The Fifth Doll(48)

For a fleeting moment, Matrona wondered if Slava had been training the bird to come after her.

“You’re late,” Slava remarked, pulling off the glove.

Matrona lifted her chin, casting aside any lingering thoughts of Feodor. “Did you expect me not to be?”

“No. I expected this.”

“You know me so well.”

“I do.” His reply carried a surety that made Matrona’s chin drop. “I know all of you, like my own children. Come.”

He moved into the kitchen. Matrona followed with quick steps.

“You have children, Tradesman?” Matrona asked as they took the short stairs into the carpeted hallway.

“I do not. Not in the sense you’re thinking, Dairymaid.”

As Slava opened the door to the doll room, Matrona wondered if he thought of his dolls as children. A caterpillar-like gnawing formed in her stomach as she approached the table once more. Her eyes darted to the Jaska doll near the rightmost edge. Her skin tingled as if a carding brush had traced over it. She eyed Slava, but the man had turned his back on her to retrieve her doll.

Not enough time. Matrona held her peace, and Slava turned back, handing her the doll. She took it in both hands and pressed her lips together before unscrewing the largest doll.

“No complaints this time?” Slava asked.

She set the dual pieces of the first doll on the nearest shelf and opened the second.

“Good.” Slava nodded. “You’re growing.”

The third doll, with its black-painted interior.

“You’ve accepted your fate.”

The fourth doll, the length of her palm, stared up at her. Don’t hesitate, she thought. Earn more of his confidence.

She twisted it, the halves squeaking loudly against each other. Pulling them apart, Matrona looked for the fifth and final doll.

It wasn’t there.

Holding her breath, Matrona turned the pieces upside down, then peered inside them. Nothing. No doll, no painting, no marks of any kind.

“I don’t understand.” She lifted her eyes. “You told me there were five.”

“There are.”

She turned the pieces about to show Slava their contents. “There are only four. There should be a fifth inside.” One, Matrona presumed, that didn’t open.

Slava shook his head. “Put them together, separately.”

“But—”

“Matrona.” He eyed her, and Matrona fumbled to reinstate the fourth doll, then the third, the second, and the first. She set them next to one another on a free area of the shelf, not far from the unopened dolls of Boris and Rolan Ishutin. Largest to smallest. Four likenesses of her looking forward with soft, knowing smiles.

Matrona clenched her jaw to keep from shivering.

Slava stepped up to her, pointing his large forefinger at the largest doll. “One,” he said, and moved down the line. “Two. Three. Four.”

His hand came down, resting like a sack of beans on Matrona’s shoulder. “Five.”

Matrona pulled away from his touch. The caterpillar gnawed inside; the card brush dug in its bristles. “I don’t understand.”

“I think you do.”

Her eyes took in the dolls, trailing down the line of them. She glanced at Slava. The dolls.

“I’m the fifth doll?” she whispered. “But it doesn’t make sense.”

“Not at first.” Slava nodded, turning from her to the full tables. “But it will.”

A sore throbbing formed in the center of Matrona’s forehead. She stared at the dolls. How could it be? She certainly wouldn’t fit inside any of these creations!

She touched herself, feeling skin. She was no doll.

“I will teach you to navigate outside the village soon enough,” Slava continued, his words raising the fine hairs on the back of Matrona’s neck. “But the craft itself is more important for you to learn.”

Stiff, Matrona looked to him. In his hand he held a smooth block of wood, a little longer than Matrona’s forearm. Soft linden wood, by the look of it.

“You must learn to make the dolls yourself.”

Matrona swallowed against a drying throat. “Why?” she rasped. “You have all the dolls already.” Except yours. She had scanned the shelves and tables many times, but Slava’s doll, if he had one, was not in this room.

“To protect them,” he answered. “Roksana Zotov will deliver any day. We must prepare a doll for her child.”

The throbbing in her head spread to her temples. “But why?” she asked, picking up her fourth doll and turning it over in her hands.

“To keep it safe. We will carve the doll and prepare its body. Create the enchantment, and finish it once the babe is born. Paint it to match its sex and foreshadow its appearance.”

“Foreshadow?”

“We will foresee what the babe will look like as an adult and paint its likeness.”

Matrona turned, eyeing the dolls on the table. Was that why some dolls looked older, others younger? Had she been painted as an adult when she was but a babe?

Her gaze settled on the doll that bore a likeness to Irena Kalagin. The painted face was younger than the woman it resembled, but older than the depictions on her, Jaska’s, and Feodor’s dolls. A chilling realization settled into her breast.