Zash—my Zash—was here. At the Ipatiev House. He had not abandoned me. He might look like a Bolshevik, but he’d given me his spell ink. He’d caught me off the swing. He’d winked at me. He’d shown kindness. He cared about me and my family.
He played the role of Bolshevik well, but light could not be so swiftly overcome by darkness. Not when that light rested in a person’s soul. So as the door closed, I sent him the smallest of smiles.
* * *
That day we were allowed into the garden for a mere ten minutes. It was enough for a swing, a turn about the small space, and about seventy deep inhales. That was all we were allotted for the entire day. No second outing.
The next day we were let out again. This time Zash was on garden duty, but instead of standing with a friend, he stood with a rifle. He did not watch me. I did not go to him. It felt like a secret—our friendship. Even though he’d yet to reveal the Zash I knew, I faithfully held on to the knowledge he was in there. He was my new hope. And hope never abandoned us—only we could abandon it. Perhaps rescue would never come for us, but for now, I had friendship.
I would not die alone.
Joy trotted beside me as I walked the garden. She shook her head and her long ears flopped across her face like furry paddles. I took in the new guards and their machine guns set up on the edges of the palisade. They watched us like vultures. Waiting for us to die. Or waiting for the order to shoot. As we were ushered back inside, a truck arrived with enormous grates of metal. We were locked back in our quarters, but not before we saw them reinforcing the wooden gate with a metal one.
The next day Zash was on duty on the landing again. I spotted him when Olga took her morning bathroom visit. I sat at the breakfast table wavering back and forth on whether I should try talking to him again. But he was too close to the commandant’s office.
Then I saw something through our window: Yurovsky leaving through the reinforced gate on horseback with two other soldiers. I watched the rhythmic trot of the horse’s hindquarters take them along the path toward the wooded distance. Yurovsky faded from sight and there was only one guard on the landing.
I hopped up and rang the bell.
Zash answered the summons. I stepped out and closed the door behind me, then breathed his name. “Zash.” I couldn’t restrain myself. I embraced him, pulling his form—a form of safety—to me, never wanting to let go.
It was the most we’d ever touched beyond the brush of his fingers against mine and the embrace of grief after Ivan’s death. But it didn’t hold the same assurance as that previous touch. Because he did not return the embrace.
Instead, Zash placed two strong hands—the same hands that caught me from the swing—on my shoulders and pushed me back, not unkindly. “Do your duty, Citizen.”
Confused, I glanced around—again—to ensure we were alone. Maybe he didn’t understand. “Yurovsky is not here. He’s left on horseback. We can converse safely!”
Something changed behind his eyes and my relief was swift. “Oh, you are there,” I said like a silly girl. “I thought . . . I thought perhaps you’d . . .” My voice broke.
War entered his features. A war of ice and heat. Of morals. Of duty. I could see it play out and knew that if I let him stand there warring within himself long enough, he would choose the ice. It was safer for him to be a loyal Bolshevik.
I couldn’t risk that. I couldn’t lose him. I took his hand in mine. He startled, but I held fast. It was warm. It was comfort. “Zash, please. Don’t leave me. I don’t . . . I don’t want to die alone.”
I could see he understood. Alone didn’t mean without someone by my side. It meant void of friendships. Completely at the mercy of the enemy.
His fingers tightened around my hand and I held on to the gesture as I would a lifeline. He swayed forward for a moment, then seemed to catch himself. He pulled his hand from mine and the ice won over. “I’m here. But you saw what they did to Ivan. I cannot abandon my duty and my future for”—he gestured at me—“this. There is nothing you can offer me that I should risk my life for.”
My hand turned cold at my side. Words like friendship and trust and maybe even love sounded so foolish in my head. What could I say? That I’d been imprisoned for so long that I’d grasped on to his acceptance like a drowning girl to a straw of grass?
“You would risk your life for them? For the Bolsheviks who shot your friend in the head? Who attack cities and steal people’s livelihoods? What do you live for, Zash, if not others?”
He gripped the barrel of his rifle and suddenly I was staring at a stranger. “Do your duty, Citizen.”
I gaped like a beached fish. Gasping for air. Assurance. Neither came. So I closed my eyes and forced the breathing to even out. Zash . . . my Zash.
When I opened my eyes, I let my sorrow show. I let him know I was resigned to his coldness. “The only reason I came out here was to see you.”
The statement chipped his ice, but not enough.
I channeled my heartache into a fresh rhythm of boldness. “But, if you insist . . .” I turned and pushed my way into Yurovsky’s office. Let Zash try to stop me. Let’s see how far his Bolshevik loyalty went.
“Nastya,” he hissed, completely abandoning the use of the term citizen.
I didn’t stop. The room was much tidier than when Yurovsky had interrogated me. No more empty bottles or boxes. He’d disposed of most of the loose papers and even dusted. I dropped to my knees by the cabinet. At first I saw only shadow. But then . . . the doll.
I snatched it and shoved it into my corset. Zash stepped into the office and watched me. Had he seen the doll? He stood rigid—I almost mistook it for anger, but the darting of his eyes betrayed his concern.
I pushed past him back onto the landing. “Report me if you must, but you instructed me to do my duty. And my duty is to protect my family.” I waited a moment, on the off chance he would return to the Zash I knew.
He did not bend. Did not move. Did not soften. With a sigh I reentered our quarters.
So we had finally reached the end. There was no White Army coming for us. There was no Zash. My hand slipped up to the Matryoshka doll. Hope and life were up to me now.
19
I hid the doll in the corner of the main room, right up against the wall of Yurovsky’s office and inside my spare pair of shoes. It wasn’t safe—but nothing was safe these days. I had to hope that Yurovsky’s pocket watch would point toward his office. I had to hope it would buy me some time.
None of the soldiers would talk to us. They were loyal to Yurovsky through and through. Even Papa stopped trying. I could tell each time he approached a new soldier his heart wasn’t in it. He was giving up. We were all giving up. He barely got three words out before the soldiers leveled their guns at him.
There would be no alliances. It was rescue or death.
Three days in a row, Yurovsky rode out on a horse and did not return until late. On those days, we received our full time in the garden, but the laughs were subdued. Mamma never came out. Olga stayed inside to read to her. Maria was a glassy-eyed shell, and Alexei could only bear to be moved from his bed every other day.
My family was fading.
Anytime I saw Zash, he stood stiff as a statue. Chin raised. Rifle gripped. Encased in ice.
Gunshots echoed from the city, seeming more frequent than they ever were before. Louder now that we were outdoors instead of trapped in our five-room prison. Something was happening out there.
So on the third day, I left the garden early and returned to our rooms. Zash would be on landing duty once my family returned. For now I muttered to the current Bolshevik that it was too hot outside for me.
He didn’t respond. I pushed myself into the main room. Mamma was asleep on her bed. Perfect. I retrieved the doll from my shoe, closed myself in my bedroom, and dropped to my knees at my bedside. I knew what I had to do, and the only safe way to vent my concerns was through prayer. Help me, Iisus.
That was all I could manage. My
family wasn’t alone in their despair. I was fading, too. And perhaps soon I wouldn’t have the strength to try to save my family. I needed to know what spell the Matryoshka doll held. I needed to know what weapons we had for survival.
The White Army wasn’t coming. I had to do something while I could.
I held the doll in front of me. The seam was complete. A thick black line ringed the center of the doll, shining light no longer. My heart thundered in my chest and I managed to dig a thumbnail into the crack.
“Don’t use it until the White Army arrives,” Papa had said. “Or at the last possible moment.”
I rubbed a thumb over the doll’s face. The time spent against my sweaty skin and my rough corset had scraped away some of the paint. I gripped it in my fist as the pounding footsteps of my family ascended the stairs. They returned and took up whatever games or entertainment they’d been indulging in prior to the garden time.
I finished my prayer, waited a few extra moments, and then rang the bell on the landing.
Zash answered. I looked up at him, but he didn’t meet my eyes. No one was in Yurovsky’s office and, though I knew Zash would not receive it well, I still brushed a hand on his shoulder. “Privyet, Zash.” It was a simple hello, spoken with all my heart. Trying to understand his turmoil.
After all, why should he maintain friendship with me? Simply because we didn’t deserve to die yet? Or because we were friends? Those things could get him shot. It was best he separated himself from us. Yes. That was best.
I entered the toilet area and latched the door. Then I took the doll from my corset. My sweaty hands slid against the wood. I gripped the top half of the doll with one fist and the bottom half with the other. With a deep breath, I twisted.
The doll opened.
Inside rested a smaller doll. I didn’t see a spell or a word like when Rasputin had used spells. Gingerly, I lifted the inner doll and slid it into the space in my corset. It felt too small and loose now that it was not encased by its senior.
There, in the bottom part of the largest doll, sat a word. Painted in the glimmering rainbow spell ink: Ajnin.
I had never seen that word before—not in Russian, English, German, or French. This gave me no information. What sort of power did this spell hold?
As I stared at the word, it detached itself from the inner wood of the doll layer. It floated in the air, up in front of my eyes, the letters flickering as though on an invisible ribbon. I grabbed the top of the doll to recapture the spell before it was somehow enacted.
But the word seemed to sense my intentions. It swooped down and slipped between my lips. I gasped and the spell settled onto my tongue. It burned like a flame but tasted like embers and power.
Somehow I knew that once I spoke the mysterious word, the spell would be enacted.
I’d never heard of a spell entering a person’s mouth to be spoken. I’d never heard the word ajnin before. But this was a spell by Dochkin. This could save my family—and now it couldn’t be taken from me.
A fist pounded on the bathroom door. I jumped. “A moment, please!” Then I clapped a hand over my mouth. The spell hadn’t come out. I hadn’t said the word. I was able to speak other words freely.
My breath returned, and I closed up the empty shell of the Matryoshka doll before leaning close to the small mirror. I stuck my tongue out. The letters rested in the very center of my tongue. Like an unswallowed line of sugar. Barely visible.
The pounding on the door repeated. Zash’s voice came from the other side. “Nastya.”
Now I’d done it. The spell was in me. Dare I use it without knowing what it did? Was this the time? I slipped the empty doll shell up my sleeve, shut my mouth, and opened the door.
“What were you doing?” Zash hissed. “Do you want to raise suspicion?”
I lifted my chin. “I was doing my duties, as you commanded me to do. Sir.” Then I returned to our space and placed the now smaller Matryoshka doll back in my shoe.
July 15
It was a torrential day when the cleaning women came. We were sitting at our table, playing a family game of bezique. All of us but Mamma who lay in bed and Olga who read to her in the other room. Alexei sat in Mamma’s wheelchair with Joy on his lap.
“Zdravstvutye!” We greeted the four cleaning women with bright smiles. It was nice to see new faces. Kind faces.
We hadn’t had cleaning women before, but Yurovsky liked clockwork and cleanliness. He paced on the landing, eyeing us. Eyeing the cleaning ladies. His pocket bulged with his watch and I turned away. If he pulled it out, would it track me again? Would it detect the ajnin spell on my tongue?
None of the women returned the greeting beyond deep bows. We did not speak with them beyond the greeting, not wishing to bring trouble upon their heads.
We kept our quarters relatively clean, but I found myself staring after them longingly as they mopped and dusted and scraped bits of mud off the entryway. I wanted to put my hands to work. Not to play. I wanted purpose like they had purpose.
They continued to glance our way. A flicker here. A side-eye there. I couldn’t stop my grin. They were curious about the royal family. We probably looked a fright compared to their expectations—all of us girls in our black skirts and white frocks that we’d mended more times than we cared to count. Practically bald.
The ladies finished the entryway and hoisted their cleaning buckets toward the bedrooms. Yurovsky must have seen enough because he reentered his office. I stuck out my tongue—just barely—at his retreating form.
One cleaning lady giggled. I caught her watching me. I giggled, too, and hopped up from the table to help move the cots so they could reach the floor beneath.
“Nyet, nyet,” one lady said. “We can do it.”
“Oh, we welcome this opportunity for physical exertion,” I replied. Even Maria moved from the card game to help slide the beds. “At home we used to enjoy work of the hardest kind with the greatest of pleasure.” I wanted to go into detail about sawing wood with Papa and stacking logs.
They let us help. I relished the strain on my feeble muscles. I hoarded the reward of doing something. Of helping someone. But these were women from outside. From the city. We rarely encountered people from the city, and I had to risk further conversation. I had to know the temperament of Ekaterinburg.
“What is happening out there?”
The lady nearest me paused in her scrubbing. She glanced over her shoulder toward the entryway, then shoved her stiff brush over the wood, sending bubbles in a spray at my knees. “Unrest.” Her gaze met mine. Wide. Fierce. “The White Army is here.”
20
July 16
It was too much to hope for. That the White Army was here! In Ekaterinburg! I might have doubted the cleaning lady long after she left, but Yurovsky’s nervous pacing and constant in and out of his office the very next day affirmed her statement.
The White Army must be here.
Yurovsky’s clockwork regiment was chiming off-time. His pendulum broke its rhythm. Olga—frail as she was—jumped into action, hemming and mending and stitching our jewel-encrusted camisoles and corsets to ensure their durability should we be rescued. She didn’t join us in the garden that day, telling Yurovsky she was going to read to Mamma and “check the medicines.”
That was code for sewing more jewels.
Alexei stayed inside, too, because he had woken with a cold. I took Joy out into the sunshine with me, per his request. “Maybe she will carry some back inside for me.”
Once outside, I tried to listen for city sounds. Sounds of unrest and rescue. Sounds of war or panic. All I heard were engines. Automobile engines. Back and forth and back and forth along the road beside our house. Even the gunshots had stopped.
I paused by Zash during my walk. He didn’t acknowledge me, but I spoke anyway.
“What is happening?” The words came stilted. In between each one, the Matryoshka spell tried to wiggle free. I swallowed, though it brought no change to the discomfort
of the spell. I shouldn’t have spoken. Each word out of my mouth became harder and harder to control.
I had opened the doll too early. I should have waited for the White Army like Papa commanded. I must not let it loose before it was time, especially now that rescue could be right on the other side of the gates.
“The city is evacuating.” Zash’s stiff Bolshevik obedience cracked. He seemed nervous, like he didn’t know what was going on or what would happen to all of us—soldiers included—at the Ipatiev House. My breath hitched at the idea of him being attacked by the White Army. Killed, even.
I pressed my hand to his arm. I wanted to speak, but the spell chanted in my mind, thrummed against my tongue. Ajnin. Ajnin. Ajnin. It craved being released, but I forced other words out instead. The last words I’d likely speak to Zash until I used the spell. “Please.” Ajnin. “Be careful.” Ajnin.
He looked at me. Torn. “You, too.”
When we returned to the house, Olga placed each of our jewel-encrusted camisoles—perfectly mended and reinforced with thread—beside our beds. We didn’t put them on yet. That would alert Yurovsky to our preparation for a rescue.
He drove in and out of the palisade gates all day, leaving for a longer length in the evening and not returning until dinnertime. After dinner, the Ekaterinburg curfew sounded. Eight o’clock. A gunshot interrupted the curfew bells. I stepped to the window, but Papa pulled me back. “Best not stand by the window tonight, Nastya.”
I nodded, still not speaking. The spell sat like a coal in my mouth. Where was the White Army? I couldn’t hold this back much longer. I doubted I would even sleep! I wanted to tell Papa of the spell, but I couldn’t risk releasing another word. Perhaps I should write him a letter?
“Come play bezique,” Maria urged, and I indulged her. I imagined she was thinking of Ivan. If we were rescued, she and he likely would have spent life together. It would be a bittersweet escape for her. At least she’d woken somewhat from her dazed existence.
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