“A baby boy.” Matrona’s own eyes watered.
“How did you . . . ?”
“He just appeared?” Matrona pressed.
Sacha nodded.
Her knees felt thin as dried reeds. Thank the heavens above, Matrona thought, pulling in a shuddering breath. Roksana’s baby, alive.
Roksana.
“I’m so sorry”—Sacha looked from Matrona to others trying to build another fire—“but I need to—”
“No, go. See them taken care of. I’ll . . . introduce you to our parents, once everyone is settled.”
Sacha mouthed the word parents and nodded, hesitant to pull away, but duty called, as it always did.
Matrona watched the woman walk away and forced her legs to move. Roksana. Where was Roksana?
“Tumble down into the mud,” a familiar ramble sounded from the second fire. Matrona followed the sound and spotted Olia sitting on a fallen log near the flames, Galina and Kostya beside her. Ash speckled her white hair. “Too bright, too hot. Too cold, too dead.”
Matrona’s heart sank into her stomach, and she hugged herself tighter. The madness was truly permanent, then. If Olia hadn’t been cured, Roksana wouldn’t be, either. The truth of it panged sharply in her chest, and Matrona closed her eyes for a long moment, pocketing the sorrow for another time. She could not mourn her friend again, not now. Not when there was so much confusion in the village, and so many questions awaiting answers.
She continued her search and found Roksana inside Sacha’s home, head resting on her mother’s lap. Pavel and Luka had joined a small party scouring the village and examining the houses, most of which remained empty. Apparently the small town of Siniy Kamen was rumored to be haunted, for nearly all its inhabitants had been swallowed up in the night, never to be seen again . . . until now. It was no wonder the homes had stayed vacant, even after twenty years. Few would brave superstition, even if it meant free quarters.
“It’s gone,” a boy said as Sacha’s adoptive mother handed Matrona a shawl—what seemed to be the last of the family’s supplies. “The secret house. It’s really gone!”
Matrona’s gaze bounced between the boy and the woman. “The secret house?”
The woman worried her lip.
“Please,” Matrona pressed. “Superstition won’t frighten me.”
The woman drew in a deep breath through her nose. “It was here when we first arrived. We were not ones to trouble a town of ghosts, but our home had been given to the soldiers, and we were desperate—”
“The yellow house, with the blue tiles,” said the boy, hopping from foot to foot either in excitement or to stave off the cold. “It was here, the grandest house in the whole place, but it was locked up.”
The woman nodded. “Strangest thing, like a lord’s house amid the rabble. But the doors and windows wouldn’t budge. The glass panes wouldn’t so much as crack under our blows, and the kites . . .”
“Kites?” Matrona glanced back over the village, toward the trees.
“Like sentinels, they were,” she continued. “Nasty birds. Sometimes you couldn’t see them, but try too hard to get into that house—that empty house—and they’d fly for you with their talons outstretched. So we left the house alone. For twenty years we left it alone. Then it caught fire, and you and yours appeared.”
“It’s gone,” the boy repeated, sticking his fingers in his armpits. “All of it. Just a pile of ash now.”
Matrona nodded slowly. “Thank you. For everything.” She gestured to the shawl. “We’ll repay you in any way we can.”
Matrona picked her way through the village lit by morning sun, trying to find something familiar from her dim childhood memories. All of it, however, was strange and surreal. The sky, the cold; even the trees did not grow as they had in the wood around the village, and Matrona could not recall these skeletal monsters from her childhood.
“You did this?”
Matrona looked up to see Feodor walking toward her. His father and mother lingered farther up the road, talking, and gesturing to one of the abandoned izbas.
Matrona stared at him until her eyes burned, but no, the doll-sight had truly left her. How pitiful that she could not use the one gift Slava had given her on the man she’d once wished to know the most about. As to his question, she merely nodded. “Me, Jaska, Pavel.”
Feodor stopped a pace and a half in front of her, his shirt pulled closely to him. “They say you burned down Slava’s house.”
She nodded. “Do you remember—”
“A little.” He glanced to the side. He would have been ten years old at the time of Slava’s spell. “And my father will not be quiet, speaking of Russia and the revolution and everything that might have happened in our absence.”
That hadn’t yet occurred to Matrona. A lot could happen in twenty years. Was Russia still the way Slava remembered it? The way she didn’t? The snows of her memories and the flashing storms were gone, save for traces along the paths. Puddles lay in depressions in the road and in patches where the izbas’ roofs sank in, their still surfaces dusted with ash. The world was warming. Changing?
“Did you not consider the rest of us?”
The question pulled Matrona from her thoughts.
Feodor frowned. “Look around you, Matrona. How the people shiver. At the hard ground, and these . . . things.” He gestured to a squat izba, not nearly as fine as the homes Slava had crafted for them. “Why would you do this? Bring us here?”
Matrona licked her lips, but it only made them colder. “It was all or none.”
“And you chose for us.”
The declaration stabbed knife sharp. Her own words to Slava echoed in her ears: “Why . . . if this life is so much better . . . did you not give us the choice?”
But she wasn’t like him. She hadn’t done wrong, merely undone wrong. This was the real world; the other world, the one he had created, was no more than a mirage.
“You were incapacitated.” Hardness leaked into Matrona’s voice, and she drew away from him. “Or did you not also hear about the dolls? You were a doll, Feodor. Wooden and painted and lifeless.”
“We had a pleasant life,” he continued, as though her words had dropped before reaching him. “Easy crops, perpetual summer.” Looking down into her eyes, he sighed. “I don’t know how we’re going to mend this.”
Matrona shook her head. “There’s nothing to mend. Not between us.”
Feodor looked at her, expressionless save for the slight downturn of his lips.
“We have a village to assemble,” she continued. “Fires to build, homes to repair. Memories to settle. There will be no wedding, Feodor.”
He merely nodded. Relief flowed from her core, and yet sorrow tinged it, for Matrona knew Feodor had never truly cared for her, even by the smallest measure. How easily she could have assigned her life to him. The prospect left her colder than the ice lining the road.
Feodor turned up the way, for his family, and she was glad to see the back of him.
Matrona let out a long breath and cut through the yard of another building—house or shop, she couldn’t quite tell. A vine of sorts, brown and dead from the winter, climbed up two sides of it. She touched it, and an old, stale leaf crumbled beneath her fingers.
She walked, wondering at Feodor’s words. How many more would share his sentiment? Not Pavel, not Oleg. Not Jaska or her parents. Hopefully most of the older men and women would remember their homes and recognize they’d been freed from captivity. There was no returning now.
Slava Barinov’s voice chuckled in her imagination. She dug her nails into her palms and hushed it.
Her toe kicked something in the road, and she paused. Its smoothness and colors contrasted against the heap of ash nesting it. Painted eyes looked up at her, squinting and smiling.
Crouching, Matrona picked up the Japanese Fukuruma doll and turned it in her hands. Nothing else had survived from the doll world, so why had this?
She ran her hands over the doll,
which was a little larger than the ones Slava had crafted. Even if Matrona had not seen his memories of Russia, she would have known this figure had another creator. The hand was not Slava’s—it was simple, with fine, black strokes. The large face sat low on the body. It had large eyebrows and a rounded nose.
This was the doll that had started it all, whispering of magic and possibilities to the tsar’s mysticist.
Something shifted within its body.
Pressing her thumbs to the seam, Matrona split open the halves. But instead of a smaller version of the Fukuruma doll, she found two other dolls. Fourth dolls, judging by the size. One bore the face of a kite; the other of an old man. She recognized the second as Slava, if the years had been harder on him.
Her breath tickled her lips. Cradling the Fukuruma doll against her elbow, Matrona took the brown doll and ran her fingers over the detail in its feathers. The wood squeaked when she opened it. Emptiness greeted her.
A cry pierced the air and startled her, nearly causing her to drop the dolls. Looking up, Matrona saw a kite soar above the village. Sun glinted off a copper band around its leg as it flew toward the wood.
“Pamyat?” she whispered, and looked down at the doll in her hands. He had been of this world, and preserved? Then . . .
She placed Pamyat’s doll halves back into the Fukuruma and pulled out the doll painted to look like Slava. She didn’t understand. Slava’s doll had been his house. So why did a vessel with his likeness exist here?
The words of Pavel rang ever true in her memory. “Do you really think that whoreson would build himself a prison without a way out?”
Her eyes met the blue painted ones of Slava. The irises weren’t as neat as the other dolls’. The clothing was oversimple, as though the painting had been done in haste. A new construct? Had Slava created this while Matrona and the others hid in the Nazad?
She eyed the seam splitting the stomach of the doll.
“Matrona.”
She turned to see Jaska walking toward her, a borrowed hat pressed over his hair. She searched his face for traces of regret, but his eyes were warm, and that singular dimple curved into his cheek ever so slightly.
His gaze fell onto the dolls, and his brow furrowed. “What is that?”
Matrona set the tradesman’s doll back into its Fukuruma hiding place. She thought of Feodor. “It is a decision that isn’t mine to make.”
She had already mimicked her mentor and changed the fate of her comrades. The village would choose what to do with Slava’s last attempt at immortality. She pressed the Fukuruma halves back together.
Jaska’s eyes refocused on her, framed with lines of confusion.
“I will explain later,” Matrona promised, “but where all can hear.”
He nodded slowly. “Now is the time, then. A town meeting.” He gestured back toward Sacha’s home. “To figure out where to start, I guess. And to learn what we’ve missed.”
He extended his hand toward her.
Matrona tucked the doll beneath her blanket. She reached for Jaska’s hand, glancing back to where she had seen the kite.
The Fukuruma doll shuddered from within.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Another book done! This one barreled down the pipeline almost out of nowhere, but I’m happy with how it turned out. Many thanks to my husband and kids, who put up with their wife/mother tucking away to punch out words. You all are so supportive (even if the little ones don’t realize they’re being supportive, yet).
A big thank-you, as always, to Marlene Stringer, Jason Kirk, and Angela Polidoro, who helped make this book what it is, from idea to print. Together we’re an unstoppable team.
Thank you to my friends who read this book and helped me get it into shape: L. T. Elliot, Laura Christensen, Caitlyn Hair, Rebecca Blevins, and Kimberly VanderHorst. You guys are dedicated and sharp, and I would flounder without you.
Thank you to Bill Giles, Chris Baxter, and Wendy Nikel, who helped me get religious facts and Russian names correct. Thank you also to Katie Purdie, who shared her research with me.
I’d like to tip my hat to the LDStorymakers conference because I came up with the idea of enchanted Matryoshka dolls while putting together a workshop for you. You’re the best.
My gratitude to the cover designer, editors, and layout folks who made this book pretty and readable.
And keeping with tradition, thank you so much to my Heavenly Father, who still somehow finds it amusing to let me dabble in my fantasy playground. Cheers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2015 Erin Summerhill
Born in Salt Lake City, Charlie N. Holmberg is the author of Followed by Frost; Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet; and The Paper Magician trilogy, which includes The Paper Magician, The Glass Magician, and The Master Magician. A RITA Award finalist, she majored in English and minored in editing at Brigham Young University. Raised a Trekkie alongside three sisters who also have boy names, Charlie plays the piano and ukulele, owns too many pairs of glasses, and hopes to one day adopt a dog. For more on the author and her work, visit www.charlienholmberg.com.
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