You’re friends dared you to enter the shop not letting you leave until you collect a strand of hair from the shopkeeper. when you refused they pushed you inside. The children whispered his name like a curse—Matryoshka, the dollmaker who never smiled, whose hollow eyes seemed to follow you long after you’d gone. His shop stood at the end of the street, its windows filled with glassy-eyed figures, their porcelain faces frozen in silent, knowing expressions. No one ever saw him outside. No one ever heard him laugh. But when a child is shoved through his door on a cruel dare, she learns what the others only fear—some dolls are made, and some were something else before they were hollowed out.