by Joy Preble
“The three. You’re right. I should never have missed it, Anne. Don’t blame yourself. I’m the one who should have seen it.” He pushes some wet strands of brown hair off his forehead, then clasps his hands together, the two thumbs against his lips. It looks like he’s praying.
“Whatever,” I tell him. There’s no point in playing the blame game. We just need to figure out what to do to make this all stop. “I know it’s all screwed up somehow, because four of us came out. But I don’t get it.”
“It’s her.” I hadn’t even noticed that Viktor, with Anastasia behind him, has moved over to us. He points up to Baba Yaga, who’s howling Anastasia’s name.
“Explain,” Ethan says. His blue eyes lock onto Viktor’s face. His hands clench at his sides. “If you knew that this would happen—”
“No,” Viktor says. He raises his hands briefly in the air, as if to signal his innocence. “I’m guilty of a lot of things, but that’s not one of them. But I think I understand what’s happening.” He looks skyward, and I’m shocked when he pulls Anastasia behind him as Baba Yaga swoops closer.
“It’s the original spell, I think,” he says. He’s shouting now over the wind, the storm, all of it. “The ancient magic we used to compel Baba Yaga to do our bidding. She didn’t want to. You see,” he points again to her, “how strong she is. How powerful. The words, the events, they had to be just right. It’s like building a house of cards—one slip and it all comes falling down. The magic—I think they were built around one of us, you, Ethan, or me, or another brother—going with the girl into the forest. Three of us would be coming out. I never had to really think about the end of it, but I suppose that’s what would finally break the hold—not only to free Anastasia, but to reverse it all.”
“And so it’s not reversed?” I think I finally understand what Viktor is saying. “You mean she’s still compelled to take Anastasia?”
“Even if she wants to free her,” Ethan says. He turns to Anastasia, fires off some Russian, listens to her response.
“She agrees,” he tells me. “The witch wants to give her up. She’s the one who called the horsemen to help, set things in motion to let her free. But I don’t think she can. She’s got to protect a Romanov, whether she wants to or not.”
“I will go back to her.” Anastasia stands up straight. Her blue eyes—even bluer than Ethan’s—are clear and strong as they look at me. The grand duchess, telling me what she wants to do.
“No!” Of all the things that are making me absolutely hysterical at the moment, this one seems somehow to be the worst of all. “No!” I say again. “Tell her, Ethan. Tell her in Russian so I’m sure she understands. She can’t go back—not after all that’s happened, all we’ve done. She just can’t!”
I don’t even wait for him to say what I’ve asked him to. I put my hands on Anastasia’s shoulders. I have to keep myself from just clutching at her wildly. “You can’t do that!” I scream at her. I’m not sure if she can understand me, but the words pour out of me anyway. “You’re only seventeen! You didn’t have a chance. You’ve been stuck there all this time. You’ve got to stay here. You’ve got to live. You’ve got to do the things you’ve always wanted to do. Please, Anastasia!”
“Let her do what she wants.” Viktor’s voice sounds tired and angry at the same time. “You think she cares what you think?” He grabs my arm and yanks me away from Anastasia. A cut on his cheek is bleeding freely. He’s mortal again, so his wounds will be around for a while. “You—you’ve destroyed everything! Look at all this! Look at her! You think she can survive in this world? You think you’ve really helped her? I told you—”
“You stupid son of a bitch!” Ethan’s fist connects with Viktor’s jaw so hard that Viktor staggers backward. Ethan grabs him by the collar with one hand, then punches him again with the other. The second punch sends Viktor sprawling to the wet ground.
“Stop it!” I yell. “This isn’t solving anything! It isn’t going to help us stop Baba Yaga.”
“ Nyet! ” Anastasia shouts in Russian. No!
Maybe she really doesn’t understand, I think. Maybe she doesn’t realize how much Viktor has betrayed her.
“You can’t protect him!” I scream at her. “Not after what he’s done to you! To me too! Do you know why it’s me? Because I exist through him. I’m his blood too. That’s why it’s me. He had a daughter, and I’m descended from her! I’m one of you too! Part Romanov. And I’m telling you, he’s the bad guy!”
“Do you think I do not know?” Anastasia says. “Please. Let me do what I must! Let me end all of this.”
So I back away, and Ethan does too, and we both let her do what she has to do.
Thursday, 3:45 pm
Ethan
“You said that you would help.” Anastasia stands in front of Viktor, still the grand duchess, even with the rain whipping sideways at us as we press against the building. She’s speaking in Russian, so I translate quickly for Anne. “That you would keep us safe. But you didn’t really do that, did you, Brother? You never planned on doing it.”
“But I did,” Viktor says to her. So many emotions are crossing his face—anger, denial, regret, perhaps even love. It’s like he’s seeing Anastasia for the first time, not just as a pawn to use to get what he wanted, but as a person. “I did. I wanted you to live.” As he says it, it’s like he’s there again, and for a moment, I almost believe him.
Anne moves to stand next me. I listen, and watch, and translate for her as best as I can.
“Do not lie to me, Viktor,” Anastasia says to him. “I will know.” They both step from the protection of the bank’s overhang out into the driving rain. In an instant, they’re both soaked once more by the storm, the wind swirling around them.
“It is no lie,” he says to her. “I wanted you to be safe. I wanted to help.”
“But then, my brother, you wanted something else, didn’t you?”
“She really does know, doesn’t she?” Anne says. “She knows what he’s done—why he’s done it.”
I nod. It is between them now, between Viktor and the half sister he has betrayed—just as he betrayed me, and Anne.
“Look at you,” Anastasia cries at him. “You look exactly the same. You have not changed. You have not aged. How is this possible? Am I the price you paid for that?”
“Anastasia.” Viktor attempts again to say something, but she’s already told him that she knows, so his words could only be lies.
“Your jacket, Viktor. It is leather, is it not? And a fine leather. I can see that. Your shoes—look at your shoes. I know good quality, my brother. I am a grand duchess of the Romanovs. I know what it is to have the very best. And I know he denied you that. So what did you do, Viktor? Did you really use me to gain this jacket, to buy these expensive shoes? Tell me, Viktor!” She’s shouting now, her voice echoing even over Baba Yaga’s howls, even over the torrential storm. “Tell me the truth!”
Viktor stands silently. The rain is streaming over him, running down those fine clothes, soaking those fine shoes. And even through the storm, I can see he is doing something I never expected him to do. He’s weeping.
“They killed them, one by one,” Anastasia says. She clutches her arms around her as though she’s in that room once more. “Mama. Papa. My sisters. Even Alexei. You told me it would be all right. But it wasn’t! They were slaughtered! Their blood spattered over me as they died. I knew it was all wrong then. That I shouldn’t have listened to you. But it was too late. They were dead—and I was not. You said I would save the Romanovs, but the only one you wanted to save was yourself!”
Viktor’s face has become a study in anguish. He seems to grow smaller: the powerful Brother Viktor, bowed by the truth.
“Then she”—Anastasia points to the sky, to Baba Yaga—“she took me away. Because you made her. You compelled her. She didn’t want to. Do you know that, my brother? Do you know that I was reaching for my mother’s hand when Baba Yaga grabbed me?”
�
�I’m sorry,” Viktor says to her. “Oh, God. I am so very sorry.”
“You must let me go back,” she says to him.
“To be trapped again? No. I cannot.”
Anastasia’s brown eyes burn into Viktor’s face as she studies it. “He was right,” she says finally. “You really are not worthy of being his son.”
She reaches back and slaps him—hard—across the face. I can see the red imprint of her hand on his cheek. “To the world, I am already dead. Do not destroy any more lives because of me! Please. I am begging you. Let me go.”
As though she has heard the girl speak, Baba Yaga swoops closer, reaches down with those hideous hands.
I’m not prepared for what happens next, even though I should have realized it was coming. People sometimes surprise you—perhaps surprise themselves. I can’t say that it changes anything. It doesn’t bring back the dead. But it’s something, just the same.
“Witch!” Viktor pulls Anastasia aside and stands to face Baba Yaga. I can see the distorted reflection of his face in her iron teeth as she smiles at him. “You need a Romanov, do you not?”
For one terrifying moment, I think he means something else. I reach out for Anne. He’s going to give her to the witch, trap her forever.
But I’m wrong.
“Take me, then!” he says to her. His voice is as terrible as Baba Yaga’s smile. He reaches up to the jagged cut on his forehead, swipes his fingers over it, and holds them out to her—stained red with his own blood.
“It’s in me too!” he tells her. “Romanov blood.” He shoves his hand into her face. “Smell it, Baba Yaga. Know it. I am one of them. So take me! Stop this thing! But do not take the girl. Take me instead.”
For a moment, it’s as if everything around us is holding its breath—the rain, the thunder, Baba Yaga herself.
And then she smiles. “Ah,” she says. She runs one enormous finger over the blood on Viktor’s hand—brings it to her lips, runs her tongue over it.
Viktor turns around to look at us. He opens his mouth, about to speak. But whatever he might have said, we never get to hear. Baba Yaga’s hands wrap themselves around him. He doesn’t even scream as she lifts him into the mortar.
She whirls away with him, up toward the black clouds. Her eyes are glowing in the dark sky, each pupil a smiling skull. Her iron teeth are shining.
“Peace be with you, Brother,” I say. But I never know if he has heard me, because then they are gone.
Thursday, 4:20 pm
Anne
The thunder stops, but the rain continues to fall. If possible, it’s raining harder. The street is filling with it.
“She is crying,” Anastasia says. Well, actually she says it in Russian and Ethan translates it for me, but it’s still what she says. “Auntie Yaga. She is weeping.”
I don’t ask why she’s crying, if, in fact, that’s what she’s doing. The answer is pretty clear. She’s crying for Anastasia. Like a mother, I realize in a rush, crying for a lost child—or at least for a poor, motherless girl who just wants some piece of what she has lost.
I’d thought of Baba Yaga only as a witch. It never occurred to me that she might be more than that.
I peer into the door of the bank. My mother is still lying where we’ve left her. I press my face against the glass until I see the movement of her chest. She’s breathing. I need to go to her, but I can’t—not yet.
“What do you want?” I ask Anastasia. I reach over and smooth my hand down her wildly tangled hair. Then I take her hands in mine. They’re warm. Even out here in the damp, her hands are warm. Anastasia—my distant relation through circumstances I’d never have believed even a few days ago.
I could be friends with her, I think, if things were different. She and I and Tess.
“What do you want to do?” I ask her again, because I think that if we can help her do it, then it will be all over. It’s the one last thing Baba Yaga needs.
Anastasia hesitates. She pulls her hands from mine, but our gazes stay locked. When she answers me, it is in Russian. I’m not sure why, but I think it is easier for her because she knows that her words will hurt me.
Ethan translates. “She wants to go home,” he says. His voice is very tired and sad. “Back to Russia. Back to when it happened. Anne, she wants to die like she was supposed to. It’s the only thing she really wants.”
“Die? But she can’t! I—Ethan, how can she want to—?”
I don’t even finish protesting. I may be a lot dumber about some things than I ever knew I was, but I understand that sometimes, you just have to let go. There’s an order to things, to life. Viktor had broken that order. Maybe he’d done it out of selfishness. Maybe he’d done it for vengeance. Or maybe a little part of him—the part that knew Anastasia loved him—did it to help her. But none of that mattered—not even Ethan’s personal sacrifice for so many years, not anything that I had done.
It only mattered that it was broken, and we had to fix it if we could.
“Can we do it?” I ask him quietly. “Is there a way? Do we have any magic left? Maybe together or something?”
“I don’t know for sure,” he says. “I would think right now, you’ve got a lot more than I have, but we won’t know until we try.”
I look at Anastasia. She’s pulled the small, wooden doll from her pocket.
“She’s pretty,” I say to her.
“She is my matroyshka, ” she says to me slowly in English. “It means ‘little mother.’ My mama told me to hold on to her. No matter what. That if I did not let her go, she would keep me safe. And she has. She has kept all my secrets.” Anastasia pulls the doll apart, shows me the other smaller dolls tucked inside. “Even as I was hidden away like this.”
I watch as she clasps the pieces back in place, and I wonder how a doll can keep you safe, but I don’t say anything. It’s amazing enough that she’s kept this doll with her all this time, with everything she’s been through—things I don’t even want to know. She’s still kept this link to her home, to the person she used to be.
“May I see her?” I ask Anastasia. I hold out my hand, palm up. She hesitates, but only for a second. Then she places the doll in my hand.
I suppose I can always think that what I hear then is just my over-stimulated imagination. Or I can choose to believe that the doll really says something to me. I mean, it’s not like those pretty, red-painted lips actually move or anything. Still, a little voice whispers in my head.
Hold me between you, the voice says. Both of you think about where she’d like to be. Imagine. And if you can hold that thought—together—then you can send her home.
I don’t really know what to believe. I’d thought of home when Baba Yaga had told me to choose, and that hadn’t gone well at all.
But somehow, this feels different.
Professor Olensky’s dying words come back to me. The book doesn’t matter, he’d said. Not exactly. He’d said that I already knew what I needed to, and maybe he’d only meant about using my blood to get to Anastasia. But maybe I knew something else too.
My mother had given me the answer when she’d handed me the lacquer box and told me the story—the one I’d read the rest of on my own. About Vasilisa the Brave and her magic doll. The doll like this one, that Tsarina Alexandra had given to her daughter Anastasia.
“Yes,” Anastasia says. “I hear what you hear. And I think it is the way.”
“It’s the doll,” I say to Ethan. “That’s what will send her back.”
“Are you sure?” he asks.
But we all know the only way to be sure is for us to try. So we do.
We stand together, Anastasia and I. Between us, we hold her matroyshka , my hand on one side, and hers on the other.
I take my other hand and place it over my heart like I’ve learned in ballet—the universal sign for love. Can I love someone I’ve never really known? I guess it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I can do this.
The air around us sparks with ligh
t.
I don’t flinch when, like in my dreams, I see what’s in her head. I know it’s just part of the connection we have with each other. So when she sees that basement again, I don’t push the image away.
But then—well, it’s like it always is for me in my dreams, when things shift without my permission. I just can’t help myself when all of a sudden I think of one last thing I’d read when I was researching Anastasia—about the wonderful Easter her family had spent together in 1911, when she was almost ten. It was the Easter her father had commissioned this really fantastic Fabergé egg with all the children’s pictures on it to give to the tsarina. They all looked so happy—and so unaware that a few years later, their lives would all end.
So there I am, trying to think about death—but all I can think about is life. And Anastasia—well, she looks over at me. Her hand’s still on the doll. So is mine. And she smiles. It’s a great smile—and it even reaches her pretty blue eyes, the ones I know Tess would want to fix up with a little mascara and some shadow and all that.
“No,” she says to me softly. “Not then.”
Our fingertips touch across the doll. The image we’re sharing shifts back to the basement. No matter how much I want her to live, it turns out that it’s not my choice. I can only stand and watch as the shooting begins and Anastasia, the last grand duchess of the Romanovs, slowly fades and disappears.
Thursday, 5:00 pm
Ethan
Anne stumbles away from me into the rain, sobbing.
“Anne,” I say. I follow her. We stand in the street, the rain soaking us. “Anne, stop. Please, stop. Don’t cry. It’s over. You did it. It’s going to be okay.”
I wrap her in my arms. Her body shakes against mine.
“What difference did I make?” she weeps. “I was supposed to save her, Ethan. That’s what you told me. And I couldn’t. That poor, innocent girl—trapped for all these years, and now what? She’s dead. And there’s nothing I can do about it. I have all this crazy power, and for what?”