The Fifth Doll(19)

Matrona gasped, the shock of the cold clearing her head. “It’s not warm,” she gasped, more air than voice.

“Only because you dallied,” her mother snapped, shoving Matrona’s head forward and dragging lye over her neck. “Can you wash up, or must I do that, too?”

Matrona reached up a trembling hand and took the lye. Her mother left, slamming the bedroom door behind her.



“You must resolve this.” Feodor paced the length of the front room, moving back and forth before the brick oven, his hands clasped behind his back. His shirt was wrinkled around the waist and elbows. The evening sun trickled through a window, casting the shadow of the half-open shutter over the floor. Matrona’s parents were in the pasture, milking the cows.

“I have been very patient with you,” Feodor continued, glancing Matrona’s way as he walked back and forth, back and forth. Matrona felt the glance more than she saw it. Feodor had been pacing for nearly half an hour, lecturing her thoroughly enough that his disapproving voice had replaced the mocking one inside her head. It left her body limp and heavy, as though ink flowed through her veins, instead of blood, smudging her insides with darkness. He’d begun to repeat himself, and Matrona’s tongue was too heavy to ask him to stop. He continued, “I don’t understand the enigma you’ve become this week, Matrona. For heaven’s sake, I thought we were past this.”

Unseen cords wrapped around Matrona’s shoulders and tried to pull her toward the ground. She fought against them. Though a full day had passed since her last visit to Slava’s house, the urge to curl up into a ball and let the earth suck her up had not lessened. Her head continued to ache—more so if she focused on it—and the dismal thoughts running through her brain had long since begun to repeat themselves, much as Feodor was doing now.

The comparison made her stomach turn, but perhaps that was just hunger. This bizarre depression had consumed her appetite as well.

“I’ll be well in a couple of days,” Matrona murmured, cradling her forehead in her hands. Surely she would recover by Slava’s next deadline, else he could expect nothing from her. The voice inside her attacked again. Is that the kind of posture you choose to take before your future husband? Can you not bear it and smile for his sake?

She bit the inside of her cheek and shot back, Can he not bear a smile for mine?

She tried to straighten, to pull up the corners of her mouth, but they were so heavy, and the effort made her bones throb.

Feodor’s footsteps paused. “Stop this now, Matrona.”

The order ran down the back of her neck like sharpened fingernails. She gritted her teeth. “I am trying. I am merely not well.”

Feodor’s toe tapped against the floorboards, and the echo carried in the silence of the room. “I’ll send for the doctor.”

And then Feodor left, too.

Matrona dragged herself back to her bed and lay there, trying to sleep. But while the desperation stretching inside her made her weary, it also kept her alert. She tried to let it roll over her, water off a lark’s feathers, but the effort made her body ache all the more.

Her father came in at some point to lecture her, but his voice dropped as pebbles in a bottomless well. He gave up, for Matrona did fall asleep, and by the time she awoke to twilight, her father was gone.



Feodor did summon the doctor to the Vitsins’, which Matrona might have found endearing were she in a sound state of mind. And she tried to appear sound, for fear that the doctor would declare her mad. Maybe she was mad.

The doctor checked her for ailments, trying to diagnose hurts that had no physical cause. He claimed her in good health, so with heavy hands Matrona tied an apron about her neck and waist and forced herself outside. If the sunshine would not help, then perhaps work would. She could not let this darkness paralyze her.

Matrona breathed deeply as she walked to the barn, shivering despite the cloudless day, trying to imagine her skin opening up and drinking in the late-morning light. Her thoughts had calmed, at the very least, leaving her head foggy and lined with cobwebs. The headache pounding behind her eyes persisted. Sitting at the butter churn, Matrona plunged the handle up and down in time to the beat within her throbbing skull, hoping the exercise would unravel the tautness across her shoulders and back.

It didn’t.

She churned for a long time, trying to breathe through Slava’s spell, though this morning the smell of the cream turned her stomach. If the hateful voice in her head had ceased its prattling, then soon the rest would wear off as well, yes? Matrona tried to grasp that glimmer of hope. She could pretend to be well until true relief came, and if it did not, she would drag her leaden body to Slava’s and demand an antidote . . . Yet she feared what future torments he had in store for her. Removing the second doll had produced a worse effect than removing the first. This doll attacked her from within, and she still didn’t understand why.

A knock sounded between beats of the plunger hitting the base of the churn, and Matrona looked up, blinking back shadows and webs to see the person in the doorway. It took her too long to recognize him, and when she did, a sliver from the plunger handle bit into her index finger.

Jaska.

She blinked again and rubbed her wrist over her eyes.

“I’m sorry to intrude.” Jaska’s voice seemed to skim along the sides of her neck. It was pitched lower than Feodor’s, yet not as deep as her father’s. “I tried to come sooner—”