The Fifth Doll(16)

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.”