The Fifth Doll

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  A quick smile tugged on his lips. “When are you supposed to go to him?”

  Matrona let out a sigh. “He said he’ll send for me, and I won’t escape his anger if I evade him again. He’s giving me time to . . . ponder. I don’t know what to do.” She paused. “Let me help you.”

  Jaska tugged on her braid and kissed her again. Despite the graveness of their situation, despite Feodor, Matrona smiled against his lips.

  Downstairs a door opened.

  Matrona pulled back. “Oh heavens.” In her mind’s eye, Feodor strode through the house, ready to condemn her, to guilt her before she could tell him—

  Jaska listened for a moment before frowning. “It’s my father.”

  “How—”

  “His gait’s uneven.” He sighed. “We don’t have a back door, but I doubt he’s lucid enough to notice you.”

  She nodded, trying to mask the jitters running the length of her arms. “Will you be all right?”

  “Eventually.” An honest answer. “And Slava . . . take the power from him, Matrona.”

  Matrona wasn’t sure what Jaska meant, but the knowledge that Afon was skulking around downstairs urged her to her feet. She crept down the stairs and then quietly closed the attic door behind her.

  Afon was in the kitchen—his head against the ridge of a shelf, his back to her. She hurried by on her tiptoes, and as far as she knew, the drunkard didn’t turn around.

  Matrona kept her head down as she departed the house and headed, off path, into the village. Not out of embarrassment, but because she wanted a moment alone. And if someone had spotted her exiting Jaska’s home, she wasn’t in any mood to see narrowed eyes or hear whispers behind cupped hands. Such a thing would ruin the strange, churning feelings inside her. Yet maybe the fourth doll would prevent such gossip . . .

  She headed toward the Grankins’ potato farm, but stopped at the small cordwainer’s shop, resting her back against its rear wall. She touched her lips, igniting a feathery feeling in her chest.

  All the reasons she shouldn’t want this had gone limp within her—the village gossip, the age difference, even her engagement. In that moment, she truly didn’t care, and nothing in her small world could have restrained the grin pulling on her cheeks. A new warmth flooded her body, lingering in her veins, and she relished it. The sensation was unlike anything she’d felt before—stronger than the relief she’d felt when the agreement between her and Feodor was set, more pleasant than a holiday feast, more poignant than a church sermon, more exhilarating than a wagon of foreign goods from Slava’s cart. Something Matrona had been missing all her life had finally been found, and all the reasons she shouldn’t want it simply didn’t matter anymore.

  Rolling her lips together, she considered Feodor. She needed to speak with him as soon as possible. There would be consequences, of course. Matrona wasn’t sure how dear they would be, or if the opened fourth doll would make the involved parties more agreeable.

  She pushed off the building and continued toward home, but she didn’t get far before her steps slowed.

  Was she really doing this? Tarnishing her family’s reputation by negating a betrothal? The feathers around her heart grew heavy. Kisses weren’t promises, were they? What did she expect, to marry Jaska?

  Did he even want to marry her?

  Her stomach twisted as she recounted the words exchanged in Jaska’s room, trying to interpret them. The spell of the second doll put him under so much stress. Had it affected his behavior toward her? Yet the spells of his first and her fourth dolls had revealed that he returned her affections.

  “It’s time,” a tenor voice sounded beside her, startling her. Matrona turned to see Georgy Grankin, an empty potato sack in his hands. Sweat collared his neck and dust clung to the perspiration on his face. Her blood tingled, and she saw his desperate need to impress his father and a yearning for hard work.

  “Forgive me, I didn’t see you.” Matrona wished the doll-sight away. “Time for what?”

  “She will labor soon. The pains have already begun.”

  Matrona frowned and took a step away from the man. The voice was not Slava’s, but Matrona recognized his cool, patronizing tone. “Must you summon me in such a vulgar way? Come for me yourself.”

  “I would waste time if I sought you out with my own eyes,” Slava said through the farmer’s mouth. “Come now, as promised.”

  Matrona nodded, and Georgy blinked. “Oh, Matrona,” he said, then turned about, taking in his surroundings. “I was just plowing . . .”

  “And thank you for coming out to see me, but my ankle is fine.” She feigned a smile. “I’m clumsy today.”

  Georgy’s brows pulled together, but he nodded before turning back for his farm.

  Matrona took a deep breath. Thank goodness Slava did not look for me earlier. How humiliating it would have been for him to have spoken to her through Jaska.

  The moment Matrona started northward for the tradesman’s house, her palms began to sweat, and any lingering good feelings within her fell as ash to her feet. She tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone dry.

  She had hoped Slava would give her more time. And maybe he would have, had Roksana not begun her labor pains.

  Her gut clenched. The baby was coming. How much of that did Roksana comprehend? How far did the madness extend? While Matrona had spent time at the Maysaks’ house when she was younger, she had never studied Olia. Galina would know more—if, indeed, the madness in the two women continued to take the same pattern—but there would be no time to ask her today.

  Slava stood waiting outside his house, his thick arms folded across his thick chest, looking taller than his grand home. When he saw her, he offered a short nod and retreated into the house. Matrona followed, her steps too light, ghostly. She waited for the doll-sight to come upon her, but it didn’t, not even when she stared hard at the tradesman’s back and tried to beckon it. The maker of the dolls must have made himself immune to her gifted prying.

  Slava moved swifter than she did, and he preceded her into the doll room. When Matrona followed him inside, she saw that the open space before Pamyat’s perch had been filled with another rectangular table, unadorned. Upon it rested carving utensils, wood shavers—several things Matrona had seen in Pavel’s carpentry. Three blocks of linden wood sat on its edge. Beside the table was a lathe, which would hold the wood and spin it when powered by a pedal. This must be how he shaped the dolls. It was not so different from a pottery wheel.

  “The body must come first.” Slava selected the topmost block of wood. He turned it over in his hands, studying the grain, pulling it closer and farther from his eyes. “Once the body is made, the spell can begin to take hold.”

  Matrona pressed her lips together.

  Slava drew his finger across the center of the wood. “It must be linden wood, and the dolls must all be made from the same piece, or they will not fit together. If you don’t make them correctly, you’ll do more harm than good.”

  Is any of this good?

  “The bottom half is always made before the top, to ensure fit. This is as much about craft as it is sorcery.”

  When did we become your artwork?

  “I estimate the Zotov child will be born tonight, perhaps tomorrow if the labor is long. That will give us enough time to carve the wood. Then, if the child doesn’t survive, we can save the doll for the next infant born in the village.”

  Matrona gritted her teeth. He spoke so matter-of-factly, as if the child itself was no more than a doll. No more than the unshaped wood he held in his hands.

  “I will show you how to begin.” Slava placed the piece of wood in the lathe, ensuring with a few pumps of the pedal that it held evenly. “Then you will practice on the other pieces. Pay close attention, for this wood is aged and treated. It is not easy to prepare, and I will not tolerate careless mistakes.”

  Slava selected a sharp-looking tool from the rectangular table. Matrona spoke before he returned to the lathe. “Where would
it go?”

  Her words were hushed. Slava raised his brow. “Hm?”

  “The baby.” Matrona stared at the lathe. “Roksana’s baby. Where would it go without this doll?”

  “Another place.”

  “You want me to become as you are, yet you won’t tell me?” Her voice raised with each word. “Where would the babe go, Slava? Where did Esfir go, when you failed to make a doll for her?”

  His face darkened, the wrinkles deepening. “You’re not prepared to learn that.”

  “A place with snow? With gray skies and marching feet?”

  Slava glowered.

  “Is that it?” Matrona asked, taking one step closer to the table. “Is that where Esfir went? Did you even try to retrieve her, or did she freeze in the night?”

  Slava’s fist hit the table, shaking the tools. A block of linden wood toppled to the floor. “Do not make me compel you to finish this, Matrona!”

  “These are prisons!” she shouted back, the words tearing up her throat. She jutted a finger to the tables of dolls. “You’ve caged us! Why, Slava? If this life is so much better than the alternative, why did you not give us the choice? Olia, Esfir, Roksana . . . they wouldn’t have suffered if you didn’t intervene. Don’t you see what you’re doing?”

  Slava gripped the lathe with one hand, the linden block with another. Pamyat screeched behind him. “You think yourself so righteous? I will not make the doll for you. If you will not work, Roksana’s child will perish. Is that what you want? You will save the babe, or it will vanish just as your sister did.”

  Tears stung Matrona’s eyes. She shook her head. “What was it you said?” Words cracked against her tongue. “You saved us. You saved us. Yet now you threaten me with the death of an innocent. You threaten me by manipulating the people in the village to be your puppets.”

  Shadows spread over Slava’s features, and he stared at her with red-veined eyes. He gripped the worktable and shoved it aside, sending a sliver of cold fear up Matrona’s spine. She backed away. He advanced.

  “You still do not see it,” he seethed. “What I have given you. What your pathetic life would be like without my intervention. You do not understand starvation. You do not understand death, only the idea of it from passages in your damnable Book. You cannot fathom pain, or war, or suffering. Because I have spared you. I am your savior, Matrona. I have saved all of you.”

  Matrona’s back hit the door. She swallowed. “I never asked to be saved.”

  Slava threw the linden block across the room. It clapped against the wall. Pamyat hissed and flapped his wings.

  “You want to see it for yourself?” he spat. “I will show you your misery, and you will wallow in it when the blood of that baby is on your hands!”

  “My hands are clean!” Matrona shouted, clutching them to her chest. A tear rolled down her cheek. “And I will be free, Slava! I will not be manipulated any longer. Do your worst, but the child’s fate will be on your head, not mine!”

  Slava’s arm struck out like a serpent, his fingers fangs to ensnare her. Matrona stumbled back, out the door, narrowly missing his grip. Her shoulder struck the far wall of the hallway, and the burst of pain jolted her into action. She raced for the stairs, grabbing the skirt of her sarafan as she nearly tripped over it. Slava’s shadow filled the space behind her, his footsteps thundering over the carpet. A whimper escaped Matrona’s throat as she bounded into the kitchen.

  Slava grabbed her elbow, but Matrona spun from his grasp before he could hold her. His body, a wall between the kitchen and the front room, blocked the exit.

  “We don’t have a back door,” Jaska’s voice whispered, “but I doubt he’s lucid enough to notice you.”

  Slava had a back door.

  Spinning on her heel, Matrona sprinted for the door, moving faster than she ever had, straining every muscle in her body.

  “No!” Slava shouted after her.

  Her fingers reached for the handle.

  “Stop!” he bellowed, chasing her.

  Matrona grabbed the handle, but the hinges stuck as though rusted in place. Crying out, she shoved her weight into the door, bruising her shoulder down to the bone.

  The door opened on screeching hinges. Matrona scrambled toward the wood, and knew.

  Chapter 16

  Slava hovered over the five-legged console just off center in his small but well-furnished room, turning over the pieces of the figurine he’d acquired on a trip to Japan some years ago. Its wood was yellowed with sap and painted with the face of an old man with a long forehead. The woman who had sold it to him called it Fukuruma. Seven dolls in all, a number for good luck. Slava had an inkling that the craftswoman had suspected the truth—he hadn’t bought the doll merely as a souvenir. He had seen the magic within it, the potential.

  He had almost unlocked it.

  Putting the Japanese doll down, he picked up his imitation, made of linden wood. It had to be a soft wood, and the others hadn’t sparked in his hands as they ought to have. They had either cracked when he tried to carve them or were simply null once formed, useless. But this doll was on the cusp. He had almost finished painting it, imitating the limbless appearance of the Japanese doll, but adorning the character—this one a woman—in Russian garb: a gold kokoshnik and a maroon sarafan. Not just any woman, but Her Imperial Majesty’s handmaid. The magic sparked when the doll mimicked a real person. It made Slava wonder who the old man depicted in the Japanese doll was, if he still lived.

  He turned both dolls over, measuring them, nodding to himself. These would hold spells nicely, but he had to know the dolls’ utmost potential before presenting them to—

  A firm knock sounded on his door, four even beats.

  Slava straightened and rubbed his fingers into his neck and across his beard. There were a few gray hairs in it now. How long before he turned into an old man?

  “Come in,” he called.

  The narrow door to his chamber opened to reveal a guard in navy uniform with a red breast and gold buttons. The guard nodded once before saying, “His Imperial Majesty requests your presence in his study.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “I will come,” Slava said, and the guard departed, leaving the door open. They always did that. With a muted sigh, Slava collected the dolls and stashed them in a mahogany chest of drawers near the window. Straightening his clothes and smoothing his beard, he made the trek through the palace to Tsar Nicholas II’s study.

  Light poured in through the windows lining the corridors of Alexander Palace, reflected by the newly fallen snow that encased everything outside—the grounds, the fence posts, the trees. The calendar promised winter would end soon, but recent snowfalls had been heavy and unyielding. While beautiful to behold, the relentless chill would only drive more peasants to the palace gates. Winter made even the best people desperate.

  Slava reached the study, which had a single guard posted outside its door. They exchanged no words, but the guard knocked softly on the door before opening it and announcing, “The mysticist, Slava Barinov.” He stood back and let Slava pass.

  The study was not a terribly large room, in part because Nicholas had packed it with so much. The tsar sat behind a desk lined with picture frames, the most recent displaying his new wife. The wall beside him was packed with bookshelves, atop which sat numerous clocks telling him the times of cities across Russia and Europe. Above those hung yet more frames, some with photos, some with art.

  Soft sofas and chairs crowded around the desk. Slava saw Zhakar Kharzin, the other mysticist in Nicholas’s employ. He was close in age to Slava, but had been working for the royal family for far less time. As such, he fancied himself Slava’s rival and had become a thorn in Slava’s boot. Closer to the door sat the recently appointed minister of defense and the governor of St. Petersburg. The latter shifted uneasily in his chair, his eyes shooting back and forth between Kharzin and Slava. It was a familiar reaction—many members of the orthodoxy considered mysti
cs to be devil workers.

  Despite the announcement, the conversation within went on uninterrupted. Slava took the seat closest to the door, which had the added benefit of being farthest from Kharzin.

  “Can we borrow more from France?” Nicholas asked, tapping a pen against a piece of parchment on his desk, leaving an array of ink splats in the paper’s corner. He was anxious.

  “Do you have more soldiers to promise them?” the minister of defense asked. “That is the only way.”

  “What is the point of acquiring money to pay soldiers if I’m sending them to France?”

  The minister knit his fingers together and set them under his chin. “They’ll only demand them should war break out. Germany seems relatively peaceful.”

  “For now.”

  “It is easy to promise soldiers that won’t be used,” the minister pressed.

  Nicholas ran the nail of his thumb over his lips. “France aside, I can’t hire more soldiers to tame these revolts if I can’t pay them.”

  “You can,” Kharzin interjected. “They will follow your orders.”

  Slava snorted, earning him the eyes of all four men.

  Kharzin growled. “What entertains you, Barinov? Do you scoff at the power of His Imperial Majesty?”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Slava said. “It won’t take long for unpaid and unfed soldiers to join the hordes of peasants. And they’ll be armed.”

  Nicholas nodded. “My sentiments exactly.” He sighed. “Letov?”

  The governor said, “We’ve isolated two of the revolutionaries inciting these . . . incidents. Pavel Zotov and Oleg Popov. Both from Siniy Kamen.”

  “You know their locations?”

  “I believe so. We’ve discovered their use of the symbol of the white horse, hailing to the Great Martyr Saint George, which has helped us single them out. They travel frequently, gathering more pitchforks for their riots, driving the ungrateful through the snow to attack good officers.”

  “Majesty,” said Kharzin, “perhaps we do not need to throw more soldiers at these peasant men. Allow me to venture out and take care of them my way. We have names. And, as the saying goes, once the head of the chicken is cut off . . .”