She was inside the pieces she held in her hands.
Slava had mentioned navigating outside the village. Going wherever he went when he left on his trips and brought back supplies. Beyond the loop. Supposedly Matrona could now follow him.
But the others could not.
Trapped. Her mind formed the word as though carving it in a great block of ice. Trapped. All of them, only their bars were patterned in wood grain and bespelled by the man before her. But for how long? How long had they been jailed inside these painted cages, and what lay beyond this village?
The doll-halves fell from her hands and struck the floor in unison.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered, shaking her head, backing away from the halves. “I can’t do this.”
Slava’s face darkened instantly. “You have no choice, Matrona. I have primed and prepared you. You will learn. Or do you want Roksana to lose her child as well as her mind?”
“Mind.” Three days. Matrona remembered her promise to Jaska. Jaska, who was trapped like the rest of them. Heart thudding in her chest, Matrona glanced at the potter’s doll. Took another step back, letting herself sway on her ankle.
“Matrona,” Slava growled.
She looked up at him. “What have you done to us?”
Then she teetered on her legs, pretending to faint, and fell toward the second table of dolls. Her elbow, then shoulder, slammed into the edge of the table. Its legs held, so she swept her arm out in her descent, knocking over a dozen dolls. Half of them tumbled onto the floor with her, including Jaska’s.
“You fool girl!” Slava bellowed, rushing forward to steady the table.
In the commotion Matrona’s hand shot out for Jaska’s dolls. She slid the top half off his first doll as another doll tumbled from the table and struck her hip.
Clenching the second doll’s hands in her fingers, she pulled on the top until it popped free. She pressed it back in place just as quickly, then returned the top half to its rightful position seconds before Slava’s hand grabbed her upper arm. He hauled her upward, and Matrona tried not to gasp at the force he used.
Slava did not yell at her; his words hissed from the cracks of his teeth like steam from a kettle. “Your clumsiness could cost us dearly. Once a doll is damaged, there’s no replacing it!”
“Then perhaps you should find someone else.”
Slava scoffed and released her. “Too late for that,” he muttered. Matrona tried not to tremble, but failed. She pressed herself into the corner where Pamyat usually perched, watching as Slava picked up the dolls one at a time, inspecting them before returning them to the table, Matrona’s included. To Matrona’s relief, another doll had twisted ever so slightly, and Slava thought nothing of it as he corrected it. Hopefully Jaska’s would pass inspection as well.
Slava gathered up Jaska second to last and straightened him. Studied him. Matrona bit down on her tongue.
He placed the doll in its usual spot. Matrona swallowed a sigh.
“I’m sorry,” she offered as Slava stood, his knees cracking as he did so. He pressed his knuckles into the small of his back, for once letting his age show. Closing her eyes, Matrona tried to sort through the array of thoughts spinning in her aching head. Time. She needed time.
“Give me time,” she asked, soft and demure, pulling on the cloak of humility she wore with her parents. “A day or two to think. I need . . . to work this through. Then you can teach me how to make the dolls. For Roksana’s baby.”
Slava glared at her. “You are almost more trouble than you’re worth.”
“Please.”
He grumbled deep in his throat. “When I come for you, you will come, without any more of this nonsense.”
Matrona nodded. “Yes, Slava.”
“Get out.”
Matrona hurried past him without hesitation, up the hallway and through the rooms that had become far too familiar to her. Pamyat shrieked as she passed but did not leave his perch. She headed out the door, into the sunshine.
Nothing changed about her this time, not that she could feel. But she was free now, as free as a trapped woman could be. Tilting her head back, Matrona gazed skyward. The lines of wood grain against the sky were darker and sharper than they had been before. Was this how Slava saw the world?
Not the world, the village. There was only the village. She would never look at it or its inhabitants the same way again.
Jaska, she thought, remembering the horrors she’d faced after opening her own second doll. That darkness would be weighing down on him now, and without warning. He was suffering.
Matrona had to find him, help him, and tell him what she knew.
Chapter 15
The village changed before Matrona’s eyes. Or perhaps it was her urgency that colored it differently.
In her mind’s eye, Matrona saw izbas built of paper, people milling about them like marionettes on strings. Completely unaware of where or what they were, the villagers prattled to each other about pointless things. For if Matrona was the center of her doll, were not these people also the centers of theirs?
Yet if Matrona had truly escaped Slava’s spell, why did she still see wood grain in the sky?
Confusion coiled around her heart as a serpent, making it hard to breathe. The Demidovs appeared on the path ahead of her, driving an ox to pull a wagon heavy with a plow. Matrona rushed by them, clapping shoulders with Lenore, who began to shout something after her, but the words fizzled before they finished. Matrona found herself uncaring. Lenore Demidov was just a doll. All of them were.
What if that was all Matrona had ever been?
Esfir, she reminded herself, quickening her pace. Esfir never had a doll. She was real, before she vanished. I must be real, too.
The serpent squeezed.
Her body was flushed with exertion by the time she reached the pottery, which stood free of customers. Viktor worked near the kiln in the back, and Kostya sat at a pottery wheel, a delicate carving knife clutched in his clay-stained hand.
“Where is Jaska?” Matrona asked.
Both brothers looked over. Viktor blinked a few times as though his vision was slow to focus. The memory of Jaska’s unbidden revelation about him made Matrona’s stomach flip.
Kostya eyed Matrona as well, looking too long, as though he were trying to place how he knew her. His mouth worked, as if preparing to say something unkind, but no words came.
A strange sensation filled Matrona the longer she studied him, almost like the sensation of falling mixed with the cool mist of rain. Then, all at once, she saw beyond Kostya. Or rather, into him. She saw his insecurities about his family as if they were freckles dotting his skin. She felt his desire for thrill seeking, which often led to late-night excursions, like the time she’d witnessed him out with one of the village girls. She saw his sorrow over the absence of caring, present parents in his life, which simultaneously made her appreciate her own.
It shook her, seeing all that. The effect was different from when she’d opened Jaska’s doll, from when poor, dear Roksana had opened hers. Those secrets had flooded her mind all at once; these impressions filled in the more she focused on the man, and they eased the moment she looked away.
More importantly, the secrets weren’t hers.
“I . . . ,” she started, unsure of herself. Was this a symptom of opening the fourth doll? Some special doll-sight?
Was this how Slava saw her?
“He’s not here,” Kostya finally answered, not meeting her eyes. Why wouldn’t he meet her eyes?
Rubbing a chill from her arms, Matrona abandoned the pottery and sprinted to the izba beside it. She rapped her knuckles on the door.