The Fifth Doll(63)

Clasping Jaska’s fifth doll in her hands, she popped open his first doll, then his second, then his third. She held the fourth in her hands. The urge to pull it apart made her fingers twitch, but she set it back down. She couldn’t risk losing Jaska to the insanity of Slava’s spells.

She reassembled the doll and turned about slowly, studying the rest. Starting on the far edge of the room, near the kite, she opened the first doll of each one. Pavel, Alena, Luka, Feodor, Oleg, Galina, Afon, Viktor, Kostya, Georgy, Zhanna. Irena, Nastasya, Boris Ishutin. The Grankins, the Demidovs. Every last one until her hands threatened to blister.

Then she moved a dozen of the dolls to the floor, climbed atop the table, and pushed open the solitary window. Pamyat leapt from his perch and flapped wildly for his escape, the copper band about his leg glinting in the sunlight.





Chapter 19


The tip of the chisel stuck into the turning linden wood, leaving a crooked gash. Matrona pulled her foot off the lathe pedal and barely resisted throwing the chisel into the wall beside her. Tears burned her eyes. She hadn’t blinked as she worked.

Dropping the chisel, Matrona grabbed the ruined wood and threw it onto the floor with the rest before squatting down and throwing her arms over her head. She’d tried and tried and tried, but she couldn’t even get the shape of a doll correct, let alone carve out its hollows and bespell them. And how was she to paint the babe’s face? All of Slava’s dolls were adults. Somehow he knew what the young would look like once they aged, and he hadn’t told her how. She hadn’t let him.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Two days since Roksana’s unnamed babe had been born. Slava had warned her about the third day, that without a doll, the infant would vanish just as Esfir had. Yet without the tradesman, Matrona had no way to stop it from happening. Slava had promised Roksana’s baby would pay the price for Matrona’s disobedience, a thought that pounded through her head again and again as she kept trying—and failing—to work the lathe. She had no way to create a functioning doll, and no way to free herself, let alone anyone else, from this bespelled prison.

She rubbed a knuckle into her eye and picked up the chisel. She was so tired. Exhausted from running about the village, from tending Roksana’s child, from trying to create this doll.

She knew she’d never learn the craft that quickly. But if she didn’t try, where did that leave her?

She didn’t even have the pleasure of the villagers’ secrets occupying her thoughts. Whatever spell had turned them into wooden miniatures had also voided the consequences of opening their dolls. Matrona would have loved to know her mother’s secrets, or Feodor’s. If Luka’s deepest thoughts had been spilled, perhaps she would discover just what he had intended to name his son.

Sighing, Matrona trudged out of the doll room and to the nearest closet, taking up another block of wood from Slava’s dwindling supply. She had to try again. And again, and again . . .



Matrona failed.



She hated leaving Roksana like this, weeping into her pillow, calling out Luka’s name in fleeting moments of lucidity. Roksana had barely seemed to realize her babe had been born, yet even with her mind gone, she felt the infant’s absence. Three days old and the boy had vanished, just as Matrona’s sister had.

Roksana wouldn’t eat anything, and Matrona couldn’t, for her belly twisted and ached with her failure. She carried the pain with her as she departed the Zotov house for Slava’s abode, Roksana’s wails catching the breeze that followed her.

When she arrived at the room of dolls, she reached into her pocket and withdrew Jaska’s doll.

“Please, please work,” she prayed aloud, and pressed a kiss to the tiny doll’s head. Then, walking around the two doll tables, her feet kicking up wood shavings from the lathe, she found the other pieces of the doll and opened them one by one, until she cracked open the seam of the fourth.

Like hers it was empty inside. Matrona didn’t delay. Holding her breath, she placed the fifth doll inside, then trapped it within, making sure to line up the seams. The fourth doll went into the third, the third into the second, and the second into the first.

The moment the stitches of Jaska’s shirt aligned, the seam melted beneath Matrona’s fingertips, vanishing as though it had never been.

“No, wait!” Matrona cried, grappling at the dolls, trying to pull them apart. Surely she hadn’t just trapped Jaska forever! “I—”

“Matrona?”

Her heart lodged in her throat at the voice. She turned around, and there he stood in the center of the room, rubbing the side of his head as though it ached, wearing the same clothes she’d seen him in before the village had turned into dolls.

Eyes filling with tears, Matrona ran to him and threw her arms around his waist, burying her face into his chest. He smelled like wood and paint.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, returning the embrace. “And where . . .”

Matrona stepped back, letting Jaska take in his surroundings. His gaze fell on the tables first, then the shelves, his eyes moving with deliberate slowness. At last, he noticed the doll in Matrona’s hands—solid and painted with his face.

“This is it,” he said. “Slava’s . . . room.”

She nodded and set the doll beside the others.

Jaska rubbed his head again. “How did I get here?”