One-Shot

[laleia]

Disclaimer: I know nothing about Estonia aside from what Wikipedia told me. Correct me, please, if I have gotten anything wrong.
The life-sized doll is based on 0001 of eLouai.

Kaja had been to her great-uncle's house but once. She had been young, then, and her confused memories filled with mysteries, darkness, monsters, and a laughing old man who had continually fed her sweets. She had vague memories of women, but did not know how that could be. Her great-uncle had never married, and his daughters were typically Estonian in their height and build. None had the peculiar hair and costume of her obviously somewhat-distorted memories.

So when Kaja traveled back to East Estonia in order to take care of the house her great-uncle had left to her in his death, she could not wait to see what was memory and what was the imagination of a young child. When she entered the house, she had been almost overwhelmed by the dust. Her great-uncle had spent his last few years with one of his daughters, not alone in this old place. As a result, the house was quite untidy.

As Kaja made her way through the rooms, she remembered more and more. Small things, they were. Here, in this room, Great-Uncle Heino had scolded her for not knowing what Kaja meant.

"You are Estonian," he had told her, "and you must not forget your heritage. You live in America now, but do not forget your Estonian roots. Kaja means echo. Do not ever forget again." Of course, this speech had been in badly-accented English, and she had not understood the import of his words, just the disappointment in his tone.

In this chair, he had sat as he told her stories of Kalevipoeg, modified so that a child would understand. He had cut out a lot of bits, she later found out, because they were inappropriate, because she would not have understood. He told her only the exciting bits, and she found the rest out later on, in university, when she had time and inclination to find out more about this hero of her childhood summer.

And in this room, her great-uncle had kept his special treasures. Kaja opened the door with care, and stared in shock at the life-sized dolls before her. There were five in a row, lined up in stuffy-looking clothing and moth-eaten hair. Their eyes bore into her and she understood why she had been frightened.

They were very bizarre, and she wondered why her great-uncle would keep them in the first place. She knew too little about her Estonian family and heritage. Was it an Estonian thing? Was it a hobby of her great-aunt's? Perhaps they had been worth money at some point, and her great-uncle had meant to sell them. Perhaps she would never know.

But she was being silly, of course. She could just ask her cousin next time they met. It was not so serious as that. Kaja willed herself to close the door on the accusing eyes of the dolls as she turned away.