The Fifth Doll(26)
She nodded.
“As what? An apprentice? To take over this sorcery?”
The word sorcery prickled the back of Matrona’s neck and sent a new burst of energy through her weary limbs. She tried to study the shadows of the young man’s face. “You believe me?”
“I don’t have a reason not to.”
For a moment, Matrona tried to imagine those words on the lips of her mother, or Feodor. It was impossible to envision it. “But it’s so far-fetched.”
“Not if you pay attention.”
“What do you mean?”
Jaska shrugged, hesitated. “Have you ever noticed . . . how content everyone is?”
Matrona’s lips parted slightly. She thought of her mother, her father . . . Feodor pacing in her front room, lecturing her for the suffering to which Slava had subjected her. “I can’t say I have.”
“They are.” He rubbed the back of his head with a hand. Noticing the glove over his fingers, he pulled it off, then did the same with its match. “So . . . complacent. Or how everyone is born here, and everyone stays. There’s no . . . mingling with other towns, save for the goods Slava brings from them.” He, too, eyed the cellar doors. “Aside from your sister’s disappearance . . . nothing bad ever happens.”
“What do you mean?” Matrona wrung her fingers. “What sort of ‘bad’ things would happen, Jaska?”
The potter pulled away from the closet, shaking his head. “I don’t know.” He paused. “Things my mother says.”
Matrona frowned. Mad Olia had a lot to say, and most of it was nonsensical, if it could be understood at all. Like bad poetry spoken underwater. But, Matrona conceded, were she my mother, I would try to make sense of it.
The cellar doors creaked again, and Matrona’s hands tightened into fists as she waited for the doors to open. They didn’t. A trick of the wind, perhaps.
“I don’t trust him,” Jaska murmured after a long moment.
“Slava?”
“Mm.”
“Why? Because of what I said?”
He shook his head again, watching the cracks between the cellar doors. “Because he’s . . . different.”
“Different how?”
“Look at him, Matrona. Listen to how he talks. He’s different.”
“I hadn’t spoken to him much before . . . this,” she confessed. “But yes, he is. Dragon house and all.”
He turned from the crack. “Dragon house?”
Matrona flushed. “It looks like . . . Never mind. He’s a sorcerer, he has to be. If only you could see the dolls—”
“I’m not surprised. Makes me wonder about the others.”
Her spine stiffened. “Others?”
Jaska didn’t answer.
“Who else do you not trust?” Who else should I not trust?
He shrugged and leaned onto one leg, tilting his shoulders. “I don’t know.”
“Jaska—”
“Pavel.” The name struck her chest like a hammer. But there was nothing off about Pavel. Matrona knew him well. “Ole—” he continued, but the name cut clean between his teeth. Still, Matrona had heard enough of it.
“Oleg?” she repeated, skin heating. “Oleg Popov?”
Jaska ran a hand through his unkempt hair. “I didn’t mean to say it.”
“What is there not to trust about Oleg?” Her betrothed’s father? Her heart raced.
“I don’t know. Intuition. I have no good reason to suspect him of anything, Matrona.”
“But then why—”
“The horses, I guess.”
She paused, stared at him. “Horses?”
“He and Pavel have both asked me to paint white horses on their pottery. Both have white horses in their homes. Dozens of them. I’ve asked why, and neither will answer beyond admitting to a fondness for them. I don’t know. I thought it was strange.”
“That two men happen to like horses?”
“White horses, specifically? I’ve never even seen a white horse.”
She licked her lips, listening to the cellar doors in the silence that fell between them.
Jaska shook his head. “Like I said, I have no reason.”
Matrona pursed her lips.
After a long moment, a soft chuckle sounded in the potter’s throat.
“What’s funny?”
He glanced at her. “The excuse. I used to say that to you when you stayed over. You’d ask why I misbehaved, and I’d say I had no reason.”
The memory surfaced easily in Matrona’s mind, and she felt her chest flush at the reminder of how young Jaska was, and how foolish her own mind could be.
Jaska looked around the cellar, but didn’t move toward its doors. “What if you went, Matrona?”
The words struck her like the point of an awl. “Pardon?”
“If you went to Slava. Opened the . . . third? Doll.”
Matrona shook her head. “I . . . I can’t. He’ll break me. If only you knew what opening those dolls meant . . .”
“I have an idea,” he murmured. “How many layers are there?”
Matrona paused, stretching her mind to remember. He’d said there were five, hadn’t he?