The Fifth Doll(36)

Pamyat hissed. Matrona shook her head. Sticking the unlit end of the candle in her mouth, she grabbed both halves of Jaska’s doll and popped them apart.

A moment of silence descended on the room, quieting even Pamyat.

A creak in the hallway shot a chill of terror through Matrona’s spine. Slava wasn’t home. He couldn’t be. Had Jaska followed her in? Fumbling with the doll, she pulled the candle from her mouth and blew it out. The smoke from the wick tickled her nostrils.

She waited, listening. Heard nothing more.

Using the dim moonlight from the high window as a guide, Matrona shoved the pieces of Jaska’s doll back together, lining them up as best she could, and then set the doll back in its designated place on the table. Squatting, she checked the floor for beads of wax and found none.

She peeked into the hallway, seeing nothing but ordinary shadows. She rushed back down it. When she reached the front door, she nearly threw it open in her eagerness to get outside. She stumbled onto the portico and pulled the door shut behind her.

And just like that, like a lantern lit within her mind, she knew.

All his secrets.

They sprouted in her mind like a wild garden: Playing cruel pranks on neighbors after his mother lost her mind. Crying into his pillow so his siblings wouldn’t hear. Trying to persuade his mother to be sane again.

Matrona’s eyes widened as more and more secrets bubbled up. Finding Nastasya Kalagin on a spread of blankets in the basement, his brother Viktor—his married brother, Viktor—writhing on top of her. Viktor swearing him to secrecy. Stealing sausages hanging in the butchery because Oleg Popov wouldn’t give his “detestable” family their share.

Matrona rested a hand against one of the portico’s twisting columns to steady herself. Small secrets, childhood fibs and the like, speckled her thoughts. Then a new flower bloomed, and Matrona caught her breath; Jaska Maysak didn’t believe in God.

She pushed off the column and hurried down the steps of the porch. Jaska came to church every Voskresen’ye, yet it was only for show. That secret alone would ostracize him from the village. The spell of the doll held back the reasons for his disbelief, but Matrona’s heart ached for him and the judgments he would face come morning.

More secrets, ones Matrona already knew—his distrust of Pavel and Oleg, of Slava.

But as Matrona came around the side of the house, the spell revealed a secret she had not been expecting.

What Jaska thought of her.





Chapter 12


Matrona froze in her steps as truths unfolded in her mind. She wavered on her feet.

Jaska hadn’t thought anything special about her until that day all her secrets filled his head, nestling there as if he’d always known them. The day he learned Matrona Vitsin desired him and hated herself for it.

Seeing her later, on the path to the butchery, he had looked at her differently. Noticed her. Matrona was beautiful, wasn’t she?

Over the last week, Jaska’s thoughts had turned and turned, kneaded like bread dough, and as Matrona peered into the shadows where he hid, she knew.

He wanted her, too.

Air expelled from her lungs, and she struggled to breathe it back in. Her entire body felt light. Her skin tingled. Her mouth dried. Her blood . . .

A vision born of the third doll crossed her mind: lightning. That’s how she felt. Like it flashed relentlessly inside her.

She was wanted—and by him, no less. She had never experienced a sensation like this.

A voice that sounded too similar to the berating voice awakened by the second doll whispered, You marry in two weeks, you wretched girl.

But Feodor didn’t truly want her. Not like this. Not the way she so desperately needed to be wanted.

“Matrona?”

His voice sounded like pine needles caught on the wind. He shifted from the darkness, letting a sliver of moonlight catch his features.

Matrona forced breath into her lungs. They ached like a deep bruise.

“Did you find it?” he asked.

But of course—Matrona had felt nothing after opening her first doll. She’d learned of its consequences secondhand.

She stared at him without speaking. Could this be some sort of trick? Perhaps Slava had done something to Jaska’s doll.

“Matrona?” he asked again.

She nodded, her neck stiff. “Yes.” Her voice poured like sand from her tongue, rough and broken. She rubbed her throat with her fingertips. “It’s done.”

“You’re . . . sure?” He sounded unconvinced.

She worked up enough moisture to swallow. “I—I’m sure.”

He didn’t respond immediately, only watched her. What did he expect her to say? Do you really feel that way? Even if it were true, could his feelings really be genuine? And what if Matrona had misread his thoughts somehow? Would Jaska laugh at her? His denial would crush her.

Instead, she said, “I know about . . . Viktor.”

He pulled back from her, breaking their gaze, and startled her by cursing. The word sounded like one of Pamyat’s hisses.

Running a hand through his hair, he asked, “They’ll all know, won’t they?”

The sound of rustling—footsteps?—touched Matrona’s ears. Likely her imagination again, but in a flash of boldness, she grabbed Jaska’s hand and pulled him away from Slava’s extravagant home. Only when they reached the edge of the wood did she say, “We shouldn’t linger here.”