Matrona looked forward again, focusing on Slava’s house, trying not to let Feodor’s answer burrow too deeply. She heard the underlying meaning: You’re the best choice, given my options. There were only a handful of eligible women Feodor could marry without leaving the village—and, of course, he couldn’t do that because of the loop, and because of the spell that forbade him from noticing it.
Matrona didn’t know what she had thought he would say. She knew better than to hope for a declaration of love. She half expected him to say, Who else would I offer to? Galina Maysak? but the next words from his mouth were, “Here we are. Take care, Matrona.”
They’d reached Slava’s house. Matrona, who had spent all day yesterday avoiding the tradesman, found herself eager to get inside, if only to escape Feodor’s obvious indifference.
“Thank you for the escort.” At least he had been both kind and direct. She offered another nod before slogging up to Slava’s portico. She didn’t look back as she knocked on the door.
“Come,” Slava’s voice called, and Matrona slipped inside. She heard Pamyat squawk in response to the door shutting, the sound especially loud. She realized why when she stepped into Slava’s front room and saw the bird of prey at its center, wings raised like scythes, talons digging into the leather of a long glove protecting the tradesman’s right arm.
“Easy,” Slava cooed to the kite, holding up his naked left hand, palm flat and facing the bird’s face. Pamyat opened his mouth to hiss, but no sound came out. Stepping lightly, Slava carried the bird to his perch, which had been moved into the far corner of the room. As soon as the kite was settled, Slava fed the bird some sort of meat from a pouch at his hip. Pamyat gobbled it up without a second thought.
For a fleeting moment, Matrona wondered if Slava had been training the bird to come after her.
“You’re late,” Slava remarked, pulling off the glove.
Matrona lifted her chin, casting aside any lingering thoughts of Feodor. “Did you expect me not to be?”
“No. I expected this.”
“You know me so well.”
“I do.” His reply carried a surety that made Matrona’s chin drop. “I know all of you, like my own children. Come.”
He moved into the kitchen. Matrona followed with quick steps.
“You have children, Tradesman?” Matrona asked as they took the short stairs into the carpeted hallway.
“I do not. Not in the sense you’re thinking, Dairymaid.”
As Slava opened the door to the doll room, Matrona wondered if he thought of his dolls as children. A caterpillar-like gnawing formed in her stomach as she approached the table once more. Her eyes darted to the Jaska doll near the rightmost edge. Her skin tingled as if a carding brush had traced over it. She eyed Slava, but the man had turned his back on her to retrieve her doll.
Not enough time. Matrona held her peace, and Slava turned back, handing her the doll. She took it in both hands and pressed her lips together before unscrewing the largest doll.
“No complaints this time?” Slava asked.
She set the dual pieces of the first doll on the nearest shelf and opened the second.
“Good.” Slava nodded. “You’re growing.”
The third doll, with its black-painted interior.
“You’ve accepted your fate.”
The fourth doll, the length of her palm, stared up at her. Don’t hesitate, she thought. Earn more of his confidence.
She twisted it, the halves squeaking loudly against each other. Pulling them apart, Matrona looked for the fifth and final doll.
It wasn’t there.
Holding her breath, Matrona turned the pieces upside down, then peered inside them. Nothing. No doll, no painting, no marks of any kind.
“I don’t understand.” She lifted her eyes. “You told me there were five.”
“There are.”
She turned the pieces about to show Slava their contents. “There are only four. There should be a fifth inside.” One, Matrona presumed, that didn’t open.
Slava shook his head. “Put them together, separately.”
“But—”
“Matrona.” He eyed her, and Matrona fumbled to reinstate the fourth doll, then the third, the second, and the first. She set them next to one another on a free area of the shelf, not far from the unopened dolls of Boris and Rolan Ishutin. Largest to smallest. Four likenesses of her looking forward with soft, knowing smiles.
Matrona clenched her jaw to keep from shivering.
Slava stepped up to her, pointing his large forefinger at the largest doll. “One,” he said, and moved down the line. “Two. Three. Four.”
His hand came down, resting like a sack of beans on Matrona’s shoulder. “Five.”
Matrona pulled away from his touch. The caterpillar gnawed inside; the card brush dug in its bristles. “I don’t understand.”
“I think you do.”
Her eyes took in the dolls, trailing down the line of them. She glanced at Slava. The dolls.
“I’m the fifth doll?” she whispered. “But it doesn’t make sense.”
“Not at first.” Slava nodded, turning from her to the full tables. “But it will.”
A sore throbbing formed in the center of Matrona’s forehead. She stared at the dolls. How could it be? She certainly wouldn’t fit inside any of these creations!
She touched herself, feeling skin. She was no doll.
“I will teach you to navigate outside the village soon enough,” Slava continued, his words raising the fine hairs on the back of Matrona’s neck. “But the craft itself is more important for you to learn.”
Stiff, Matrona looked to him. In his hand he held a smooth block of wood, a little longer than Matrona’s forearm. Soft linden wood, by the look of it.
“You must learn to make the dolls yourself.”
Matrona swallowed against a drying throat. “Why?” she rasped. “You have all the dolls already.” Except yours. She had scanned the shelves and tables many times, but Slava’s doll, if he had one, was not in this room.
“To protect them,” he answered. “Roksana Zotov will deliver any day. We must prepare a doll for her child.”
The throbbing in her head spread to her temples. “But why?” she asked, picking up her fourth doll and turning it over in her hands.
“To keep it safe. We will carve the doll and prepare its body. Create the enchantment, and finish it once the babe is born. Paint it to match its sex and foreshadow its appearance.”
“Foreshadow?”
“We will foresee what the babe will look like as an adult and paint its likeness.”
Matrona turned, eyeing the dolls on the table. Was that why some dolls looked older, others younger? Had she been painted as an adult when she was but a babe?
Her gaze settled on the doll that bore a likeness to Irena Kalagin. The painted face was younger than the woman it resembled, but older than the depictions on her, Jaska’s, and Feodor’s dolls. A chilling realization settled into her breast.
Irena had not been a babe when Slava made her doll.
When had this sorcery started?
Slava’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “We will have three days after its birth to complete it.”
Matrona looked back to the doll in her hands and separated its halves with a crisp pop. “Three days.”
“Or the child will vanish.”
Cold enveloped her. Her tongue writhed behind her teeth, and she struggled to find speech. She managed a single name. “Esfir.” Her lost sister, vanished from her cradle just after coming into the world. No trace of her since.
“You see why it is a crucial skill to learn.”
A tear beaded in each of Matrona’s eyes. “Why didn’t you make a doll . . . for Esfir?”
“I did not understand it then. My na?veté is . . . regrettable.”
“How could you not understand?” she asked, voice gaining strength. “You made dolls for every person in the village! How could you not make one for Esfir?”
She looked over the tables. She knew the faces of every single doll. How long had Slava been crafting these dolls, and why did he start? Why were there no dolls for the villagers who had lived before her time, grandparents and great-grandparents?
She looked down at the doll in her hands, staring at its hollow interior. The lines of wood grain within it.
Just like the imprint she’d seen in the sky, the wood. The pattern—it matched.
It came together then. The abstractness of it all. The wood grain had always been around her, guarded by the loop. She just couldn’t see it. She was the fifth doll.