The air stretching between the log walls was warmed from the brick oven, and her father, Feodor, and Feodor’s father, Oleg, sat on the nicest rag rug the family owned. It measured about nine feet in diameter and was woven with pinks, blues, reds, and yellows. The men had propped themselves up on pillows and were sharing a small pitcher of mint kvass.
Feodor noticed Matrona and offered one of his tight-lipped smiles. It startled her at first but, finding her senses, she offered a small smile in return. Perhaps this talk—these negotiations—had gone well.
Matrona couldn’t help but wonder if the Popov men drank kvass after a good bargain on cattle.
Her father glanced up and grinned. “Ah, Matrona, there you are.” He set his mug down, stood, and smoothed his beard. “She works so hard to see to the needs of her family and the village. And not a spot on her. Graceful hands make graceful work.”
Neither Matrona nor her mother corrected him.
Feodor stood, too, and stooped to help up his father. Oleg Popov did not set down his kvass, and a few drops splashed onto the rug.
“I see that.” The bottom of Oleg’s thin white beard brushed the rim of his cup. “A girl trying very hard to become a woman, indeed.”
Trying to become a woman? Matrona thought, raising an eyebrow. She looked at her father, who did not return her gaze. Had that been part of the discussion? Playing off her now-public faults as the whims of a child? A child who could simply be righted by marriage?
She glanced to Feodor, who folded his arms across his chest and nodded in agreement with her father. Matrona took a deep breath. No, this is good. If my parents can salvage my reputation and solidify this engagement, we’ll all be the better for it. It was a more decent excuse than anything Matrona could have come up with.
Oleg downed the rest of his drink and handed the mug to Feodor before striking his fist against his chest in a show of honor and offering the same hand to Matrona’s father. “Let’s keep out of sight for a bit before moving forward with the planning. She is easy on the eyes, once you look long enough.”
He smiled at Matrona. Matrona wasn’t sure if she offered one back.
Feodor gathered the mugs from the rug and crossed the room, offering them to Matrona’s mother, who beamed happily at him before running the dishes to the kitchen. To Matrona, he held out his hand. Though still unsure of the situation, she placed her fingers in his.
“I’m glad to see this sorted out,” he said, though surely he knew Matrona had no idea what had been discussed in her absence. She swallowed the questions spinning in her brain, letting them die in her stomach. If the marriage was on, then all was as it should be, and she could relax. Feodor bent over her hand, but Matrona felt only the puff of warm breath before he stood back up and returned to his father, whom he escorted to the door.
She rubbed the back of her hand as the Popovs left. Why had he pantomimed kissing it without completing the act? She smelled her hands but detected no sourness from unscrubbed milk. If he had truly forgiven her, wouldn’t he have pressed his full lips to her flesh?
Matrona found herself wishing that Feodor would kiss her. Truly kiss her. Not here, in front of their parents, but somewhere. She wished that he would meet her on the path behind his butcher shop or leave her a letter requesting a rendezvous in the wood. She tried to imagine it: standing in the shadows of an oak grove under a purple sky, crickets singing in the evening’s warmth, and Feodor’s arms encircling her. Perhaps he would whisper something against her ear, something meant only for her, something that revealed a hidden aspect to his character. Then he would kiss her, and Matrona would feel new possibility bloom within herself. Feel like the wood had opened a little wider to make a special place just for her—a place situated in the crooks of Feodor’s arms.
The door shut, and Matrona blinked the vision away. There was still time. Time to be held, to be kissed, to be loved. She and Feodor had their whole lives ahead of them. Years to grow into love. And surely a husband would be as eager to grow as his wife, yes?
Years? You have two days, she realized. Two days until Slava would make her open the second doll. What if Feodor didn’t stay after the next round of revelations?
But what more could the village possibly learn about her?
Her mother returned from the kitchen. “Now, Matrona—”
“Do we need bread for dinner?” Matrona asked, chancing the interruption. “I can start the bread and wash the cups.”
Her mother seemed pleased, which trickled relief like cool water over Matrona’s skin. “Yes, that will do nicely.”
Matrona offered a minute curtsy before heading into the kitchen, her thoughts full of twilit woods and painted dolls.
Matrona wondered if she would see Slava Barinov before his three-day deadline, but the tradesman did not come to pick up his share of milk. He seldom did. Perhaps cheese and butter weren’t kind to his tongue, or his gut.
By the time the third day arrived, Matrona’s public humiliation had somewhat abated; the older a rumor grew, the less excitement it elicited from wagging tongues. She had taken time to mull over Slava’s words, tone, and demeanor in the doll room, and it left her with a sour stomach. The way his aging forehead wrinkled when he told her a must. The way he left her no choice in the matter. The way he held her father’s doll in his hands—her father, who had always been kinder than her mother, and whose heart hadn’t been so damaged after the loss of Esfir.
But Slava had her doll, too, and answers to her questions. So later that afternoon, when her father was away to collect potatoes from the Grankins and her mother was busying her hands hanging laundry, Matrona took the well-worn path to the center of the village. She made her way to the bright blue-and-yellow house, where a simple paintbrush had brought her so much grief . . . and enlivened her with an almost childish curiosity.
Slava answered the door after her first knock. He had been expecting her.
“Good.” He spoke first. “Come.”
Matrona followed him silently down the hall, tracing the now-familiar path to the sunlit room of dolls. Their eyes all seemed to watch her, each pair set in a face she recognized. A clicking of talons on the floor revealed Pamyat, who boosted himself to his perch with two flaps of his long wings.
“Tell me how they know,” Matrona said as Slava reached for her doll, kept in the same place at the edge of the left table. No wonder he’d noticed her earlier trespass—he kept everything in this room in such strict order. The paintbrush alone would have given her away.
Slava clasped her doll by its head and lifted it from the others, turning it toward her with narrowed eyes. A small smile stretched his lips and deepened the wrinkles under his eyes. “Ah, I forget about these things. I never have the opportunity to discuss them.”
“Never?” Matrona asked. She tried to think of whom Slava associated with, but no names rose to mind.
“I have never needed to. Only one other has noticed the mass revelations, among other things, and she does not have the liberty to discuss it.”
His smile faded, and Matrona’s bones grew cold.
She croaked, “Who?”
“You would not notice the suddenness of others knowing, if your eyes had not been opened,” he said, ignoring the second question and rattling her doll in his hand. “You will see more, as you must, before you replace me as keeper. Have you kept your word?”
Matrona swallowed and nodded. Who else knows, and why can’t she speak of it?
Then, What did Slava do to her . . . ?
Her eyes shifted to Pamyat. She shivered.
“Good.” He glanced over the other dolls. “I have not heard any mention of us on the tongues of our friends in the village, so I believe you.”
“You assume me dishonest.” Matrona let disapproval flavor her words. Her body warmed. “I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of other things from our friends.”
Slava smiled, and Matrona flushed despite herself. “The Maysak boy is especially interesting.”
Matrona folded her arms across her chest.