Dreaming Anastasia

by Joy Preble

  “And then,” Ethan says, “I met Brother Viktor.”

  “Brother? Like a monk or whatever? You mean that’s why you had that robe on in my dream? Is that what you are?” Tess, I figure, is going to be pretty disappointed. So much for her stealthy, hot-guy fantasies if Ethan is in some sort of weird religious order.

  “Was,” he says. “Then. And for a long time. I was a believer then. Now, I suppose it is much harder to say. But yes, Viktor was of the Brotherhood. And for a time, so was I.”

  Ethan stands then. He walks back to the counter, picks up a small, covered cup and a spoon, and carries them back to the table.

  “I like it sweeter,” he says, pointing to his tea. “In Russia, we liked sweet tea. My father used to put a cube of sugar between his teeth so it would sweeten each sip as he drank it.”

  I wait while he stirs in a couple of spoonfuls of sugar and shake my head no when he offers some to me. I know he’s stalling. But I also know how it is to have a story you just don’t like to tell.

  “Viktor was older,” Ethan says then. “About ten years older than I. Maybe a little less. He saw me trying to steal some potatoes from a vendor’s stand in the marketplace of a town I’d wandered into. When I failed, he followed me back toward the forest. I can still see his long robes billowing as he chased after me. I though he was some sort of officer, come to arrest me.

  “But he didn’t. He offered me some bread and cheese and told me he knew what I’d suffered. Somehow, I felt he did. He told me he could stop the violence raging through Russia. That there was a group, a Brotherhood, dedicated to protecting our land and destroying the forces bent on corrupting it. If I joined them, he said, I could do this too. I could protect other families, protect the tsar and his family from the evil that had tried to speak in his name.”

  “You believed him?”

  He nods. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have. But I was young and I was frightened. And I was alone. Viktor seemed to be offering a lifeline. I don’t remember that I even gave it much thought, although later I knew I should have. I just took it. And I was grateful.”

  He stands up and paces back toward the counter, leans against it.

  The mark on my arm sends out a sudden jolt of pain. I rub it and try to make it go away. Ethan watches but doesn’t comment. Then he continues.

  “I had nothing,” Ethan says. “He offered me—everything. And so I accepted.

  “I was fed, clothed. I learned Russian history and philosophy and literature. I studied theology. And I was taught the ancient magic.”

  “Exactly how much magic?” Even as I ask the question, I’m not really sure I want to know.

  “Enough,” he says simply. “Mostly basic protection spells. Some a little more complicated. A few more dangerous than that.” His blue eyes darken a bit at that last part.

  He knows I can see that there’s much more to this than he is letting on. But I keep quiet—for now.

  “It’s not something I enjoy. But it is something I have learned to use—when I need to.”

  “Like back there, in the park, with those men?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Like that.” He looks at me closely—and then closer still. “You know I didn’t kill them, don’t you? Just slowed them down a bit so we could get away.”

  “All right,” I tell him. “So you’re this monk—well, former monk, I guess, who knows some magic. And your job was to protect the tsar.”

  I pause because, let’s face it, I know what happened to the Romanovs, and I’m sensing that protecting the tsar and his family is probably not high on the super-secret Brotherhood success stories list.

  “But the dreams, Ethan. And these marks on our arms. And my hand glowing. Where does all that—where do I fit in to this story?”

  “It’s coming,” Ethan says. He walks back to the table and sits down again. He leans his elbows on the wood and clasps his hands together so that, for a second, it looks like he’s praying. “I just need you to see all the pieces. Hell, at this point, I think I need to see them again too. Because even after I’m done telling you this part, I still have to figure out who—or what—is after us. And why.”

  “Figure out? Like, you really don’t know?”

  “Like, I need to finish telling you so you’ll understand.” There’s an edge to his tone, but he smiles at me.

  “Sorry,” I say, even though I’m pretty sure he knows I’m not. “It’s just taking a long time.”

  “You’re young,” he says, as though that explains it.

  “Getting older,” I tell him. “So go on.”

  “A few years before the Revolution, Brother Viktor began to talk of a prophecy. He spoke of forces corrupting Russia from within—dangerous forces that would do anything to destroy the tsar and his family. They were everywhere, he said, even within the Brotherhood itself.

  “I found nothing shocking in the idea of a corrupted Russia. How could I when my family was murdered in cold blood? But that this corruption had somehow seeped its way into the sacred Brotherhood? I wasn’t sure what to think. These were the men who had taken me in, fed me, protected me. Could one of them—maybe more than one—really be my enemy?”

  “Was it that Rasputin guy? I mean, from what I read, he seemed to have a bunch of control over the tsar’s wife. And the way he died—all that poison and being shot, and then finally they had to drown him in the river. He certainly sounds like a candidate for corruption. Not to mention a makeover. That whole robe and hair thing—not exactly working for him.”

  Ethan reaches up and smooths his own hair, then grins at me, which I guess is a good sign, or at least a sign that he knows how he looked back then.

  “You’ve done some research,” he says. “But no, it wasn’t Father Grigory. You are right—the tsarina trusted that crazy fellow, mostly, I think, because he offered her hope for her son, Alexei.”

  “I know,” I tell him. What I don’t say is that I’ve also seen what it’s like for a mother when she realizes that she can’t save her son.

  “So who then?” I sit up straighter and roll my shoulders a bit, trying to relax my muscles.

  “We never did know for certain,” he says. “I suspected a younger monk, Ivan. He’d become strange, avoiding Viktor, refusing to take his meals with the others. He would stay away from the monastery for weeks on end and come back wild-eyed, as if he hadn’t slept in days. Right before the assassination, he simply disappeared. And then—then things changed, and there was no point in looking for him.”

  Somewhere outside, a car honks, and we both look toward the window across the room. I’m not sure what he’s thinking, but I know what’s going through my head. How in the world can he really be as old as I think he is? Of course, I haven’t looked in a mirror since this all started. It’s possible that he’s looking at me and thinking that I look about a thousand right now.

  I push my bangs off my forehead. I just can’t get my head around this. Even if he is old but looks young, why? How?

  “Then what?” I ask him. Suddenly I’m even more impatient to hear the rest of it.

  “Eventually it didn’t matter. The Revolution was coming, and nothing—not even magic—was going to stop it. But Viktor told us there was one slim hope. He said there was a chance that we could save one person. That there was magic, old magic, that could help us. If we used them, we might be able to keep at least one member of the royal family safe.”

  “It was Anastasia, right? The one. I mean that’s horrible. But she was the one, wasn’t she? That’s what people have said all along, anyway. There are all those rumors that she’s not dead. People think there’s this whole conspiracy or something. Only now—what I asked you back in the park—you’re telling me it’s true, just not how people think?”

  Ethan nods. “Yes,” he says, “she was the one. I didn’t question that part of it. I mean, why her, and not one of her sisters or the boy? It simply was going to be her, and we all knew it. But even with that, Viktor told us this act would not be p
ossible without a price. I suppose that’s the way of the world, really, isn’t it? I mean, in my experience…well, there’s always a price. And mine—well, mine was my life.”

  “Your life? But you’re not…”

  “Dead? No.” Ethan smiles at me. “Very much alive. And, as you can see, very much the same.”

  “The same, as in how old? And why? What does one have to do with the other?”

  The questions tumble out of me, but as they do, I get the feeling that once I hear the answers, there’s no going back. Once he tells me the rest of it, I can’t just pretend that none of this is happening.

  “I had just turned eighteen that year,” Ethan says.

  Eighteen. I start to do the math in my head. “So that would make you—”

  He cuts me off. “A great deal older than you.” He stands up and paces to the window, then stands there, staring out into the street.

  My pulse is racing again. He looks eighteen—a really good eighteen, by the way, with those eyes and that longish hair—that probably got a little sweaty while we were running so it’s curling up a bit at his neck—and everything else that’s packed into those normal-looking, dark-wash jeans he’s wearing with a long-sleeved light blue shirt. But he’s over one hundred years old! And then something else occurs to me, so I say it aloud.

  “So what you’re saying is that you’ll stay like this—young—forever, until you find her? You’ve been like this—all this time?”

  “Yes.” He turns from the window to meet my gaze. “That was our pledge. Viktor would use the ancient spells to compel Baba Yaga to help us. I know it all sounds impossible to believe. That’s how I felt then too. Magic was one thing. I’d learned it. I knew how it worked. But a fairy tale come to life? I couldn’t get my mind around it. Yet it was true. In that room—the hands, Baba Yaga’s hands. They—”

  “I know,” I tell him. “I saw it. In my dream. It was like I was there in that room with you. With all of them. With her.”

  A shiver works its way through my body. Dreaming all this was bad enough. Knowing that this poor girl actually experienced what I had seen down to the last detail was much, much worse.

  “So that was it.” Ethan continues to stand by the window. “We could protect the grand duchess—that’s her title, by the way—even if all the others died. And if it worked, our lives would not be our own until one of us freed her. She, at least, could keep the Romanov line alive.”

  I stand and walk over to Ethan. “And you were okay with that? You were willing to give up your freedom for hers?”

  “Yes.” He runs both of his hands through that thick, shaggy hair of his, blows out a breath. “Yes, I was. I’ve thought about that since then. I suppose I’ve had—well, I’ve had a number of years to think. I was just a child when my family was murdered. I couldn’t stop it. If I could stop this, I—well, it seemed like something I had to do.”

  “All right,” I say. The mark on my arm gives another sharp burn, and my heart gives another smack in my chest. “Let’s say I believe it all. That it’s all true. It still leaves out the main question. Why me? Why do you need me? Why am I suddenly in the middle of all this?”

  “The prophecy spoke of a girl—one connected in some way to the bloodline of the Brotherhood. She would be the one who could free Anastasia. We wouldn’t know where she lived, or even when. But there would be hints, bits of other writings that would help us. If we stayed true to our cause, eventually, we would find her.”

  Ethan’s still talking when the spike of temper edges its way into me. I don’t know if it’s his calm tone or what he’s saying or maybe a little of both.

  “But how can that be me?” I realize I’m shouting at him, and I have no plans to lower my voice anytime soon. “You seriously expect me to believe that I’m related to some anonymous someone in a secret Russian religious order? And that you and God knows who else have been searching for me for—well, a number of decades? You have got to be kidding.”

  Ethan has the grace to look slightly flustered, but he continues to speak in that same even tone, that tone that’s making me want to smack him. “Yes,” he says. “That is exactly what you need to believe—because it is the truth.”

  And then he stops being quite so calm.

  He moves closer to me and grabs my arm. “Look at it!” He’s holding my arm harder than I’d like. He points to the mark that continues to burn and glow a deep red. “It is the one true sign that Brother Viktor spoke of. He said that if—when—we found the girl, her mark would appear and match our own. He said we would feel it, know it.”

  I try to wrench my arm away, but Ethan’s grip holds firm. The tiny part of me that has still been treating all this like a game of some sort knows now that it is no game.

  Ethan’s voice has become low and kind of ragged. “Many times over the years, I thought I’d found her. But always, always, I was wrong. This time, I’m not wrong. I know you are the one. I just need you to know it too.”

  He lets go of my arm, then takes both my hands tightly in his. “Believe, Anne. Believe. It is your destiny.”

  “Destiny? I’m sixteen years old. I don’t want a destiny. I go to high school. Until you started following me around, my biggest problem was whether or not I’d studied for my chemistry test. Now I’m running from crazy witches. People are shooting at us. With bullets. And it’s all your fault.”

  “It’s not my fault,” Ethan says. “It’s what has to be. It’s what you’re supposed to do.”

  “And who put you in charge of me?”

  “Well, I…you—”

  “I, you, what? That’s the best you can do? You’re telling me that you’ve been around since horse-and-buggy days, checking out every likely girl who comes your way to see if she’s the one, and that’s the best you can do? I? You? Give me a break, Ethan. I mean, seriously.”

  “It is serious. It’s all very serious. Anastasia’s life hangs in the balance. What you decide to do right now is of ultimate importance.”

  “Like I said, so? What if I don’t? Can you, like, make me?”

  I’m going to run, I think. Or slap him. Or something.

  Only then I look down at our hands.

  Slowly, steadily, their color is changing. Ethan’s hands and my hands are both radiating the same blue-white glow that my hand had at home last night. The color shifts to the sapphire hue of the sparks that flew from Ethan’s fingers back at the park.

  Destiny.

  And this time, it’s not just a glow. I can feel the intense warmth of power residing just below the surface of my skin. Once again, everything in my world shifts.

  “It’s okay,” Ethan tells me as the tears spill out of my eyes and trickle down my cheeks. “It will be okay,” he says again.

  I’ve heard that sentence a lot lately. But I’m not sure I believe it. In fact, I’m not sure of much of anything at this point. I’m certainly not sure that I’m special enough to have all this suddenly thrust upon my shoulders.

  But it seems to be here whether I want it or not.

  “How did you know?” I ask him. “I accept that you felt something when you saw me, but how did you know where I was? It’s a big world, Ethan.”

  “There were documents.” He walks back over to the table and starts to clear our tea mugs. “A professor friend that I met in Europe showed me…”

  He pauses, places the mugs in the sink, and begins to rinse them. “He’s expecting us to come see him. He—”

  I’m no longer listening. I walk over to the window. A flash has caught my eye.

  Whatever is now pulsing inside me pulses a little faster.

  “Ethan,” I say, interrupting him, “if Baba Yaga is protecting Anastasia, why did she come after us back at school? Is that all part of this whole thing? I mean, is she coming for me so I can free Anastasia? Or is she trying to hurt us?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” he says. “That part took me by surprise as much as it did you.”

  The fact that h
e doesn’t know is not thrilling me. Neither is the black limousine—a familiar limousine—that has now glided past the building for a second time.

  I turn away from the window.

  I feel the pulsing get even faster. “I think now would be a very good time for you to tell me who you think those men are who were chasing us.”

  His answer is exactly what I hoped it wouldn’t be. “I’m not entirely certain,” he says, his expression grim. “I think they may have been sent by Brother Viktor.”

  “But aren’t you and he on the same side?” My voice rises so fast it actually squeaks.

  “There is a possibility,” says the man who is quickly—very quickly—screwing up my entire existence, “that I was wrong about that.”

  I glance out the window again. Sure enough, two familiar figures dart across the street toward Ethan’s building. Well, that’s just great.

  “It took you over eighty years to realize he might be the bad guy?” I take my gaze away from the window to glare at him.

  Ethan opens his mouth to respond. Then he cocks his head, listening. His eyes—those two cute little pools of blue—are now flashing like two angry blue crystals.

  “Get down!” he shouts. He grabs my arm and we both slam into the floor together as bullets begin to pound the window.

  Wednesday, 1:45 pm

  Ethan

  It’s those same men!” Anne shouts above the din of bullets raining against the glass. I offer up a silent thanks as they bounce harmlessly off and back down toward the street. My magic may be a bit rusty, but the wards are holding.

  For now.

  “Follow me,” I tell her. We’re still flattened to the wooden floor of the loft. My arm is slung across her back. I can feel the rapid pace of her breathing, the wild thundering of her heart. She turns her head and looks at me, those deep, brown eyes filled with fear. A look that has me realizing that I may be in over my head. On many levels.

  “Stay down.” I reach over and grab her hand. “I don’t know how long the protection’s going to hold.” Her eyes widen more at that last part.