The Fifth Doll(37)

Coming to her senses, she dropped Jaska’s hand like a match burned through. Her insides felt like tumbling gravel. If only she could hear his thoughts now. What she wouldn’t do for an assurance, or even a negation before her hopes climbed too high.

“What else do you know?”

The gravel sucked into her core, weighing it down, yet her lips felt as insubstantial as water when she stuttered, “I—I suppose everything.”

He stepped closer to her. Matrona’s skin burned like he was the sun. “What do you know?” he asked again, softer.

Her pulse was everywhere. “I know about . . . God.” She closed her eyes for a moment, ready to use Jaska’s curse on herself. Jaska was the one exposed, the one who would suffer, and her thoughts were centered entirely inward. She could not still her heart, but she managed to sort through her thoughts enough to ask, “Why don’t you believe in God?”

Jaska made a sound similar to a chuckle, though Matrona detected no mirth in it. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t remember ever making the decision.”

“But you don’t.”

Just enough moonlight peeked through the darkness to reflect off his eyes. “No. I have a hard time thinking there’s a greater being looming somewhere in the heavens, apart from us, picking and choosing who to love and who to punish.”

Matrona shook her head. “But God doesn’t work that way.”

“You don’t think my mother was punished?” Jaska asked, the question barely audible, half-stolen by the breeze. “My father?”

Words piled in Matrona’s mouth, but she was too exhausted to swallow them. “Your father punishes himself.”

Jaska turned away.

The gravelly feeling returned. “Jaska, I didn’t mean—”

“No, he does,” Jaska agreed, hands on his hips. He looked back at her. Despite the darkness, Matrona thought she could feel his gaze on her face, her breasts, her stomach. “What else . . . do you know?”

She licked her lips. “Everything, I’m afraid. Just as you know my secrets.”

“Tell me.”

The tone of his voice bristled over her skin. He knows I know. The knowledge made her tremble. Hadn’t she imagined herself walking through the wood with a lover?

She cleared her throat. “You and your mother, some thievery. Other . . . things.”

A strong breeze made her jump.

“What will Slava do?” he asked, hushed.

Matrona shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Find me if you need me. If you need anything. If he confronts you, I’ll come with you—”

“Slava cannot know you asked me to open the doll, Jaska.” Her voice bordered on begging. “He can’t know you know. Promise me you won’t do anything to let him know.”

Then again, Jaska’s secrets had spilled to the entire village. Had Matrona’s confiding in him been leaked as well, or was that secret solely hers?

She hugged herself. “I should go home.” She thought of the creaking floorboards inside Slava’s home, but pushed the uneasiness away. There was enough for her to worry about without jumping at ghosts.

She turned to leave, but Jaska’s voice snared her. “Matrona.”

She paused.

He hesitated. “Do you love him? Feodor.”

The question thickened the air between them. Feodor’s name weighed like a yoke across her shoulders.

Jaska already knew her secrets. Why must he ask?

“It doesn’t matter if I do or don’t,” she answered, offering him a smile she wasn’t sure he could see. “The date is already set.”

She tore herself from the shadows of Jaska’s web, though unseen filaments tugged at her feet. Her heavy limbs dragged, and her chest danced with uncertainty as she followed the border of the wood to her own home.

Her parents slept soundly in their bed, dreaming of Jaska Maysak’s secrets.



In the dark of Matrona’s room, secrets ran through her mind like briars, scratching against her thoughts every time fatigue tried to pull her asleep. Jaska. Jaska.

The darkness buried deep inside her stirred. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore it. To ignore everything.

When slumber settled upon her, however, she dreamed not of Jaska, but of Roksana. Roksana, her hair intricately plaited, arriving at the Zotov household to speak to Luka. Luka, who fancied Nastasya Kalagin, but fancied her less with every lie Roksana told him about Nastasya. Roksana had demeaned the other woman’s character until, eventually, the only woman Luka saw was Roksana herself.

The dream flashed forward in color and speed, and Matrona saw her dear friend offering a new bottle of kvass to Oleg Popov and murmuring, “She is a fine woman who will bear strong children. The Zotov house would not forget your kindness if this betrothal were made.”

Roksana, bending over a child’s work and frowning at the poor answers he gave in school, then lying to his parents about his progress so he would not be thought dumb.

Childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Matrona dreamed strange things all punctuated by Roksana, until they became a blur of imagination that settled in the corners of her mind before dawn awoke her.



The slightest scent of burning porridge drew Matrona’s attention to the brick oven, and she hurried over to pull the breakfast kasha off the heat before the smell could waft to her parents’ noses. It looked well and fine, but upon stirring it, Matrona noticed burned porridge sticking to the bottom of the pot. Hopefully her mother wouldn’t notice.