Good heavens, was this what her life had become?
“I . . . ,” she began, but realized she didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
“Think about it,” Jaska whispered. “But not for . . . my sake. Don’t you want to know what it all means?” Though the shadows hid parts of his face, Matrona felt the stiffness that hardened the air around them, reminding her, He knows.
Before the embarrassment could solidify around her, putting her in a cage, Jaska said, “Let me take a look around, see if he’s gone. You’re welcome to hide as long as you want. I’ll let you know what I find.”
Matrona nodded, unsure if Jaska could see it. He crossed the cellar in a few long strides, took the stairs two at a time, and pushed open the rightmost cellar door.
The sunlight it let into Matrona’s chilly sanctuary was blinding.
There was little time left to decide.
Matrona had spent most of the day walking the strange loop of the wood, evading Slava. It would be dark soon. She certainly couldn’t stay in the Maysaks’ cellar overnight.
She sat on the second-to-last stair, weariness washing over her. She helped herself to some bread from her pack as she mulled over her options.
It was impossible to leave the wood, and in the clarity of her solitude, she accepted that she could not hide from Slava forever. What more could happen if she opened another doll? She couldn’t fathom anything worse than the secrets and the darkness, and her mother had always groaned that Matrona had too much imagination.
Jaska couldn’t understand, not fully. He hadn’t held the dolls in his hands, hadn’t seen the changes one little twist created in her father. He hadn’t borne the humiliation of a hundred spilled secrets or the belittlement of years of self-doubt and failures. And yet he was the only one who knew of her forced arrangement with the tradesman. He might, Matrona realized, be the only person in the village who would ever believe such an implausible tale. Matrona wondered if that was due to the stories she used to tell him when he was a boy, thanks to the very imagination that seemed to be failing her now.
Her cheeks heated a little at the thought. A boy. Mercy in heaven, what must Jaska think of her, knowing the way she’d ogled him in the past? Knowing the imprudence of her feelings?
How kind of him to help her anyway . . .
But Slava couldn’t know that she’d betrayed her unspoken oath to keep the dolls secret. He could never know.
And so Matrona would give him no reason to suspect her.
Grabbing a fistful of her skirt, Matrona stood and hiked up the stairs, pushing her shoulder into the cellar door to open it. The sky began to tint pink as the sun crawled toward its wooded bed. Matrona realized that this ritual, too, was caught in an endless loop.
She hurried from the cellar before anyone could see her departure. Her parents would certainly be wondering after her by now, and she had to reveal herself to them before they started alerting the neighbors and causing more trouble. Her mind spun a story as she hurried to her izba. She dropped the pack inside the pasture gate before stepping inside, lest she raise even more suspicion.
“Where on God’s earth have you been?” her mother spat. She had been drying dishes, and threw the towel into the air hard enough for it to strike the ceiling. “You’re not married yet, Matrona, and this disrespect is unacceptable! And the tradesman! Slava Barinov, of all people, came by looking for you, and I had to fumble my words trying not to look like an utter fool—”
“I spoke with Slava.” It felt oddly invigorating to cut off her mother. “We had a long conversation. He’s trading for some cows soon and wanted my opinion on what he should look for. I apologize for my delay, but he was insistent.”
The lie slid off her tongue so easily, it was startling—not only to Matrona, but to her mother as well.
“Slava asked you for breeding advice?” Her mother’s voice was incredulous, her eyes calculating. “Why not ask your father? Or me, for that matter?” She paused and rubbed at her belly. “We certainly know more.”
Matrona shrugged, trying not to betray the nerves that prickled beneath her skin, down to the center of her chest. “You’ll have to ask him. Are you well?”
Her mother pursed her lips and stacked plates inside the cupboard. “Must have eaten something sour while you were off on your own. Father’s been feeling it, too. It will pass.”
Matrona frowned as she watched her mother’s hand massage her middle again. That was where the seams on the dolls were, wasn’t it?
All the more reason to make haste.
“Good night, Mama.”
She walked away, and her mother remained silent. Matrona slid into the darkness of her bedroom, and then out the window into the twilight.
“All right, Tradesman,” she whispered. “I’m coming.”
Chapter 9
Matrona had never walked the village at night. Every star in the unreachable heavens felt like an eye watching her, and the calm breeze that loosed strands of hair from her braid sounded like whispers. It reminded her all too much of her shameful walk to her izba after opening her first doll. She shuddered.
Keeping her spine straight and shoulders back, Matrona tried not to feel like a vagrant. She pieced together excuses should she run into anyone. Then again, whoever might see her would have explaining of their own to do, wouldn’t they?
She glanced over her shoulder—she’d been doing that a lot recently. Listened to the voices of the nearby wood, the silence of the izbas around her, all darkened windows and cold chimneys. The air smelled different at night: earthier, cleaner. She could taste grass in the air. Crickets called after her, muting her footsteps along the worn path encircling the village.
When the path turned eastward, toward Slava’s house, a muffled giggle startled Matrona. She nearly tripped over her own feet in her haste to leap off the path. It was a maiden’s laugh, and Matrona’s gaze followed the sound to the tiny shops to her right, where she saw two shadows dancing. Her blood heated when she realized they were a man and a woman. They shushed each other as they ran from eave to eave, oblivious of Matrona’s proximity.
She thought to continue walking, but her muscles froze at the sound of a whisper from the man. Squinting, Matrona tried to draw his outline in her mind, and her stomach sank. Was that . . . Jaska?
The roving couple dashed to a new eave, and the moon cast just enough light for Matrona to see the cut of the man’s hair. A long breath escaped her. Not Jaska. In fact, it looked quite a lot like his brother Kostya. Matrona pinched her lips together, forced her gaze away, and trudged up the path with renewed energy. The sooner this was over, the better.
Even in the embrace of night, Slava’s house was not hard to spot. Not because of its size, its incredible decor, or the fact that, at the right angle, it looked like a dragon. No, it stood out from the shadows for the light in its window. A single candle flame, but amid a village sleeping in the dark, it blazed like the sun. Matrona fixed upon it, slowing to watch the subtle shifting of its light, before approaching the front door.
The bright colors of the home looked muted, almost gray and dull, and Matrona fancied that if she ran her hand against the siding, she could wipe off the shadows like ash from fine porcelain. Instead, she brought her knuckles toward the door. Paused, and dropped her fingers to the door handle. She stepped inside.
The air in the house was too warm—almost suffocating after her brisk walk through the cool night. It smelled faintly of kvass and strongly of smoke. Turning the corner by the stairs, she saw Slava sitting in one of his fine chairs beside that flickering candle, a glossed pipe held to his lips. Corn-silk-colored smoke passed through his nostrils as he looked up at her.
Dragon, indeed.
He pulled the pipe’s stem from his lips. “I was concerned I’d have to persuade you,” he said, and Matrona noticed two dolls on the table beside him—her parents’. Were their bellyaches Slava’s doing? How far would he have gone, had Matrona not come?
He
paused to puff twice on the mouthpiece, then let the smoke flow all at once from his lips. “I’m relieved I do not have to.”
Persuade me, Matrona thought. She didn’t bother to hide the frown tugging on her lips. “I’m here now, Tradesman.” She emphasized his occupation. A bit of metal caught her eye—a bridle, new enough that it gleamed without blemish, beside a leather satchel, its sides expanding with the contents within. Slava must be leaving for his trades soon. Matrona wondered again how he alone managed to escape—
“Tell me about the loop,” she said.
He raised a gray brow. “What loop?”
“In the wood. Walk too far south and you appear in the north. Too far west and you appear in the east.”
“So you’ve noticed.” Smoke spilled from his nostrils. “And what were you doing so deep in the wood?”
Matrona rolled her lips, trying to determine how far to extend her honesty.
Slava’s face seemed to melt into his wrinkles. “I will teach you soon enough, and you will not speak of it to another soul, is that understood?”
She watched him for several long seconds through his halo of smoke. “Show me what’s inside the third doll.”
He smirked faintly—Matrona saw it only by the twitching of his beard. He took one more draw of his pipe before dumping its ashy contents in a bowl on a small side table. He stood, both knees popping as he did so, and took up her parents’ dolls before walking back toward the kitchen and the carpeted hallway that led to the dolls. He said nothing to her, only motioned with his hand, fully expecting her to follow.
She did.
The hallway was unlit, save for the light of a lamp glowing under the door to the room of the dolls. The hall seemed much longer than Matrona remembered, and she was oddly out of breath by the time Slava opened the door.
The hissing of the kite scared Matrona. Her shoulder slammed into the doorjamb when she jumped.
“Easy, Pamyat.” Slava spoke with a grandfatherly tone, his voice worn. He set her parents back in their respective places on his tables. Matrona wondered again at his veiled desperation to have her take his place as the keeper of the dolls. He was old, yes, but seemed to be in good-enough health.
The dolls watched her enter. All their faces looked forward, as if in anticipation of her arrival. Matrona tried not to shiver under their relentless, flat stares, but her resolve could go only so far. She hoped Slava had not seen her shudder.
She stared back, her gaze jumping from face to face. There was Boris, Pavel, Oleg, Roksana, Irena, Lenore, Nastasya, Darya, herself. Slava moved for her doll, and Matrona stepped to the side, inching closer to the watching kite, to study more of the faces. She found Jaska and his siblings, Feodor, the Avdovin clan. A few of the faces took longer to recognize, for they were either younger or older versions of the people they represented. Children were depicted as adults, their faces still round in Slava’s style of art. A few of the elderly were youthful, free of the wrinkles they bore in life. Matrona wondered, briefly, what had inspired Slava to draw some of the villagers old and others young.
Slava turned about, his large hands wrapped around her third doll, but Matrona did not meet his eyes. She turned, scanning the dolls on the shelves. Slava said nothing, and when Matrona’s attention returned to him, she asked, “Tradesman, where is your doll?”
Slava’s expression did not alter the slightest bit, not even a twitch of an eyebrow. “You assume I have one?” he asked.
“Everyone has one.” Matrona gestured to the full tables. She could not think of a single person in her acquaintance that was not represented among the figures, and there was not a single doll she did not recognize. “But I don’t see yours.”
“Hmm.” He lifted her doll in his hands. He removed the first two layers and presented Matrona with the third. “It is time.”
Matrona folded her arms. “You will not answer me?”
He held out her doll.
Swallowing back a complaint, Matrona took the doll in her hand, looking it over. It was the length of her hand, and today she wore the red sarafan that matched it. She turned it over, studying its back. Ran the pad of her thumb along the seam.
“Why must I do this?” she asked, half a whisper.
“I have explained it to you.”
“Have you?” she asked, feeling bold, ignoring a second hiss from Pamyat.
Slava’s lips drooped. “You must find your center, Matrona. You cannot understand any of this until that is done.”
Matrona took a long breath and let it out slowly. She examined the doll. “What will happen this time?”
“You will see.”
“You will tell me.” Her tongue was whip-like in her mouth. How her mother would fuss should she say such a thing at home. “I’ve endured two burdens for your sake already, tarnished my name among the villagers, and hurt my relationship with my parents. I nearly lost my engagement because—”
“You mentioned it the last time you were here,” Slava cut in. “Open the doll, Matrona. You must comprehend what I have done for you before you can help the others.”
Matrona’s breath paused in her lungs. Help the others? What was wrong with them?
Slava planted his hands on his hips, making him look broader in the poor light. “How old are you now, Matrona?”
Her gaze flickered from the doll to him. “Twenty-six. Why?”
“Then perhaps nothing will happen at all.” He dropped his hands. “I am weary. Open the doll before I force your hand.”
She gritted her teeth together. So much for conversation, she thought, and clutched the head of the doll in one hand, the base in the other. Her heart sped, making her feel light headed.
“What can he do that’s worse than what he’s already done?” Jaska’s voice whispered in her thoughts.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Matrona twisted the halves and pulled until their snug sealing opened with a faint pop. She held her breath, but as before, she felt no change overtake her. Opening her eyes, she looked down at the doll. A fourth doll sat inside it, identical to its counterparts, save for the simplified details to the clothes and kokoshnik. As Matrona fingered the small fourth doll, however, she noticed the third doll was different from the first two.
The inside was painted completely black.
She held the top piece toward the lamp, causing Pamyat to rustle on his perch. Entirely black, not a sliver of clean wood to be seen. The bottom half, too. She wondered at it.
Slava’s hands overpowered hers and pulled the dolls away. Her signal to leave, but as she turned for the door, the tradesman said, “You will return in three days. Do not try to thwart me again, Matrona.”
She glanced his way; he reassembled her doll and put it back on the table before meeting her eyes. She thought of the satchel and bridle and asked, “Will you be here in three days?”
His eyes narrowed. “If you think I will merely vanish, or give up on this, you are wrong,” he continued, blue eyes piercing even in the dim room. “If you knew who I was, you would not dare to hide, to speak out of turn, or to deny me in any way.”
Matrona’s skin prickled into gooseflesh. Trying to steel her voice, she asked, “And who are you, Slava?”
He straightened, then snorted, the corner of his mouth turning up ever so slightly. “I am a more patient man than I once was. Three days. Good night.”
Unsure of what to do, Matrona offered a simple nod and stepped from the room, following the faint guidance of the front room’s candle until she reached the door. She paused, searching behind her for the tradesman, but he did not follow.
Sucking in a deep breath through her nostrils, Matrona pulled open the door and stepped out into the cool darkness of the night.
It hit her all at once. Images filled her eyes, bright despite the cover of dark. A splintered table, a heavy coat, a bowl full of thin soup. Her fingers, small, wrapped around a wooden spoon.
Her mother, younger, wearing a tattered shawl as she rubbed Matrona’s numb feet.
A smell she didn’t recognize—something burning, unnatural, hanging in the air. The sound of marching footsteps in the distance, like—
The sky, contorted and dark, full of thick clouds that rumbled and . . . The word dragged slowly across her mind. Thundered.
A muddy street scarred with wagon tracks, a strange whiteness to either side of it. Breath fogging under her chin.
Matrona blinked, and once more found herself in front of Slava’s dragon house. Still, the new, startling images lingered in her mind. They were not crisp, but they were undeniable, like old drawings smeared by a careless hand. Her head ached as she tried to make sense of them. Then she remembered Mad Olia’s prattling the day she’d visited the pottery to ask for a replacement jug for Feodor.
“Snow,” Matrona breathed, touching both hands to her breath. “Jaska . . . I know what snow is.”
The light in Slava’s window extinguished. Matrona whirled around, staring at the tradesman’s quiet house.
Snow. But what was the rest?
Had she traveled outside the loop before, and forgotten?
A pressure like angry, pressing fingers flared in her temples. Snow. The more she thought of it, the stronger the pain grew. She needed to get home, to sleep. When she was well rested, she’d pick apart the details of Slava’s newest curse.
What did it mean? And how had Mad Olia Maysak named the cold whiteness before Matrona ever knew what it was?
She stumbled away from Slava’s house. The breeze felt too cold. Cold, like the snow. A coldness Matrona had never felt before, and yet these strange images made her think maybe she had.
One thing was certain—tomorrow she would find Jaska and tell him that maybe, maybe, his mother wasn’t as crazed as they believed her to be.
Chapter 10
“Have I heard of what?” her father asked, setting his water cup beside his empty breakfast plate.
“Snow,” Matrona tried again, unsure of where to settle her eyes. She customarily did the respectful thing and kept them downcast, but today she felt the need to study her parents’ expressions. Her father’s forehead wrinkled into thick lines. Her mother watched her with a sidelong look, her brows drawn, her lips puckered.
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