Slava grumbled. “You must swear it, regardless of God.”
Regardless of God. It was near blasphemy. Still, the memories of her father’s condition forced her to bob her head.
It was enough for Slava. “Very good. You will open your doll now, just one, and place it on the table.” He gestured to the empty spot on the leftmost tabletop. “Then you will return to me in three days’ time to open the next. Understood?”
Again, she nodded, her hands sweating against the glazed paint of the doll, her dress too hot against her skin. Just open it, she told herself. Open it and leave. How desperately her lungs ached for fresh air.
She twisted the two pieces a hair’s breadth. “What will happen?”
“You will be unharmed.” Slava folded his arms. “The rest will soon become apparent.”
The kite nodded his narrow head as if in agreement. The movement made his beak look longer.
Closing her eyes, Matrona held her breath and wrenched the doll open.
Nothing happened. She didn’t feel crazed. She didn’t feel different at all. Opening her eyes, she glanced down at the doll in her hands. Sure enough, inside the outer shell was another doll identical to the first, wearing the same clothes and expression. Matrona set the open halves of the larger doll on a sliver of free space on the large table and studied the smaller doll in her hand.
“Close it and place it on the table,” Slava instructed.
Matrona did so, her gaze lingering on her likeness.
“Three days,” he reminded her. “I will be waiting for you.”
Matrona nodded mutely. When Slava seemed to have no further words for her, she turned and let herself out of the house, happy to be done with it.
She took two full breaths once the familiar dirt path appeared underfoot, then shook out her arms until her shoulders relaxed. Glancing behind her to the tradesman’s house, she wondered if it had all been some sort of ruse. Had Slava merely used her gullibility to frighten her? She felt no different.
Perhaps she wouldn’t know the truth until she saw her father.
She passed the children’s glade in the wood and saw Alena Zotov coming the opposite way with the cooper’s wife beside her, both carrying baskets to be filled by other village craftsmen. Matrona moved to wave, but the shadows on Alena’s face stilled her hand. The woman’s features only darkened as she drew nearer. The cooper’s wife, too, narrowed her eyes at Matrona, then turned and whispered something into Alena’s ear. Alena’s stare did not break from Matrona’s, and a scowl formed on the other woman’s lips. She nodded slightly, agreeing to whatever the cooper’s wife had told her.
They did not make space on the path, forcing Matrona to step onto the tromped grass beside it. Alena had never looked at her so coldly before. Neither of the women had.
They passed, sniffing as they went, and Matrona caught the words “—indecent. I feel sorry for—” and then they were gone.
Matrona watched after them, tucking back those short, stray hairs. Surely the scowls weren’t meant for her. Had someone else in the village treated them poorly before they came this way? Was all well at Roksana’s home?
Matrona shook herself. Father. Find father. She needed to ensure he was well, and that Slava was not playing some strange game with her. Picking up her skirt, Matrona returned to the path and quickened her step.
As the west side of the village came into view, so did the other villagers. Perhaps Matrona imagined it, but they all seemed to be scowling at her. The cobbler’s daughter gaped with a wide O expression to her mouth, and old Irena Kalagin shouted out, “I was sick for three days, you wretched girl!”
Matrona’s heart retreated until it hit her spine, and she quivered with its every beat. “I’m sorry,” she said too quietly. “What—?”
But Irena simply spat on the ground before turning back to her laundry.
Taking a deep breath to still her nerves, Matrona focused on the path beneath her and hurried toward her house, nearly at a run, avoiding the eyes of her other neighbors. Their gaze made her feel naked, and she without a clue as to where her clothes had gone.
Slava’s words, “The rest will soon become apparent,” echoed against her skull as the scents of the dairy farm wafted over her.
She glanced up to the safe haven of her izba and opened the door, letting out a long breath as she pushed it closed with her heel. Her mother looked up from the brick oven and hurried toward her.
“Mama,” Matrona said, breathless, “the strangest thing—”
Her mother’s open palm cracked against Matrona’s cheek.
The force turned her head and pounded in her ears. Eyes watering, Matrona blinked rapidly and touched the tender bruise forming beneath her eye. She turned toward her mother, noticing the hardness in her eyes and the prominent vein drawn down her forehead.
“You dare to humiliate me and the Popovs with such a scandal?” her mother snapped. “By the saints, he’s practically a child!”
Matrona’s stomach sank into her hips, her heart plopping atop it. They had to be weighing down her lungs, for she found it difficult to breathe. “Wh-What?”
“And a Maysak,” her mother spat, throwing her hands up into the air and plodding back to the brick oven to check on whatever cooked there. “His mother is a madwoman and his father a drunk!”
Matrona’s skin turned cold, and she leaned back against the door to keep from falling over. Her fingers trembled. “Y-You know . . .” about . . . Jaska?
“About your filthy yearnings for Mad Olia’s youngest? Everyone knows,” she spat again. “I did not raise my daughter to have such indecent thoughts. And toward a Maysak!”
Matrona slid down the length of the door until her rump smacked against the floor. She pinched herself, but this was no dream. The beats of her pulse bled into one another, leaving her light-headed.
Her mother picked up a wooden spoon and threw it against the front of the brick oven. “Your father is in a rage over it. I can’t imagine what Feodor will say, let alone his parents!” She spun back toward Matrona, fire inside her skin. “Get up. You think now is a time for rest? And I knew the cheese that made everyone sick two years past was your doing. I knew it, reckless girl!”
Irena’s hard words surfaced in her mind. “I was sick for three days,” she’d said. The food poisoning. Yes, that had been her fault. She’d sensed the milk was turning wrong, but the demand had been so high . . . She hadn’t told a soul—not about that, and certainly not about Jaska.
If Feodor cancelled the marriage, she’d be trapped inside this izba forever, barely esteemed higher than the rag rugs.
A murky image of her doll surfaced in her mind. It can’t be.
The back door to the izba slammed shut, and her father stomped in, brow furrowed. When he noticed Matrona, his bearded lips pulled into a deep frown. “You have a great deal of explaining to do. How will we show our faces at church?”
No slurred words. No twitching. Only anger. Yet Matrona could find no peace in his apparent recovery.
“Well?” pushed her mother.
“I—I never . . .” Matrona shook her head, and her mother stormed forward to grab Matrona’s sleeve and haul her upright. “I—I didn’t mean for the cheese to go bad . . .” Her face flushed, and tears stung her eyes. “I never . . . Jaska, I never acted on—”
“It barely makes a difference!” her mother shouted. “The things you think about that potter—”
Think about the potter? Matrona wondered, her bones feeling as hollow as flutes. How could her mother possibly know her thoughts?
They bubbled up inside her, scraps of past and buried flights of fancy about the youngest Maysak. The times she’d measured his shoulders—his hips—with her eyes. How she’d imagined strolling in the wood with him, wondered about the taste of his mouth, and—
“God help me,” she murmured.
“He wants nothing to do with you,” her mother snapped.