Slava stood waiting outside his house, his thick arms folded across his thick chest, looking taller than his grand home. When he saw her, he offered a short nod and retreated into the house. Matrona followed, her steps too light, ghostly. She waited for the doll-sight to come upon her, but it didn’t, not even when she stared hard at the tradesman’s back and tried to beckon it. The maker of the dolls must have made himself immune to her gifted prying.
Slava moved swifter than she did, and he preceded her into the doll room. When Matrona followed him inside, she saw that the open space before Pamyat’s perch had been filled with another rectangular table, unadorned. Upon it rested carving utensils, wood shavers—several things Matrona had seen in Pavel’s carpentry. Three blocks of linden wood sat on its edge. Beside the table was a lathe, which would hold the wood and spin it when powered by a pedal. This must be how he shaped the dolls. It was not so different from a pottery wheel.
“The body must come first.” Slava selected the topmost block of wood. He turned it over in his hands, studying the grain, pulling it closer and farther from his eyes. “Once the body is made, the spell can begin to take hold.”
Matrona pressed her lips together.
Slava drew his finger across the center of the wood. “It must be linden wood, and the dolls must all be made from the same piece, or they will not fit together. If you don’t make them correctly, you’ll do more harm than good.”
Is any of this good?
“The bottom half is always made before the top, to ensure fit. This is as much about craft as it is sorcery.”
When did we become your artwork?
“I estimate the Zotov child will be born tonight, perhaps tomorrow if the labor is long. That will give us enough time to carve the wood. Then, if the child doesn’t survive, we can save the doll for the next infant born in the village.”
Matrona gritted her teeth. He spoke so matter-of-factly, as if the child itself was no more than a doll. No more than the unshaped wood he held in his hands.
“I will show you how to begin.” Slava placed the piece of wood in the lathe, ensuring with a few pumps of the pedal that it held evenly. “Then you will practice on the other pieces. Pay close attention, for this wood is aged and treated. It is not easy to prepare, and I will not tolerate careless mistakes.”
Slava selected a sharp-looking tool from the rectangular table. Matrona spoke before he returned to the lathe. “Where would it go?”
Her words were hushed. Slava raised his brow. “Hm?”
“The baby.” Matrona stared at the lathe. “Roksana’s baby. Where would it go without this doll?”
“Another place.”
“You want me to become as you are, yet you won’t tell me?” Her voice raised with each word. “Where would the babe go, Slava? Where did Esfir go, when you failed to make a doll for her?”
His face darkened, the wrinkles deepening. “You’re not prepared to learn that.”
“A place with snow? With gray skies and marching feet?”
Slava glowered.
“Is that it?” Matrona asked, taking one step closer to the table. “Is that where Esfir went? Did you even try to retrieve her, or did she freeze in the night?”
Slava’s fist hit the table, shaking the tools. A block of linden wood toppled to the floor. “Do not make me compel you to finish this, Matrona!”
“These are prisons!” she shouted back, the words tearing up her throat. She jutted a finger to the tables of dolls. “You’ve caged us! Why, Slava? If this life is so much better than the alternative, why did you not give us the choice? Olia, Esfir, Roksana . . . they wouldn’t have suffered if you didn’t intervene. Don’t you see what you’re doing?”
Slava gripped the lathe with one hand, the linden block with another. Pamyat screeched behind him. “You think yourself so righteous? I will not make the doll for you. If you will not work, Roksana’s child will perish. Is that what you want? You will save the babe, or it will vanish just as your sister did.”
Tears stung Matrona’s eyes. She shook her head. “What was it you said?” Words cracked against her tongue. “You saved us. You saved us. Yet now you threaten me with the death of an innocent. You threaten me by manipulating the people in the village to be your puppets.”
Shadows spread over Slava’s features, and he stared at her with red-veined eyes. He gripped the worktable and shoved it aside, sending a sliver of cold fear up Matrona’s spine. She backed away. He advanced.
“You still do not see it,” he seethed. “What I have given you. What your pathetic life would be like without my intervention. You do not understand starvation. You do not understand death, only the idea of it from passages in your damnable Book. You cannot fathom pain, or war, or suffering. Because I have spared you. I am your savior, Matrona. I have saved all of you.”
Matrona’s back hit the door. She swallowed. “I never asked to be saved.”
Slava threw the linden block across the room. It clapped against the wall. Pamyat hissed and flapped his wings.
“You want to see it for yourself?” he spat. “I will show you your misery, and you will wallow in it when the blood of that baby is on your hands!”
“My hands are clean!” Matrona shouted, clutching them to her chest. A tear rolled down her cheek. “And I will be free, Slava! I will not be manipulated any longer. Do your worst, but the child’s fate will be on your head, not mine!”
Slava’s arm struck out like a serpent, his fingers fangs to ensnare her. Matrona stumbled back, out the door, narrowly missing his grip. Her shoulder struck the far wall of the hallway, and the burst of pain jolted her into action. She raced for the stairs, grabbing the skirt of her sarafan as she nearly tripped over it. Slava’s shadow filled the space behind her, his footsteps thundering over the carpet. A whimper escaped Matrona’s throat as she bounded into the kitchen.
Slava grabbed her elbow, but Matrona spun from his grasp before he could hold her. His body, a wall between the kitchen and the front room, blocked the exit.
“We don’t have a back door,” Jaska’s voice whispered, “but I doubt he’s lucid enough to notice you.”
Slava had a back door.
Spinning on her heel, Matrona sprinted for the door, moving faster than she ever had, straining every muscle in her body.
“No!” Slava shouted after her.
Her fingers reached for the handle.
“Stop!” he bellowed, chasing her.
Matrona grabbed the handle, but the hinges stuck as though rusted in place. Crying out, she shoved her weight into the door, bruising her shoulder down to the bone.
The door opened on screeching hinges. Matrona scrambled toward the wood, and knew.
Chapter 16
Slava hovered over the five-legged console just off center in his small but well-furnished room, turning over the pieces of the figurine he’d acquired on a trip to Japan some years ago. Its wood was yellowed with sap and painted with the face of an old man with a long forehead. The woman who had sold it to him called it Fukuruma. Seven dolls in all, a number for good luck. Slava had an inkling that the craftswoman had suspected the truth—he hadn’t bought the doll merely as a souvenir. He had seen the magic within it, the potential.
He had almost unlocked it.
Putting the Japanese doll down, he picked up his imitation, made of linden wood. It had to be a soft wood, and the others hadn’t sparked in his hands as they ought to have. They had either cracked when he tried to carve them or were simply null once formed, useless. But this doll was on the cusp. He had almost finished painting it, imitating the limbless appearance of the Japanese doll, but adorning the character—this one a woman—in Russian garb: a gold kokoshnik and a maroon sarafan. Not just any woman, but Her Imperial Majesty’s handmaid. The magic sparked when the doll mimicked a real person. It made Slava wonder who the old man depicted in the Japanese doll was, if he still lived.
He turned both dolls over, measuring them, nodding to himself. These would hold spells nicely, but he had to know the dolls’ utmost potential before presenting them to—
A firm knock sounded on his door, four even beats.
Slava straightened and rubbed his fingers into his neck and across his beard. There were a few gray hairs in it now. How long before he turned into an old man?