He stepped closer to her. Matrona’s skin burned like he was the sun. “What do you know?” he asked again, softer.
Her pulse was everywhere. “I know about . . . God.” She closed her eyes for a moment, ready to use Jaska’s curse on herself. Jaska was the one exposed, the one who would suffer, and her thoughts were centered entirely inward. She could not still her heart, but she managed to sort through her thoughts enough to ask, “Why don’t you believe in God?”
Jaska made a sound similar to a chuckle, though Matrona detected no mirth in it. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t remember ever making the decision.”
“But you don’t.”
Just enough moonlight peeked through the darkness to reflect off his eyes. “No. I have a hard time thinking there’s a greater being looming somewhere in the heavens, apart from us, picking and choosing who to love and who to punish.”
Matrona shook her head. “But God doesn’t work that way.”
“You don’t think my mother was punished?” Jaska asked, the question barely audible, half-stolen by the breeze. “My father?”
Words piled in Matrona’s mouth, but she was too exhausted to swallow them. “Your father punishes himself.”
Jaska turned away.
The gravelly feeling returned. “Jaska, I didn’t mean—”
“No, he does,” Jaska agreed, hands on his hips. He looked back at her. Despite the darkness, Matrona thought she could feel his gaze on her face, her breasts, her stomach. “What else . . . do you know?”
She licked her lips. “Everything, I’m afraid. Just as you know my secrets.”
“Tell me.”
The tone of his voice bristled over her skin. He knows I know. The knowledge made her tremble. Hadn’t she imagined herself walking through the wood with a lover?
She cleared her throat. “You and your mother, some thievery. Other . . . things.”
A strong breeze made her jump.
“What will Slava do?” he asked, hushed.
Matrona shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Find me if you need me. If you need anything. If he confronts you, I’ll come with you—”
“Slava cannot know you asked me to open the doll, Jaska.” Her voice bordered on begging. “He can’t know you know. Promise me you won’t do anything to let him know.”
Then again, Jaska’s secrets had spilled to the entire village. Had Matrona’s confiding in him been leaked as well, or was that secret solely hers?
She hugged herself. “I should go home.” She thought of the creaking floorboards inside Slava’s home, but pushed the uneasiness away. There was enough for her to worry about without jumping at ghosts.
She turned to leave, but Jaska’s voice snared her. “Matrona.”
She paused.
He hesitated. “Do you love him? Feodor.”
The question thickened the air between them. Feodor’s name weighed like a yoke across her shoulders.
Jaska already knew her secrets. Why must he ask?
“It doesn’t matter if I do or don’t,” she answered, offering him a smile she wasn’t sure he could see. “The date is already set.”
She tore herself from the shadows of Jaska’s web, though unseen filaments tugged at her feet. Her heavy limbs dragged, and her chest danced with uncertainty as she followed the border of the wood to her own home.
Her parents slept soundly in their bed, dreaming of Jaska Maysak’s secrets.
In the dark of Matrona’s room, secrets ran through her mind like briars, scratching against her thoughts every time fatigue tried to pull her asleep. Jaska. Jaska.
The darkness buried deep inside her stirred. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore it. To ignore everything.
When slumber settled upon her, however, she dreamed not of Jaska, but of Roksana. Roksana, her hair intricately plaited, arriving at the Zotov household to speak to Luka. Luka, who fancied Nastasya Kalagin, but fancied her less with every lie Roksana told him about Nastasya. Roksana had demeaned the other woman’s character until, eventually, the only woman Luka saw was Roksana herself.
The dream flashed forward in color and speed, and Matrona saw her dear friend offering a new bottle of kvass to Oleg Popov and murmuring, “She is a fine woman who will bear strong children. The Zotov house would not forget your kindness if this betrothal were made.”
Roksana, bending over a child’s work and frowning at the poor answers he gave in school, then lying to his parents about his progress so he would not be thought dumb.
Childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Matrona dreamed strange things all punctuated by Roksana, until they became a blur of imagination that settled in the corners of her mind before dawn awoke her.
The slightest scent of burning porridge drew Matrona’s attention to the brick oven, and she hurried over to pull the breakfast kasha off the heat before the smell could waft to her parents’ noses. It looked well and fine, but upon stirring it, Matrona noticed burned porridge sticking to the bottom of the pot. Hopefully her mother wouldn’t notice.
“Unthinkable,” her father said as Matrona set the pot on a folded towel and grabbed a pitcher of water to fill cups. The words weren’t addressed to her, but to her mother, who was setting the table. Her father leaned against the wall near his seat at the table, his arms folded against his chest.
“I’ve always said they are a vile family,” her mother retorted, setting down a bowl almost hard enough to shatter it. She glanced once at Matrona, who pretended not to see. “With sons like that, it’s no wonder Olia lost her mind.”
Matrona pressed her lips together, trapping her tongue. When had it become so hard for her to swallow words? They pushed against her teeth, demanding that she come to the defense of Jaska Maysak, but she would be sentencing herself to further humiliation to do so. Already the threat of spinsterhood loomed ahead of her, though she had yet to hear Feodor’s thoughts on the revelations.
“Do you love him?”
Her heart beat a little faster, her thoughts threatening to consume her yet again. Those same thoughts had made her burn the kasha and kept her awake most of the night. The revelation that Jaska cared for her.
It was too absurd to believe.
“I always thought Viktor . . . ,” her father began, but whatever sentiment he intended to utter died on his lips.
“I don’t feel at all bad about Nastasya, seeing how she turned out. To hell with all of them,” her mother spat.
Matrona flinched, spilling water on the floor as she carried the cups to the table. “Mama!”
“It’ll be no surprise to them!” her mother countered, throwing spoons for the porridge onto the table. “Can’t go to heaven if it doesn’t exist. Hypocrites, every one of them. Feigning worship of the good Lord and then spitting on Him when our backs are turned.”
Matrona set down the cups. “I hardly think the Maysaks would spit on another’s deity.”
“Another’s!” Her mother turned on her, jabbing a pointed index finger into Matrona’s breastbone. “There is only one God, Matrona! Still my heart, what will I do with you?” Her eyes narrowed. “You stay away from that disgusting boy, you hear me?”
“I assure you, I have no intention of mingling with Jaska Maysak,” Matrona lied, stirring the kasha.
Her father rubbed his forehead with a thumb and forefinger. “I’ll visit Oleg today.”
Her mother grumbled and rubbed her eyes. “It’s no fault of ours this time. He’ll have to be lenient. We already gave him the dairy.”
Matrona nearly dropped the pot. “You did what?”
“Didn’t I say we made sacrifices to keep this marriage together?” her mother snapped.
Her father said, “It’s not so much as all that. Feodor will run the dairy and double his family’s allotment is all.”
“Double?” Matrona set the porridge on the table. “You don’t just double an allotment; everyone receives the same.”
“Tell that to Afon Maysak,” her
mother spat. “Half his brewing goes down his own throat.” She turned to Matrona’s father. “Yes, see Oleg. Take Matrona.”
“I don’t believe that will help,” her father said.
Her mother turned to her. “You should bake. Something delicious, to ease the tensions. Feodor won’t have forgotten your own indiscretions.”
“A folly I never acted on,” Matrona countered, but her heart split into fluttering pieces within its cage of ribs. But could I act on it? How it would humiliate her parents if she abandoned a strong marriage prospect for a too-young potter boy who didn’t even believe in God.
Yet she could not forget how alive Jaska made her feel. The sight of his shadow by the tradesman’s home, the warmth of his skin in the cellar of the pottery, the strength of his arms as they lifted her into his cart—each moment she’d spent with him had made more of an impact on her than the weeks of her engagement to Feodor.
Days. It seemed like years.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Matrona thought, Stop it, stop it. You’re making it harder for yourself, and for him. Pretend like you don’t know. You’ll ruin everything, knowing.
Feodor and Jaska were so different, Matrona thought as she sat down to break her fast with her family. Feodor was an outstanding man, well disciplined and well liked among the village. Skilled with a knife and competent. Intelligent beyond his occupation. He was lean and attractive. Should Matrona open his doll, she didn’t think a single foul thing would escape from it.
Yet Jaska . . . Jaska was so much more feeling. He was adventurous. He was bold, and he was compassionate. Matrona had always admired the way he helped his aging mother around the village, using soft words whenever she got anxious. Even the thought of him touching her made her skin tingle. Already he had touched her more than her own betrothed, and guilt ate away at Matrona’s gut from the way she craved it.
It still shocked her, his disbelief in God. She believed in Him; she always had. To think He didn’t exist . . . she’d be a shell empty of its nut. God was limb to her body, one she was sure she couldn’t function without.
But Jaska. Jaska wasn’t a heathen or a devil worshipper or whatever other names her mother had to sling at him. He was a good person, one of the best in her acquaintance, and she couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Thinking about him thinking about her.
After Matrona’s spoon scraped the last bits of kasha from her bowl, she stood to take her dishes to the sink. Before she left the table, however, her father said, “You fool, you don’t know what you’re playing with.”
Matrona froze, glancing at her father, whose eyes watched her with still glassiness. She settled back onto the bench. “Pardon?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
Matrona blanched, shivers running up and down her arms. Her mother continued to eat her breakfast, as though completely unaware of the bizarre exchange.
“Papa.” Matrona’s words were slow and deliberate. “I don’t know what you’re speaking of.”
“Use your brains, foolish child,” her father said. “I’ve seen the work of your clumsy hands on Jaska Maysak’s doll. How dare you defy me.”
Matrona felt snow jump from her memory and pack around her. “S-Slava?”
Her father’s lips moved stiffly with each word. “You will come to me. Now.”
Matrona’s gaze darted to her mother, still eating, still unaware. “Mama?”
No response.
Her father blinked twice, then resumed his breakfast as well.
Matrona collected her dishes. Neither parent so much as glanced at her. She didn’t know what bothered her more—the fact that Slava had, somehow, spoken through her father as if he were a puppet or the fact that she’d already been caught.
She set her unwashed dishes aside and left the house immediately, nearly jogging up the path that led to the tradesman’s abode. None of the other villagers tried to talk to her—something that she wouldn’t have noticed on an ordinary day, but now the hairs on the back of her neck bristled. She offered a quick prayer for her safety and glanced heavenward. Blinked and shielded her eyes from the sun.
The sky . . . there was a pattern to it, faint as a sleeper’s breath. Curving lines like the whorl of a thumbprint. Blue against blue, but she saw it, though staring into the brightness overhead made her eyes water.
She spun slowly, taking in the sky cupped by the crowns of trees. The faint lines were almost like wood grain.
Another blink, and the pattern vanished, leaving her with watery eyes and an aching head.
Sucking in a deep breath and trying to still the trembling in her fingers, Matrona hurried along the path. Slava’s home looked twice its usual size as she approached, and the door swung open before she could knock.
Slava’s face was dark above his beard, his eyes bright and narrow. Yet as Matrona met the hardness of his gaze, her fear extinguished, replaced by heat that bubbled in her core.
“How dare you,” Slava growled.
“How dare you!” Matrona snarled back. “What sorcery have you cast over my father to speak to me in such a way?”
Her mother had likened Jaska to the devil, completely unaware that the devil dwelled beside the north wood.
Slava snatched her wrist and yanked her into the house, slamming the door the moment she cleared it. She nearly tripped over her own toes.
Slava seethed. “Did you think I wouldn’t know?”
“Of course you would know.” Matrona matched his tone. She spun around to face him, determined to be bold, to be brash, to protect Jaska. “You never forbade it.”
“I never—” Slava shook his head and balled his hands into fists as he pushed past her into the front room. “I never forbade it? Must I spell out every consequence to every possible indiscretion?” He whirled around and shot a glare at Matrona that would have made even her mother cower. “Don’t banter with me. You waited until I was out of the house—”
“Pamyat didn’t seem to mind.”
Slava snorted. “That damnable bird was a monster when I caught him. So many years indoors has clipped his wings.” He collapsed into his upholstered chair. “Why Jaska Maysak, hm? Wanted to see if he returned your sentiments?”
Despite the embarrassing accusation, Matrona choked on a sigh of relief. If Slava didn’t know why she’d opened Jaska’s doll, then he didn’t know that Jaska had asked her to do it. That Matrona had indeed defied him and told another about the dolls.
It would seem that the secret was solely hers—and that the spell didn’t give away secrets made after the opening of the first doll.
Matrona merely nodded. It was an answer she didn’t need to defend, for Slava knew her feelings. She couldn’t quell the flush that tickled her cheeks, but found herself grateful for it, for it made the lie that much more believable.
Slava dug his nails into the armrests of his chair. “How many did you open?”
“Only the first layer.”
Slava watched her, his gaze lidded, his beard twitching with the movement of his lips. His fingertips relaxed before they dug again. Matrona met his stare, trying not to blink.
Slava released the armrests. “If you continue to think of this as a game, your ‘suffering’ will only grow worse. You try to make an enemy of me.”
“All I did was return a paintbrush.”
A flash of a smirk appeared on the tradesman’s mouth, and then it dissipated as a puff of smoke. He straightened, breathed deeply. Matrona remained silent through it all. Finally he said, “It is good that you only opened one.”
“I do listen to your warnings.” Matrona let her muscles unwind. “Why do you time my visits three days apart? And why is it good that I opened only one of his dolls? Surely I’ve cooperated enough for you to tell me that much.”
Slava watched her for an uncomfortable minute, his gaze making her wrists and ankles itch. He opened a drawer in a short, elaborately painted table beside him and retrieved a cigar, but he did not light it.
“It is madness,” he said.
Matrona waited for clarification, but when Slava did not speak, she said, “I would agree.”
He shook his head. “You know that you are tied to your doll. You know it is the same for the others. But sorcery is not natural to the mind. To unleash it all at once would drive a person mad.”
Matrona leaned forward, her pulse short and quick. “Literal madness? Were I to open all my dolls at once—”
“You’d lose your mind, yes. It was not something I had originally accounted for, and I’ve sworn to prevent any more casualties.”
Matrona perked at the words. “Any more?” she repeated.
Then it struck her.
Snow.
“Olia,” she whispered, searching the tradesman’s eyes. “Mad Olia Maysak.”
Slava nodded.
“Only one other has noticed . . . and she does not have the liberty to discuss it.”
That’s what he’d told her a few days ago. Olia knew about snow because her third doll had been opened. “She opened her dolls,” Matrona voiced, “and lost herself.”
“No,” he corrected. “I opened them.”
The words shocked her like the sting of a hornet. She shook her head, thinking of Jaska, of how he’d struggled to salvage his mother’s mind, to no avail. Of the cruel things her mother and so many others said about Olia and her family.
She swallowed against a tight throat and whispered, “Why would you do such a horrible thing?”
Slava’s gaze dropped to the floor. He leaned his elbows on his knees and clasped his thick fingers in front of him. The breaths drawn through his nose were loud in the silent room.
A long moment passed before he spoke again. “I loved her.”
Of all the answers he could have given, Matrona had not expected that.
Slava cleared his throat. “I loved her, and I wanted her to love me. I wanted her to know the truth, as you know it. As you will soon know it. And so I opened her dolls, unaware of the consequences. Of the cost.”
The Fifth Doll Page 12