The Fifth Doll(5)

Matrona waited several seconds, but there was no answer. Hadn’t she seen Slava’s wagon around the back of the house? She knocked again, harder. Stared at the knotted square etched into Slava’s brass door handle. Traced it. Touched it. Turned it.

The door opened onto a short front hall well lit by the windows. “Slava?” she called inside. “Tradesman?”

No answer. She needed to think quickly, for dark things dwelled in the thresholds of houses, so she couldn’t linger long. Matrona glanced at the paintbrush in her hands. She could set it down on the doorstep for him to find later, yes?

As she pulled the door closed, however, she heard movement within the house, perhaps the brushing of a shoulder against a rough wall? She paused for a breath, then pushed the door open again and called, louder, “Slava? Are you home?”

No answer.

“It’s Matrona Vitsin. I found a brush near the path that I believe must be yours . . .” Her voice faded as the heaviness of the quiet house pushed it toward the floor. Pressing her lips together, she moved to set down the paintbrush, but a thump from within stilled her hand.

She straightened. “Slava? Are you all right?” A vision of the aging tradesman filled her thoughts, of him trying to reach her and then tumbling to the floor, breathless, ill, with no one to help him. After gnawing on her lip a moment, Matrona pushed the door open and stepped inside the house.

Matrona had never entered Slava’s home; he always completed his trades off the side of the path. She noted that the interior of the house was simpler than the exterior, though still fine. A staircase at the end of the hall, its banister unpolished, led to the upper floor. There were a few simple paintings on the wall, with simple frames, and Matrona wondered if Slava had painted them himself, if this paintbrush truly was his. She hadn’t known the tradesman to be an artist, but then again, he kept mostly to himself.

“Slava?” she called again with urgency, rounding the corner and spying a rolltop desk. She touched its fine stenciling, wondering where Slava had found it, for she’d never seen Pavel Zotov, the carpenter and Roksana’s father-in-law, craft something so fine. She passed a chest of drawers, a short table, and some embroidered chairs with high backs of a make she didn’t recognize. “Slava, are you hurt?”

Perhaps he wasn’t home after all. Matrona turned about once, looking for a shadow, listening for a groan, then slipped from the front room into a small kitchen. She spied across the empty room to a short hallway to her right, which dipped down with two stairs from the kitchen floor. Another rustle, deeper in the house, encouraged her to take those stairs; she tried to resist marveling at the aged but lush carpeting underfoot. A door at the end of the hallway was cracked open, spilling out a sliver of sunlight.

She pressed it open, half-expecting a bedroom, and instead got a face full of brown feathers. She shrieked and staggered back as a large bird grappled with the door frame before flitting to the opposite end of the room and finding a perch on the windowsill. Pressing a palm to her speeding heart, Matrona gawked at the creature—a red kite, perhaps? Surely such a creature hadn’t gotten lost inside the house! Had Slava acquired the bird on one of his routes? The creature glared at her with a yellowed eye, and he wore a copper band around one of his legs.

Matrona’s hand tightened on the paintbrush, and she took two calming breaths. This must have been what she’d heard, then, foolish bird. She took half a step away from the room, but its interior snared her attention: two tables—one large, one small—took up most of the space, and simple wooden shelves had been nailed into the walls. The glass window, where the kite perched, was too tall to be peered into from outside.

Her lips parted in surprise. Dolls. The tables and shelves all held dolls. Carved wooden dolls, round faced and slightly pear shaped, about the length of her forearm. They were painted in a variety of colors, and many wore head scarves and ornamented clothes. So many dolls. Dozens. Over a hundred, surely.

Glancing once at the watching kite, Matrona walked to the large table. She set down the paintbrush and picked up one of the dolls, its wooden body lacquered and smooth. It bore a remarkable resemblance to Zhanna Avdovin, were she twenty years younger. A coppery kokoshnik framed her face. The doll even had the same light curls and pursed mouth.

She set the doll down, for another caught her eye. She touched it, hesitant to pick it up, but she did, studying the face closely. Pavel. It looked exactly like the carpenter.

She set the doll down and stepped back to examine the other faces, her mouth opening wider with each one, a slow breath trickling into her lungs. Viktor, Sacha, Ilary. And there—that was Jaska, undoubtedly. And on the small table to her left, she found a doll resembling her father. Even the facial hair matched. Her father had not altered his beard in all the years she’d known him.

The kite clicked deep in his throat, but she ignored him and picked up her father’s doll, turning it over. He had this same clothing as well, the blue rubashka with black trim, the matching hat. How long ago had Slava made this doll? All of them? And why?

Gooseflesh rose on Matrona’s arms. She thought to search for her own doll when her thumbnail discovered a seam in the doll’s center, encircling her father’s round waist. It was two pieces, then? It opened?

Gripping the top and bottom of the doll with chilled fingers, Matrona pulled, though the pieces were stiff. The wood squeaked against itself as the top and bottom half twisted—