The Fifth Doll(65)

Her eyebrows pinched together. Slava never took the dolls outside; she could assume that much. He never so much as rearranged them from their designated spots, except perhaps to dust them or waggle them before Matrona’s nose until she bent to his will. How long had they been inside that room?

Inside that house?

A cool tingling ignited between her breasts. She sat straighter, lifting her gaze from the dolls to the front room, following the invisible path Jaska had just taken. She stood and walked it. Pulled open the front door and stepped out onto the portico. Down the few steps.

She studied the house, its blue-trimmed walls and cornices, its twisting yellow columns and glassy windows.

Something Jaska had said to her days ago, something unimportant, nagged at her.

“We don’t have a back door, but I doubt he’s lucid enough to notice you.”

She thought of the fifth dolls—the people—sitting in that room down the hall, never moved. Trapped.

Trapped inside this house.

Tucking the short, stray strands of black hair behind her ears, Matrona walked around the house, crisp grass crunching softly beneath her shoes. In the backyard, she examined the edge of the wood and the stable. She’d let the horse out to graze a while back, and it had wandered away. She came to the back door and the steps leading up to it.

None of the dolls’ spells had taken hold until she left Slava’s home. The villagers had turned into dolls the day she ran away from Slava. The moment she left his house . . . through this door. Every other time she’d visited, she’d come and left through the front door.

A numb heaviness settled on her chest, making it difficult to breathe. She studied the back door. Rubbed her hands together. Reached for the handle and pushed it open.

Slava Barinov greeted her.





Chapter 20


His eyes, dark and shadowed, met hers. A chair fell behind him, and Matrona started to see her father and mother stumbling toward the wall, Feodor standing on the table, and Galina sitting beside him. Matrona had left their dolls on the table. They’d been restored.

“What is this?” Feodor asked, his gaze flitting from Slava to Matrona. “Why are we—”

“Reverto!” Slava barked, and the four shrank before Matrona’s eyes, returning to small wooden dolls in a quarter of a breath’s time. Feodor and Galina fell to the table; her parents rolled across the floor.

“What have you done?!” Matrona shouted, taking a single step into Slava’s home before stopping. Though it would not be safe to draw too near to the tradesman, she also did not want to linger in the threshold of his house. If any doorway housed dark beings, surely it would be Slava’s.

Slava growled. “You will have to tell me exactly what you did in the Nazad if they are to be restored, foolish girl.”

“The what?” Gritting her teeth, she stepped back into the shelter of the doorway, more willing to risk superstition than Slava’s anger. “I know the truth.” She clutched the frame to keep her hands from trembling. “I know what you did.”

A frown deepened the wrinkles in Slava’s face and made his eyes droop.

“Your house is your doll. That’s how you separated yourself from us. You put us in our dolls, then put those dolls inside yours.” She glanced at the small dolls on the table, then at the open door before her, and she realized something else. “The spells don’t take hold until we leave the house. This place is neutral ground. It binds everything together, doesn’t it?”

“So you are not as simple as you appear.”

“Is that why your house is so elaborate? To be some sort of . . . ultimate doll?” She tilted her head back and looked at the ceiling. It wasn’t built of logs or panels, but was a solid sheet of wood. The pattern in its grain matched that of her fourth doll . . . and that of the sky.

Slava’s nostrils sucked in a long breath before he spoke. “The spells on this house are far more complex than anything you could hope to understand. These dolls are child’s play in comparison.” He stepped away from the fallen center dolls and closer to Matrona, then pressed a flat hand to one of the walls. “This is not simply a doll. It is a sanctuary. A vessel. A temple.”

“A temple to yourself.”

She expected Slava to glare, but he merely straightened and pulled his hand from the wall, strangely calm. “You are not incorrect.”

Matrona took half a step into the house—she dared not take more, and she watched Slava with the eyes of a kite. “What would you have them do, Slava? Do you plan to restore them to their mindless existence and, once death claims you, have them come here to worship your memory?”

A chill nipped at her bones. Was Matrona the first to discover these truths, or had someone else done so before her? Had Slava merely . . . reconditioned them all?

“Death will never truly claim me if the spells are right,” he said. “I will be here to watch over them always. Them, and you.”

Matrona scoffed. “You think yourself immortal? The tsar didn’t think so.”

Now Slava did glare. Several seconds passed before he spoke. “If the spells are right. This body will not last; that much is evident. But the mind is something else entirely.”

“So you intend to live on in this make-believe world in spirit, using our captivity to fuel your immortality?” Matrona asked, hardly believing the words passing between them. “You think yourself a savior, but how is that saving us?” She gestured to the dolls. “How is this a kindness?”