The Fifth Doll(44)

“The dolls,” Matrona whispered. “She followed me to S-Slava’s home. Found her doll. Opened it all . . . Oh, Jaska, i-it’s what happened to your mother. To see it all at once is m-madness, and Roksana—”

She choked, swallowed, and drew in a shuddering breath. “Roksana is gone. They both are.”

Jaska pressed his lips together, his head tilting to one side as though too heavy for his neck. Matrona choked back her sorrow, wiped her eyes with her sleeve—

She noticed the warmth on her arm first, then the light pressure from his fingertip. Looking up, she saw his face, his shoulder. Jaska pulled her to him, tentatively at first, but when Matrona didn’t resist, he wrapped both arms around her and drew her close. The cotton of his kosovorotka was soft against her cheek. Scents of clay and wood smoke tickled her nose, but his hair smelled like angelica.

To Matrona, it was as if the breeze stilled, the birds silenced, and earth held its breath. For a moment, she felt entirely whole.





Chapter 14


Matrona sat beneath the shade of an ancient aspen at the edge of the wood east of the village, far enough into the trees to feel hidden, close enough to the village to hear the calls of the livestock. One of the tree’s roots had grown up and over a large rock, resting across its surface like a sun-bathing snake. It was there Matrona made her perch and waited, watching a starling flit back and forth from branch to branch overhead, its small, quick wings breaking up beams of morning sun.

Today was the third day since Matrona had opened her third doll, and while the strange memories it had awakened in her were mild compared to dolls one and two, Matrona had determined not to return to the tradesman’s home. At least, she fought to be determined. The very thought of that fourth doll hardened her stomach and softened everything else. Knowing what she now knew about Olia; seeing it play out with Roksana. The mystic idea of being “separated” from the village, as Slava had put it. She couldn’t trust such simple words, not from him.

He frightened her.

She thought about her parents’ dolls sitting beside Slava as he smoked in his chair. He would not go too far, would he? Despite everything, Matrona was sure he cared for the people he depicted in wood and paint, else he would not strive to make her their caretaker. The question was, whose will would bend first? Hers or Slava’s?

Was it fair to let her family and neighbors suffer for the sake of that contest?

Her hand strayed up to her shoulder to work out a knot as she breathed out slowly, imagining her anxiety floating away on the wind, little seeds to take root elsewhere. She didn’t know how long she could put off Slava, and truth be told, she doubted she would ever manage to turn his interest from her. The tradesman was the first reason why she lingered here in the east wood, resting within the sanctuary of its trees.

The soft steps of a man walking over clover and sloughed bark reminded her of the second.

Matrona stood and smoothed out her skirt, searching for the sound until Jaska appeared between two dwarf linden trees. He looked tired, but alert. He wore older clothes, gray with a few faint stains of clay on them. His sleeves were rolled up again, but for once his hands and arms were spotless.

Matrona tried to ignore the twitching in her chest. “I was worried you wouldn’t come.”

“Ignore a cryptic message left for me in the bottom of a cracked pot?” Jaska asked with a small smile. “I couldn’t resist.” He glanced toward the village and stepped back, masking himself behind the linden tree. Matrona didn’t know whom he saw, but she slipped closer to the aspen until Jaska relaxed. It would do no good for either of them to be seen together.

“I have to show you first,” Matrona said, “before you’ll believe me.”

“I’ll believe you.”

The simple words brought a smile to her face. “I know. But I’d rather show you.”

She stepped away from the tree, moving deeper into the wood, and motioned for Jaska to follow her. He did so without complaint, taking long strides until he reached her side, ducking under the branch of a thorn tree as he went.

“You’ll not be missed?” he asked.

Matrona scoffed. “My mother thinks I’m discussing my future with Feodor. I have all the time in the world.”

Jaska frowned.

“And you?”

“Little work today. Nowhere else to go, for now.”

She glanced over at him as the ground dipped and rose again. “How are you faring?”

He shrugged. “Worse than usual. The key is to wait for someone else to become a more alluring topic of conversation.”

They walked a moment in silence, their footsteps almost in sync with each other.

Jaska sighed. “Viktor won’t speak to me. He thinks it’s all my doing . . . and I suppose it is. I don’t know about his wife yet. She hasn’t . . . been around. Neither has Galina, helping with the Zotovs. Put my mother in a fit last night to have me walk her to bed, instead of my sister.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not your doing.”

No, it was Slava’s.

“I opened the doll,” she reminded him.

He looked at her and began to speak, but a stone concealed by clover caught Matrona’s toe, and she pitched over it. Jaska caught her elbows and stopped her fall. When Matrona glanced up to thank him, his dark eyes were dangerously close to hers, reminding her once more of his doll’s loudest secret.