The Fifth Doll

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, returning the embrace. “And where . . .”

  Matrona stepped back, letting Jaska take in his surroundings. His gaze fell on the tables first, then the shelves, his eyes moving with deliberate slowness. At last, he noticed the doll in Matrona’s hands—solid and painted with his face.

  “This is it,” he said. “Slava’s . . . room.”

  She nodded and set the doll beside the others.

  Jaska rubbed his head again. “How did I get here?”

  “I carried you.” She bit her lip. “Let me show you.”

  Deep lines creased Jaska’s forehead, but he allowed Matrona to take his hand and pull him from the room, up the hall, and into the kitchen. There, on Slava’s small table, rested a handful of dolls—Feodor, her parents, Galina. Jaska picked up his sister’s doll and studied it.

  “It doesn’t open.”

  “They’re the center dolls,” she explained. “Jaska, the entire village is like this. Moments ago, you were one of them.”

  His eyes widened. Matrona started from the beginning, detailing her summons to Slava’s house after her . . . visit . . . with Jaska, their argument, the revelations about Slava and Russia that had filled her mind. The dolls, Roksana and Olia, the babe, the vanishing.

  “Enough time passed that I could open the rest of your dolls and assemble them whole.” She paced for a moment before turning to face Jaska. She held out her hand. “Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Outside. The spells started to work once I left the house.”

  He took her hand. She closed her fingers through his and led him out the front door and down the steps, until they stood on grass.

  She studied his face. “Do you remember? The third doll should have triggered memories, like the ones I told you about. Snow, the gray skies? Your family, maybe?”

  Jaska’s brows drew together, and his eyes unfocused for a long moment. Sighing, he shook his head. “I don’t. I’m sorry.”

  Matrona pressed her lips together. Her own memories were faint, whereas the visions she’d gotten from Slava had been sharp and detailed.

  Her mind opened to the reason like a lotus bloom spreading its petals to the dawn. Age. Slava’s visions were so clear because those events had happened when he was an adult. She had been a child, and . . .

  “You were born here,” she whispered.

  Jaska frowned.

  Matrona began pacing again. “That’s what it is. My memories are old. A child’s memories. That’s why I have so few. But Jaska, you must have been born here, in this world.”

  “I’ve been in that house all my life.”

  Matrona nodded. “You don’t remember Russia because you never lived there.” Jaska had been born shortly after Esfir. Slava must have realized the trick with the dolls and infants by that time. “But your mother does. I do. It must have been . . .” She sucked in a deep breath. “Twenty years ago.”

  Twenty years inside the doll world. Twenty years since Russia. Since Slava fled Tsar Nicholas and the other mysticist.

  She went back into the house and sat on one of the kitchen chairs, thinking.

  “Matrona.”

  She looked across the table.

  Jaska stood in the kitchen doorway and offered her a weak smile. “I need to find my mother.”

  She nodded. “She’s still at the izba, last I checked. I should visit Roksana, too. She’s . . . not well.” Chamomile had helped her sleep through some of the grief, but it wouldn’t force food down her throat or calm her broken mind.

  Jaska stood and rested his hands on his hips. “Does Slava have another home? Somewhere in the wood, perhaps?”

  “Not that I know of. The wood is much smaller than we once thought.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “I wonder if my mother knows. She’s surprised me before.” His dark gaze focused on Matrona. “I’ll look, once she’s taken care of. See if I can find him, or any clues.”

  “Or anyone else.” She gestured to the dolls on the table.

  Jaska nodded, but didn’t leave immediately. He lingered, and Matrona’s skin felt tight. The quietness of the house seemed to thicken around her.

  His eyes glanced down to her lips. “I’ll be back. And . . . we need to talk.” He turned to go. Matrona watched him cut across the front room, then listened to his footfalls echo in the short hallway to the door.

  “We need to talk.” She pressed her thumb into a fluttery spot in her stomach. Swallowed. Looking at the dolls on Slava’s table, she reached out and selected Feodor’s. Met its painted stare for a long moment. “Even without him,” she said aloud, thinking of Jaska, “all of this would change. Neither of us will be the people we were.”

  She certainly wasn’t. To think that only weeks ago she had knelt in her parents’ bedroom before her mother’s chest, drawing out a wedding gown with Roksana beside her. That memory was a dream, unreal. Make-believe.

  Where would she be right now had the glint of that silver paintbrush never caught her eye?

  She knew Feodor could not hear her, for Jaska appeared to have no memories from his time in the spell’s thrall. Still, she spoke to Feodor, if only to sort out her own thoughts.

  “I’ve always wanted to be loved. I don’t know if Esfir’s passing closed my parents’ hearts, or if it’s just their way, but affection has always been lacking in my home. I fear it’s lacking in yours as well. I can’t be part of that.” She sighed. “I can’t sit in a bedroom all my own, sharing your name and nothing else. I can’t be your . . . doll.”

  Frowning, she set Feodor’s doll down so that it looked at her, and she studied the fine lines of its face. Her gaze shifted to the other villagers before her. She could open all their second dolls today. Then three days for the thirds, and another three for the fourths. In a week the village would be restored, all cramped into Slava’s house unless she moved the dolls outside.

  Her eyebrows pinched together. Slava never took the dolls outside; she could assume that much. He never so much as rearranged them from their designated spots, except perhaps to dust them or waggle them before Matrona’s nose until she bent to his will. How long had they been inside that room?

  Inside that house?

  A cool tingling ignited between her breasts. She sat straighter, lifting her gaze from the dolls to the front room, following the invisible path Jaska had just taken. She stood and walked it. Pulled open the front door and stepped out onto the portico. Down the few steps.

  She studied the house, its blue-trimmed walls and cornices, its twisting yellow columns and glassy windows.

  Something Jaska had said to her days ago, something unimportant, nagged at her.

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

  She thought of the fifth dolls—the people—sitting in that room down the hall, never moved. Trapped.

  Trapped inside this house.

  Tucking the short, stray strands of black hair behind her ears, Matrona walked around the house, crisp grass crunching softly beneath her shoes. In the backyard, she examined the edge of the wood and the stable. She’d let the horse out to graze a while back, and it had wandered away. She came to the back door and the steps leading up to it.

  None of the dolls’ spells had taken hold until she left Slava’s home. The villagers had turned into dolls the day she ran away from Slava. The moment she left his house . . . through this door. Every other time she’d visited, she’d come and left through the front door.

  A numb heaviness settled on her chest, making it difficult to breathe. She studied the back door. Rubbed her hands together. Reached for the handle and pushed it open.

  Slava Barinov greeted her.

  Chapter 20

  His eyes, dark and shadowed, met hers. A chair fell behind him, and Matrona started to see her father and mother stumbling toward the wall, Feodor standing on the table, and Galina sitting beside him. Matrona had left their dolls on the table. They’
d been restored.

  “What is this?” Feodor asked, his gaze flitting from Slava to Matrona. “Why are we—”

  “Reverto!” Slava barked, and the four shrank before Matrona’s eyes, returning to small wooden dolls in a quarter of a breath’s time. Feodor and Galina fell to the table; her parents rolled across the floor.

  “What have you done?!” Matrona shouted, taking a single step into Slava’s home before stopping. Though it would not be safe to draw too near to the tradesman, she also did not want to linger in the threshold of his house. If any doorway housed dark beings, surely it would be Slava’s.

  Slava growled. “You will have to tell me exactly what you did in the Nazad if they are to be restored, foolish girl.”

  “The what?” Gritting her teeth, she stepped back into the shelter of the doorway, more willing to risk superstition than Slava’s anger. “I know the truth.” She clutched the frame to keep her hands from trembling. “I know what you did.”

  A frown deepened the wrinkles in Slava’s face and made his eyes droop.

  “Your house is your doll. That’s how you separated yourself from us. You put us in our dolls, then put those dolls inside yours.” She glanced at the small dolls on the table, then at the open door before her, and she realized something else. “The spells don’t take hold until we leave the house. This place is neutral ground. It binds everything together, doesn’t it?”

  “So you are not as simple as you appear.”

  “Is that why your house is so elaborate? To be some sort of . . . ultimate doll?” She tilted her head back and looked at the ceiling. It wasn’t built of logs or panels, but was a solid sheet of wood. The pattern in its grain matched that of her fourth doll . . . and that of the sky.

  Slava’s nostrils sucked in a long breath before he spoke. “The spells on this house are far more complex than anything you could hope to understand. These dolls are child’s play in comparison.” He stepped away from the fallen center dolls and closer to Matrona, then pressed a flat hand to one of the walls. “This is not simply a doll. It is a sanctuary. A vessel. A temple.”

  “A temple to yourself.”

  She expected Slava to glare, but he merely straightened and pulled his hand from the wall, strangely calm. “You are not incorrect.”

  Matrona took half a step into the house—she dared not take more, and she watched Slava with the eyes of a kite. “What would you have them do, Slava? Do you plan to restore them to their mindless existence and, once death claims you, have them come here to worship your memory?”

  A chill nipped at her bones. Was Matrona the first to discover these truths, or had someone else done so before her? Had Slava merely . . . reconditioned them all?

  “Death will never truly claim me if the spells are right,” he said. “I will be here to watch over them always. Them, and you.”

  Matrona scoffed. “You think yourself immortal? The tsar didn’t think so.”

  Now Slava did glare. Several seconds passed before he spoke. “If the spells are right. This body will not last; that much is evident. But the mind is something else entirely.”

  “So you intend to live on in this make-believe world in spirit, using our captivity to fuel your immortality?” Matrona asked, hardly believing the words passing between them. “You think yourself a savior, but how is that saving us?” She gestured to the dolls. “How is this a kindness?”

  “I never should have dealt with you. Better to have left you curious than to have pulled you into my plans,” Slava said, more to himself than to her, for his eyes remained fixated on the wall. “You would not have spoken of it, mousy girl that you were. And if you had, who would have believed you?”

  “Jaska.” Her grip on the door handle tightened. “He would have.”

  Slava stood tall, his body like the shadow of a great beast. “Then perhaps he did not forget as easily as I had supposed.”

  Her stomach dropped. Jaska? Like Matrona, had Jaska once discovered something he shouldn’t have, and had his memories replaced?

  She took back her half step, framing herself in the doorway once more. Slava’s calm demeanor melted from him—his eyes widened, and his forehead grew tight.

  “You know the truth, Matrona,” he growled, advancing toward her, his hand reaching forward. “You’ve seen the place we hail from. Surely you recall the harsh winters, the starvation, the war. Boys too young pulled from their homes to fight battle after battle, leaving their mothers and sisters with nothing. And if the hunger didn’t kill you, disease would, festering and—”

  “You were never hungry,” Matrona snapped. “You lived in a palace.”

  “I was not born into luxury!” he spat. He took another step forward. He was almost close enough to touch her. “Look beyond your own nose, you selfish girl! I can sense your thoughts, and they are foolhardy!”

  Matrona swallowed, trying to moisten her tongue. She whispered, “Run back to Russia, Tradesman.”

  Slava’s hand shot out. Matrona released the door handle and pushed herself backward, falling through the doorway. Her backside hit the ground hard, sending a sharp burst of pain up her tailbone. Her lungs sought air as if she had run one of the loops.

  She looked up. The doorway stood empty, without the slightest trace of Slava Barinov.

  Matrona’s blood thrummed beneath her skin. Her heartbeat echoed in her ears.

  “The Nazad.” The backward. That was what Slava had called this place—this backward version of the village, where Matrona’s eyes saw the villagers as they really were: tiny dolls made for an old man’s play. But why did Slava vanish when she entered it?

  The answer lay within herself, Olia, and Roksana. They had all opened their dolls. They had been exposed to the truths of this world. Jaska, too, came into his normal being once Matrona had opened all of his dolls. But Slava . . . Slava had never opened his own doll.

  She stared up at the house, unsure if it held the same layers the other dolls did, but one thing was certain. Matrona had seen Slava’s secrets as soon as she had opened his back door. Perhaps that was his doll’s first layer. Yet Jaska hadn’t known the tradesman’s secrets. Had Jaska been unable to absorb the information in his small wooden form? Was that how Slava protected himself?

  The tradesman ruled over their village, but he had never exposed himself to it. In that sense, this Nazad was his weakness—the one place Matrona could go where he could not follow . . . for now.

  She had to act before the tradesman found an escape.

  Picking herself up, ignoring the dirt on her dress and beneath her fingernails, Matrona ran down the narrow space between the stable and house. Jaska’s home was not too far; she had to tell him what she’d learned, then go back to the house for the—

  A sharp pain split her middle. Matrona gasped and tripped over her own heel, hitting the ground knees first.

  Pressing a hand against her belly, Matrona took a few deep breaths until the stitch subsided. Too much exertion, perhaps. She pushed herself onto her feet—

  The pain hit again, like a knife slicing across her navel. Matrona cried out this time, her shoulder colliding with the house. The agony traveled around her torso, just above her hips and the small of her back, until a ring of fire burned through skin and muscle. Matrona pushed her legs forward, leaning against Slava’s house, but the ring flared up again and again, bringing her to her knees.

  A seam, she realized, and her skin paled with cold. She had handled the dolls often enough to know just where the halves split. It was the exact place that agonized her.

  Somehow Slava was hurting her, using her doll against her in the true village.

  Her vision doubled with the thought, and no amount of blinking or head shaking would make it relent. Was this how it was for her father when she’d twisted his doll?

  Grunting, Matrona crawled forward, but every breath intensified the fire looping her middle. Her doll. She had to get her doll.

  She’d nearly reached the portico when the invisible k
nife sliced her in half. Silent alarms screamed in her head as it dipped down to the grassy ground.

  “Help,” she whispered, throat parched. “Jaska. Jaska!”

  But he was too far away to hear.

  Saint Christopher, get me to my feet, please! she prayed. Grabbing the side of the portico, she hauled herself up, crying out with the strain. She fumbled with the door handle that kept jumping in her vision, and fell into the house, her elbow slamming into the hardwood floor. The floor seemed to swing before her eyes, so she shut them, groaning.

  Slava had never hurt her before, but she had become a threat. She was going to ruin his quaint little paradise.

  Roksana’s face floated to the forefront of her mind. Matrona opened her eyes and pushed herself onto her knees, reaching for a wall to keep from stumbling. She thought of Olia and took a shaky step forward, then another. Esfir, vanished from her cradle, got Matrona into the front room.

  She tasted blood when she bit down on a scream, her torso wrenching as though her legs were twisting one way and her shoulders another. She fell to the floor again, head spinning.

  In the torrent she saw the tiny form of Roksana’s child. Heard the echo of Roksana’s cries.

  Matrona dragged herself through the kitchen and toppled down the short steps into the hallway. Clawed her way to the doll room.

  Sharpness dug into her hips like an axe striking, and Matrona found herself suddenly waking up—her body half in the doll room, a streak of vomit staining the carpet. Though her head weighed as if an anvil, she forced it up, trying to focus on the spinning tables of dolls before her. She searched for the red sarafan. Dolls hit the floor as she struggled to pull herself upright.

  Ribbons of fire sliced through her, dropping her back to the floor. She was underwater, unable to swim, unable to tell up from down. She tried to reach for something to balance her, to steady her, to keep her alert—

  Her hand brushed a smooth rod. She clasped it. Though her vision was a whirling blur of colors, she recognized the chisel.

  As her body began to pull apart, a single thought stuck into Matrona’s mind: if Slava could hurt her with her doll, maybe she could hurt him with his.