Slava watched her for an uncomfortable minute, his gaze making her wrists and ankles itch. He opened a drawer in a short, elaborately painted table beside him and retrieved a cigar, but he did not light it.
“Sit,” he instructed, and Matrona stepped to the closest chair and obeyed. She dared not push Slava’s patience any further. Not today.
“It is madness,” he said.
Matrona waited for clarification, but when Slava did not speak, she said, “I would agree.”
He shook his head. “You know that you are tied to your doll. You know it is the same for the others. But sorcery is not natural to the mind. To unleash it all at once would drive a person mad.”
Matrona leaned forward, her pulse short and quick. “Literal madness? Were I to open all my dolls at once—”
“You’d lose your mind, yes. It was not something I had originally accounted for, and I’ve sworn to prevent any more casualties.”
Matrona perked at the words. “Any more?” she repeated.
Then it struck her.
Snow.
“Olia,” she whispered, searching the tradesman’s eyes. “Mad Olia Maysak.”
Slava nodded.
“Only one other has noticed . . . and she does not have the liberty to discuss it.”
That’s what he’d told her a few days ago. Olia knew about snow because her third doll had been opened. “She opened her dolls,” Matrona voiced, “and lost herself.”
“No,” he corrected. “I opened them.”
The words shocked her like the sting of a hornet. She shook her head, thinking of Jaska, of how he’d struggled to salvage his mother’s mind, to no avail. Of the cruel things her mother and so many others said about Olia and her family.
She swallowed against a tight throat and whispered, “Why would you do such a horrible thing?”
Slava’s gaze dropped to the floor. He leaned his elbows on his knees and clasped his thick fingers in front of him. The breaths drawn through his nose were loud in the silent room.
A long moment passed before he spoke again. “I loved her.”
Of all the answers he could have given, Matrona had not expected that.
Slava cleared his throat. “I loved her, and I wanted her to love me. I wanted her to know the truth, as you know it. As you will soon know it. And so I opened her dolls, unaware of the consequences. Of the cost.”
Matrona massaged gooseflesh from her arms. “But Olia is married.”
“It did not matter to me.”
“How can you say that?” Matrona asked before she could think to bridle the words. “Do you think you can simply dismiss a marriage made under the eyes of God?”
Slava looked up at her, and there was a sting to his gaze. His lips pulled into a grin, but it was not a friendly one. “You think yourself fit to judge me, Matrona Vitsin? You are na?ve now, but you will soon follow in my footsteps. You will soon understand.”
Matrona set her jaw.
Slava stood.
Scraping one last bit of boldness from her heart, Matrona said, “Afon—”
“Struggled to deal with his wife’s state of mind, yes. I never thought him a suitable match for her, but I pitied him and gave him the brewery after his incessant pleading for kvass.”
Slava growled deep in his throat. Matrona stared at the space between his eyes. It was the first she’d heard that Slava had managed the brewery before Afon, but that wasn’t what startled her.
It was Slava’s fault. Olia’s madness, Afon’s drunkenness. The core of the Maysaks’ hardships. The reason she had tended both Jaska and Kostya when they were younger. The reason so many saw them as . . . less.
Slava had done that to them . . . because of passion?
“All for your own self-interest,” she whispered.
Slava pressed his lips into a flat line and stared down Matrona with a gaze that mimicked Pamyat’s. A moment passed. “Now that we’ve had our heart-to-heart, you will return the other doll.”
Matrona furrowed her brows. “Other doll?”
“Roksana Zotov’s. I know you have it.”
But Matrona shook her head. “I don’t have it. I didn’t—”
Blood drained from her face.
Roksana’s skeptical gaze as Matrona excused herself last night. The feeling of watching eyes. The rustling near the wood, the creaking in the house.
The dream.
“By the saints,” she whispered. “She was here.”
Slava raised an eyebrow.
Matrona leapt from her chair and ran for the door. “She was here!” she shouted, and burst into the sunlight.
Roksana had followed her. She’d seen Jaska. She’d seen the dolls.
And she didn’t know what any of it meant.
Matrona barreled down the path from Slava’s home, grabbing fistfuls of her skirt to free her legs. Not the schoolhouse, not today. She would be home. She had to be home!
Please, God, please, she pleaded as the wind whipped a tear from her eye, please let me be wrong.
She ran off the path, taking the most direct route to the Zotov izba, oblivious to passersby, uncaring of what new rumors her behavior might start. She had to find Roksana. She had to find her before it was too late.
The izba came into sight, smoke puffing from its chimney. The carpentry behind it lay silent. Matrona ran up to the izba, not bothering to pause for the door. She burst through it, the wood slamming against the wall behind. Inside, Pavel and Roksana’s father looked up from a round rug where they sat, their hands clasped in prayer.
“Roksana,” Matrona huffed, shoulders heaving. “Where is Roksana?”
Roksana’s father dropped his gaze. Between her breaths, Matrona heard Alena sobbing in the next room.
Darting past the men, Matrona raced down the hall to the room Roksana and Luka shared. The door was ajar.
Inside, Luka sat on the edge of their bed, his head in his hands, while Roksana lay curled up on the floor, singing softly to herself as she played with the pieces of a painted nesting doll.
Chapter 13
Opened. Every single one of them.
Roksana lay on her side, her full belly resting on a rag rug, poking her fingers into the cavities of dolls painted to look just like her.
“I will tell you fairy tales,” she sang quietly, taking up the top of the third doll and spinning it on its head, “and sing you little songs. But you must slumber, with your small eyes closed. Bayushki bayu.”
“Roksana,” Matrona whispered, and Luka looked up from the bed. Matrona took a stiff, wooden step into the room, then another, another. She dropped to Roksana’s side and took the doll-half from her hand.
“Roksana?” she tried.
“The time will come,” Roksana sang, “when you will learn the soldier’s way of life.”
“Roksana.” Matrona took her friend’s shoulders and tried to get her to sit upright, but Roksana squeezed her eyes shut and fought Matrona’s hold as a little child would. Afraid of hurting her, Matrona pulled away. Roksana snatched the doll-half out of Matrona’s hand.
Her dreams of Roksana hadn’t been dreams at all; Matrona had merely been asleep when her friend opened the dolls. Most of Roksana’s secrets were mild, save her lies about Nastasya to Luka. Yet no one was likely to have much sympathy for Nastasya now that they knew the truth about her and Viktor. That’s what Matrona’s mother had meant when she mentioned Nastasya at breakfast.
“It’s no use,” Luka murmured behind her, his voice low and rumbling. “She’s been like that since the middle of the night. Won’t come to her senses, no matter how we . . .”
His voice choked, and Luka turned away. Tried to clear it.
“Sleep now, my dear little child,” Roksana sang. “Bayushki bayu.”
Tears pooled in Matrona’s eyes as Roksana started a new verse of the strange song—a song that nagged at Matrona, for its melody sounded strangely familiar. She tried to place it. Visions surfaced: Fat, falling snowflakes. An old rag rug and unpainted shutters. A little wood-burning stove in the corner.
Her head ached. What place was this?
When Luka spoke again, he startled her. “We don’t know where the dolls came from. She came home late, without saying where she’d been. Had that thing in her hands. Looks just like her.”
Matrona’s throat constricted. She blinked, and a tear traced the length of her cheek. “It does,” she croaked.
“Do you know?”