This doll was small enough to fit inside a fourth doll . . .
She thought of the quietness that plagued her from Slava’s home to hers. The empty children’s glade, the bare path.
Was this . . . her mother? But how?
Shuddering, Matrona pocketed the doll and retraced her steps through the izba, slower this time, searching low instead of high. She found what she was looking for just outside the barn in the cow pasture—another small doll painted to look like her father. It was the same size as the other, and with no seam.
Her chest squeezed in on itself as she stared at the likeness of her father. Were they all like this?
Shivers traced circles along her back and shoulders as she added the second doll to her pocket. “Roksana,” Matrona whispered, and she ran from the cow pasture, not even bothering to close the gate after her. The skirt of her sarafan billowed as she pushed herself up the path from her home. Her lungs blazed with fire by the time she arrived.
A low moan within the Zotov izba answered her.
“Roksana!” Matrona called, throwing open the front door. The room before her looked empty, as did the kitchen, the hallway. But Roksana lay in her bedroom, blankets pulled halfway up her round stomach. Her black hair, wavy from its braids, scattered loosely over her shoulders and pillow. She opened her eyes, looked at Matrona, then gritted her teeth as a contraction rippled up her belly.
Matrona’s doll-sight flickered to life, but the only emotion she sensed in her friend was confusion.
On the floor, at the foot of the bed, lay two dolls: one painted to look like Alena and the other depicting the midwife, both younger versions of themselves. Matrona scooped them up. She bit her lip to keep it from quivering.
“Roksana.” She stowed the two women in her pocket and hurried to her friend’s bedside, where she took up Roksana’s hand. “Are you all right?”
Roksana’s head rolled to the side, and her lips formed the words of that strange lullaby. The madness still had its hold on her.
Matrona felt the weight of the midwife’s doll in her pocket. If the midwife was gone, and Roksana’s mother . . . who would help Roksana birth this baby? Matrona had only witnessed the birthing of calves on a few occasions. Her knowledge ended there.
“Lord help us,” she breathed, and moved to the foot of the bed, where the midwife’s bag of supplies rested, along with a bowl of lukewarm water and several towels. Matrona sorted through the bag, her fingers trembling.
Roksana’s breath hitched. She wasn’t terribly close to delivery—the contractions were too far apart.
Matrona stilled, watching her friend’s chest rise and fall. Roksana and Matrona had both opened their dolls—that had to be why they were still whole, still real. The others had become the literal parts of Slava’s curse.
Matrona perked. “Jaska,” she whispered. Would he be whole, too? Would he be able to help?
Checking under Roksana’s blanket to ensure she wasn’t bleeding, Matrona whispered, “I’ll be back. Breathe deeply. I’ll be right back.”
Roksana whimpered, but as Matrona raced out of the house, she heard her friend humming the haunting strains of her Russian lullaby.
Matrona ran across the village, again cutting through the potato farm. She found Georgy’s doll in the soil behind the plow; Zhanna’s in the grass beneath her clothesline. Other villagers scattered the path or the porches outside their homes. Despite her rush, Matrona could not bring herself to leave them alone. She scooped up each one she saw, until they knocked together in her pockets with her every step.
Her legs ached by the time she reached the pottery, but Matrona hurried to the Maysak house and threw open the door. She ran to the stairs in the back, climbed up to the attic.
“Jaska?” she called, but the room was empty. Huffing, muscles tingling, she approached the bed against the left wall and peeled back the covers.
Her heart fell into her stomach when she saw his doll there.
“Oh, Jaska,” she whispered, picking the small likeness off the mattress. He hadn’t been spared.
“It’s all gone bad,” mumbled a voice downstairs. “The whole of it. We’ll starve!”
Matrona whipped around, her lips forming the name, Olia. She rushed down the stairs just in time to see the old woman walking the short hallway to the other bedrooms, pressing one hand against the wall for balance. Her eyes found Matrona, then turned away, disinterested. Matrona locked the mad woman in her gaze until the doll-sight came to life, but she sensed only what she had felt with Roksana—deep-rooted confusion.
“All gone bad,” Olia continued as she stepped into the kitchen, throwing a hand into the air. “Didn’t salt it, all bad now. Skin your hide.”
“Olia! I know about Slava,” Matrona tried, but the woman rambled on, opening and closing cupboards as she walked the perimeter of the room. Matrona licked her lips. “I know about Russia.”
Olia paused and turned, looking at Matrona as though seeing her for the first time. For a split second, Matrona thought she saw clarity in the woman’s gaze, but it vanished just as quickly. Olia shook her head. “No sheep is no socks and we’ll lose our toes. No salt, no salt!”
Biting her lip, Matrona rolled Jaska’s doll between her fingers. Olia tripped and cursed, drawing Matrona’s eyes to a doll on the floor. Rushing forward before the woman could kick it away, she grabbed the figurine. Galina.
“At least Slava spared you from this,” Matrona muttered to the aged woman as she tucked Galina into her pocket. Olia ignored her. She’d restarted her circuit of the kitchen, again opening and closing the cupboard doors.
Matrona helped herself to a cup of water before hurrying from the Maysak home for the second time that day. She wished desperately that she had a horse, and that she knew how to ride it. For now, urgency was her only fuel, but it was enough to get her across the village.
Roksana was mostly unchanged when Matrona returned, though her forehead had begun to perspire. After soaking a rag in the pail of water, Matrona wiped Roksana’s face, then built up the fire that had burned down to embers in the brick oven in the kitchen. The sun outside the window marked late afternoon.
Matrona put water over the fire to boil—and subsequently found Luka’s doll near the dining table. Exhausted, she fell into a chair to rest a moment. While her body did, her thoughts did not.
She had to return to Slava.
The muscles in her arms and neck tensed at the idea, but there was no one else save Olia, and she was as mad as ever. Leaning her elbows onto her knees, Matrona cradled her head in her hands. What if Slava refused? What if she’d retaliated against him one too many times?
Roksana’s groan snaked down the hallway. Matrona jumped to her feet and hurried to her friend’s side. A prayer in her heart pleaded that Roksana would not be pained enough to try to leave her bed, for the agony of labor would only worsen. Already the contractions grew closer together, and Roksana’s slender fingers gripped fistfuls of her blanket.
Sorting through the midwife’s things once more, Matrona found chamomile and catnip for pain and tension. She mixed them into a cup and managed to get Roksana to drink most of the medicine—the impending delivery had captured nearly all of Roksana’s focus, which prevented her from rambling, or worse. After checking once more to ensure nothing had gone awry, Matrona left the izba and ran for the sleeping dragon.
She started shouting for Slava before she even reached the portico. “Slava!” she bellowed. “You have your wish! I’ll do whatever you want, just bring them back!” She ran up the steps to the door. Pushed it open. “Slava!”
The front room was empty, as was the kitchen, as was the doll room, where Pamyat greeted her with a hiss. Matrona’s worry quickly shifted into anger, which imbued her body with new strength.
“No more games!” she shouted, coming back up the hallway. “I’ll make your dolls! Keep your secrets! Wash your feet if I have to!”
She reached the entry hall and called up the stairs, loud
enough to crack her voice. “Slava!”
No answer.
Had he left? All his talk about urgency, and he’d simply left everything behind?
Setting her jaw and lifting her skirt, Matrona climbed up the stairs. Only two rooms occupied the upper floor; the first was a large bedroom simply decorated, with a low, wide bed and taupe-colored curtains over a broad window. The other was a sitting room filled with remarkable wonders—shelves that held golden eggs and a bronze inkstand, plait ornaments, plates painted with unfamiliar heraldry, and the Japanese Fukuruma doll from Slava’s memories. The walls boasted embroidered plashchanitsas and paintings, as well as a small flag striped white, blue, and red. On any other day, at any other hour, the treasures would have incited awe. Now she saw only the empty spaces around them.
The tradesman was gone.
Chapter 18
The Fukuruma doll hit the floor.
More of the wonders spilled onto fine rugs as Matrona searched behind and under the treasures for Slava’s doll. She emptied bookshelves and turned over chairs both in the sitting room and in his bedroom, then went downstairs to do the same. She lifted rugs and pillaged cupboards, even received a sharp bite from Pamyat when she searched behind his perch. She physically touched each and every doll Slava owned, ensuring none of them wore his face.
None of them did. Matrona panted, weary. There was no doll.
She went through the room again, this time cleaning up the clutter, then crawled over the floors on hands and knees, searching for a small doll. A center doll without a seam. That eluded her as well. She searched the small stable behind the house, and the yard surrounding it. No sign of the tradesman.
But he’d left his horse, so he couldn’t have gone far. Where could he have hidden? The wood?
Matrona sighed and trudged back into the house. Slava wasn’t the sort of man to hide. He had merely . . . vanished.
Matrona collapsed on the stairs. “Slava, I need you,” she said, too tired to shout. “Roksana needs you. Please.”
No answer.
Matrona spat the few curse words she knew and pulled herself up, then dragged her body back to the Zotov house. She found Roksana in the kitchen, clutching the edge of the table, making a sound between a grunt and a scream as her fingernails dug into the wood. Matrona expected Roksana to resist when she put her arms around her, but the laboring woman leaned into her instead, sobbing, and allowed Matrona to lead her back to the bed.
Roksana climbed onto the mattress on her hands and knees, breathing too fast. She cried out.
“Slow breaths,” Matrona urged, hoping Roksana would understand. She pulled the tie off the end of her own braid and used it to pull back Roksana’s hair. “Try to take deep breaths, or you’ll faint. It won’t be forever.”
Getting Roksana as comfortable as possible, Matrona returned to the kitchen to boil water again—she’d left the stove too long, and the first pot of water had all gone to steam. Then she ate a piece of bread and returned to Roksana’s room, where she arranged towels for the delivery.
Roksana uttered the words of her sad lullaby in the short spaces between contractions.
Matrona sang them with her.
The babe’s cry startled Matrona awake. Her eyes hurt from being pressed into the mattress, her backside from sitting in the wooden chair too long. Folds from Roksana’s blanket had left creases in her forehead.
Roksana had labored all night, but delivered a baby boy in the hours of midmorning. All three of them were exhausted, but because Matrona feared Roksana would not nurse the baby on her own, she stayed alert and nearby.
Roksana stirred groggily as the infant wailed beside her. Matrona woke her friend with a few words and helped bring the babe to her breast. Fatigue, it seemed, helped keep the madness at bay.
That evening, while both mother and son rested, Matrona ventured back to Slava’s house, finding it just as empty as before. She took the path that surrounded the village and walked it, picking up a few more dolls, adding them to the collection she now kept in one of Roksana’s cloth satchels. She visited Olia, who pretended to knit while only tying knots in her yarn, then went to the butchery, where she found Oleg’s doll, and the Popov izba, where she collected Feodor and the rest of his family.
By nightfall, it became evident to Matrona that whatever spell Slava had cast over the village would not resolve itself, and that Slava would not save her from it. She also knew she could not break it alone.
She dumped the satchel’s contents onto the rag rug in the Zotovs’ front room. Familiar, painted faces rolled. She found Jaska’s doll, palmed it, and returned to the tradesman’s home.
Though it felt like weeks, only three days had passed since Matrona had bumped into Slava’s table and opened Jaska’s second doll. Now there was no one to interrupt her as she sought out his likeness on the table of dolls. Even Pamyat saved his hissing. The kite was looking sick, and likely hadn’t been fed since Slava’s abandonment. Did the bird hunt his meals? There was no meat to be had in the house. She’d need to do something—even a creature as grumpy as Pamyat shouldn’t be made to suffer.
Clasping Jaska’s fifth doll in her hands, she popped open his first doll, then his second, then his third. She held the fourth in her hands. The urge to pull it apart made her fingers twitch, but she set it back down. She couldn’t risk losing Jaska to the insanity of Slava’s spells.
She reassembled the doll and turned about slowly, studying the rest. Starting on the far edge of the room, near the kite, she opened the first doll of each one. Pavel, Alena, Luka, Feodor, Oleg, Galina, Afon, Viktor, Kostya, Georgy, Zhanna. Irena, Nastasya, Boris Ishutin. The Grankins, the Demidovs. Every last one until her hands threatened to blister.
Then she moved a dozen of the dolls to the floor, climbed atop the table, and pushed open the solitary window. Pamyat leapt from his perch and flapped wildly for his escape, the copper band about his leg glinting in the sunlight.
Chapter 19
The tip of the chisel stuck into the turning linden wood, leaving a crooked gash. Matrona pulled her foot off the lathe pedal and barely resisted throwing the chisel into the wall beside her. Tears burned her eyes. She hadn’t blinked as she worked.
Dropping the chisel, Matrona grabbed the ruined wood and threw it onto the floor with the rest before squatting down and throwing her arms over her head. She’d tried and tried and tried, but she couldn’t even get the shape of a doll correct, let alone carve out its hollows and bespell them. And how was she to paint the babe’s face? All of Slava’s dolls were adults. Somehow he knew what the young would look like once they aged, and he hadn’t told her how. She hadn’t let him.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Two days since Roksana’s unnamed babe had been born. Slava had warned her about the third day, that without a doll, the infant would vanish just as Esfir had. Yet without the tradesman, Matrona had no way to stop it from happening. Slava had promised Roksana’s baby would pay the price for Matrona’s disobedience, a thought that pounded through her head again and again as she kept trying—and failing—to work the lathe. She had no way to create a functioning doll, and no way to free herself, let alone anyone else, from this bespelled prison.
She rubbed a knuckle into her eye and picked up the chisel. She was so tired. Exhausted from running about the village, from tending Roksana’s child, from trying to create this doll.
She knew she’d never learn the craft that quickly. But if she didn’t try, where did that leave her?
She didn’t even have the pleasure of the villagers’ secrets occupying her thoughts. Whatever spell had turned them into wooden miniatures had also voided the consequences of opening their dolls. Matrona would have loved to know her mother’s secrets, or Feodor’s. If Luka’s deepest thoughts had been spilled, perhaps she would discover just what he had intended to name his son.
Sighing, Matrona trudged out of the doll room and to the nearest closet, taking up another block of wood from Slava’s dwindling su
pply. She had to try again. And again, and again . . .
Matrona failed.
She hated leaving Roksana like this, weeping into her pillow, calling out Luka’s name in fleeting moments of lucidity. Roksana had barely seemed to realize her babe had been born, yet even with her mind gone, she felt the infant’s absence. Three days old and the boy had vanished, just as Matrona’s sister had.
Roksana wouldn’t eat anything, and Matrona couldn’t, for her belly twisted and ached with her failure. She carried the pain with her as she departed the Zotov house for Slava’s abode, Roksana’s wails catching the breeze that followed her.
When she arrived at the room of dolls, she reached into her pocket and withdrew Jaska’s doll.
“Please, please work,” she prayed aloud, and pressed a kiss to the tiny doll’s head. Then, walking around the two doll tables, her feet kicking up wood shavings from the lathe, she found the other pieces of the doll and opened them one by one, until she cracked open the seam of the fourth.
Like hers it was empty inside. Matrona didn’t delay. Holding her breath, she placed the fifth doll inside, then trapped it within, making sure to line up the seams. The fourth doll went into the third, the third into the second, and the second into the first.
The moment the stitches of Jaska’s shirt aligned, the seam melted beneath Matrona’s fingertips, vanishing as though it had never been.
“No, wait!” Matrona cried, grappling at the dolls, trying to pull them apart. Surely she hadn’t just trapped Jaska forever! “I—”
“Matrona?”
Her heart lodged in her throat at the voice. She turned around, and there he stood in the center of the room, rubbing the side of his head as though it ached, wearing the same clothes she’d seen him in before the village had turned into dolls.
Eyes filling with tears, Matrona ran to him and threw her arms around his waist, burying her face into his chest. He smelled like wood and paint.
The Fifth Doll Page 19
