The Fifth Doll(45)

Clearing her throat, she pulled away and continued the trek eastward.

“Where are we going?” Jaska asked after another quarter mile.

“That’s part of what I want you to see.”

He nodded and fell silent. They moved easily together, crossing a brook, spooking a deer, passing a spiderweb strung with a few stubborn dots of dew.

“Have you heard the children’s rhyme about me?” Jaska asked.

“I have, unfortunately.”

Jaska wiped a hand down his face. “Kind of catchy.”

“The children have a gift for meter.”

Jaska laughed.

They walked farther still, talking of small things. Normally Matrona didn’t notice the loop in the wood until she passed through it, but today she saw something different. Her steps slowed until they ceased altogether. Jaska paused two paces ahead of her.

“What is it?” he asked.

Matrona blinked, but yes, it was there. A strange thumbprint pattern across the trees, filling even the empty spaces between them. Identical to the one she’d seen in the sky.

Beyond it, the wood seemed to go on forever. Yet Matrona knew what would happen when they passed through it.

Licking her lips, she gestured ahead of her. “Do you see it?”

Jaska eyed her, then scanned the wood ahead of them, and Matrona knew he did not. Gesturing to a bush with yellow flowers, he asked, “The pea shrub?”

“Follow me.” Matrona resisted the urge to clasp his hand and pull him through the spell he still couldn’t see. She walked forward first, toward the grain across the wood. There was no sudden wind, no change in sensation whatsoever, save for the sudden absence of a pintail’s cry.

Jaska followed after her, looking around as though expecting something to jump out at him. Before Matrona could ask if he noticed a difference, he looked skyward and said, “The sounds. They changed.”

Relief lifted Matrona’s shoulders. She’d only discovered the loops after opening her second doll, so she hadn’t been sure he would sense them yet. “We’re in the west wood now.”

His gaze dropped to her.

“A loop of some sort. From north to south, too.” She walked westward now, back through the subtle pattern. “I found it after opening my second doll.”

Jaska caught up with her and paused, perhaps listening to the sudden return of the pintail’s song. “What else have you ‘found’?”

“There’s a pattern.” Matrona glanced over her shoulder. Sure enough, the faint lines wrapped through the wood as though painted on the air itself. “A pattern of lines where the loop starts, and in the sky.”

Jaska looked up again, but Matrona could tell by his frown that he didn’t see it. It hadn’t been revealed to her until the opening of the third doll.

“I’m hiding again today.” She chuckled, though there was no humor in the words. “It’s the third day.”

“I know.”

“You’re attentive.” She shared a look with Jaska that threatened to make her flush, so she shifted her focus to the ground ahead of her.

“You don’t want to open it?”

Her steps slowed. “Jaska, if you understood—”

“I want to.” He reached out and clasped her fingers, stopping her. His brow lowered. “Why doesn’t he just open it for you?”

“So I’ll stay ‘independent.’” A shiver traced Matrona’s shoulders. “And because of your mother.”

“Not again,” Slava had said. It felt wrong to disclose Slava’s secret to Jaska, yet it seemed just as wrong to withhold the truth.

“You said she’d opened her dolls.”

But Matrona shook her head. “She didn’t. Slava did.”

Jaska stiffened.

“He didn’t know the consequences.”

Jaska’s expression darkened. “He’s not the one who must suffer them.”

Perhaps only a broken heart, she thought.

Jaska turned away from her, pulling his fingers from hers, placing his hands on his hips. His body was tense. She stayed quiet, letting him sort through the revelation on his own. She shifted toward a tree and picked at its bark. Noticed an animal trap not far off and made a note to be aware of others on this uncharted path.

“I want you to open my second doll.”

Matrona turned back to him, feeling herself pale. “It’s the worst one. Jaska, I could never do that to you.”

“I want to know what you know.”

“All you’ll know is the horrors of your own existence.” She continued to walk westward. “That’s the one I had opened when you found me outside his house, Jaska. It’s dark and horrible.”

“Do you think I won’t survive it?”

Matrona frowned. “It’s not a matter of survival.”

His face softened. “I think it is. And I think you want to survive alone.”

The accusation jarred her, forcing her to stop once more. She could have laughed. “Survive alone.” Isn’t that what she’d been doing even before Slava insinuated himself into her life? Isn’t that why she pined after her lost sister, why she had jumped at the chance to marry Feodor? So she wouldn’t have to survive alone . . .