot of it.”

  They’d moved around the bend, and Matrona could see Slava’s house lurking ahead of them. She realized she’d been clenching her fists and forced them to relax. Scraping together some courage, Matrona asked, “Why do you want to marry me?”

  Feodor dropped his hand. “Pardon? That’s a bold question.”

  “But an important one.” She slowed her steps to buy herself more time. “If I may ask it,” she added.

  A small frown touched Feodor’s mouth. “Because despite the . . . complications . . . we’ve experienced as of late, you are the obvious choice.”

  Matrona looked forward again, focusing on Slava’s house, trying not to let Feodor’s answer burrow too deeply. She heard the underlying meaning: You’re the best choice, given my options. There were only a handful of eligible women Feodor could marry without leaving the village—and, of course, he couldn’t do that because of the loop, and because of the spell that forbade him from noticing it.

  Matrona didn’t know what she had thought he would say. She knew better than to hope for a declaration of love. She half expected him to say, Who else would I offer to? Galina Maysak? but the next words from his mouth were, “Here we are. Take care, Matrona.”

  They’d reached Slava’s house. Matrona, who had spent all day yesterday avoiding the tradesman, found herself eager to get inside, if only to escape Feodor’s obvious indifference.

  “Thank you for the escort.” At least he had been both kind and direct. She offered another nod before slogging up to Slava’s portico. She didn’t look back as she knocked on the door.

  “Come,” Slava’s voice called, and Matrona slipped inside. She heard Pamyat squawk in response to the door shutting, the sound especially loud. She realized why when she stepped into Slava’s front room and saw the bird of prey at its center, wings raised like scythes, talons digging into the leather of a long glove protecting the tradesman’s right arm.

  “Easy,” Slava cooed to the kite, holding up his naked left hand, palm flat and facing the bird’s face. Pamyat opened his mouth to hiss, but no sound came out. Stepping lightly, Slava carried the bird to his perch, which had been moved into the far corner of the room. As soon as the kite was settled, Slava fed the bird some sort of meat from a pouch at his hip. Pamyat gobbled it up without a second thought.

  For a fleeting moment, Matrona wondered if Slava had been training the bird to come after her.

  “You’re late,” Slava remarked, pulling off the glove.

  Matrona lifted her chin, casting aside any lingering thoughts of Feodor. “Did you expect me not to be?”

  “No. I expected this.”

  “You know me so well.”

  “I do.” His reply carried a surety that made Matrona’s chin drop. “I know all of you, like my own children. Come.”

  He moved into the kitchen. Matrona followed with quick steps.

  “You have children, Tradesman?” Matrona asked as they took the short stairs into the carpeted hallway.

  “I do not. Not in the sense you’re thinking, Dairymaid.”

  As Slava opened the door to the doll room, Matrona wondered if he thought of his dolls as children. A caterpillar-like gnawing formed in her stomach as she approached the table once more. Her eyes darted to the Jaska doll near the rightmost edge. Her skin tingled as if a carding brush had traced over it. She eyed Slava, but the man had turned his back on her to retrieve her doll.

  Not enough time. Matrona held her peace, and Slava turned back, handing her the doll. She took it in both hands and pressed her lips together before unscrewing the largest doll.

  “No complaints this time?” Slava asked.

  She set the dual pieces of the first doll on the nearest shelf and opened the second.

  “Good.” Slava nodded. “You’re growing.”

  The third doll, with its black-painted interior.

  “You’ve accepted your fate.”

  The fourth doll, the length of her palm, stared up at her. Don’t hesitate, she thought. Earn more of his confidence.

  She twisted it, the halves squeaking loudly against each other. Pulling them apart, Matrona looked for the fifth and final doll.

  It wasn’t there.

  Holding her breath, Matrona turned the pieces upside down, then peered inside them. Nothing. No doll, no painting, no marks of any kind.

  “I don’t understand.” She lifted her eyes. “You told me there were five.”

  “There are.”

  She turned the pieces about to show Slava their contents. “There are only four. There should be a fifth inside.” One, Matrona presumed, that didn’t open.

  Slava shook his head. “Put them together, separately.”

  “But—”

  “Matrona.” He eyed her, and Matrona fumbled to reinstate the fourth doll, then the third, the second, and the first. She set them next to one another on a free area of the shelf, not far from the unopened dolls of Boris and Rolan Ishutin. Largest to smallest. Four likenesses of her looking forward with soft, knowing smiles.

  Matrona clenched her jaw to keep from shivering.

  Slava stepped up to her, pointing his large forefinger at the largest doll. “One,” he said, and moved down the line. “Two. Three. Four.”

  His hand came down, resting like a sack of beans on Matrona’s shoulder. “Five.”

  Matrona pulled away from his touch. The caterpillar gnawed inside; the card brush dug in its bristles. “I don’t understand.”

  “I think you do.”

  Her eyes took in the dolls, trailing down the line of them. She glanced at Slava. The dolls.

  “I’m the fifth doll?” she whispered. “But it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Not at first.” Slava nodded, turning from her to the full tables. “But it will.”

  A sore throbbing formed in the center of Matrona’s forehead. She stared at the dolls. How could it be? She certainly wouldn’t fit inside any of these creations!

  She touched herself, feeling skin. She was no doll.

  “I will teach you to navigate outside the village soon enough,” Slava continued, his words raising the fine hairs on the back of Matrona’s neck. “But the craft itself is more important for you to learn.”

  Stiff, Matrona looked to him. In his hand he held a smooth block of wood, a little longe
r than Matrona’s forearm. Soft linden wood, by the look of it.

  “You must learn to make the dolls yourself.”

  Matrona swallowed against a drying throat. “Why?” she rasped. “You have all the dolls already.” Except yours. She had scanned the shelves and tables many times, but Slava’s doll, if he had one, was not in this room.

  “To protect them,” he answered. “Roksana Zotov will deliver any day. We must prepare a doll for her child.”

  The throbbing in her head spread to her temples. “But why?” she asked, picking up her fourth doll and turning it over in her hands.

  “To keep it safe. We will carve the doll and prepare its body. Create the enchantment, and finish it once the babe is born. Paint it to match its sex and foreshadow its appearance.”

  “Foreshadow?”

  “We will foresee what the babe will look like as an adult and paint its likeness.”

  Matrona turned, eyeing the dolls on the table. Was that why some dolls looked older, others younger? Had she been painted as an adult when she was but a babe?

  Her gaze settled on the doll that bore a likeness to Irena Kalagin. The painted face was younger than the woman it resembled, but older than the depictions on her, Jaska’s, and Feodor’s dolls. A chilling realization settled into her breast.

  Irena had not been a babe when Slava made her doll.

  When had this sorcery started?

  Slava’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “We will have three days after its birth to complete it.”

  Matrona looked back to the doll in her hands and separated its halves with a crisp pop. “Three days.”

  “Or the child will vanish.”

  Cold enveloped her. Her tongue writhed behind her teeth, and she struggled to find speech. She managed a single name. “Esfir.” Her lost sister, vanished from her cradle just after coming into the world. No trace of her since.

  “You see why it is a crucial skill to learn.”

  A tear beaded in each of Matrona’s eyes. “Why didn’t you make a doll . . . for Esfir?”

  “I did not understand it then. My naïveté is . . . regrettable.”

  “How could you not understand?” she asked, voice gaining strength. “You made dolls for every person in the village! How could you not make one for Esfir?”

  She looked over the tables. She knew the faces of every single doll. How long had Slava been crafting these dolls, and why did he start? Why were there no dolls for the villagers who had lived before her time, grandparents and great-grandparents?

  She looked down at the doll in her hands, staring at its hollow interior. The lines of wood grain within it.

  Just like the imprint she’d seen in the sky, the wood. The pattern—it matched.

  It came together then. The abstractness of it all. The wood grain had always been around her, guarded by the loop. She just couldn’t see it. She was the fifth doll.

  She was inside the pieces she held in her hands.

  Slava had mentioned navigating outside the village. Going wherever he went when he left on his trips and brought back supplies. Beyond the loop. Supposedly Matrona could now follow him.

  But the others could not.

  Trapped. Her mind formed the word as though carving it in a great block of ice. Trapped. All of them, only their bars were patterned in wood grain and bespelled by the man before her. But for how long? How long had they been jailed inside these painted cages, and what lay beyond this village?

  The doll-halves fell from her hands and struck the floor in unison.

  “I can’t do this,” she whispered, shaking her head, backing away from the halves. “I can’t do this.”

  Slava’s face darkened instantly. “You have no choice, Matrona. I have primed and prepared you. You will learn. Or do you want Roksana to lose her child as well as her mind?”

  “Mind.” Three days. Matrona remembered her promise to Jaska. Jaska, who was trapped like the rest of them. Heart thudding in her chest, Matrona glanced at the potter’s doll. Took another step back, letting herself sway on her ankle.

  “Matrona,” Slava growled.

  She looked up at him. “What have you done to us?”

  Then she teetered on her legs, pretending to faint, and fell toward the second table of dolls. Her elbow, then shoulder, slammed into the edge of the table. Its legs held, so she swept her arm out in her descent, knocking over a dozen dolls. Half of them tumbled onto the floor with her, including Jaska’s.

  “You fool girl!” Slava bellowed, rushing forward to steady the table.

  In the commotion Matrona’s hand shot out for Jaska’s dolls. She slid the top half off his first doll as another doll tumbled from the table and struck her hip.

  Clenching the second doll’s hands in her fingers, she pulled on the top until it popped free. She pressed it back in place just as quickly, then returned the top half to its rightful position seconds before Slava’s hand grabbed her upper arm. He hauled her upward, and Matrona tried not to gasp at the force he used.

  Slava did not yell at her; his words hissed from the cracks of his teeth like steam from a kettle. “Your clumsiness could cost us dearly. Once a doll is damaged, there’s no replacing it!”

  “Then perhaps you should find someone else.”

  Slava scoffed and released her. “Too late for that,” he muttered. Matrona tried not to tremble, but failed. She pressed herself into the corner where Pamyat usually perched, watching as Slava picked up the dolls one at a time, inspecting them before returning them to the table, Matrona’s included. To Matrona’s relief, another doll had twisted ever so slightly, and Slava thought nothing of it as he corrected it. Hopefully Jaska’s would pass inspection as well.

  Slava gathered up Jaska second to last and straightened him. Studied him. Matrona bit down on her tongue.

  He placed the doll in its usual spot. Matrona swallowed a sigh.

  “I’m sorry,” she offered as Slava stood, his knees cracking as he did so. He pressed his knuckles into the small of his back, for once letting his age show. Closing her eyes, Matrona tried to sort through the array of thoughts spinning in her aching head. Time. She needed time.

  “Give me time,” she asked, soft and demure, pulling on the cloak of humility she wore with her parents. “A day or two to think. I need . . . to work this through. Then you can teach me how to make the dolls. For Roksana’s baby.”

  Slava glared at her. “You are almost more trouble than you’re worth.”

  “Please.”

  He grumbled deep in his throat. “When I come for you, you will come, without any more of this nonsense.”

  Matrona nodded. “Yes, Slava.”

  “Get out.”

  Matrona hurried past him without hesitation, up the hallway and through the rooms that had become far too familiar to her. Pamyat shrieked as she passed but did not leave his perch. She headed out the door, into the sunshine.

  Nothing changed about her this time, not that she could feel. But she was free now, as free as a trapped woman could be. Tilting her head back, Matrona gazed skyward. The lines of wood grain against the sky were darker and sharper than they had been before. Was this how Slava saw the world?

  Not the world, the village. There was only the village. She would never look at it or its inhabitants the same way again.

  Jaska, she thought, remembering the horrors she’d faced after opening her own second doll. That darkness would be weighing down on him now, and without warning. He was suffering.

  Matrona had to find him, help him, and tell him what she knew.

  Chapter 15

  The village changed before Matrona’s eyes. Or perhaps it was her urgency that colored it differently.

  In her mind’s eye, Matrona saw izbas built of paper, people milling about them like marionettes on strings. Completely unaware of where or what they were, the villagers prattled to each other about pointless things. For if Matrona was the center of her doll, were not these people also the centers of theirs?

&n
bsp; Yet if Matrona had truly escaped Slava’s spell, why did she still see wood grain in the sky?

  Confusion coiled around her heart as a serpent, making it hard to breathe. The Demidovs appeared on the path ahead of her, driving an ox to pull a wagon heavy with a plow. Matrona rushed by them, clapping shoulders with Lenore, who began to shout something after her, but the words fizzled before they finished. Matrona found herself uncaring. Lenore Demidov was just a doll. All of them were.

  What if that was all Matrona had ever been?

  Esfir, she reminded herself, quickening her pace. Esfir never had a doll. She was real, before she vanished. I must be real, too.

  The serpent squeezed.

  Her body was flushed with exertion by the time she reached the pottery, which stood free of customers. Viktor worked near the kiln in the back, and Kostya sat at a pottery wheel, a delicate carving knife clutched in his clay-stained hand.

  “Where is Jaska?” Matrona asked.

  Both brothers looked over. Viktor blinked a few times as though his vision was slow to focus. The memory of Jaska’s unbidden revelation about him made Matrona’s stomach flip.

  Kostya eyed Matrona as well, looking too long, as though he were trying to place how he knew her. His mouth worked, as if preparing to say something unkind, but no words came.

  A strange sensation filled Matrona the longer she studied him, almost like the sensation of falling mixed with the cool mist of rain. Then, all at once, she saw beyond Kostya. Or rather, into him. She saw his insecurities about his family as if they were freckles dotting his skin. She felt his desire for thrill seeking, which often led to late-night excursions, like the time she’d witnessed him out with one of the village girls. She saw his sorrow over the absence of caring, present parents in his life, which simultaneously made her appreciate her own.

  It shook her, seeing all that. The effect was different from when she’d opened Jaska’s doll, from when poor, dear Roksana had opened hers. Those secrets had flooded her mind all at once; these impressions filled in the more she focused on the man, and they eased the moment she looked away.

  More importantly, the secrets weren’t hers.

  “I . . . ,” she started, unsure of herself. Was this a symptom of opening the fourth doll? Some special doll-sight?