The words felt like an open palm across her face. Matrona shook her head, forcing the movements as though her neck had rusted.
But it couldn’t be. This couldn’t be.
“Roksana,” Matrona tried again, pushing the name through her shaking voice. “Roksana, listen to me.”
Roksana merely sang, “Sleep my angel, calmly, sweetly, bayushki bayu.”
Matrona grabbed her friend’s shoulders again, but this time she ignored Roksana’s attempts to break free. Shaking her, she shouted, “Roksana Zotov, listen to me! Wake up, you hear me?”
“It’s no use,” Luka whispered.
“This isn’t you! Roksana!”
Roksana wailed and threw her fists at Matrona, forcing her to let go. As soon as she did, Roksana collapsed to the floor and sobbed into the crook of her elbow.
“Matrona.”
The voice was Pavel’s. He stood in the doorway, his features long and heavy, blurred—no, that was from Matrona’s tears. She wiped her sleeve across her eyes, but they were wet again a heartbeat later.
Pavel sighed. “We’re waiting for the doctor.”
The doctor would do nothing for them, but Matrona couldn’t voice the words. She looked back to Roksana, more tears escaping her eyes.
You’re going to be a mother, she thought, for her throat had swollen too much to speak the sentiment. You can’t . . . be like this. What about your baby? Luka?
It was her fault, wasn’t it? If she hadn’t put off Roksana last night, if she hadn’t agreed to meet Jaska. If she’d never found that paintbrush . . .
Matrona shook her head. No. This couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be Roksana’s fate, to be as mad as Olia Maysak, to break her family the way Jaska’s had been broken. Matrona wouldn’t stand for it.
Through her blurry vision, Matrona gathered the dolls, her fingers mimicking a feeding hen as she snatched them off the rug. Eight pieces. She looked for the fifth doll, for Slava had claimed there were five, but she couldn’t find it. Perhaps it was in the folds of Roksana’s dress or under the bed. Matrona fumbled with the dolls she had, clicking them back together, smallest to largest, lining up Slava’s delicate drawings as tears splashed over her hands. She squeezed the finished doll in her fingers. “Roksana.”
Roksana hummed the strange lullaby and picked at a thread in the rug.
Pavel groaned, a raw sound that stemmed from the base of his throat. “Perhaps . . . we could ask Galina to come.”
“And what has she done for her mother?” Luka scoffed, his voice cracking. “What could any of the Maysaks do?”
Not the Maysaks, Matrona thought, squeezing Roksana’s doll in a crushing grip. They’re not the ones who can fix this.
Matrona stood and fled the room, bumping her shoulder into Pavel as she went. Her ungraceful footfalls echoed in the hallway. She barely noticed Roksana’s father as she flew out the door, the sunlight burning colors into her tears.
Not the Maysaks. The words repeated in her mind as she choked on a sob, running over grass, cutting the quickest path to Slava’s home. She burst in through the front door, finding Slava just where she’d left him, though he had at last lit the cigar in his hand.
Matrona collapsed to her knees in front of him, offering up Roksana’s doll. “Fix it,” she cried. “Please, you have to fix it.”
Slava’s brows drew together. He put out his cigar in the center of a strangely decorated bowl atop the side table before taking the doll from Matrona’s hands.
He examined it for only a second before drawing his lips into a deep frown. “It’s been opened.”
“Every last one.” Her words were like a dying breeze.
Slava shook his head, and Matrona felt her heart dry and crumble within her.
“There’s nothing that can be done. Her mind is gone.”
“No!”
“If there were a cure, I would have used it.” On Olia, he didn’t say.
Matrona shook her head, studying his face, searching for . . . She didn’t know. Anything to give her hope. But the tradesman’s wrinkles had etched themselves deeper, and his eyes seemed sunken as he placed the doll beside his extinguished cigar, with a reverence that stabbed Matrona to her core.
“Please!” she begged, grabbing the fabric of his pants. “She’s supposed to be a mother. She’s my best friend. Please, you can’t—”
“You did not give her the doll?”
Matrona released Slava’s clothing and leaned back, the coldness returning to her limbs.
Slava nodded. “So she took it herself. Foolish girl. The damage she could have done—”
“You.” Matrona stood. “Why have you made them? The dolls. Why are they here? What do they mean?”
“You are learning—”
“I don’t want to learn, I want them gone!” Matrona shouted. Through the kitchen and down the hall, Pamyat echoed her anger. Matrona took a step back. “What have you done to us?”
“I have saved you!” Slava bellowed, rising from his chair. He seemed a giant, broad and tall, his presence spreading out like a sunset shadow.
“From what? I’ve seen no danger save what you keep in that room!” She thrust a pointed finger toward the kitchen. “What are you doing to us?” The sound of marching footsteps on the snow-hardened ground echoed in her head. She pressed the heels of her hands to her temples. “What have you put into my mind?”
Slava didn’t respond, merely fumed like fire on wet logs.
“You did this,” Matrona murmured. “You broke Roksana. You tore apart the Maysaks—”
Her hands flew from her head when Slava grabbed the collar of her dress and yanked her forward, close enough that his breath clouded over her face. “Without me,” he growled, “they would be starving and destitute, torn apart by war.”
Matrona blinked tears from her eyes. “War?” The word was foreign on her tongue.
Slava released her. “Get out. Wallow in your misery somewhere else.” He glowered. “But return tomorrow. We are not yet finished.”
Matrona scowled even as new tears formed in her eyes. Resisting the urge to spit at his feet, she turned her back on the sorcerer and fled, slamming the door in her wake.
The children all fled the glade when she arrived, sobbing and red-faced, the hem of her sarafan stained with mud. The cadence of their new rhyme still resonated in her ears:
Jaska’s rotted to the core
For Jaska has denied the Lord
His mum is mad, his dad is sad
His soul is very, very bad
It astonished her, how hungry the cruelty of children could be.
She sat on the large stone that rested just off center in the glade until her tears stopped save for an occasional sob. Then she picked herself up and limped her way through the wood, hugging herself despite the warmth of the noon hour.
It grated on her, the normalcy of the village. The unchanging birdsong, the insects’ chipper cadence. Laundry still hung on lines, and smoke puffed up from a handful of chimneys as it always had, up to a sky that still bore the faint patterning of wood grain in the places where the brilliance of the sun had not burned it away. By the way her neighbors walked about, did their chores, or chatted with one another, Matrona knew Roksana’s debilitation hadn’t become common knowledge. Yet.
She wiped her sleeve across her eyes again, surprised at how damp it had become. Surprised that she still had tears to cry, for her body felt like a corn husk left in the sun. In her mind’s eye, she imagined it baking and burning, crumbling to the path in a heap of ash to be swept away by the wind. Slava had been absolute, but Matrona couldn’t accept his words. Could sorcery not unravel sorcery?
She had little direction to follow, but she had to try. Something. Anything.
“Matrona.”
She looked up, her izba in the distance, and found Feodor not two paces from her on the path, several unplucked roosters, tied with strings, slung over his shoulder. There was a wool blanket under them, no doubt to keep his clothes clean.
She had nearly walked right past him.
“I need to talk to you,” the butcher said.
Matrona nodded numbly, looking toward her home. “My father mentioned visiting.”
“He has, but we are old enough to sort things for ourselves without our fathers’ by-your-leave. I’m sure I don’t need to enlighten you.”