The Fifth Doll(50)

“Get out.”

Matrona hurried past him without hesitation, up the hallway and through the rooms that had become far too familiar to her. Pamyat shrieked as she passed but did not leave his perch. She headed out the door, into the sunshine.

Nothing changed about her this time, not that she could feel. But she was free now, as free as a trapped woman could be. Tilting her head back, Matrona gazed skyward. The lines of wood grain against the sky were darker and sharper than they had been before. Was this how Slava saw the world?

Not the world, the village. There was only the village. She would never look at it or its inhabitants the same way again.

Jaska, she thought, remembering the horrors she’d faced after opening her own second doll. That darkness would be weighing down on him now, and without warning. He was suffering.

Matrona had to find him, help him, and tell him what she knew.





Chapter 15


The village changed before Matrona’s eyes. Or perhaps it was her urgency that colored it differently.

In her mind’s eye, Matrona saw izbas built of paper, people milling about them like marionettes on strings. Completely unaware of where or what they were, the villagers prattled to each other about pointless things. For if Matrona was the center of her doll, were not these people also the centers of theirs?

Yet if Matrona had truly escaped Slava’s spell, why did she still see wood grain in the sky?

Confusion coiled around her heart as a serpent, making it hard to breathe. The Demidovs appeared on the path ahead of her, driving an ox to pull a wagon heavy with a plow. Matrona rushed by them, clapping shoulders with Lenore, who began to shout something after her, but the words fizzled before they finished. Matrona found herself uncaring. Lenore Demidov was just a doll. All of them were.

What if that was all Matrona had ever been?

Esfir, she reminded herself, quickening her pace. Esfir never had a doll. She was real, before she vanished. I must be real, too.

The serpent squeezed.

Her body was flushed with exertion by the time she reached the pottery, which stood free of customers. Viktor worked near the kiln in the back, and Kostya sat at a pottery wheel, a delicate carving knife clutched in his clay-stained hand.

“Where is Jaska?” Matrona asked.

Both brothers looked over. Viktor blinked a few times as though his vision was slow to focus. The memory of Jaska’s unbidden revelation about him made Matrona’s stomach flip.

Kostya eyed Matrona as well, looking too long, as though he were trying to place how he knew her. His mouth worked, as if preparing to say something unkind, but no words came.

A strange sensation filled Matrona the longer she studied him, almost like the sensation of falling mixed with the cool mist of rain. Then, all at once, she saw beyond Kostya. Or rather, into him. She saw his insecurities about his family as if they were freckles dotting his skin. She felt his desire for thrill seeking, which often led to late-night excursions, like the time she’d witnessed him out with one of the village girls. She saw his sorrow over the absence of caring, present parents in his life, which simultaneously made her appreciate her own.

It shook her, seeing all that. The effect was different from when she’d opened Jaska’s doll, from when poor, dear Roksana had opened hers. Those secrets had flooded her mind all at once; these impressions filled in the more she focused on the man, and they eased the moment she looked away.

More importantly, the secrets weren’t hers.

“I . . . ,” she started, unsure of herself. Was this a symptom of opening the fourth doll? Some special doll-sight?

Was this how Slava saw her?

“He’s not here,” Kostya finally answered, not meeting her eyes. Why wouldn’t he meet her eyes?

Rubbing a chill from her arms, Matrona abandoned the pottery and sprinted to the izba beside it. She rapped her knuckles on the door.

Creaking floors alerted her to someone’s approach. Afon opened the door, a short ceramic jug in his hand. His blue eyes—Jaska had inherited his dark gaze from his mother—looked at her through a film of drink, and he lifted the jug to his mouth and took a swig. Matrona smelled the stench of alcohol when he spoke. “Whattaya want?”

That strange cooling sensation erupted within her once more. She sensed a blissful stupor within the Maysak patriarch, and beneath it a thick blanket of failure—

She averted her eyes, shivering under the force of the unwanted revelations. “I’m looking for Jaska.”

Afon looked her up and down. Drank again.

“Papa,” Galina’s soft voice sounded from within. “Please go rest.” She appeared at her father’s elbow and pulled him from the doorway. He silently obliged, his legs quivering slightly with every step.

Galina filled the doorway with her body, as if eager to hide the home she lived in. Matrona looked at her and gritted her teeth, resisting the strange doll-sight. To her surprise, her mind and body cooperated, and she saw only the surface of Galina.

“Matrona.” Galina paused, as though seeing her for the first time. “How can I help you? Has Roksana worsened?”

The serpent dug its fangs into Matrona’s heart at the sound of Roksana’s name. “No. I don’t know. I’m looking for Jaska.”

Galina frowned. “Feodor asked him to stay away from you.” Then, lower, “He asked all of us.”