Her arms strained, but Matrona churned steadily, pushing past the ache, letting her thoughts settle into the quiet between beats. Never again, she thought with a frown. That was the most likely outcome. She’d never get a chance to study the dolls, not unless she could figure out a way to persuade Slava to display them without revealing her secret. She would have to think on it more.
The butter was stubborn, and by the time it was ready to salt, her back promised soreness in the morning. She stretched out her limbs in the privacy of the barn, then set about milking the cows. By the time she’d finished the evening milking—usually her father’s job—prepared cream for tomorrow’s butter, and set the rest of the milk in barrels, her mother had produced cabbage and potatoes on the table. There was also pork butt, courtesy of Feodor.
As Matrona washed her hands in a pail, her mother asked, “Is your father not with you?”
Matrona shook water from her fingers and wiped them on her skirt as she peered outside. “He wasn’t in the pasture . . .” She hadn’t seen him since that afternoon, she realized.
A knock on the door called their attention. Her mother sniffed. “Now who could that be?”
Slava’s name passed through Matrona’s mind, quickening her pulse. Wringing her hands, she followed her mother back to the front room, only to discover it was not a knock on the door they’d heard, but a knock on the wall beside the brick oven. By her father’s forehead.
“Papa?” Matrona asked, gawking at her father’s body. His hands were pressed against the wall, and he was banging his head repeatedly against it, none too gently.
“Good heavens, Marlen!” her mother exclaimed, rushing up to him. She took his elbow, and Matrona’s father stopped the banging at once, pulling away from the wall, his expression dazed. Matrona hurried to him and pressed a palm to his red forehead, then to the side of his neck. No fever.
“What’s wrong?” Matrona asked.
Her father shook his head, his beard brushing across his chest. “I just . . . I just can’t think my words.”
“What are you rambling about?” her mother asked. “Think your words? You’re sounding like Mad Olia Maysak, you are!”
“Don’t contrary me to that woman!” he shouted with a raised finger, which caused Matrona’s mother to drop her hand from his arm. Matrona’s pulse sped quicker. Her father so seldom raised his voice, and never to his wife.
“Papa, please,” Matrona tried. “You mean, don’t compare you . . . ?”
Her father scratched his ears and shook his head. “Let’s eat. Eat. Let’s eat, and I’ll feel wall again.”
“Well again,” Matrona whispered, and her mother turned to her with lips cinched tight as a barley bag. Sighing, Matrona quieted and led the way to the table, feeling powerless.
Dinner passed in general silence, minus a few grunts from Matrona’s father, who held his fork in a fisted hand almost like a babe would and seemed to have a hard time swallowing. Throughout the meal, Matrona’s mother kept shooting pointed glares at her, silent warnings not to speak. In return, Matrona mouthed, Doctor? but her mother simply shook her head. After her father retired early, leaving them to the dishes, her mother said, “He’ll be fine in the morning.”
He was not.
Chapter 3
Matrona watched her father as villagers came to the house to retrieve milk for their breakfasts. He seemed . . . itchy, the way he twitched and scratched or occasionally rubbed himself against the wall. Because he refused to stay abed, her mother tried to keep him to the back of the house where he wouldn’t be seen. His hands lost their dexterity, leaving him unable to complete the evening milking, which settled the bulk of the work on Matrona. He spoke little, and when he did talk, his words were garbled. At lunch, he refused to eat, instead choosing to stand at the fence on the far edge of the pasture, staring off into the wood like an injured stag that knew a hunter lurked just beyond those trees.
It was then, standing at the back of the house while wringing a cheesecloth, that Matrona thought of it. Slava.
It was an absurd notion, she knew, but the memory of the tradesman’s house nagged at her. Had her father not been well yesterday morning? Had he not spoken to Feodor with perfect intelligence? Feodor had noticed his erratic behavior first, had told Matrona of it as soon as she returned from her uninvited visit to Slava’s blue-and-yellow home. After she’d seen the dolls. After she’d tried to open her father’s.
She worried her lip, straining to remember. She hadn’t opened the doll, but she’d twisted the two pieces before fleeing. Still, what could the wooden simulacrum possibly have to do with her father? Surely Slava Barinov didn’t perform witchcraft. Surely she hadn’t, through his dolls.
And yet it was the only explanation Matrona had. The only thing that had changed around the same time her father had.
She needed to go back.
Matrona stepped inside and washed her hands, scrubbing the scent of old milk from beneath her nails. She heard her mother in the front room, making an exchange with another villager, so she returned to the pasture and slipped through the back gate. It would be impossible to explain—her mother, who always chided her for her imagination, would never believe such a wild story. She barely believed it herself. The chores could wait an hour.
Matrona weaved around another house before turning onto the dirt path that stretched across the village, following it with unsure steps. She passed Pavel Zotov on the way and nodded to him. When the tradesman’s ornate house finally came into view, it no longer reminded her of the slumbering body of a great beast, but a block of unchipped granite, hard and unyielding. Invisible ants began to tickle Matrona’s chest.
A quick glance assured her that the tradesman’s horse and wagon rested near the edge of the wood. Surely he was home. But how to explain herself?
As Matrona took the two brick steps to the porch, she settled on honesty as the best approach. So what if Slava thought poorly of her? She only interacted with him when he wanted some cream or butter, which was not too often.
She lifted her hand to knock on the painted door, but it swung open before her knuckles could connect.
Slava Barinov stood before her.
He wasn’t a tall man, and while age had paled his trimmed beard and stripped the hair from the top of his head, he stood with a straight back and level shoulders. Crinkles edged the corners of his eyes, and long wrinkles drew down the cheeks on either side of his broad-bridged nose. He wore a simple shirt and trousers that contrasted with the vivacity of his house.
“I—” Matrona began.
“I thought it was you.” His blue eyes narrowed ever so slightly while they surveyed her up and down. “Come in.”
He stepped aside. Words tangling in her throat, Matrona passed him into the short hallway, looking around the home. Slava shut the door, and Matrona managed to say, “Thought it was me, Slava Nikolayevich?” She hoped the formal address would ease the tension.
The old man turned toward her, a gray eyebrow raised. “And how do you know my father’s name was Nikolay?”
Matrona swallowed. “I heard Feodor Popov refer to you as such.”
Slava hummed deep in his throat and nodded once before passing by her and moving into the front room. “So you did. But you do not use the patronymic with any others in the village, do you? So you must not use it with me. Understood?”
Matrona nodded.
He gestured for her to follow him, and she did so silently, her feet light and her lips pressed shut. Already she knew where Slava was leading her. She followed him past the chest of drawers, through the kitchen, and down the small hallway to the room filled with dolls. The red kite rested in the far corner, on a small wooden perch Matrona hadn’t noticed before. Turning his head, he watched her with a single yellowed eye.
She hesitated in the doorway, but Slava beckoned to her. “Come. Pamyat won’t harm you.”
Pamyat, she wondered, crossing the threshold. Memory? What a peculiar name for a bird.
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br /> The dolls were all there, filling up the two tables in the center of the room, and the short shelves nailed into the walls. They were exactly as she remembered them, wooden pear-shaped dolls, intricately painted to look like the villagers, all with fine seams around their middles. Matrona glanced over them, looking for more familiar faces. There, near the Jaska doll, was Olia Maysak. And behind them rested the entire Letov family.
Slava stepped toward the smaller table on the left and picked up a doll with a blue rubashka and a long beard, the top half of the long shirt mismatched with the bottom half. Her father’s doll.
“Sir—” Matrona began.
“Slava. Address me as you would the others,” he reminded her. “I thought that only someone in Marlen Vitsin’s brood would take interest in his doll, and he has little enough family. Though your mother is a snoop, I thought it would be you. Hoped it would be.”
He looked over the twisted doll with a strange sort of fondness, holding it across both palms as if testing the weight of it.
Matrona eyed him, waiting for him to say more. The seconds weighed heavy on her shoulders. “Slava, Tradesman,” she interrupted, “you hoped I would come into your house unannounced and play with your dolls?”
Slava chuckled. “Play with them, did you?”
“I—I . . . didn’t have a better word.” She flushed.
Pamyat shifted on his perch.
Slava nodded, and Matrona watched his hands on her father’s doll. “I hoped it would be you and not your mother, for you are still young, Matrona. Your mother is not, and as you can see, neither am I.
“These dolls need a caretaker,” he continued, gesturing to the rest of the room. “I made each one, and I’ve looked after them all. Yours included.”
He pointed to a doll on the edge of the small table to the left, and Matrona gaped at the sight of her own face, her gray eyes carefully pricked with lashes, her long braid of black hair slung over her left shoulder, just as it lay now. The doll wore a red sarafan similar to the one she’d donned yesterday, with a matching kokoshnik. Matrona stepped toward it, but hesitated, eyeing Slava. What did it mean?
“I’m sure we can arrange to keep them safe,” she tried.
But Slava shook his head and let out a long breath, weariness settling onto him like an iron cloak. In the corner, Pamyat ruffled his feathers. “You do not understand.”
Matrona did not reply.
Slava turned her father’s doll over in his hands and scanned his similar creations. “They are connected, these dolls and the people in this village. You know that, don’t you, Matrona? That is why you came back.”
Matrona’s mouth went dry. “I—I came to return a paintbrush—”
“No one else in the village has seen this room . . . at least none of whom I’m aware,” he continued. “If someone else has come, they did a much better job of covering their tracks.” His eyes twinkled, but his voice was a little too cool to be jesting. He held up the doll in his hands so Matrona could again see how its halves didn’t align. It felt as if the floor of the room had tilted, making Slava’s end higher than hers, as if his body grew until it pressed against the walls and ceiling, while hers shrank into the grooves of the floorboards.
Hugging herself to banish a sudden chill in her chest, Matrona retreated two steps. “My father has been acting strangely. Unwell. Not at all himself. It began after I . . . looked at your dolls.”
“Hmm,” Slava grumbled in agreement. “Because the doll is connected to him, and you have altered it. But perhaps it’s a blessing that you’ve seen this place. I need a replacement, and choosing one has proved . . . difficult.” He rubbed his fingers over his beard. “This makes it easier.” He chuckled. “I wouldn’t have thought you bold enough to enter . . . but it’s my fault for not locking the door.”
His words tickled in Matrona’s ears. “Lock? What’s a lock?”
Pamyat clicked deep in his throat.
“Never mind that.” Slava waved his hand. A simple dismissal—Matrona was so very used to that. “I will not be here forever, no matter what I do. You will care for the dolls in my absence, Matrona. You will watch over them, guard them, and create them.”
The feathers on Pamyat’s neck rose. The kite lowered his head, his marble-round eyes focused on Matrona.
Create? Her thoughts repeated, and she took another step back, eyeing the kite. Her shoulder hit one of the shelves stacked with dolls. “I know nothing of woodworking—”
“It doesn’t matter. I will teach you.”
“Slava, Tradesman,” she tried, sounding out each word carefully, working to not let her voice quake, “I am a simple dairymaid, soon to be married. I cannot take on a new trade—”
“You can, and you will,” he interrupted, blue eyes sharpening. He held up her father’s doll so that the painted eyes looked directly into hers. “You’ve stumbled on something greater than yourself, Matrona. My life’s work. I need you, and you will comply, for I cannot trust you if you don’t.”
Matrona eyed the open door. He was mad. She couldn’t—
Pamyat shrieked, the noise amplified by the close walls. Matrona nearly choked on her own tongue.
“I’ll not set him right,” Slava added, and the words pulled her attention back to his face. Back to the doll he held. Slava grasped the upper and lower halves in his large, calloused hands, but did not twist them one way or another. Instead, he said, “I’ll not set him right, and I’ll see that you don’t, either. He’ll not be well unless he’s straightened out, don’t you see?”
Matrona’s tongue traced the backs of her teeth, seeking moisture, finding none. She nodded. She understood.
Slava smiled. “Good.” Then, with a sharp, squeaking twist, he shifted the halves of the doll. Matrona yelped, but Slava had only righted the halves so that her father’s shirt buttons fell in a single, even row and his sleeves connected flawlessly with his pale-painted hands.
Slava set the doll on the table, then shifted backward to select Matrona’s doll.
“Please don’t,” she whispered.
“Oh, I won’t do anything.” Slava’s tone was so casual, she could hardly believe he’d just threatened her with her father’s well-being, however mystical in nature. “This, you must do. You cannot understand me and my creations without finding your center, Matrona.”
The chill in her chest abated somewhat. “My center?”
He held the doll out to her, and Matrona stared into the glazed face of her miniature.
“You must open your doll.”
Chapter 4
The tips of Matrona’s fingers tingled on the verge of numbness as she took her doll from Slava’s hands. In the moment it seemed heavier than her father’s, yet also too small, too fragile. A caricature of her face looked up at her, unblinking. Two salmon-colored circles highlighted her cheeks. The red kokoshnik, she realized, was one she had worn to fairs and church services as an adolescent and had since disposed of. The painted eyelashes were so fine, Matrona could not comprehend how any hand, especially old Slava’s, could have painted them.
Instantly Matrona thought of her father’s crazed behavior, all due to his doll’s misalignment. If such a small thing could cause a grown man to stutter and speak nonsense and bang his head against walls, what could opening this doll do to her?
Again she glanced toward the door, keeping her eyes down in hopes that Slava would not notice. She could outrun him, couldn’t she? Take the doll and flee into the wood? She did not know the way to any other villages or towns, but surely she’d find one eventually . . .
She eyed the kite, wondering how well trained he was. Did Slava use him to hunt?
But the bird was hardly her biggest worry. She remembered how her father’s doll had looked cradled in Slava’s hands, its body little more than an eggshell. She couldn’t run off with both, not now. And what of her mother’s doll? Roksana’s? Feodor’s?
“Please,” she begged, daring to look up at Slava’s face. While not un
kind, it was tired, calculating. A face she didn’t feel confident trusting. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand why . . .”
Slava nodded, the faintest smile touching his lips. He selected a doll seemingly at random—Jaska Maysak’s doll. Matrona stared at it, drawn to its dark eyes. It was well dressed, not in a potter’s apron, but in simple slacks and a gray shirt. The paint used for his face and hands was a smidge darker than that of the surrounding dolls, and several shades darker than Matrona’s own. Somehow Slava had even mastered the unkemptness of the potter’s hair. Oddly, the image of Jaska looked older than he was at present. When had Slava painted this likeness?
“Do you know how these work?” he asked, giving Jaska’s doll a small shake. Something rattled within.
Matrona shook her head.
“They come from a distant island. To get there, you have to travel far over land and across a sliver of sea,” Slava explained. “A narrow isle steeped in tradition and war, full of a studious and honor-bound people. I went there long ago, on one of my journeys, and found something similar to this in a small hut.” He turned Jaska over, his fingers crossing the potter’s clothes like spider legs. Matrona quelled the sudden desire to snatch the doll away. “I could sense the dolls’ magical properties immediately. It requires expert craftsmanship to create them, and I learned all I could.
“You see, inside every doll is another doll,” he said, and Matrona felt the skin between her eyebrows crinkle. “And inside that doll is another doll, and another. However many the maker wishes to create. Your doll, Matrona, is actually five dolls, each hollowed out to fit the next. They all are,” he added, gesturing to the others.
Matrona glanced down at her miniature and rubbed the pad of her thumb along the seam. She gave it a gentle shake. Whatever lay nestled inside was large and had little room for movement. Another doll? Did it also bear her likeness? How strange.
“To understand what I need you to learn, you need to separate yourself from the rest of the village,” Slava explained. Matrona’s head snapped up, her stomach sinking, and the old man had the audacity to chuckle at her. “You will still be here, if that is your worry. It is . . .” He waved his hand in a circular motion before her, and Matrona could see him picking through his thoughts the way her father so often did, searching for perhaps the sweetest or tamest words to explain something she couldn’t possibly fathom.
The Fifth Doll Page 3