The Fifth Doll

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  The sob finally broke free, heavy and slick. Matrona rushed from the room, unable to bear the feral sounds ripping from Roksana’s throat—or to stomach her own guilt. Luka barreled past her and into the bedroom. Matrona made a sharp turn toward the back door to avoid the rest of the family. She stepped outside, the smells of sun-warmed grass and wood shavings from Pavel’s carpentry filling her nose.

  She leaned against the side of the house and buried her face in her hands, letting another sob break free from her chest.

  “It’s true, then.”

  Matrona looked up to see Jaska before her, standing on the line of shadow cast by the eaves. He seemed a stark contrast to the blue skies and sturdy wood. Remembering the hard words muffled by Roksana’s bedroom wall, Matrona realized Jaska was the one who’d been turned away at the door. He looked older, as though weights hung from his facial features. The shade cast him in tones of gray.

  “The dolls,” Matrona whispered. “She followed me to S-Slava’s home. Found her doll. Opened it all . . . Oh, Jaska, i-it’s what happened to your mother. To see it all at once is m-madness, and Roksana—”

  She choked, swallowed, and drew in a shuddering breath. “Roksana is gone. They both are.”

  Jaska pressed his lips together, his head tilting to one side as though too heavy for his neck. Matrona choked back her sorrow, wiped her eyes with her sleeve—

  She noticed the warmth on her arm first, then the light pressure from his fingertip. Looking up, she saw his face, his shoulder. Jaska pulled her to him, tentatively at first, but when Matrona didn’t resist, he wrapped both arms around her and drew her close. The cotton of his kosovorotka was soft against her cheek. Scents of clay and wood smoke tickled her nose, but his hair smelled like angelica.

  To Matrona, it was as if the breeze stilled, the birds silenced, and earth held its breath. For a moment, she felt entirely whole.

  Chapter 14

  Matrona sat beneath the shade of an ancient aspen at the edge of the wood east of the village, far enough into the trees to feel hidden, close enough to the village to hear the calls of the livestock. One of the tree’s roots had grown up and over a large rock, resting across its surface like a sun-bathing snake. It was there Matrona made her perch and waited, watching a starling flit back and forth from branch to branch overhead, its small, quick wings breaking up beams of morning sun.

  Today was the third day since Matrona had opened her third doll, and while the strange memories it had awakened in her were mild compared to dolls one and two, Matrona had determined not to return to the tradesman’s home. At least, she fought to be determined. The very thought of that fourth doll hardened her stomach and softened everything else. Knowing what she now knew about Olia; seeing it play out with Roksana. The mystic idea of being “separated” from the village, as Slava had put it. She couldn’t trust such simple words, not from him.

  He frightened her.

  She thought about her parents’ dolls sitting beside Slava as he smoked in his chair. He would not go too far, would he? Despite everything, Matrona was sure he cared for the people he depicted in wood and paint, else he would not strive to make her their caretaker. The question was, whose will would bend first? Hers or Slava’s?

  Was it fair to let her family and neighbors suffer for the sake of that contest?

  Her hand strayed up to her shoulder to work out a knot as she breathed out slowly, imagining her anxiety floating away on the wind, little seeds to take root elsewhere. She didn’t know how long she could put off Slava, and truth be told, she doubted she would ever manage to turn his interest from her. The tradesman was the first reason why she lingered here in the east wood, resting within the sanctuary of its trees.

  The soft steps of a man walking over clover and sloughed bark reminded her of the second.

  Matrona stood and smoothed out her skirt, searching for the sound until Jaska appeared between two dwarf linden trees. He looked tired, but alert. He wore older clothes, gray with a few faint stains of clay on them. His sleeves were rolled up again, but for once his hands and arms were spotless.

  Matrona tried to ignore the twitching in her chest. “I was worried you wouldn’t come.”

  “Ignore a cryptic message left for me in the bottom of a cracked pot?” Jaska asked with a small smile. “I couldn’t resist.” He glanced toward the village and stepped back, masking himself behind the linden tree. Matrona didn’t know whom he saw, but she slipped closer to the aspen until Jaska relaxed. It would do no good for either of them to be seen together.

  “I have to show you first,” Matrona said, “before you’ll believe me.”

  “I’ll believe you.”

  The simple words brought a smile to her face. “I know. But I’d rather show you.”

  She stepped away from the tree, moving deeper into the wood, and motioned for Jaska to follow her. He did so without complaint, taking long strides until he reached her side, ducking under the branch of a thorn tree as he went.

  “You’ll not be missed?” he asked.

  Matrona scoffed. “My mother thinks I’m discussing my future with Feodor. I have all the time in the world.”

  Jaska frowned.

  “And you?”

  “Little work today. Nowhere else to go, for now.”

  She glanced over at him as the ground dipped and rose again. “How are you faring?”

  He shrugged. “Worse than usual. The key is to wait for someone else to become a more alluring topic of conversation.”

  They walked a moment in silence, their footsteps almost in sync with each other.

  Jaska sighed. “Viktor won’t speak to me. He thinks it’s all my doing . . . and I suppose it is. I don’t know about his wife yet. She hasn’t . . . been around. Neither has Galina, helping with the Zotovs. Put my mother in a fit last night to have me walk her to bed, instead of my sister.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s not your doing.”

  No, it was Slava’s.

  “I opened the doll,” she reminded him.

  He looked at her and began to speak, but a stone concealed by clover caught Matrona’s toe, and she pitched over it. Jaska caught her elbows and stopped her fall. When Matrona glanced up to thank him, his dark eyes were dangerously close to hers, reminding her once more of his doll’s loudest secret.

  Clearing her throat, she pulled away and continued the trek eastward.

  “Where are we going?” Jaska asked after another quarter mile.

  “That’s part of what I want you to see.”

  He nodded and fell silent. They moved easily together, crossing a brook, spooking a deer, passing a spiderweb strung with a few stubborn dots of dew.

  “Have you heard the children’s rhyme about me?” Jaska asked.

  “I have, unfortunately.”

  Jaska wiped a hand down his face. “Kind of catchy.”

  “The children have a gift for meter.”

  Jaska laughed.

  They walked farther still, talking of small things. Normally Matrona didn’t notice the loop in the wood until she passed through it, but today she saw something different. Her steps slowed until they ceased altogether. Jaska paused two paces ahead of her.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Matrona blinked, but yes, it was there. A strange thumbprint pattern across the trees, filling even the empty spaces between them. Identical to the one she’d seen in the sky.

  Beyond it, the wood seemed to go on forever. Yet Matrona knew what would happen when they passed through it.

  Licking her lips, she gestured ahead of her. “Do you see it?”

  Jaska eyed her, then scanned the wood ahead of them, and Matrona knew he did not. Gesturing to a bush with yellow flowers, he asked, “The pea shrub?”

  “Follow me.” Matrona resisted the urge to clasp his hand and pull him through the spell he still couldn’t see. She walked forward first, toward the grain across the wood. There was no sudden wind, no change in sensation whatso
ever, save for the sudden absence of a pintail’s cry.

  Jaska followed after her, looking around as though expecting something to jump out at him. Before Matrona could ask if he noticed a difference, he looked skyward and said, “The sounds. They changed.”

  Relief lifted Matrona’s shoulders. She’d only discovered the loops after opening her second doll, so she hadn’t been sure he would sense them yet. “We’re in the west wood now.”

  His gaze dropped to her.

  “A loop of some sort. From north to south, too.” She walked westward now, back through the subtle pattern. “I found it after opening my second doll.”

  Jaska caught up with her and paused, perhaps listening to the sudden return of the pintail’s song. “What else have you ‘found’?”

  “There’s a pattern.” Matrona glanced over her shoulder. Sure enough, the faint lines wrapped through the wood as though painted on the air itself. “A pattern of lines where the loop starts, and in the sky.”

  Jaska looked up again, but Matrona could tell by his frown that he didn’t see it. It hadn’t been revealed to her until the opening of the third doll.

  “I’m hiding again today.” She chuckled, though there was no humor in the words. “It’s the third day.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re attentive.” She shared a look with Jaska that threatened to make her flush, so she shifted her focus to the ground ahead of her.

  “You don’t want to open it?”

  Her steps slowed. “Jaska, if you understood—”

  “I want to.” He reached out and clasped her fingers, stopping her. His brow lowered. “Why doesn’t he just open it for you?”

  “So I’ll stay ‘independent.’” A shiver traced Matrona’s shoulders. “And because of your mother.”

  “Not again,” Slava had said. It felt wrong to disclose Slava’s secret to Jaska, yet it seemed just as wrong to withhold the truth.

  “You said she’d opened her dolls.”

  But Matrona shook her head. “She didn’t. Slava did.”

  Jaska stiffened.

  “He didn’t know the consequences.”

  Jaska’s expression darkened. “He’s not the one who must suffer them.”

  Perhaps only a broken heart, she thought.

  Jaska turned away from her, pulling his fingers from hers, placing his hands on his hips. His body was tense. She stayed quiet, letting him sort through the revelation on his own. She shifted toward a tree and picked at its bark. Noticed an animal trap not far off and made a note to be aware of others on this uncharted path.

  “I want you to open my second doll.”

  Matrona turned back to him, feeling herself pale. “It’s the worst one. Jaska, I could never do that to you.”

  “I want to know what you know.”

  “All you’ll know is the horrors of your own existence.” She continued to walk westward. “That’s the one I had opened when you found me outside his house, Jaska. It’s dark and horrible.”

  “Do you think I won’t survive it?”

  Matrona frowned. “It’s not a matter of survival.”

  His face softened. “I think it is. And I think you want to survive alone.”

  The accusation jarred her, forcing her to stop once more. She could have laughed. “Survive alone.” Isn’t that what she’d been doing even before Slava insinuated himself into her life? Isn’t that why she pined after her lost sister, why she had jumped at the chance to marry Feodor? So she wouldn’t have to survive alone . . .

  Jaska sighed. “Matrona, when you opened my first doll—”

  His words sent a cool thrill through her. There was one secret they hadn’t discussed. And yet the shadows still lurking in the dark corners of her mind screamed at her, reminding her how wrong it would be for them to acknowledge the way they both felt. Her parents had sacrificed so much to keep Feodor for her, hadn’t they? It had been an act of love. Love they rarely showed anymore.

  “Please, Jaska.” His name was just louder than a whisper.

  Jaska’s mouth closed so quickly, Matrona heard the snap of his teeth. He ran a hand back through his hair. “Just let me know what snow is like. Let me see it for myself. To help my mother.”

  Matrona looked away, blood coursing too fast, pretending to study the crooked bough of a hornbeam. “There is no saving her,” she murmured. “Or Roksana. Slava said as much.”

  “Matrona.”

  “I’ll open it.” The promise sucked the energy from her. “But we must wait the three days. I couldn’t forgive myself if you . . .”

  She didn’t say went mad, but Jaska nodded his full understanding.

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “Three days.”

  She nodded. “Then I’ll only have to avoid Slava for one.” He probably wouldn’t do too much damage if she put him off a single day . . . yet the thought made her uneasy. “I won’t be able to get to your doll otherwise. I need to be invited in.”

  “Won’t he see?”

  Matrona glanced at him, at his desperate eyes, at the stubble lining his jaw. For some reason, she was glad he didn’t wear a beard.

  “I’ll figure out something.” Oddly enough, it seemed the more Matrona stoked Slava’s temper, the less afraid of it she became. Perhaps that was the secret to his undoing.

  Or to hers.

  They trudged through the wood again, separating when the unmarked path grew too rocky, coming back together when it smoothed.

  “Not if it will endanger you,” Jaska said after a stretch of silence.

  Matrona had already begun to formulate a plan in her mind. She nodded almost absently. “It won’t. He won’t know, if I do it right.”

  “How will you . . . ?”

  Matrona smiled at him. “I have a hunch that a bit of clumsiness can go a long way.”

  Jaska grinned at her, bits of sunlight from the uneven canopy spotting his hair bronze. They were close enough to hear the pounding of the blacksmith’s hammer.

  “Thank you,” he continued, “for showing me. It makes me understand even less, but I’m glad to know. And . . . thank you for not hating me.”

  Matrona looked at him, surprised. “Why would I?”

  Jaska snorted. “Even before the dolls, people found plenty of reasons.”

  She shook her head. “Jaska, I could never—”

  He grabbed her before she could finish the sentiment, his hand a vise around her wrist, jerking her toward him and behind an oak. Matrona’s face burned like the kiln, but Jaska’s attention wasn’t on her.

  “Wh-What?” she croaked.

  Matrona glanced around the tree. They were right on the edge of the village. She hadn’t realized.

  “I think you should wait here before starting home.”

  “Why?”

  He gestured with a tilt of his head. Following his gaze, Matrona looked toward the pottery. Specifically, to a tall, lean man standing outside of it, his arms crossed over a spotless kosovorotka.

  “Feodor?” she murmured.

  “I don’t think he’ll be happy to see us emerging from the wood together.”

  A defense rose up her throat, but Matrona swallowed it. “Yes, that would be wise.”

  Jaska ran a hand back through his hair, and Matrona realized the habit was why it always looked unkempt. “This will be enjoyable.”

  “He may just need a pot—”

  Jaska laughed. “Matrona, Feodor is not the kind of man that waits around for anything if he can help it. If he’s here, empty-handed, he’s waiting for me.”

  Matrona paled. She almost asked, Why? but there was no point. They both knew.

  Jaska touched her shoulder, and Matrona hoped he couldn’t feel her pulse pick up beneath her skin. “Take care.” He pulled away and stepped into the village.

  Matrona stared ahead for a few seconds before daring to peek back around the oak. Jaska strode toward the pottery, and Feodor’s gaze fell heavily upon him. They spoke for a brief moment before stepping inside the
house, not the pottery. Matrona frowned. Feodor wasn’t confronting him, was he? They hadn’t done anything . . .

  Did Feodor care about her enough to snuff out possible competition? Matrona snorted. Likely he’s assuaging his own pride.

  She shook her head at the thought, but then again, strange things had been pouring into Matrona’s life like milk into a cistern. A frown tugging on her lips, Matrona stepped out of the wood and followed a path at random, her fingers lingering on the prints she could still feel on her shoulder.

  Matrona evaded her home most of the day, skirting her parents when she could—not only did she not want an argument about how she was spending her time, but she feared Slava would turn them into living dolls again. Finding her, speaking to her through their mouths.

  So she went to the Zotov izba, unsurprised to find Galina there, still working with Roksana, who hadn’t improved. Matrona stayed as long as she could stand, tidying the rooms and helping Alena with dinner, despite the way the woman still glared at her. Matrona could listen to her dear friend scream only so many times before her heart couldn’t bear it anymore, and she left.

  Slava had called for her near dinnertime, her father said when she returned home. And as she lay in bed, her mind turned over the first three dolls: the secrets, the belligerence, and the memories. What could a fourth doll show her? And what if she didn’t succeed in opening Jaska’s?

  What if she did, and Slava caught her?

  She woke the next morning with a headache that only worsened as she milked the cows, the rhythm of splashing milk pounding into her skull. So much grief, and yet she still didn’t know why the dolls existed in the first place, how their vulgar magic worked, or what exactly Slava wanted her to do once old age claimed him.

  Resolving herself for Jaska’s sake, Matrona changed into a clean blue sarafan and left for Slava’s sleeping-dragon home midmorning. She hadn’t yet reached the bend in the road when she heard her name.

  Turning around, she saw Feodor heading up the path toward her. Biting down on a mindless stutter, Matrona nodded her head in greeting, silent, as she usually was around him.