No answer.
“It’s Matrona Vitsin. I found a brush near the path that I believe must be yours . . .” Her voice faded as the heaviness of the quiet house pushed it toward the floor. Pressing her lips together, she moved to set down the paintbrush, but a thump from within stilled her hand.
She straightened. “Slava? Are you all right?” A vision of the aging tradesman filled her thoughts, of him trying to reach her and then tumbling to the floor, breathless, ill, with no one to help him. After gnawing on her lip a moment, Matrona pushed the door open and stepped inside the house.
Matrona had never entered Slava’s home; he always completed his trades off the side of the path. She noted that the interior of the house was simpler than the exterior, though still fine. A staircase at the end of the hall, its banister unpolished, led to the upper floor. There were a few simple paintings on the wall, with simple frames, and Matrona wondered if Slava had painted them himself, if this paintbrush truly was his. She hadn’t known the tradesman to be an artist, but then again, he kept mostly to himself.
“Slava?” she called again with urgency, rounding the corner and spying a rolltop desk. She touched its fine stenciling, wondering where Slava had found it, for she’d never seen Pavel Zotov, the carpenter and Roksana’s father-in-law, craft something so fine. She passed a chest of drawers, a short table, and some embroidered chairs with high backs of a make she didn’t recognize. “Slava, are you hurt?”
Perhaps he wasn’t home after all. Matrona turned about once, looking for a shadow, listening for a groan, then slipped from the front room into a small kitchen. She spied across the empty room to a short hallway to her right, which dipped down with two stairs from the kitchen floor. Another rustle, deeper in the house, encouraged her to take those stairs; she tried to resist marveling at the aged but lush carpeting underfoot. A door at the end of the hallway was cracked open, spilling out a sliver of sunlight.
She pressed it open, half-expecting a bedroom, and instead got a face full of brown feathers. She shrieked and staggered back as a large bird grappled with the door frame before flitting to the opposite end of the room and finding a perch on the windowsill. Pressing a palm to her speeding heart, Matrona gawked at the creature—a red kite, perhaps? Surely such a creature hadn’t gotten lost inside the house! Had Slava acquired the bird on one of his routes? The creature glared at her with a yellowed eye, and he wore a copper band around one of his legs.
Matrona’s hand tightened on the paintbrush, and she took two calming breaths. This must have been what she’d heard, then, foolish bird. She took half a step away from the room, but its interior snared her attention: two tables—one large, one small—took up most of the space, and simple wooden shelves had been nailed into the walls. The glass window, where the kite perched, was too tall to be peered into from outside.
Her lips parted in surprise. Dolls. The tables and shelves all held dolls. Carved wooden dolls, round faced and slightly pear shaped, about the length of her forearm. They were painted in a variety of colors, and many wore head scarves and ornamented clothes. So many dolls. Dozens. Over a hundred, surely.
Glancing once at the watching kite, Matrona walked to the large table. She set down the paintbrush and picked up one of the dolls, its wooden body lacquered and smooth. It bore a remarkable resemblance to Zhanna Avdovin, were she twenty years younger. A coppery kokoshnik framed her face. The doll even had the same light curls and pursed mouth.
She set the doll down, for another caught her eye. She touched it, hesitant to pick it up, but she did, studying the face closely. Pavel. It looked exactly like the carpenter.
She set the doll down and stepped back to examine the other faces, her mouth opening wider with each one, a slow breath trickling into her lungs. Viktor, Sacha, Ilary. And there—that was Jaska, undoubtedly. And on the small table to her left, she found a doll resembling her father. Even the facial hair matched. Her father had not altered his beard in all the years she’d known him.
The kite clicked deep in his throat, but she ignored him and picked up her father’s doll, turning it over. He had this same clothing as well, the blue rubashka with black trim, the matching hat. How long ago had Slava made this doll? All of them? And why?
Gooseflesh rose on Matrona’s arms. She thought to search for her own doll when her thumbnail discovered a seam in the doll’s center, encircling her father’s round waist. It was two pieces, then? It opened?
Gripping the top and bottom of the doll with chilled fingers, Matrona pulled, though the pieces were stiff. The wood squeaked against itself as the top and bottom half twisted—
A thump outside elicited a muted shriek in Matrona’s throat and an eager cry from the kite. Her gaze instantly fixed on the closest window, and the impropriety of the situation hit her like a bucketful of cold water. What was she doing, wandering around inside another villager’s house like this? Touching his things, however odd or fascinating they may be?
Was Slava home?
Matrona hurriedly set down her father’s doll and rushed from the room, through the kitchen and around the chest of drawers, past the stairs and out the front door. She heard the nickering of a horse behind the house, but she ran over the wild grasses and back onto the path, sprinting until she felt the wood at her back. Had he indeed returned home, Slava would not see her now.
She paused to catch her breath. Perhaps it had been foolish to run. She simply could have explained herself, couldn’t she have? She’d only meant to return the brush . . .
It was those dolls . . . so strange and disarming. Matrona had never seen their like before. If Slava had made a habit of creating them, why hadn’t he ever shared his work, even at the annual fair? Were they meant to be secret? What lay inside them?
Wiping sweat from her brow, Matrona hurried down the path, wondering if Feodor still awaited her at the house. She prayed she hadn’t dawdled too badly, for her frazzled thoughts could not bear a scolding. You must be levelheaded and purposeful, she reminded herself. The jug would be made, she would do her chores, and she would forget about the odd collection inside Slava Barinov’s house.
Chapter 2
Matrona’s quick pace left her flushed and breathless by the time she reached her family’s izba. Feodor stood just outside the door, likely on his way home. Matrona forced her legs to slow and her spine to straighten. She tucked those stubborn stray hairs behind her ears.
Feodor looked up and cocked one of his thick brows. “You’ve made good time.”
“I tried to be swift,” she replied. She took deep, slow breaths to quiet her nerves. While she’d not seen a doll for Feodor on the tables, there had been so many, and all the ones she’d inspected had borne a likeness to someone in the village. She suspected he had one, too. Did its outfit match the shirt and vest he wore now, or perhaps the gray rubashka he often favored?
“‘He who hurries his footsteps errs,’” he said, quoting the Good Book.
They met on the path, Feodor leaning his weight onto one lean leg, taking a moment to look over her. His gaze felt like a cool breeze against naked skin, and Matrona tried not to shiver beneath it. Instead, she studied him back.