The Fifth Doll(14)

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.