The workshop teemed with people today. Zhanna Avdovin waited in the corner with her arms folded, tapping her foot impatiently. Alena Zotov held an urn in one hand and used her other to make wide gestures as she spoke to Viktor Maysak. Behind him, Kostya—the one Matrona had seen out with one of the village girls last night—leaned sleepily over a slate, writing down instructions dictated to him by Rolan Ishutin, Boris’s father. Beyond them, Galina swept the floors. In the back of the pottery, Matrona spotted Jaska dressed in a dark-viridian kosovorotka. It looked new, and the ends of his hair brushed its stiff collar.
Matrona glanced at the villagers around her, most of whom hadn’t noticed her arrival. Of course there would be people here to witness her approach Jaska. She sighed, then remembered the door tucked away behind the kiln. Escaping out the wide doorway, Matrona hurried around the pottery, finding the door across from the basement where Jaska had hidden her just yesterday. Slipping through it, she inched into the pottery, hoping to remain unseen by the bustle of people at the front.
Jaska didn’t see her; the firelight of the kiln reflected brightly in his eyes. A rag tied about his crown kept his hair back from his face. He hefted a large hook and shoved it into the kiln, sliding it around a large pot there. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up above his elbows, and Matrona watched the lines of his forearms tense and shift as he hauled the pot from its oven.
She flushed and tucked loose hairs behind her ears. Jaska noticed her then and started ever so slightly. Attention back to the pot, he grasped it between thickly gloved hands and carried it to a stone block beside the kiln.
“Matrona.” He glanced to the front of the shop. Matrona’s cheeks flushed hotter—did she embarrass him, too? He passed her, moving to a small table against the wall, upon which sat three clay jugs ready for baking. He hesitated and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I spoke with Slava last night.” The noise of the pottery almost swallowed her voice.
“You did?”
She nodded. “I opened the third doll.”
Jaska glanced again at the front of the pottery. Picked up one of the jugs and brought it to the kiln. Glanced back at her, as though he wasn’t sure where to settle his eyes.
“Nothing happened at first, but these images . . .” She struggled to make sense of them, to not sound foolish in front of the potter. “They’re like . . . memories, almost.”
Jaska hefted the jug into the kiln and shut its door, then wiped his forearm across the bridge of his nose. Glanced at Viktor, then at Matrona. “Maybe now isn’t—”
“I know what snow is.”
He dropped his arm, and for a moment he was still as a painting. Licking his lips, he reached toward Matrona, but then lowered his hand and instead gestured toward the back door. Matrona gratefully fled to it, eager to be away from onlookers.
The air outside felt blissfully cool, and she took in a deep, refreshing breath of it. Jaska shut the door and stepped around her. Pushed both hands into his hair, then grabbed the rag and pulled it off. “My mother, she talks about snow all the time. I haven’t a clue . . .”
He gazed at Matrona with a strange sort of intensity—almost like Slava’s, yet different. It made Matrona’s stomach clench.
He asked, “What? What is it?”
She forced her body to relax. “It’s cold. It’s white.” A new image came to her head—pale blankets of clouds, soft down floating through the air. “It falls from the sky, like rain.”
Jaska turned away, paced a few steps, then turned again and leaned against the wall of the pottery. “‘Falls from the sky, like rain,’” he said, not incredulous, but thoughtful. After a moment, he glanced at her. “You’ve seen it?”
She nodded. “I have . . . in a sense. Not with my own eyes, yet . . . it’s like I did, once upon a time. A strange sort of memory. Like an old dream.”
She thought the words too poetic, but Jaska merely nodded. His mouth worked for a few seconds before he managed, “My mother knows, too.”
“We could ask her . . .” Matrona tried, but the words faded before she could finish them.
Jaska offered a sad sort of half smile. They both knew Olia didn’t answer questions. She didn’t comprehend sense at all. And yet, she knew.
“Tell me the rest,” Jaska pleaded. Kostya hollered his name inside the pottery, but Jaska ignored it, shortening the distance between himself and Matrona to no more than a pace. “What else did he show you?”
Matrona looked down, in part to pull her focus from Jaska’s nearness, in part to concentrate. She told him about the gray skies, the cold. The houses scattered along a muddy road, smaller and far drabber than the ones in the village. She described the snow and the large buildings puffing smoke into the air, the echoes of marching footsteps.
“I feel . . . like there’s more,” she continued, “but I can’t quite grasp it. Like it’s too far away.”
Jaska was silent for a long moment. She wondered if he was processing the strangeness of her visions, or if, perhaps, he was trying to compare them to his mother’s ramblings. Something inside the pottery broke, but Jaska didn’t seem to hear it, and Matrona dared not disturb his silence.
She looked away, studying the grass growing between the pottery and the Maysaks’ home, the basement doors, the tips of the wood beyond. A few people passed them, but none looked their way.
Then Jaska’s warm hand clasped hers, and everything else fell away.
“Matrona.” His voice was just above a whisper, his hand calloused and dry. His skin looked tan against hers, the nails clean and trimmed. Clay stained a few knuckles.
Her entire body became a heartbeat.
He looked squarely at her, eyes perfectly level with her own. “I want you to open my doll.”
Her spine prickled, and she pulled her hand from the potter’s grasp. “Jaska, no. You don’t understand—”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll suffer through it. I need to know what you know, see what you see. I want to know what’s at the center of those dolls.”
Matrona shook her head. “Then let me open the last one and tell you what I see.”
She found herself thinking again about the warning Slava had given her: “You need to separate yourself from the rest of the village.” What did it mean? Would she even be able to speak with Jaska once she finished Slava’s work?
“I need to know for myself. I have . . . questions, Matrona,” he pleaded, keeping his voice low, glancing up once when someone passed by. “I’ve felt it for a long time. These dolls . . . If what you say is true, perhaps my answers lie in Slava’s home.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“No, I didn’t mean that.” He slouched a little, coming closer to her height. “I want to understand this. I want to understand you.”
Matrona tried to swallow a sore lump in her throat. “If Slava knows I told you—”
“That’s why I’m asking you to do it. If I thought it possible, I would go myself—”
“Don’t do that.”
He smiled, one dimple peeking at her. “Please. Just open the first one. If I can’t handle it, we can stop, right?”
“You don’t understand.” Matrona wrung part of her skirt in her hands. “Everyone will know your secrets, Jaska. Including Slava. He’ll know we opened it.”
He leaned back, a sigh passing over his lips. “And he’ll know it was you.”
“It couldn’t be anyone else.” Matrona chewed on her lip, watching Jaska’s expression fall. Slava had never told her not to open the other dolls, had he? Just not to share the secret. Which, of course, she already had.
Even so, wasn’t Slava’s plan for her to replace him, and soon? Once that happened, she would be keeper of the dolls, and they would be in her stewardship. In a sense, they were already hers. Why shouldn’t she open Jaska’s doll?
“Jaska!” Kostya bellowed.
Jaska straightened, though his whole person seemed to wilt. “I have to get back inside.”
“Tonight,” Matrona whispered.
He looked taken aback.
“Tonight, after sunset,” she clarified, “When full dark settles. I think Slava is leaving for another trip, if he hasn’t already.” She thought briefly of Pamyat, but the kite hadn’t attacked her the first time she’d entered the room, and surely the beast was used to her by now. “I can go then, when the others won’t see—”
“Let me come with you.”
She nodded. “But not into the house. I won’t risk that.”
“Agreed.” Jaska clasped her hand as though they were two men making a business deal. But the smile had returned to his face.