A low moan within the Zotov izba answered her.
“Roksana!” Matrona called, throwing open the front door. The room before her looked empty, as did the kitchen, the hallway. But Roksana lay in her bedroom, blankets pulled halfway up her round stomach. Her black hair, wavy from its braids, scattered loosely over her shoulders and pillow. She opened her eyes, looked at Matrona, then gritted her teeth as a contraction rippled up her belly.
Matrona’s doll-sight flickered to life, but the only emotion she sensed in her friend was confusion.
On the floor, at the foot of the bed, lay two dolls: one painted to look like Alena and the other depicting the midwife, both younger versions of themselves. Matrona scooped them up. She bit her lip to keep it from quivering.
“Roksana.” She stowed the two women in her pocket and hurried to her friend’s bedside, where she took up Roksana’s hand. “Are you all right?”
Roksana’s head rolled to the side, and her lips formed the words of that strange lullaby. The madness still had its hold on her.
Matrona felt the weight of the midwife’s doll in her pocket. If the midwife was gone, and Roksana’s mother . . . who would help Roksana birth this baby? Matrona had only witnessed the birthing of calves on a few occasions. Her knowledge ended there.
“Lord help us,” she breathed, and moved to the foot of the bed, where the midwife’s bag of supplies rested, along with a bowl of lukewarm water and several towels. Matrona sorted through the bag, her fingers trembling.
Roksana’s breath hitched. She wasn’t terribly close to delivery—the contractions were too far apart.
Matrona stilled, watching her friend’s chest rise and fall. Roksana and Matrona had both opened their dolls—that had to be why they were still whole, still real. The others had become the literal parts of Slava’s curse.
Matrona perked. “Jaska,” she whispered. Would he be whole, too? Would he be able to help?
Checking under Roksana’s blanket to ensure she wasn’t bleeding, Matrona whispered, “I’ll be back. Breathe deeply. I’ll be right back.”
Roksana whimpered, but as Matrona raced out of the house, she heard her friend humming the haunting strains of her Russian lullaby.
Matrona ran across the village, again cutting through the potato farm. She found Georgy’s doll in the soil behind the plow; Zhanna’s in the grass beneath her clothesline. Other villagers scattered the path or the porches outside their homes. Despite her rush, Matrona could not bring herself to leave them alone. She scooped up each one she saw, until they knocked together in her pockets with her every step.
Her legs ached by the time she reached the pottery, but Matrona hurried to the Maysak house and threw open the door. She ran to the stairs in the back, climbed up to the attic.
“Jaska?” she called, but the room was empty. Huffing, muscles tingling, she approached the bed against the left wall and peeled back the covers.
Her heart fell into her stomach when she saw his doll there.
“Oh, Jaska,” she whispered, picking the small likeness off the mattress. He hadn’t been spared.
“It’s all gone bad,” mumbled a voice downstairs. “The whole of it. We’ll starve!”
Matrona whipped around, her lips forming the name, Olia. She rushed down the stairs just in time to see the old woman walking the short hallway to the other bedrooms, pressing one hand against the wall for balance. Her eyes found Matrona, then turned away, disinterested. Matrona locked the mad woman in her gaze until the doll-sight came to life, but she sensed only what she had felt with Roksana—deep-rooted confusion.
“All gone bad,” Olia continued as she stepped into the kitchen, throwing a hand into the air. “Didn’t salt it, all bad now. Skin your hide.”
“Olia! I know about Slava,” Matrona tried, but the woman rambled on, opening and closing cupboards as she walked the perimeter of the room. Matrona licked her lips. “I know about Russia.”
Olia paused and turned, looking at Matrona as though seeing her for the first time. For a split second, Matrona thought she saw clarity in the woman’s gaze, but it vanished just as quickly. Olia shook her head. “No sheep is no socks and we’ll lose our toes. No salt, no salt!”
Biting her lip, Matrona rolled Jaska’s doll between her fingers. Olia tripped and cursed, drawing Matrona’s eyes to a doll on the floor. Rushing forward before the woman could kick it away, she grabbed the figurine. Galina.
“At least Slava spared you from this,” Matrona muttered to the aged woman as she tucked Galina into her pocket. Olia ignored her. She’d restarted her circuit of the kitchen, again opening and closing the cupboard doors.
Matrona helped herself to a cup of water before hurrying from the Maysak home for the second time that day. She wished desperately that she had a horse, and that she knew how to ride it. For now, urgency was her only fuel, but it was enough to get her across the village.
Roksana was mostly unchanged when Matrona returned, though her forehead had begun to perspire. After soaking a rag in the pail of water, Matrona wiped Roksana’s face, then built up the fire that had burned down to embers in the brick oven in the kitchen. The sun outside the window marked late afternoon.
Matrona put water over the fire to boil—and subsequently found Luka’s doll near the dining table. Exhausted, she fell into a chair to rest a moment. While her body did, her thoughts did not.
She had to return to Slava.
The muscles in her arms and neck tensed at the idea, but there was no one else save Olia, and she was as mad as ever. Leaning her elbows onto her knees, Matrona cradled her head in her hands. What if Slava refused? What if she’d retaliated against him one too many times?
Roksana’s groan snaked down the hallway. Matrona jumped to her feet and hurried to her friend’s side. A prayer in her heart pleaded that Roksana would not be pained enough to try to leave her bed, for the agony of labor would only worsen. Already the contractions grew closer together, and Roksana’s slender fingers gripped fistfuls of her blanket.
Sorting through the midwife’s things once more, Matrona found chamomile and catnip for pain and tension. She mixed them into a cup and managed to get Roksana to drink most of the medicine—the impending delivery had captured nearly all of Roksana’s focus, which prevented her from rambling, or worse. After checking once more to ensure nothing had gone awry, Matrona left the izba and ran for the sleeping dragon.
She started shouting for Slava before she even reached the portico. “Slava!” she bellowed. “You have your wish! I’ll do whatever you want, just bring them back!” She ran up the steps to the door. Pushed it open. “Slava!”
The front room was empty, as was the kitchen, as was the doll room, where Pamyat greeted her with a hiss. Matrona’s worry quickly shifted into anger, which imbued her body with new strength.
“No more games!” she shouted, coming back up the hallway. “I’ll make your dolls! Keep your secrets! Wash your feet if I have to!”
She reached the entry hall and called up the stairs, loud enough to crack her voice. “Slava!”
No answer.
Had he left? All his talk about urgency, and he’d simply left everything behind?
Setting her jaw and lifting her skirt, Matrona climbed up the stairs. Only two rooms occupied the upper floor; the first was a large bedroom simply decorated, with a low, wide bed and taupe-colored curtains over a broad window. The other was a sitting room filled with remarkable wonders—shelves that held golden eggs and a bronze inkstand, plait ornaments, plates painted with unfamiliar heraldry, and the Japanese Fukuruma doll from Slava’s memories. The walls boasted embroidered plashchanitsas and paintings, as well as a small flag striped white, blue, and red. On any other day, at any other hour, the treasures would have incited awe. Now she saw only the empty spaces around them.
The tradesman was gone.
Chapter 18