by Joy Preble
“Amelia.” My mother’s voice is urgent. She grasps Mrs. Benson’s hands in her own. “You need to calm down. This is madness. All this talk of blood and Brotherhoods and witches—what’s gotten into you? How do you even know these things?”
My first impulse is to run. I’ve been pretending for so long that I can handle all this—the magic and the secrets and being something I never asked to be. But maybe I can’t. Maybe I don’t want to. My entire world feels like an enormous jigsaw puzzle that’s missing a few crucial pieces, and I’m positive that once I slip them into place, everything is going to explode.
“She’s crazy,” Ben says, loud enough that my mother flashes her gaze on him and frowns. No crazier than I am, I think. No crazier than what happened last night at your house. The tendrils of fear inside me grab me even tighter. I need to say something. I have to say something. I can’t let her stand there spilling all this stuff and not say something. But what do I dare say?
“What do you know?” Mrs. Benson shakes off my mother’s hands and moves close to me. Too close. She yanks the fan clip from my hair, and I yelp as she takes a few strands of my hair with it. “How did this come to you? Anne, you have to tell me. We could be in danger. You have to tell me.”
“Danger?” My mother’s eyes are wild with confusion. She grabs me away from Mrs. Benson. My hand slips from Ben’s, and he pulls me back, wedges himself between me and Mom and Mrs. Benson. I appreciate the gesture, but it only seems to make Mrs. Benson more agitated.
“There were two of them that night,” she says. She’s talking so fast. Word tumbles after word, and when I realize what she’s saying—really understand—my heart sinks.
“They were coming out of a restaurant downtown. Lily and I were closing up shop. We both worked at Hyson’s Jewelry downtown, and we were open until eight on Thursdays. Lily was still inside locking the cases, and I’d stepped outside to have a cigarette. It was windy that night, and I couldn’t get the match to stay lit long enough. The taller man with the dark eyes, he walked right by me, but the other one—so handsome and with these very blue eyes—he stopped and pulled a lighter from his pocket and held it for me. Thank you, I told him and that was it. He walked off in the other direction while the dark-eyed man crossed the street to the newsstand. Lily came out of Hyson’s, and that’s when I realized I’d left my purse inside. I wasn’t gone for more than a minute when I heard her screaming.
“It’s him, she kept saying. She was pointing across the street to the newsstand, and she was pale as a ghost. When she grabbed my arm, her fingers were like ice. She let go of me and pulled at the thin gold chain she’d taken to wearing around her neck.” Mrs. Benson holds out the cameo. “She was wearing this under her blouse. She shoved it into my hands, told me this was how she knew, and then she ran. In the time it took me to slip the key from the door, she was already a block ahead of me.”
Mom reaches for the cameo. “This belonged to my mother?” Tears well in her eyes. “You wear this every day, and you’ve never told me this? How could you keep that a secret from me? How?”
Ben’s arms are still wrapped around me, and I think he must be able to feel my heart pounding, my blood pulsing in my veins. Everything is unraveling so quickly that I’m dizzy from it—if it weren’t for Ben, I think I might just fall. Ethan had said he’d seen Lily, but Mrs. Benson? Had he really seen her too? Does he know that’s who owns the Jewel Box?
“Let me see.” I find my voice and reach for the locket at the same time as my mother. All three of our hands meet—my mother’s, Mrs. Benson’s, and mine. A tingling shoots through me—my hands? The magic? Something else?—and then I curl my fingers around the cameo and pull it from Mrs. Benson’s hand. The thin gold chain trails over my palm. I look at the picture inside. Viktor stares back at me—same dark eyes, dark hair. He’s smiling slightly—just the edges of his mouth turned up, as though it pains him to look happy.
For a few dangerous seconds, I’m thrust back into the dreams I used to have inside Anastasia’s head. I remember falling asleep on the floor of Professor Olensky’s office and dreaming as Anastasia. I felt my half-brother’s betrayal—how he used me to gain immortality and said I would save my family. I remembered that moment when I realized I had trusted the wrong person—that my family was dead, and I was about to be worse than dead. Anastasia’s realizations had rushed through me in the dream like they were my own.
“Is that the guy she was afraid of?” Ben asks.
My mother blinks and shakes her head. “I’ve seen him,” she says slowly. “A long time ago, when I was little. Well, sort of.” She turns to me. “We talked about that once, remember? I told you that I used to dream I was Anastasia Romanov—that I was her when she died.” She points to Viktor’s picture in the cameo. “This man—he was with her sometimes. Or she was thinking about him. It’s hard for me to remember exactly. When I dreamed about her, I know he was there somehow. But this is all impossible! It was a dream. How can he be in this picture? Did this really come from Lily’s mother? My Lily? Is that who I’ve been—?”
I finish her sentence in my head. It’s who you’ve been dreaming about. It has to be. But if she says it aloud, then it will make it all true. Once you learn that things are different than what you always believed, there’s no going back. I get it.
I get something else too—at least, I think I do. In my mind, I see Professor Olensky clicking through saved documents on his computer. His wild hair is flopping over his face and Tess, Ethan, and I are waiting for him to find whatever he’s looking for. There was a woman who contacted me a few years ago through one of my colleagues in Prague. Nadia Tauman was her name. And then he showed us the family tree—Lily’s family tree. The one that leads to my mother and stops with me. I don’t believe what I’m about to ask, but I ask it anyway.
“Are you Nadia Tauman?” Mrs. Benson’s head jerks sharply at my question, and her eyes widen. “That’s how you’re Lily’s friend. You’re not just Mrs. Benson, are you? You’re Nadia Tauman—the one who wrote to Professor Olensky. The one who said her friend was the great-granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas.”
The expression on Mrs. Benson’s face is my answer.
She’s screaming at me then, shrill questions echoing over the increasing roar and thud of the thunder. The lightning is coming so fast now that it’s illuminating the store with a flashing strobe effect.
“You know? How can you know? I’ve been so careful all these years—so cautious!” Mrs. Benson holds out her hands to my mother. “I wanted to let you know—so many times. But I couldn’t. What happened that day your mother died—she was right. You weren’t safe. At first, I couldn’t find you, but even when I did, it was safer that you didn’t know. And easier for me to believe that none of it was true. Because how could…?”
Mrs. Benson shifts her gaze back to me. “You knew Professor Olensky?” She laughs crazily. “Well, of course. Of course. This is what happens to secrets, isn’t it? I told myself if I didn’t talk about it, then it would stop being true. But it didn’t. I tried to pull her out of the water. I saw her wrestle the coat off at the last minute. I thought I could save her then. But I couldn’t. She sank out of reach. I jumped in, but I couldn’t find her. There was just her coat. The police thought the current must have taken her, but there was no current. They never found her. I knew it was something else—something more than what I could see. It had to be. But I told myself over and over that it didn’t matter, that none of it mattered if her baby was safe. That was the only thing.”
Mrs. Benson shakes the fan-shaped clip at me. “So how can you have her hair clip? How can that be? Because if you have it, then that would mean…”
Ben hasn’t loosened his grip on me, and this both comforts me and fills me with fear. He really shouldn’t be here. Something is going to happen, and it’s going to be bad, and Ben is going to be in the middle of it. This is what I tried to avoid when I ran from his house last night. But it’s going to happen anyway. Like when
this very store collapsed and almost killed my mother. I didn’t understand what I was doing then, and guess what? I still don’t.
“Then last fall—it was real, wasn’t it?” Mrs. Benson says. It’s as though she’s plucked the image out of my head. “What I thought I saw before the store collapsed? I told myself that it couldn’t be real, that you weren’t standing there with those same two men and the girl in the white dress, that the shadow I saw overhead wasn’t what I thought. I saw a witch that day, Anne. Just like Lily told me. Baba Yaga, the witch she wanted to help her. The one she couldn’t find. I thought she had gone mad from grief and fear. I knew that witch from stories. Everyone’s Russian grandmother tells her the story of Baba Yaga, her iron teeth and removable hands and the hut that stands on chicken legs. They tell us to scare us. The witch in the forest who will eat up bad little girls. But it’s just a story. A fairy tale.”
“What shadow? What men? A girl in a white dress? A witch? Like the one on those lacquer boxes you used to stock? What are you talking about? Wasn’t it lightning, freak lightning, that hit the store last fall? Professor Olensky? The one who was killed? You knew him? I thought only your friend Ethan knew him.” Some of these questions come from my mother. Some come from Ben.
Everyone’s talking at once, and it’s hard to even think. I pry the fan-shaped hair clip back from Mrs. Benson and shove it in my pocket. My hands tingle and glow—but maybe that’s just because of the strobe lightning. I thought this was all over when Anastasia went back to die. But it isn’t. Maybe it never will be. If Ethan’s idea is right, and this power inside me isn’t from the Brotherhood’s magic like everyone has always thought, then maybe this will never be over until I find the source.
That’s the thing about destiny. Once it chooses you, you end up feeling like you really don’t have any other choice but to follow, even if you’ve been hiding from it.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Ben says.
“I know. I know. I—wait. Ben—oh, shit, Ben. Just don’t be scared, okay?” He’s looking at me like I’ve gone totally crazy, and maybe I have. “I think I can—well, I’ve got to do this. I don’t think there’s any other way.”
“Got to do what? What are waiting for? Let’s bolt.”
He pulls me toward the back of the store, but I shake him off and do the only thing I know to do. I stop hiding.
“Baba Yaga!” I shout over the thunder that’s now so loud my body is vibrating with it. “Baba Yaga! Are you out there? Do you hear me?” I don’t know if she does. She’s come to me, and I’ve come to her in my dreams. Only for a few seconds in front of Miss Amy’s last fall did she appear to me here in my world. After that, she followed us out of the forest only when the magic went wrong. Taking Viktor seems to have kept her put in her hut. Wherever those chicken legs have taken her, it hasn’t been here. The forest and the river lie between us. Neither of us has crossed them in a long time.
“Baba Yaga!” I call again. I don’t know why I want her—this witch that I mostly try not to think about, with her iron teeth and detachable hands. I just know that she’s part of the puzzle. Dream after dream, I keep going to her. Now she needs to come to me.
I try to swallow my fear. It chokes going down, so I have to squeeze out the rest of my words around it. “I’m not compelling you! I’m not using magic! I’m just asking! Help me! Lily needs me! I need you! Will you come to me?” I almost say more, but then I don’t. I won’t make any bargains with the witch unless she shows herself. Even then, I don’t really know what I plan on doing. In my dreams—and here’s the part I haven’t told Ethan—she’s asked me to drink from her stream. Standing here in the Jewel Box, I’m thinking that’s still not going to happen anytime soon. But we’re old pals, now, aren’t we? “Baba Yaga,” I call over the wind again.
“What the—?” Ben says under his breath. He grips me tightly against him. I track where he’s looking.
It’s not Baba Yaga.
Though the rain, they’re drifting: dozens of rusalkas, swirling down Second Street to the Jewel Box, their hair long, wild, and wet, their skin pale as death. One after the other, they press their faces, their dripping wet bodies, against the plate glass window of the Jewel Box.
My mother and Mrs. Benson shriek in unison.
And then—as in my dream, only this time it’s real—the roof of the Jewel Box just opens up and disappears. Rain begins pouring in, buckets of water drenching us and the store. The thunder cracks, and another flash of lightning rips jaggedly through the sky. Now I’m screaming. Ben’s trying to drag me somewhere. I grab for my mother’s hand. Mrs. Benson clutches at her chest and sinks to her knees.
A howling cackle fills the air above us. The same voice sounds my name. I look up. Rain smacks hard against my face. And through a sky that’s black as midnight, Baba Yaga streaks above us in her mortar.
FRIDAY, 11:03 am
ETHAN
Thought you quit those.”
The unlit cigarette drops from my hand to the grass near Alex Olensky’s grave. He’s sitting on the little bench a few feet from where I’m standing. My toes are at the edge of the small stone plaque that bears his name—the one I’d had placed there a few months ago so the grave site wouldn’t be so anonymous.
“You real?” I bend to retrieve the Marlboro. It’s the last in the pack that I’d told myself I wasn’t going to smoke but did anyway, and I figure if I’m going to talk to a ghost, I’ll need this one. So I slide my lighter from my pocket, stick the cigarette in my mouth, and, once it’s lit, inhale deeply. It does little to settle me, but old habits linger just as long as I have.
“Real as you’d like me to be, dear boy.” He grins at the last word. I’m a boy now, I guess. And Alex Olensky is very, very dead, even if he doesn’t look it right now.
I lower myself onto the bench, since it feels awkward standing there while he’s sitting. The cold air around him hints that he’s not real, but he’s real enough for right now. I pull in another drag on the cigarette. It tastes far too good.
“So. You love her, eh?” Alex looks not at me but at the cigarette that’s between my fingers. I offer it to him, but he shakes his head. “Can’t. Tried it, but I can’t inhale. Fascinating, really. But I can smell it. At least there’s that.” He flares his nostrils. “You haven’t answered me, have you?”
Nothing much makes sense today, so I suppose discussing my love life with the ghost of my friend is about as sensible as anything else. I’ve done what I told myself I’d never do and let myself love her—so completely and utterly that I know there’s no going back from it. I’ll be in love with Anne as long as she wants me. I’ll be in love with her even if she doesn’t.
“Seems that way.”
“Good.” Alex’s ghost claps his hands together and gives them a little shake. It’s a gesture I’ve seen him do many times. He was always a fan of the physical punctuation of an idea or comment. “But then, what are you doing here? If you love her, you should be with her—not here with an old man like me, especially in my current condition.” He gestures to his gravestone. “Although I do appreciate the sentiment. Haven’t seen you around for a while.”
“Been away. Since everything last fall. Once it was over, I needed to—well, I don’t really know what I needed. But I went looking for it anyway.” I study Alex’s face. The features are right. His hair is as silver and wild as always. He still smells of paper, tobacco, and ink. Still, there’s something off—not that this surprises me. What does surprise me is that I don’t feel edgy, that I don’t feel the need to leave. That in the midst of everything going on—the rusalka, Anne and me, all of it—I’m sitting here talking to a ghost.
“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t there when Viktor murdered him. Of the many, many things in my life that I regret, this one looms painfully large. “You paid a very large price, my friend. If I could undo what happened to you, I would. You know that, don’t you?”
Alex is quiet for a moment. He sniffs at my cigarette a
nd watches it with what looks like longing as I take one last puff, then stub it out on the bench, flick away the remaining ashes, and tuck the butt into my pocket. I don’t like the thought of leaving it lying here between people’s graves.
“You did what you had to do. Was it right? Only you can tell. Was it worth it? Hard to say, isn’t it? But you have that beautiful girl now. That’s something, isn’t it? A girl like that, a girl of substance—she’s worth some sacrifice, wouldn’t you say?”
“It wasn’t about that, Alex.”
“Wasn’t it?” The cold seeping from him gets a little colder. My skin prickles. “Come now, Ethan. What does the world come down to really? Love? Power? Fear? Maybe a righteous cause now and then? Look at the Romanovs. Someone wanted what they had or didn’t want them to have it—it all amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?—and so history played itself out. It’s the way of the world, dear fellow. It’s how we all behave. It’s what we’re made of. Nobility is quite the illusion.”
In my head, I see Anne standing with Anastasia in the middle of the street and feel the wrenching sadness and regret that ripped through me when Anastasia chose to go back to die. What if the rusalka—Lily—is telling the truth? What if that’s not what happened? What if there really was some other possible outcome for this whole mess that I helped create?
“Nobility isn’t an illusion,” I argue. “You know it was more than that. You know I thought it was more than that.” But I wonder, as I say the words, if I can even believe them. What did I really hope to gain from helping Viktor save Anastasia back then? Was it an act of altruism or did I just feel indebted to him for taking me in when I had no place to go? And why am I arguing with a ghost?