The Fifth Doll(72)

Gray night encompassed them. Blotchy darkness filled the sky, rumbling and flashing with lightning. The ground quaked harder, until Matrona could barely stay afoot. An izba down the path began to crumble. A few tiles fell from Slava’s roof.

“This is too slow!” Pavel shouted over the rumbling. “There’s an easier way to do this!”

He set down the sledgehammer and hurried on shaking legs to the large leather bag he’d brought with him from his house, filled with more tools for dismantling Slava’s doll. To Matrona’s surprise, he pulled out a flask of kerosene and a box of matches.

She dropped her mallet and ran to him, tripping with every step, until her hands clasped the kerosene.

The quaking had become so terrible, she had to shout to be heard over it, even at such close range. “We don’t know how the spells work! You might kill him!”

“Jaska’s out of harm’s way!”

“Not Jaska!” she bellowed. “Slava!”

Pavel pulled back, hand still on the kerosene. “And?”

Matrona’s jaw went slack. “Surely there’s a way not to—”

He laughed, the sound of it swallowed by the collapsing walls of buildings in the village behind them. “Do you really think that whoreson would build himself a prison without a way out?”

Matrona’s grip on the kerosene loosened.

Pavel leaned closer as one of Slava’s walls began to cave in. “Where do you think he does his trades? He goes to Russia. There’s a reason his house has two doors!”

Matrona swallowed and let go. Teetered on the trembling earth.

“We’ll chance it.” Pavel ran up to the house, near where Jaska struggled to saw through the shuddering portico. He made a few gestures to the potter, who stepped back from the house, leaving the saw embedded in its wood. Jaska walked backward toward Matrona. The ground bucked and knocked him onto his backside.

Matrona hurried to him, falling to her knees beside him. She couldn’t see straight from the shaking, couldn’t hear over the roar of their breaking world.

The first flames caught her eye, lapping up behind the second window she’d broken. Pavel fell against the house, trying to stay upright. Crawled along its body to his sledgehammer. He unscrewed the head and coaxed flames onto the tip of the handle, trying to spread the fire that was already consuming the dragon from the inside out.

A second burst of brilliance drew Matrona’s gaze skyward. Her bones became ash within her.

“Jaska!” she cried, pointing.

The sky was on fire.





Chapter 23


Matrona tried to find her feet, but the earth knocked her down and liquefied her muscles. She clung to Jaska, her eyes watering, her throat itching from the smoke pouring from Slava’s house. The orange flames reflected in Jaska’s eyes.

A circle of flames whirled above them, eating away at the now-dark sky as if it were parchment, revealing pale gray behind it. Nothing but gray. Though surrounded by heat, Matrona’s flesh turned cold. It was as though she stared into the eye of nonexistence, and it stared back at her, laughing in a voice too similar to Slava’s.

The flames continued to spread, stretching out like a molten ring, opening the gaping void in the sky. The heat struck Matrona, hitting her in a wave, burning her skin. Jaska turned into her and clutched her shoulders, and she buried her face into his neck.

Was this really the end? Had they trapped themselves inside a kiln? Would their lives truly end in ash?

The blaze brightened white hot. Matrona could see it through her eyelids, through Jaska. She screamed.

The light choked out, and cold settled upon them.



Jaska was warm against her. His breath danced across her ear.

Matrona lifted her head, blinking away spots of color. She exhaled, watching her breath cloud and dissipate. Tall dark trees lingered nearby, their branches bare and crooked like the legs of a dead spider. The sky above them was gray—no, a pale blue. The wakefulness before dawn.

Matrona pulled back from Jaska, shivering in the suddenly frigid air. She turned, her skirted knees scraping on cold, hard ground—a dirt-packed road lined with uneven stones, splattered with shadows, and dusted with . . . ash? A small izba barely larger than her bedroom stood lifeless nearby. And another one, farther away.

Jaska shifted, stood. Offered his hands. Matrona took them and let him pull her to her feet. Her muscles still trembled with memory. She turned toward Slava’s house, but it wasn’t there. In the place where it had stood, there was only a well without a rope or bucket, cold and silent.

Footsteps made her heart jump, and she saw Pavel behind a shed, stumbling as though he had a clubfoot. He blinked rapidly. His right sleeve was singed at the hem and elbow, and ash dusted his shoulders. Matrona thought of the fire that had consumed Slava’s house and of the flames whirling in the sky. The ash was all that remained of the world she had known for most of her life.

A moan sounded nearby. Matrona whirled around and saw figures rising from the shadows between structures. Nastasya Kalagin. Georgy Grankin. Whole, restored. The sight of them did nothing to inspire the doll-sight she’d gained after opening her fourth doll. Had awakening to this new world extinguished it?

“They’re . . . ,” Jaska began, but didn’t finish.

“This is it,” Pavel whispered, crossing the road to the small izba. He pressed his hand to the door. His voice quavered with wonder. “This is it . . . Look at it. Untended, left to rot for what, twenty years? This . . . this was yours, Matrona.”