How cruel that would be.
She pushed through the nearest gate and exited the pasture, her strides long and quick. She wound around the back of the land, but still managed to catch sight of Pavel Zotov across the way. His eyes lingered on her too long, like hot stones burning her skin. So she changed direction once more, toward the quiet homes of her neighbors. Their yards were empty, which encouraged her. This route was the way to Feodor’s butchery, but she would not go there. Her goal was simply to go away, where the ill- and well-meaning alike couldn’t find her.
Only, as she neared one of the less trodden paths toward her betrothed’s properties, she did see another person on the route, coming from the opposite way. Matrona froze, her throat instantly knotting into a hard lump. Jaska.
When he looked up, he stopped midstride, and she saw the recently kilned jug in his right hand.
Her body turned cold and stiff as the terrible truth dawned on her. He must know, too, just as all the others did. She could see it in his eyes, despite the long space between them.
The air felt too thick. It crushed her lungs from within. The urge to run was overpowering. The wood stretched to her right with its promise of hiding her, of absorbing her humiliation among its trees. But she was no hunter, and if she ran, it would only confirm the truth of the secrets everyone whispered about. How much more embarrassment could she withstand?
He started toward her, and a sharp panic pierced her from neck to navel. She stepped off the path and hurried, nearly running but not quite, through the village. North. Her braid whipped her back as she went, and her nails dug into her palms. By the time she reached the church, her lungs blazed like two oil lamps.
Resting a hand against one of the church’s outer log walls, she took a moment to catch her breath and wipe perspiration from her forehead. A couple passed by, and Matrona slipped around the building’s corner to avoid being seen. She could not handle another accusing gaze, not right now.
She looked up at the church, a cross-wall structure with prirub. Two of its three roofs were conical in shape, and from those two stretched short wooden spires that ended in simple crucifixes, carved by Pavel. The church was probably the second-finest building in the village, after Slava’s dragon house. It should not be so—she’d heard others whisper the same—but she was not about to petition the tradesman to donate his glass-and-blue tiles to decorate the house of the Lord.
Letting her fingers trail across its walls, Matrona circled around the church until she reached the front door. She peeked in—the space within was empty. Thanking the saints, she stepped inside and sat on one of the backless benches, huddling against the wall, hoping to meld with the shadows. There was a simple altar near the front, along with a pedestal that held the village’s only copy of the Good Book, a thin volume with a leather cover. Matrona had thumbed through it once. To her it felt the Book should be longer. Some of its passages left off midsentence, while some parables finished without conclusion. As though whoever bound it had pulled out words . . . But of course that was nonsense.
Elbows on knees, she cradled her face in her hands and offered up a weak semblance of a prayer. She wasn’t sure what to pray for, or if she should address one of the saints or God himself. Strength to withstand Slava’s spell? Mercy from her fellows? Would God heed her, a woman who lusted after a man to whom she was not betrothed, and who had willingly sworn an oath to . . . What was Slava? A sorcerer?
A chill in her bones made her shiver, but she stayed on the bench until her nerves calmed and her thoughts reordered themselves. Until the sun set just enough that she could walk home in relative privacy and begin counting the days until Slava unleashed his next terror.
Chapter 5
Matrona’s parents were so distracted by her perceived scandal and the question of how to amend their relationship with the Popovs that they did not notice her late return, if—indeed—they’d noticed her departure.
Matrona slept uneasily, her mind torn between the airing of her most private thoughts and the consequences that would follow. When she did sleep, she dreamed of Jaska, which made her head feel packed with clay come dawn.
Even distracted parents would never forgive shirked chores, so Matrona set to the cows early, partitioning the milk for the villagers, making the butter and cheese, and watering the animals in the crispness of morning. Her mother prepared breakfast, which Matrona ate before wordlessly excusing herself back to the pasture. When she’d completed the bulk of her work, she let herself through the gate and walked toward the western wood while the air still held some crispness, away from the homes of the other villagers. She let the greenery and the birdsong clear her thoughts. Dewy grass licked at her shoes. The scent of fresh lumber tickled her nose—someone must have been chopping upwind. Sighing, she let go of the momentary peace and made her way back to her izba.
Her mother was standing outside when she returned home. There was such fury on her face, Matrona nearly cowed when her mother came near and snatched Matrona’s wrist.
“Foolish girl,” she spat, dragging Matrona around the izba, to the pasture’s front gate. “Hurry up and make yourself decent.”
“What’s wrong?” Matrona asked as the gate swung open.
“Oleg and Feodor Popov are here, that’s what! And you’re nowhere to be found, out dallying without the chores done—”
“The chores are done, Mama.”
Her mother rolled her eyes and hurried Matrona to the back of the house. “We’ll see about that, but not right now. Fix your hair and change your dress.” They passed into the short hallway stocked with milk jugs, and Matrona lightened her feet to sneak by the front room, where the guests would be, and to her bedroom.
Worrying her lip, Matrona pulled off her milk-spotted dress with its soiled hem and traded it for the red sarafan. She took out her small hand mirror—one of the imports Slava had sold in the market years ago—and checked her hair. It didn’t look amiss, so she merely licked her fingertips and smoothed back the short, stray hairs over her ears, then pinched her cheeks to redden them. If she didn’t pinch them, surely her mother would, and none too delicately.
Matrona angled the mirror to see the faint line of a bruise on her left cheek where her mother had struck her. She frowned. Only noticeable if one looked for it.
As soon as she finished her grooming, Matrona stepped into the hallway. Her mother ushered her into the front room.
The air stretching between the log walls was warmed from the brick oven, and her father, Feodor, and Feodor’s father, Oleg, sat on the nicest rag rug the family owned. It measured about nine feet in diameter and was woven with pinks, blues, reds, and yellows. The men had propped themselves up on pillows and were sharing a small pitcher of mint kvass.
Feodor noticed Matrona and offered one of his tight-lipped smiles. It startled her at first but, finding her senses, she offered a small smile in return. Perhaps this talk—these negotiations—had gone well.
Matrona couldn’t help but wonder if the Popov men drank kvass after a good bargain on cattle.
Her father glanced up and grinned. “Ah, Matrona, there you are.” He set his mug down, stood, and smoothed his beard. “She works so hard to see to the needs of her family and the village. And not a spot on her. Graceful hands make graceful work.”
Neither Matrona nor her mother corrected him.
Feodor stood, too, and stooped to help up his father. Oleg Popov did not set down his kvass, and a few drops splashed onto the rug.
“I see that.” The bottom of Oleg’s thin white beard brushed the rim of his cup. “A girl trying very hard to become a woman, indeed.”
Trying to become a woman? Matrona thought, raising an eyebrow. She looked at her father, who did not return her gaze. Had that been part of the discussion? Playing off her now-public faults as the whims of a child? A child who could simply be righted by marriage?
She glanced to Feodor, who folded his arms across his chest and nodded in agreement with her father. Matrona
took a deep breath. No, this is good. If my parents can salvage my reputation and solidify this engagement, we’ll all be the better for it. It was a more decent excuse than anything Matrona could have come up with.
Oleg downed the rest of his drink and handed the mug to Feodor before striking his fist against his chest in a show of honor and offering the same hand to Matrona’s father. “Let’s keep out of sight for a bit before moving forward with the planning. She is easy on the eyes, once you look long enough.”
He smiled at Matrona. Matrona wasn’t sure if she offered one back.
Feodor gathered the mugs from the rug and crossed the room, offering them to Matrona’s mother, who beamed happily at him before running the dishes to the kitchen. To Matrona, he held out his hand. Though still unsure of the situation, she placed her fingers in his.
“I’m glad to see this sorted out,” he said, though surely he knew Matrona had no idea what had been discussed in her absence. She swallowed the questions spinning in her brain, letting them die in her stomach. If the marriage was on, then all was as it should be, and she could relax. Feodor bent over her hand, but Matrona felt only the puff of warm breath before he stood back up and returned to his father, whom he escorted to the door.
She rubbed the back of her hand as the Popovs left. Why had he pantomimed kissing it without completing the act? She smelled her hands but detected no sourness from unscrubbed milk. If he had truly forgiven her, wouldn’t he have pressed his full lips to her flesh?
Matrona found herself wishing that Feodor would kiss her. Truly kiss her. Not here, in front of their parents, but somewhere. She wished that he would meet her on the path behind his butcher shop or leave her a letter requesting a rendezvous in the wood. She tried to imagine it: standing in the shadows of an oak grove under a purple sky, crickets singing in the evening’s warmth, and Feodor’s arms encircling her. Perhaps he would whisper something against her ear, something meant only for her, something that revealed a hidden aspect to his character. Then he would kiss her, and Matrona would feel new possibility bloom within herself. Feel like the wood had opened a little wider to make a special place just for her—a place situated in the crooks of Feodor’s arms.
The door shut, and Matrona blinked the vision away. There was still time. Time to be held, to be kissed, to be loved. She and Feodor had their whole lives ahead of them. Years to grow into love. And surely a husband would be as eager to grow as his wife, yes?
Years? You have two days, she realized. Two days until Slava would make her open the second doll. What if Feodor didn’t stay after the next round of revelations?
But what more could the village possibly learn about her?
Her mother returned from the kitchen. “Now, Matrona—”
“Do we need bread for dinner?” Matrona asked, chancing the interruption. “I can start the bread and wash the cups.”
Her mother seemed pleased, which trickled relief like cool water over Matrona’s skin. “Yes, that will do nicely.”
Matrona offered a minute curtsy before heading into the kitchen, her thoughts full of twilit woods and painted dolls.
Matrona wondered if she would see Slava Barinov before his three-day deadline, but the tradesman did not come to pick up his share of milk. He seldom did. Perhaps cheese and butter weren’t kind to his tongue, or his gut.
By the time the third day arrived, Matrona’s public humiliation had somewhat abated; the older a rumor grew, the less excitement it elicited from wagging tongues. She had taken time to mull over Slava’s words, tone, and demeanor in the doll room, and it left her with a sour stomach. The way his aging forehead wrinkled when he told her a must. The way he left her no choice in the matter. The way he held her father’s doll in his hands—her father, who had always been kinder than her mother, and whose heart hadn’t been so damaged after the loss of Esfir.
But Slava had her doll, too, and answers to her questions. So later that afternoon, when her father was away to collect potatoes from the Grankins and her mother was busying her hands hanging laundry, Matrona took the well-worn path to the center of the village. She made her way to the bright blue-and-yellow house, where a simple paintbrush had brought her so much grief . . . and enlivened her with an almost childish curiosity.
Slava answered the door after her first knock. He had been expecting her.
“Good.” He spoke first. “Come.”
Matrona followed him silently down the hall, tracing the now-familiar path to the sunlit room of dolls. Their eyes all seemed to watch her, each pair set in a face she recognized. A clicking of talons on the floor revealed Pamyat, who boosted himself to his perch with two flaps of his long wings.
“Tell me how they know,” Matrona said as Slava reached for her doll, kept in the same place at the edge of the left table. No wonder he’d noticed her earlier trespass—he kept everything in this room in such strict order. The paintbrush alone would have given her away.
Slava clasped her doll by its head and lifted it from the others, turning it toward her with narrowed eyes. A small smile stretched his lips and deepened the wrinkles under his eyes. “Ah, I forget about these things. I never have the opportunity to discuss them.”
“Never?” Matrona asked. She tried to think of whom Slava associated with, but no names rose to mind.
“I have never needed to. Only one other has noticed the mass revelations, among other things, and she does not have the liberty to discuss it.”
His smile faded, and Matrona’s bones grew cold.
She croaked, “Who?”
“You would not notice the suddenness of others knowing, if your eyes had not been opened,” he said, ignoring the second question and rattling her doll in his hand. “You will see more, as you must, before you replace me as keeper. Have you kept your word?”
Matrona swallowed and nodded. Who else knows, and why can’t she speak of it?
Then, What did Slava do to her . . . ?
Her eyes shifted to Pamyat. She shivered.
“Good.” He glanced over the other dolls. “I have not heard any mention of us on the tongues of our friends in the village, so I believe you.”
“You assume me dishonest.” Matrona let disapproval flavor her words. Her body warmed. “I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of other things from our friends.”
Slava smiled, and Matrona flushed despite herself. “The Maysak boy is especially interesting.”
Matrona folded her arms across her chest.
“Your secrets are mild compared to those that could be shared.” Slava held out her doll, and Matrona took it and held it tightly between her hands. “Open it,” he ordered.
Matrona licked her lips. “You could not have offered so much as a warning, Tradesman? Do you know what it nearly cost me for that knowledge to be made public? What it still costs me?”
Slava shrugged, which angered Matrona all the more. “A few cold glances and whispers. They will pass.”
“My betrothal—”
“Is still intact. I spoke with Oleg Popov just this morning. Now open your doll.”
Her hands trembled around the glossed wood. Her heartbeat quickened. “What will happen this time?”
His pale eyes hardened. “It does not matter.”
“You say it so easily! Open your own doll, Tradesman, and let us see what you are hiding.”
She snapped her lips shut the moment the words left her mouth, and she retreated into the shelves. So loose was her tongue before this man. Her mother would have slapped her again for such insolence.
Slava glowered, and in the corner Pamyat hissed his own disapproval. “You think this is the worst the world has to offer you? That I have to offer you? You’re fooling yourself, Matrona Vitsin.” His hand reached for her father’s doll.
“I will open it.” Matrona meant to sound strong, but the statement was a strained whisper. Fingers slick with perspiration, Matrona gritted her teeth and turned the second doll on its seam, then let out a long breath and pulled the two halves
apart.
Inside was a third doll, painted like the rest, though the details in its dress were much simpler than they’d been in the first two layers. Matrona stared at it, expecting . . . She wasn’t sure. But nothing changed about her, mentally or physically. Nothing altered within the room. Nothing happened at all, save for the slight steadying of her breaths.
Slava nodded, once. “Good, good. I’m glad it is you, Matrona.”
She didn’t understand the sentiment.
“Return in three days,” he continued as he reached out a hand. When Matrona didn’t give him the doll, he pried the pieces from her fingers—both the inner doll and the two pieces of the second layer—saying nothing as he carefully reassembled them and placed them back on the table.
“Tradesman.”
He glanced at her from beneath an arched eyebrow.
Matrona took a steadying breath before speaking. “You say, ‘Return in three days.’ Why? If you insist on my pursuit of . . . this”—she gestured to the dolls—“against my will, why not open the doll yourself? Why have me come here?”
He turned toward her, lip quirking. “Because I will never open the dolls. Not again. I will see this done right. To replace me, you must be wholly independent. You must learn it on your own.”
Not again? “Learn what? Sorcery?”
“Three days,” Slava repeated, and turned back to his dolls.
Willing her unsteady heart and bubbling frustration to calm, Matrona fled the room while Slava’s back still faced her, relief bolstering her when she reached the front door.
She stepped outside and stumbled when a sudden heaviness struck her body, as though a cartload of leathers had been draped over her.
The Fifth Doll Page 5