The Fifth Doll(21)

He nodded, once. “A couple years ago, when Mama was especially bad, and my father . . .” He didn’t finish the statement. “We headed south. Didn’t tell anyone. Strapped our packs on and ventured through the wood. We walked maybe half a day before we turned back.”

“Why?”

Jaska’s forehead crinkled as he thought. “I’m not sure. I just . . . felt compelled to go home. We both did. Wouldn’t do to leave the care of our parents to Galina and Viktor, besides.”

Matrona’s gaze fell to the butter churn. South. What lay south? Or north, or east, or west? Only Slava would know. No one else ever left the village.

Would he search for her if she left, or would he choose someone else?

“Matrona!” Her mother’s distant voice formed the name, perhaps from inside the house. She must have just returned home. Matrona’s skin prickled, and she pushed her heavy body off the wall.

Jaska frowned, glancing behind him, though he would not see the house from where he stood in the barn. “I should go. I have no desire to cause more trouble for you.”

Matrona nodded. “Please. Out the back gate.”

He took one step toward the back doors of the barn before hesitating and looking back at Matrona with dark, calculating eyes. But Matrona’s mother called out to her again, and he turned away, quickening his steps, disappearing into the day.

The ache in her back and head drummed a steady rhythm of encouragement. She could leave. Stow away in another village until things calmed down and Slava moved on. Then she could come home, if she wanted. Feodor might even wait for her.

Matrona hurried out the front of the barn and made it halfway across the pasture before her mother appeared at the back door. South. She would go south, as Kostya and Jaska once had. She’d seen Slava’s wagon head south before, so there had to be something in that direction. Perhaps she could find the wagon tracks and follow them.

Matrona glanced over her shoulder, but Jaska hadn’t left so much as a shadow in his wake. She frowned, but held to her conviction.

Tomorrow morning, she would go.





Chapter 6


In the shadows of night, the darkness reared up with a blistering vengeance.

Ugly, filthy girl. The slick voice stirred her from restless sleep.

Her mother’s voice murmured, My other daughter would have worked harder. My other daughter would not have embarrassed me so. She would not leave when life grew difficult.

A child’s voice cried, I’m not pretty like the other girls. My brow is too thick and my cheeks too wide. I’ll never be pretty like them.

Matrona sat up in bed, shivering with a chill she couldn’t feel. “Stop,” she whispered.

Who would kiss such worked hands? The low, feminine voice crooned. The tone lightened, mimicking her own voice: All I’m good for is milking cows and beating rugs.

“Stop,” she repeated again, louder. Serpents coiled around her chest, thinning her air. Her head pounded, and her palms went slick with perspiration.

Useless.

Vulgar.

Coward.

Vagrant.

Clumsy.

The way you look at him—

I cannot help how I feel! Matrona shouted back, her thoughts piercing the oily venom far better than her own voice did. I cannot change the leaning of my heart any more than I can move the sun in the sky!

The darkness stirred and lashed out once more. Stupid girl. You never get anything right. Remember all your failings? Your struggle with arithmetic. Your clumsiness with the milk. Cream, spilled every—

Enough! she shouted, wincing against the stabbing in her forehead. The muscles in her legs and abdomen tightened like sinew drying in the sun. I was a child, and I tried my best! I learned it! And I cannot be held accountable for every misstep. Be gone!

Aloud, she said, “You will not have power over me.”

The voices shifted, reverting to her mother’s. You have humiliated me before the village—

Matrona did not let the words finish. I am a good and virtuous woman.

The darkness sneered. You are—

I am a good and virtuous woman, Matrona repeated, clutching fistfuls of blanket in her hands. I have strived to be good all my life, and I have succeeded. You cannot take that from me.

A glimmer of warmth sparked in her heart, loosening the serpents, and Matrona realized she believed it. She believed her counterattacks. She had strived to be wholesome and upright, since she was a little girl. Not because her mother demanded it, not to impress her father, but because that was who she wanted to be.

The darkness hissed, and when it addressed her again, it did so in the young child’s voice. You are—

“I am beautiful,” she whispered, and the storming shadows dissipated into clouds of ash, drifting away from her thoughts like the remnants of a bad dream.

Matrona took in a deep, shuddering breath and opened her eyes, searching her moonlit room. She listened, waited, but the voices did not return.

A smile pulled on her lips. She wiped tears from her eyes, rested her head on her pillow, and fell into the most peaceful slumber she’d ever had.



The third day, Matrona awoke with bones of iron instead of lead, a headache that tapped instead of pounded, and clear vision that only spotted when she moved too quickly. She headed out to the pasture early to do her chores, before her parents had awoken for the day, though the neighbors’ cock had already crowed twice. If she finished the work before she left, her parents wouldn’t have reason to seek her out until she was miles away.