Romanov

by Nadine Brandes

  I reached for him. “I’m glad you did.” He moved to take my hand, but then a grunt of pain escaped his lips and he curled in on himself. I lurched forward in my chair. “Zash, are you alright?”

  He remained bent over his midsection, fists clenched.

  “Does your arm hurt?” It had been only a bullet graze and he’d not even bled through his bandage. Could it have wounded him that severely?

  “It’s something else. My insides are . . . tearing themselves apart.”

  “Are you motion sick?” That happened to me on a boat once. It felt terrible.

  “No.” Each word came through a gasp.

  What could I do? I had no remedy to offer and conversation seemed to be the last thing to provide comfort.

  “I think . . . maybe it’s Dochkin’s spell?” He managed to tilt his head and look up at me.

  “But we haven’t used any spells on you. Unless . . . Dochkin’s spell did something to you when it escaped and sped west?” It had flown in his face. “Do you think maybe this feeling is a clue that we’re going the wrong way?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know, Nastya.”

  I pulled the Matryoshka doll from my shirt. Only the tiny nugget of the doll was left with an actual spell. The last little doll, so small I wasn’t sure it would actually open. I pulled it from the larger layer and held it in my hand—the size of a black bean. It shimmered a little under the light flashing past the windows. But no seam appeared. No word appeared. It was the last spell. Perhaps it glowed brighter the closer we got to Dochkin?

  Alexei returned to our car, unescorted and bedraggled. “Kostya and the others will stop the conductor near Perm for them to find the spell master. After that, it’s up to us.” He sank onto a bench chair and leaned against the armrest. Then he noticed Zash. “What happened?”

  Zash shook his head and I explained his discomfort to Alexei.

  Alexei seemed barely awake enough to listen. “I am sorry for you, Zash. Perhaps you need rest.”

  I handed Alexei a balled-up coat and he was out. Rest wouldn’t help Zash. “Is there nothing I can do?” I felt so helpless, watching the men suffer while I sat with no answers.

  “Perhaps this sounds crazy, but I think moving to the back of the train will help.”

  I eyed him. “That does sound a bit odd.” I pushed myself up. “But if you think it will help, then let’s go.”

  Zash got to his feet, his good arm around his middle. He walked in a half crouch to the back of the car. I opened the door and he managed to cross the hitching well enough. It was only four cars back, but when we arrived in the end car, Zash sank onto a filled burlap sack and gave a sigh. “There is a little relief.”

  “So it has to do with our traveling.” My heart sank. “It’s Dochkin’s spell. We must be going the wrong way.”

  “If so, then why did it start hurting only now? Why didn’t it direct us sooner?”

  “Maybe we were going the right direction at the start, but once we boarded the train it was wrong?” I had barely interacted with spells—let alone powerful, confusing ones like Dochkin’s. “I don’t know, Zash.”

  “Neither do I. We are all at a loss here.”

  We sat in silence, rocking to the rhythm of the train. I stared at the ex-Bolshevik before me. Hate and bitterness simmered beneath the surface of my mind, wanting to be acknowledged. I managed to ignore them. Maybe I was starting to forgive him? I still didn’t know how. I had never had to try as hard as now.

  “Zash . . . tell me about the night of the execution.” The question slipped through my lips softly, as though part of my voice tried to keep it from coming out at all.

  He looked up and I held his gaze. I needed to know why he made the decisions he did. He tried to explain before, but I wouldn’t listen. Now . . . I would try harder.

  “When Yurovsky was removing all the soldiers who had served under Avdeev, he asked me if I would be willing to shoot one of the prisoners.” He balled his hands together. “I told him I would do it without hesitation. So he let me stay.”

  “Because you wanted to stay . . .”

  “Because I wanted to stay. And that was the answer I knew he needed. I didn’t think he’d actually do it. Avdeev had never received orders having anything to do with execution. At least not that we knew of. But then a few days in, Yurovsky started assembling a firing squad. He commanded us to arm ourselves and he instructed each man to target a different . . . victim.”

  “Why did you agree?” My heart and voice cracked under my hurt. “Why didn’t you stand up to him? Say no?” This was the part I hated the most. The cowardice. The cowardice that led him to help execute my family. The cowardice that kept him bowing to Yurovsky’s will.

  “The soldiers who refused—and there were several—were locked in the shed.” His fingers twisted and tightened and cracked under his tension. “What good could they have done? They’ve likely been shot by now.”

  “A worthy death,” I breathed.

  “I agree.” He dropped his gaze and we both managed to take a breath. “But I couldn’t do that, Nastya. I don’t expect this to make sense to you, but I kept thinking of you and your family being lined up and shot without warning. I imagined you staring into the cold faces of Bolsheviks who did not care about taking life. And . . . I wanted to be the one to do it. I wanted to be there for you.”

  His hands slid to his face and I barely caught his words. “You told me you didn’t want to die alone. I figured that if you were going to be killed, perhaps it would bring you some comfort to be shot by a friend. By someone who didn’t do it out of hate or malice.” He shook his head. “Now, saying this, it doesn’t make sense. I see it was the nervous mindset of a fool. But on that day, when everything was moving so fast and I feared for both our lives . . . it made sense to me. I suppose because that’s how I would wish to die.”

  “It makes sense, Zash.” In a way it brought me a pinprick of comfort. Not enough to erase my pain, but enough to erase my confusion. At least now I knew Zash did not take part in the execution because he wished to see us dead.

  “That was the only bullet I shot, Nastya. And in that moment my soul fractured.”

  “I know what will heal you, Zash . . . and I’m trying. I’m trying to forgive you.” If that didn’t work, I had the spell I was going to demand from Dochkin. The one that would take us back and allow Zash to choose a different path.

  His mouth opened in a vulnerable show of disbelief. “That is . . . Nastya, that is far more than I could ever ask.”

  My lips slid up in a half smile—an acknowledgment that we were both broken and this new life of an ex-princess with an ex-Bolshevik was scary and dangerous and dark for us both. But there was still light—we were just learning how to find it.

  * * *

  Sleep came for us all, navigating us through the night and into the dawn when the train brakes squealed. I jolted upright out of the burlap bags. Zash was curled like a turtle in his own spot in the burlap across from me. I wasn’t sure if he’d slept. When he lifted his head, he didn’t seem as though he had.

  “We’ve reached Perm.” I pushed myself to my feet.

  Zash followed suit and let out a long breath. “Nastya, it’s getting better.”

  “Bravo! You just needed sleep!”

  “No. I didn’t sleep. What I mean is the pain—that ripping feeling—is subsiding as we slow down.” He didn’t seem happy about it, and neither was I. Because that meant that if his pain was from the Dochkin spell, we were traveling the wrong way.

  Alexei had mere hours before his agony returned, and we might be days from finding Dochkin.

  The train stopped and Zash stumbled free of the train carriage. I joined him, basking in the nature. Zash breathed in the relief for a moment, then strolled away from the train—back the way we came. He walked for about a minute, stopped, then turned perpendicular to the train and walked into the forest on the right.

  “What are you doing?” I called when he rea
ppeared.

  He tromped across the tracks to the other side of the forest. “Assessing which direction hurts the least.” He finished his experiment and then rejoined me.

  “Verdict?”

  “East.” His mouth formed a grim line. “Dochkin must live a lot closer to Ekaterinburg than we thought. We might have already passed his village.”

  All this running. All this danger and bribing and escaping . . . wasted. “That means we have to head back toward Yurovsky.”

  “This might actually be a good thing. The last thing he’ll expect is for us to turn around and travel back the way we came.”

  My spirits lifted. “You’re right. Let’s find Alexei.”

  Before explaining to Alexei, we bid farewell to the Whites. They headed into Perm to find their spell master. Would the spell master be like Vira? Unwilling to join either side of the fight?

  Once they were gone, it took some long explaining to share our conclusions with Alexei. In the end he agreed that we should return. “It seems we’ll be on foot. The conductor cannot send the train in reverse for a long period of time—it is meant only for fine adjustments.” He swayed on his feet.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Unlike myself. I feel as though I’ve expended the last of my energy—for Kostya and the others. But just because I can’t feel the pain doesn’t mean my body doesn’t feel the wear and tear.”

  Practical. Matter-of-fact. Alexei.

  “We will get you to Dochkin.” I gritted my teeth and climbed back onto a train hitch. “Let’s get our things. Not a minute to lose.” As we dispersed belongings, set Joy on the ground, and prepared ourselves for walking, I kept thinking, Soon. Soon this will be over. It is misery now, but not for long. We would find Dochkin. He would heal Alexei, reverse the execution, and the pain would be over.

  Alexei settled things with the conductor and we left. “He thinks we’re heading to Perm, too. That way, if Yurovsky questions him, he won’t have accurate information.”

  “Well done, Alexei.”

  He pulled his coat tight around himself, even though we walked under the heat of the July sun. “Let’s hope the Whites find their spell master and get out of there before Yurovsky goes digging.”

  Once again we set off following Zash. Trusting him with our lives and hearts and futures. Only this time it didn’t frighten me so much. We’d been through enough that I knew he was on our side . . . and I didn’t want to lose him.

  If Dochkin reversed our execution, would that change Zash? Would he forget everything we had gone through? What if he resumed being a Bolshevik? Yet how could I allow the deaths of my family? I could not continue living with the knowledge I could have saved them all. This action of finding Dochkin was me saving them as I should have in the first place.

  We walked inside the tree line—for both shade and cover, the pace slow for all our sakes. Every few minutes Zash would veer one direction or another to continue testing his spell’s reaction. It kept us due east. I hated the feeling of traveling back toward Siberia. That place held only captivity and death for us.

  But at least we were doing it under the open sky. Every step brought a breath of freedom with it—a snub at the whitewashed shoe box that was the Ipatiev House. We were back in nature—the same place we had spent the majority of our childhood. Even though Siberia was Siberia, nature was always connected to itself. In that sense, we could always find home.

  The sun flirted with the horizon, torturing us with its endless summer glow. Alexei stumbled, gripping a tree trunk and clapping a hand over his head. “I hope we’re not far,” he groaned.

  “Can you sense anything, Zash?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “All I know is that relief comes with each step we take east.”

  It wasn’t long before we unrolled the stretcher again to give Alexei a break. “This isn’t humiliating at all,” he said with his eyes closed as we lifted him.

  “Not around us, it shouldn’t be.” I settled the two wooden rods onto my shoulders and old bruises reminded me to bunch the fur of the reindeer coat beneath the rods. “Now, if we were carrying you like this through a party of lovely young girls . . .”

  “Then I’d find the one girl who didn’t snicker at me and I’d make her my tsarina,” Alexei replied.

  I giggled. “That’s all it takes to win a proposal from you?”

  “That and a proper pastry. That might even get her a ring.”

  Zash nodded serenely. “You can’t overlook a well-made pastry. May you dream of nongiddy girls with arms full of vatrushka.”

  “What sort of girl would win your favor, Zash?” Alexei asked with a grin in his voice. My throat cinched. Alexei, you little snoop! I would pinch his foot if it wouldn’t bruise him for a week.

  “Oh, I’m very picky,” Zash said.

  “As your invalid former tsarevich, I demand that you reveal.”

  “But of course, Your Imperial Highness.”

  If anyone asked me in that moment if I was curious about his answer, I would lie and say absolutely not. But in truth I barely allowed myself to breathe as I awaited his response. I knew how I had felt about him in the Ipatiev House. Even now, with forgiveness on the cusp of my heart, my pulse galloped faster than Yurovsky’s horse when Zash looked at me. When he talked of his remorse or his reasons behind obeying Yurovsky’s orders.

  Zash adjusted his grip on the stretcher. “I only accept advances from ex-princesses. Particularly bald ones.”

  Alexei snorted. My face burned. When I finally glanced up, Alexei had pushed himself onto his elbows enough to make eye contact with me . . . and to waggle his eyebrows.

  I was pleased to see the backs of Zash’s ears were red.

  After a long, awkward silence of crunching leaves and labored breaths, Alexei lay back down, folded his arms over his chest, and said, “I approve, peasant.”

  34

  Zash called an end to our march first. He’d had the least sleep of us all, so I didn’t blame him. My feet and shoulders ached. Alexei grew heavier with each step, so I gladly set down the stretcher.

  Zash unrolled the two bedrolls and placed them next to each other. Alexei crawled onto one, not yet ready to be moved to it by external help. But I pushed the second bedroll toward Zash. “You need more sleep than I do.”

  “Absolutely not.” He lay down on the stretcher, bunching his Bolshevik coat under him like a pillow.

  I kicked his foot. “The bald ex-princess would like you a lot more if you took the bedroll.”

  “As tempting as that is . . .” He gave a giant yawn. “It’s too late. I’m already . . . drifting . . . off . . .” He released a giant snore and I turned away to muffle my laugh.

  “Shvibzik,” I muttered.

  His second snore rattled the branches around us. As fake as a snore could be. But as he continued to pretend, the snores toned down and morphed into heavy breathing with a few real snores here and there. He was out. Alexei was out. Joy was out.

  The midnight sun was a sleepy light, hanging on to the horizon with sharp nails, refusing to dip and allow our eyes a reprieve of darkness. But we were all too tired to let it triumph.

  I was alone.

  So I pulled out the Matryoshka doll’s final spell.

  The little nugget of a doll glowed in my palm, a shimmering gold and purple, pulsing magic. It hadn’t glowed this much the last time I examined it. We must be getting closer to Dochkin.

  I turned the little doll over in my hand. No seam. No spell word. Just glowing and pulsing. I expected the spell to appear any moment now. Somehow I knew that spell would be our missing piece. It would be the name of the town Dochkin lived in or the final direction to go. Or a place to meet him.

  I lay back on my bedroll, Joy snoozing at my feet, and rolled the doll around and around in my fingers above my head, until its shimmering light melded with the twinkle of stars peeking through the leaves and branches. Until its glow became a lullaby and I drifted off.

&
nbsp; I was hardly rested when Joy barked a low, throaty warning. I bolted upright at the sound, blinking through the darkness to see. It wasn’t fully dark anymore. The midnight sun had set and risen again, pale and cold.

  None of us had kept watch! None of us had even thought of it.

  Zash was already on his feet. Perhaps Joy barked at him? But no, he looked as startled and disheveled as I felt. Alexei hadn’t moved. In fact . . . I wasn’t sure he was breathing.

  I scrambled to Alexei’s side. “Zash! Alexei’s not—”

  “Nastya,” Zash hissed. “Someone’s here.”

  “Alexei’s not breathing!” We both seemed to register the other’s statement at the same time. He swiveled toward Alexei, and I stiffened at his warning.

  Alexei groaned, weak. I released a relieved cry. His chest barely moved, but he was still alive. The numbing spell had worn off and I finally took in how swollen his head was. It pushed his forehead out like a shelf, and the skin around his eyes hung yellow and bruised.

  Dying.

  A crunch of leaves interrupted the tense silence. Joy’s barks increased. Zash drew his pistol, but a gunshot split the air and his pistol went flying out of his hand.

  Alexei’s eyes fluttered open at that, bloodshot with pain. He tried to raise himself to one elbow but grimaced. “What’s . . . happening?”

  I tried to tug him up so we could run. “I don’t—”

  “You really made this far too easy, soldier.” Yurovsky stepped out from behind a tree. He was no longer the sleek, clean, dark-eyed man. His hair was mixed with foliage and ruffled like a wild beast. Dirt smeared his cheeks and holes dotted his uniform as if nature had gnawed on him in his sleep.

  Unseen footsteps continued around us in the thickness of the trees. He’d brought Bolsheviks with him. I darted my gaze to Zash. Had he helped Yurovsky?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Zash waved a hand behind his back, signaling for me to run. But how could I leave Alexei lying helpless? And Zash without a weapon?