“You want to break the house?” Jaska asked.
She nodded. “Pull down its walls, see what’s truly on the other side of them.” How much would it hurt Slava? Would it kill him? She shuddered, her stomach souring. She did not want the tradesman’s blood on her hands. If only she understood his magic!
Pavel smiled for the first time since awakening. “I like this idea. I have tools in my shop—hammers, saws, chisels.”
“Matrona.” Jaska crossed the room and took both her hands in his. “I want to escape as much as you, but if taking a chisel to the wall can cause the ground to shake, what will a sledgehammer do? We could be killing ourselves.”
Matrona’s throat constricted at the notion.
Pavel asked, “Do you have another suggestion?”
Jaska frowned. Pressed his lips together. He was silent for several breaths—they all were. Then his shoulders slumped, and he shook his head.
“The sooner the better.” Matrona hated the weakness in her voice. She could think of no other way. They couldn’t unlearn what they knew, and she would never let Slava wipe her memories to keep his false peace intact. Even if Russia was a terrible place, it was a free one, wasn’t it?
“Will it risk the others?” Jaska asked.
“Do you want to sit around and wait for them to wake, then take a vote?” Pavel quipped. “I’ve led people into far more dangerous situations. If left to choose for themselves, they will cow. If they see action, they will follow.”
Jaska’s hands fisted. “You think them cowards?”
“I think we’re wasting time.”
“Enough,” Matrona said. “Let’s take Olia and Roksana back to Pavel’s home. Then we’ll get the supplies.”
“Matrona . . .” Her name was almost a plea on Jaska’s lips.
Standing on her toes, Matrona took his chin in her hand and kissed him, paying no attention to Pavel. Peering into Jaska’s eyes, she said, “I want to escape. I want to be free.”
The sledgehammer was too heavy for Matrona to wield, so she fisted a smaller mallet. She felt like a soldier—that was the right word, wasn’t it? soldier?—going to war, leaving her loved ones behind. Olia and Roksana had been left in the Zotov izba with the dolls. If either of the madwomen wandered, it didn’t really matter. Soon, none of it would, if Matrona’s theory was correct.
Pavel carried the heavy hammer, and Jaska wielded a sturdy saw. They walked in a line, Matrona in the middle, their paces even. As they approached Slava’s house, she saw, again, the illusion of the sleeping dragon—the shingles were its scales, the portico its great head, the hedgerows its tail. She watched it, unblinking, and in her mind saw it shudder with wakefulness, stretch out four massive legs that led to beastly feet with curved claws. Saw its head rise, tilt, and look at them, ready for the challenge.
It’s just a house, she reminded herself. An enchanted house. A great doll.
A cage.
“God help us,” she whispered, and Jaska nudged her with his elbow.
Pavel must have heard her, too, because he answered, “God isn’t in here.” They stopped before the house, and Pavel twisted his grip on the hammer. “He’s out there.”
They stood for a moment. Gray flashed across Matrona’s vision. Pavel hefted the sledgehammer with a grunt and slammed its iron head into one of the house’s columns.
The ground bucked as the painted wood splintered.
Pavel grinned and swung again. The wood cracked under the blow. The ground trembled; glass rattled in Slava’s windows. Matrona heard a very distant shout, though she couldn’t pinpoint from which direction it hailed.
The sky darkened.
Pavel swung a third time, breaking through the narrow column. The quaking of the ground didn’t cease this time. Thick clouds—were they clouds?—began to bubble in the sky.
Jaska turned around. “This is bad.”
“Too late to go back now,” Matrona murmured. Gritting her teeth, tensing her shoulders, she walked up to a window and, grabbing the mallet with both hands, shattered it.
She felt power ripple up her arms—not her own strength, but something from within the house. Something struggling, or perhaps escaping. Banging and cracking trumpeted Pavel’s work, soon followed by the long, rough draws of Jaska’s saw. Matrona moved to the next window and shattered it, then grabbed shutters and hung from them until their nails pulled free.
Gray night encompassed them. Blotchy darkness filled the sky, rumbling and flashing with lightning. The ground quaked harder, until Matrona could barely stay afoot. An izba down the path began to crumble. A few tiles fell from Slava’s roof.
“This is too slow!” Pavel shouted over the rumbling. “There’s an easier way to do this!”
He set down the sledgehammer and hurried on shaking legs to the large leather bag he’d brought with him from his house, filled with more tools for dismantling Slava’s doll. To Matrona’s surprise, he pulled out a flask of kerosene and a box of matches.
She dropped her mallet and ran to him, tripping with every step, until her hands clasped the kerosene.
The quaking had become so terrible, she had to shout to be heard over it, even at such close range. “We don’t know how the spells work! You might kill him!”
“Jaska’s out of harm’s way!”
“Not Jaska!” she bellowed. “Slava!”
Pavel pulled back, hand still on the kerosene. “And?”
Matrona’s jaw went slack. “Surely there’s a way not to—”
He laughed, the sound of it swallowed by the collapsing walls of buildings in the village behind them. “Do you really think that whoreson would build himself a prison without a way out?”
Matrona’s grip on the kerosene loosened.
Pavel leaned closer as one of Slava’s walls began to cave in. “Where do you think he does his trades? He goes to Russia. There’s a reason his house has two doors!”
Matrona swallowed and let go. Teetered on the trembling earth.
“We’ll chance it.” Pavel ran up to the house, near where Jaska struggled to saw through the shuddering portico. He made a few gestures to the potter, who stepped back from the house, leaving the saw embedded in its wood. Jaska walked backward toward Matrona. The ground bucked and knocked him onto his backside.
Matrona hurried to him, falling to her knees beside him. She couldn’t see straight from the shaking, couldn’t hear over the roar of their breaking world.
The first flames caught her eye, lapping up behind the second window she’d broken. Pavel fell against the house, trying to stay upright. Crawled along its body to his sledgehammer. He unscrewed the head and coaxed flames onto the tip of the handle, trying to spread the fire that was already consuming the dragon from the inside out.
A second burst of brilliance drew Matrona’s gaze skyward. Her bones became ash within her.
“Jaska!” she cried, pointing.
The sky was on fire.
Chapter 23
Matrona tried to find her feet, but the earth knocked her down and liquefied her muscles. She clung to Jaska, her eyes watering, her throat itching from the smoke pouring from Slava’s house. The orange flames reflected in Jaska’s eyes.
A circle of flames whirled above them, eating away at the now-dark sky as if it were parchment, revealing pale gray behind it. Nothing but gray. Though surrounded by heat, Matrona’s flesh turned cold. It was as though she stared into the eye of nonexistence, and it stared back at her, laughing in a voice too similar to Slava’s.
The flames continued to spread, stretching out like a molten ring, opening the gaping void in the sky. The heat struck Matrona, hitting her in a wave, burning her skin. Jaska turned into her and clutched her shoulders, and she buried her face into his neck.
Was this really the end? Had they trapped themselves inside a kiln? Would their lives truly end in ash?
The blaze brightened white hot. Matrona could see it through her eyelids, through Jaska. She screamed.
The light choked out, and cold settled upon them.