She pressed fingertips into her belly in an attempt to calm it and raised her chin a little higher to convince herself of her nonchalance. The Maysaks were a large family who ran both the brewery and the pottery, and more than one of its sons molded clay for the village. It was frequently Viktor who ran the pottery while his sisters tended to old Mad Olia, their mother. It would be Viktor she’d see, she assured herself, and the exchange would be brief. Before she knew it, she’d be on her way home to do her chores and speak soft words to Feodor in exchange for his—and her mother’s—favor.
The pottery sat behind the Maysak izba, where Afon Maysak, head of the household, sipped at a bottle of some sort of spirits, as he always did. Pulling her eyes from him, Matrona focused on her task. The pottery was built like a barn, with two wide doors that opened into the workshop, not so different from the barn in the cow pasture. As Matrona approached, she could feel the heat of the kiln tickling the air. The scent of clay clung to her nostrils and the back of her throat.
Viktor was there as expected, his hands gloved as he shoved a long-handled paddle into the kiln burning in the back of the shop. Yet so was he. Her eyes easily spotted the youngest Maysak brother, Jaska, closer to the front of the pottery, his hands and arms stained up to his elbows as he separated a mound of gray clay from a bundled chunk and threw it down onto the center of a potter’s wheel. Bits of clay stained his long apron as well, and a smudge traced one side of his shaven jaw. His hair, which always looked unkempt, stuck to his temples with perspiration.
Matrona found her gaze measuring the broadness of his shoulders, and she forced herself to look away, pressing the thoughts back into the dark spots of her mind, calling herself silly and odd, even a little sick in the head. Matrona was an upright woman, and engaged to be married to a fine man. Not only that, but Jaska Maysak was seven years her junior, only nineteen years of age. She needn’t have reminded herself that she used to tend him when he was a child and his mother’s illness had left her bedridden. By all means, Matrona was more an elder sister to him than anything else. It was foolhardy for her to notice him the way she did. The way she had for nearly two years.
He looked up, his dark eyes finding hers, and her stomach rekindled its unease, making her too warm and light-headed.
Jaska wiped his hands off on his apron before approaching. “Matrona! I apologize for not seeing you.”
She smiled—an easy, innocent smile. “I only just arrived.”
He glanced at the jug in her hand. “A repair?”
She hefted the jug. “I was hoping for a remake, actually. I fear this one has been repaired too many times.”
Jaska took the jug from her and turned it over in his hands. He was not as tall as Feodor, or even as tall as Viktor and his other brothers, but he had half a head on Matrona, just as her father had half a head on her mother. A good height, considering—
Stop it, for heaven’s sake, she thought with a frown.
“This is one of the Popov jugs,” Jaska said.
She blinked. “Uh, yes, it is. Feodor came by to fetch milk with it just now.”
He smiled, an upturning of one side of his lips that pressed a dimple into his left cheek. “I’m sure it was a mess for you. And congratulations, if it’s not too late to say so.”
Matrona flushed. She hoped the color would be interpreted as a reaction to the kiln’s heat. “Not at all,” she answered, her voice quieter. She tried to push more energy into it, but her throat had become oddly lethargic. “It’s only been a short time since the agreement was made. Thank you.”
He glanced at her, his dark brown eyes so very different from Feodor’s pale blue. “Agreement? You make it sound so . . .” He shrugged.
Matrona folded her arms. “So what?”
That dimple re-formed. “So formal, I suppose.” He patted the jug. “I’ll make a duplicate; should be ready tomorrow afternoon, maybe tomorrow evening. I can bring it by when it’s finished—or should I take it to the Popovs’?”
Matrona parted her lips to reply, then stood dumbly, considering. Her mother would likely want her to deliver it herself. To take credit for the effort, to bolster Feodor’s affections. She swallowed and answered, “I’ll come pick it up. It’s no trouble.”
“And it’s not there,” came a loud yet papery voice from behind Matrona, who turned with the sensation of needles pricking the length of her spine. Mad Olia hobbled into the workshop, her bowlegged steps uneven, her back hunched with age. A pink head scarf held back her half-gray hair, but a few locks had escaped the folds and dangled over either side of her nose. “And it’s not,” she repeated, brows pinched together. Her faded eyes glared at Matrona, then her youngest son. “I ought to switch your hide. There are worse punishments than being left out in the snow—”
Jaska sighed. “Mama,” he began, but his sister Galina came around the corner just then and, spotting their mother, hurried over to grasp her arm.
“It’s all right. Let’s have something to drink,” Galina murmured to the old woman, avoiding Matrona’s gaze.
Olia grumbled something unintelligible before letting her daughter pull her away, back toward the house.
Jaska’s gaze lingered on them a long moment, his eyes and shoulders drooping as though fatigued. He sighed and turned back to Matrona. “My apologies.”
Matrona shook her head, mulling over Olia’s bizarre words. “What’s ‘snow’?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea”—Jaska shrugged—“but she prattles about it from time to time.” He looked at the jug in his hands, then back at Matrona. “I’ll get this ready.”
Matrona nodded, offered her thanks, and left the workshop, trying to keep her pace respectable. She was anxious to put distance between herself and Jaska—as well as Mad Olia’s ramblings—but it wouldn’t do to appear too eager. She was levelheaded and purposeful, as always. Levelheaded and purposeful.
The heat from the pottery retreated as the village opened up to green space. Matrona imagined her flush was made of thousands of biting ants, and the soft breeze blew them off her skin as she walked, carrying them back into the wood. Her spine softened, and she fingered the end of her braid, twisting her hair around her fingers as though her hand were a loom. The sun beamed down from overhead, highlighting the milk stain on her skirt. She ran a thumbnail over its crusty edges.
Slava’s home appeared on the path, with its glimmering shingles and blue shutters, the glass-inlaid windows far finer than anything the other village izbas had put in their frames. For a moment Matrona wondered what it would be like to be a tradesman, to own a horse and take her wagon out through the wood to other towns, cities she’d never seen, even countries. To bring back the strange and remarkable things Slava always seemed to have. But the thought left as quickly as it had come, banished so thoroughly, Matrona couldn’t pin down just what her mind had been pondering.
A glint of silver caught her eye from the wild grass just off the side of the path. Stooping down, she picked up the slender item—a paintbrush with very long, very fine bristles. Its handle was tipped with silver and imprinted with an etching of chamomile flowers.
Matrona turned the instrument over in her hands, marveling at it for a moment before looking up to Slava’s house. Surely it was his. Picking up her skirt, Matrona crossed the wild grass to the narrow path leading up to Slava’s porch and portico. It was not the first time she’d knocked on the tradesman’s door, but she was not at all a frequent visitor, and she marveled at the paint and stamped designs around the door frame before knocking thrice.
Matrona waited several seconds, but there was no answer. Hadn’t she seen Slava’s wagon around the back of the house? She knocked again, harder. Stared at the knotted square etched into Slava’s brass door handle. Traced it. Touched it. Turned it.
The door opened onto a short front hall well lit by the windows. “Slava?” she called inside. “Tradesman?”
No answer. She needed to think quickly, for dark things dwelled in the thresholds of houses, so she couldn’t linger long. Matrona glanced at the paintbrush in her hands. She could set it down on the doorstep for him to find later, yes?
As she pulled the door closed, however, she heard movement within the house, perhaps the brushing of a shoulder against a rough wall? She paused for a breath, then pushed the door open again and called, louder, “Slava? Are you home?”