It was then, standing at the back of the house while wringing a cheesecloth, that Matrona thought of it. Slava.
It was an absurd notion, she knew, but the memory of the tradesman’s house nagged at her. Had her father not been well yesterday morning? Had he not spoken to Feodor with perfect intelligence? Feodor had noticed his erratic behavior first, had told Matrona of it as soon as she returned from her uninvited visit to Slava’s blue-and-yellow home. After she’d seen the dolls. After she’d tried to open her father’s.
She worried her lip, straining to remember. She hadn’t opened the doll, but she’d twisted the two pieces before fleeing. Still, what could the wooden simulacrum possibly have to do with her father? Surely Slava Barinov didn’t perform witchcraft. Surely she hadn’t, through his dolls.
And yet it was the only explanation Matrona had. The only thing that had changed around the same time her father had.
She needed to go back.
Matrona stepped inside and washed her hands, scrubbing the scent of old milk from beneath her nails. She heard her mother in the front room, making an exchange with another villager, so she returned to the pasture and slipped through the back gate. It would be impossible to explain—her mother, who always chided her for her imagination, would never believe such a wild story. She barely believed it herself. The chores could wait an hour.
Matrona weaved around another house before turning onto the dirt path that stretched across the village, following it with unsure steps. She passed Pavel Zotov on the way and nodded to him. When the tradesman’s ornate house finally came into view, it no longer reminded her of the slumbering body of a great beast, but a block of unchipped granite, hard and unyielding. Invisible ants began to tickle Matrona’s chest.
A quick glance assured her that the tradesman’s horse and wagon rested near the edge of the wood. Surely he was home. But how to explain herself?
As Matrona took the two brick steps to the porch, she settled on honesty as the best approach. So what if Slava thought poorly of her? She only interacted with him when he wanted some cream or butter, which was not too often.
She lifted her hand to knock on the painted door, but it swung open before her knuckles could connect.
Slava Barinov stood before her.
He wasn’t a tall man, and while age had paled his trimmed beard and stripped the hair from the top of his head, he stood with a straight back and level shoulders. Crinkles edged the corners of his eyes, and long wrinkles drew down the cheeks on either side of his broad-bridged nose. He wore a simple shirt and trousers that contrasted with the vivacity of his house.
“I—” Matrona began.
“I thought it was you.” His blue eyes narrowed ever so slightly while they surveyed her up and down. “Come in.”
He stepped aside. Words tangling in her throat, Matrona passed him into the short hallway, looking around the home. Slava shut the door, and Matrona managed to say, “Thought it was me, Slava Nikolayevich?” She hoped the formal address would ease the tension.
The old man turned toward her, a gray eyebrow raised. “And how do you know my father’s name was Nikolay?”
Matrona swallowed. “I heard Feodor Popov refer to you as such.”
Slava hummed deep in his throat and nodded once before passing by her and moving into the front room. “So you did. But you do not use the patronymic with any others in the village, do you? So you must not use it with me. Understood?”
Matrona nodded.
He gestured for her to follow him, and she did so silently, her feet light and her lips pressed shut. Already she knew where Slava was leading her. She followed him past the chest of drawers, through the kitchen, and down the small hallway to the room filled with dolls. The red kite rested in the far corner, on a small wooden perch Matrona hadn’t noticed before. Turning his head, he watched her with a single yellowed eye.
She hesitated in the doorway, but Slava beckoned to her. “Come. Pamyat won’t harm you.”
Pamyat, she wondered, crossing the threshold. Memory? What a peculiar name for a bird.
The dolls were all there, filling up the two tables in the center of the room, and the short shelves nailed into the walls. They were exactly as she remembered them, wooden pear-shaped dolls, intricately painted to look like the villagers, all with fine seams around their middles. Matrona glanced over them, looking for more familiar faces. There, near the Jaska doll, was Olia Maysak. And behind them rested the entire Letov family.
Slava stepped toward the smaller table on the left and picked up a doll with a blue rubashka and a long beard, the top half of the long shirt mismatched with the bottom half. Her father’s doll.
“Sir—” Matrona began.
“Slava. Address me as you would the others,” he reminded her. “I thought that only someone in Marlen Vitsin’s brood would take interest in his doll, and he has little enough family. Though your mother is a snoop, I thought it would be you. Hoped it would be.”
He looked over the twisted doll with a strange sort of fondness, holding it across both palms as if testing the weight of it.
Matrona eyed him, waiting for him to say more. The seconds weighed heavy on her shoulders. “Slava, Tradesman,” she interrupted, “you hoped I would come into your house unannounced and play with your dolls?”
Slava chuckled. “Play with them, did you?”
“I—I . . . didn’t have a better word.” She flushed.
Pamyat shifted on his perch.
Slava nodded, and Matrona watched his hands on her father’s doll. “I hoped it would be you and not your mother, for you are still young, Matrona. Your mother is not, and as you can see, neither am I.
“These dolls need a caretaker,” he continued, gesturing to the rest of the room. “I made each one, and I’ve looked after them all. Yours included.”
He pointed to a doll on the edge of the small table to the left, and Matrona gaped at the sight of her own face, her gray eyes carefully pricked with lashes, her long braid of black hair slung over her left shoulder, just as it lay now. The doll wore a red sarafan similar to the one she’d donned yesterday, with a matching kokoshnik. Matrona stepped toward it, but hesitated, eyeing Slava. What did it mean?
“I’m sure we can arrange to keep them safe,” she tried.
But Slava shook his head and let out a long breath, weariness settling onto him like an iron cloak. In the corner, Pamyat ruffled his feathers. “You do not understand.”
Matrona did not reply.
Slava turned her father’s doll over in his hands and scanned his similar creations. “They are connected, these dolls and the people in this village. You know that, don’t you, Matrona? That is why you came back.”
Matrona’s mouth went dry. “I—I came to return a paintbrush—”
“No one else in the village has seen this room . . . at least none of whom I’m aware,” he continued. “If someone else has come, they did a much better job of covering their tracks.” His eyes twinkled, but his voice was a little too cool to be jesting. He held up the doll in his hands so Matrona could again see how its halves didn’t align. It felt as if the floor of the room had tilted, making Slava’s end higher than hers, as if his body grew until it pressed against the walls and ceiling, while hers shrank into the grooves of the floorboards.
Hugging herself to banish a sudden chill in her chest, Matrona retreated two steps. “My father has been acting strangely. Unwell. Not at all himself. It began after I . . . looked at your dolls.”
“Hmm,” Slava grumbled in agreement. “Because the doll is connected to him, and you have altered it. But perhaps it’s a blessing that you’ve seen this place. I need a replacement, and choosing one has proved . . . difficult.” He rubbed his fingers over his beard. “This makes it easier.” He chuckled. “I wouldn’t have thought you bold enough to enter . . . but it’s my fault for not locking the door.”
His words tickled in Matrona’s ears. “Lock? What’s a lock?”