Anastasia Forever

by Joy Preble

  My heart skips a beat. I sit up. “What?”

  “No, really. She told me while I was sleeping. It was like a dream, but I don’t think it was. Anyway, it made sense. It felt like I’d always known it. You understand?”

  “Who told you?” I ask gently because I figure he’s hallucinating or something. The meds are strong. This is what I’m thinking in my dream.

  “Lily. She’s so pretty, isn’t she? I wish Mom knew how pretty Lily is. But Mom can’t see her, can she?”

  Another skipped heartbeat. My breath catches in my throat. Does David know about Lily? Does he understand what she is? The part of me that knows I’m dreaming says that this is impossible. David died before I even met Ethan.

  “It’s okay, little sis. I know. That’s the thing about dying. You get to know stuff. Secret woo-woo stuff.” He grins again like it’s funny.

  I try to wake up. If I know I’m dreaming, then I can wake myself up, right?

  “You need to listen,” David says. He presses his hand against my arm—his palm very cold. “She told me. Really. But you’re going to have to figure it out for yourself. What’s inside you—it’s everything. Like Baba Yaga told you. It’s about what’s been, what is, and what will be. It’s the small stuff, Anne. If you stand too close, you just don’t see it. You have to look at it the right way. And then you’ll see. Understand?”

  “No. David, I—”

  David grips my arm tighter. Our foreheads touch and his palm warms against my skin. “Anne. Really. It’s important. You could change things, you know. Lily. Mom. Me. And that guy Ethan. She told me about him too. How you saved him. She says you’re not sure about him. But I told her that my Anne is always sure. You learned that from me, right, sis?”

  It’s a dream, I tell myself again. Just a dream.

  I look at my brother. Watch as he morphs into Anastasia, lying on the bed next to me, her brown hair tangled, her face pale as death, hands fisted at her sides. She morphs again and David’s back, same as he was. But only for a moment. He changes once more, and even in my dream my stomach lurches.

  This time it’s Viktor I see lying there, face skeletal, eyes dark as ink. He smiles at me, his teeth white as bone. “You could have the secret, Anne,” he says. “Just as I do. But you’re not brave enough, are you? Just a weak little girl.”

  Somehow I force myself awake. Breathe, Anne. Breathe. I slip out of bed and shuffle down to the kitchen to brew some coffee. It’s not even morning, just barely four, but I know I won’t sleep anymore so I might as well mainline caffeine into my system.

  Halfway down the stairs, the aroma hits me. Someone’s beat me to the coffeemaker.

  “Hey,” my mother says as I walk into the kitchen, half convinced that I should hightail it back upstairs and avoid what’s coming next. “Couldn’t sleep. You either, huh?”

  I shake my head. No.

  The coffee drips into the pot, the sharp scent drifting up my nose, a dark, thick smell.

  “I dreamed about David,” Mom says. In the soft glow of the night-light, I can see tears glistening in her eyes. She sighs. “I wish he was here, Anne. I wish I could have done something. Anything.”

  I shift my gaze to the coffeepot. Underneath my skin, the witch’s power stretches and grows. I force it down. Nothing surprises me these days—not the magic tapping at my insides, or that Mom and I have both dreamed about David.

  I want him back too, I think, but I don’t say it. Does she want me to? I don’t know.

  Viktor, I think, is right. I’m weak. If I wasn’t, it wouldn’t hurt so much that this is all Mom says. Her gaze slides down to my fingertips, flickering with that stupid power.

  But she doesn’t say anything else, just rises to her feet and pours herself a cup of coffee. Holds up the pot. “You want?”

  “You know what?” I say. “I think I’m going to shower first.”

  Upstairs, under the water, I let myself cry.

  Chicago,

  The Present

  Wrigley Field, Tuesday, 12:22 pm

  Anne

  It’s the middle of the afternoon, and the David dream is still with me. So is my awkward moment with Mom in the kitchen. As for the dream, does it mean something? Of course it does. Everything means something these days. Which, let me say, totally sucks.

  As do the Cubs, but if you’re a fan, you’re a fan. That’s the way it works in Chicago. Every year, we hope for the best. Every year, we’re monumentally disappointed. Sometimes I think we’d be more disappointed if they actually won. It would throw off the “we lose but we can handle it” mentality. Possibly this gets us through our ridiculous winters.

  This is what I explain to Ethan as we park ourselves in our seats. They’re great ones—main level, first-base side—because my dad shares season tickets with his law firm. I’ve shoved a huge bag of peanuts in my backpack because that’s what we always do in our family. Over the years, David and I have eaten our way through thousands of peanuts. We used to buy them at Wrigley, but we’d go through so many bags that my mother started buying a jumbo pack at the grocery store and bringing them in her purse. Lots of things have changed in my world, but baseball traditions have stuck.

  “If my dad had his way,” I say, unpacking the peanuts and plopping the plastic sack on Ethan’s lap, “they’d remove the lights from Wrigley. He’s totally old school about this. Do you know that Wrigley didn’t have lights until like the eighties? Day games only.”

  Ethan digests this tidbit and cracks open a peanut. The wind is blowing off the lake, and the sky is blue and clear. The sun is shining. We are on our fourth official date. So far, we have: hung out at the penguin habitat at Lincoln Park Zoo, gone bowling, and played three rounds of miniature golf at Par-King. (I won two of them.) In between, we’ve talked, met for coffee. Lately he’s started calling me late at night. Ben used to do this when we were going out—call me to tell me good night. With Ethan, we talk until I start to drift off. The deep, even sound of his voice soothes me. I don’t sleep much these days, so what little I get is generally in the hours right after we finally hang up.

  Sometimes I feel like we’re pushing our luck with all this acting like two regular people in a relationship. In the dark after we’ve finally ended our nightly phone call, I lie in bed and wonder how many coffees, how many rounds of mini golf, before we meet our quota of normal. You have magic powers and your grandmother is a bipolar rusalka, I tell myself. And Ethan’s not exactly the poster boy for normal either. Eventually the cartoon anvil is going to fall on our heads.

  But then I find myself watching out the window for his car. And when he kisses me, I press myself against him and feel a ridiculously hopeful pleasure as his tongue tangles with mine and his hands—oh God, he has wonderful hands—stroke my back, my arms, my face, skim my sides, his thumbs massaging at the curve of my breasts. I run my hands under his shirt, his skin warm against my palms, the familiar tingle flickering through my fingertips as they graze that lion tattoo near his shoulder.

  Except here’s the problem. I have no idea what’s going to happen to me even a day from now. When I took the power Baba Yaga offered, I did more than just enable myself to save Ethan’s life. I gave up my own. At least I think I did. I owe the witch now, and I’m not sure what she wants or when she plans on collecting. If I end up trapped in Baba Yaga’s forest as payment for our bargain, how much worse would it be to go there feeling the way I do about Ethan? How could I live forever knowing what I’d lost?

  Again, I remember last night’s dream. David asking me if I’m sure about Ethan. The truth? There are moments when I’m positive that I don’t know everything I need to know about him. But the person I’m most unsure of is me.

  As for Ben, well, it’s still unresolved. I don’t love him. I never have. But when someone almost dies in a witch’s forest because of you, there’s a certain s
ense of obligation. Tess says I need to untether him. But she’s not the one who’s going to have to tell him to stop waiting for me to change my mind. This doesn’t make me like myself very much. But it hasn’t forced me into action either. Turns out that when it comes to Ben, I’m a head-in-the-sand kind of girl.

  “I’m with your father on the lights,” Ethan says. He passes the peanut bag to me. He’s wearing jeans that hang just the right bit of low on his hips and a white polo shirt and sandals. His hair is a little shorter than it used to be, but the bangs, even when they sort of part in the middle, still fringe his eyes. It still looks good on him.

  I try not to hyper-focus on the fact that Ethan had probably been to Wrigley before there were night games. These are the kind of moments that most girls don’t have to deal with. Girls whose boyfriends—yes, I guess that’s what he is now—weren’t immortal for like a hundred years and now aren’t. Girls who aren’t me.

  “I like night games,” I say. “But sometimes my father would let us cut school for a day game. That was always the best.” I don’t add that he stopped doing that after my brother died. Or that since last fall, we haven’t done much of anything as a family except deal with the fallout of my crazy life—something that Mom and I still haven’t found the right time to fully explain to my father. He still thinks the jewelry store where Mom works was hit by another unfortunate freak lightning storm. Or possibly a gas-line explosion.

  I push these thoughts aside. It’s a gorgeous day. We’re at a Cubs game. I’m wearing a new pair of khaki shorts and a gauzy, slightly sheer pink short-sleeved top with a pink lacy bra underneath that shows just the right amount. Other than the potential that the Cubs will lose this last game of the series to the Phillies, there will be no gloom-and-doom pondering today. No supernatural wackiness allowed.

  “Hey,” says Ethan. “I thought we were sharing.” He snatches the peanut bag, then drapes his arm around my shoulders and pulls me close. The clean scent of Ethan’s soap mingles with the smells of the peanuts and beer from the guys behind us, who are on their third round already, and the hot dogs that the kids in front of us are shoving into their mouths. Baseball makes me happy.

  I let Ethan kiss me even though I’m not big on public displays of affection. Our lips are salty from the peanuts. He nuzzles the side of my neck and traces his fingers down my bare leg, rubbing his thumb just under the bend of my knee. I shiver pleasantly. Kissing is something that Ethan does very, very well.

  “You taste like peanuts,” he says into my ear. The feel of his mouth makes my stomach tighten and sends tingles to every part of my body. God, I love baseball.

  Ethan kisses me again, and I forget about the peanuts. His lips graze lightly against mine and the feathery feel of his mouth on mine sets off sparklers low in my belly.

  When the world begins to dip and shift and bend, at first I think it’s the kissing. Damn, I think. This is one spectacular kiss.

  “Anne,” Ethan says. It takes me a few seconds to register the alarm in his voice. Has something happened to the peanuts? Has he had some kind of mystical premonition that the Cubs are actually going to pull this out and win?

  The plastic sack tips off his lap. Peanuts tumble out, bouncing on the concrete and falling under the seats of the hot-dog-eating kids in front of us. The sounds of the ballpark stretch out as if in slow motion—like how a siren wail changes as the ambulance streaks by. Everything contracts. Like paper cranes, I think suddenly. Our world is folding like we’re pieces of origami art.

  “Hold on.” Ethan grips my shoulders, and I feel the hard pressure of the chair arm against my belly as he clutches at me. The world tilts again. Wind roars in my ears.

  “Ethan.” The word draws itself out for long seconds, then seems to catch on the wind and disappear. My stomach dips. Nausea rises in my throat. So much for baseball. You suck, baseball. Just like the Cubs.

  Above us—I think it’s above us—I hear an all-too-familiar howl. Are you kidding me?

  “Guess she’s a White Sox fan,” I say. I think it’s a pretty clever comment, given that possibly we’re going to get swooshed away by Baba Yaga before the game even starts. The wind swallows my sentence. So much for humor under pressure.

  “You have promised me, girl.” Baba Yaga’s voice thunders in the air. “The past, the present, the future.”

  My eyes squint in what’s now become a gale-force wind, so I can’t even tell if the rest of the baseball fans at Wrigley are being treated to my witch’s display of crazy. Maybe they aren’t. Maybe it’s only the Cubs fans. Or our section. It’s possible that the Bleacher Bums are staring at us, wondering why we’re flailing in a whirlwind.

  I hang on to Ethan, my hands grabbing at his neck, his back, trying to keep us together. My palms burn as the magic inside me—most of it my gift from the same witch who is now ruining my love of baseball—starts to pulse and ready itself. But what am I supposed to do? I don’t even know what’s happening. How do I fight against it?

  And then, something else. Mingled with the magic that’s coming from me, I feel a different power rising from Ethan. But that’s impossible. He doesn’t have magic any more. Does he? And if it’s his, then why does it feel unfamiliar, dark? Even as I form the thought, the sensation disappears. Or maybe it’s just my panic, blocking me from cogent thought.

  The wind intensifies. I feel myself slipping from Ethan’s arms. I dig my fingers into his shoulders and realize I’m more than scared. I’m pissed.

  “No!” I shout into the wind. “No! I know I promised. I get it. I’ve bound myself to you. But I’m on a date. We seriously don’t have time to do this now.”

  Baba Yaga doesn’t answer. Bitch. She doesn’t even show herself. Or maybe she does and I’m too busy trying not to get sucked away. My feet scrabble against the concrete and the peanuts.

  “I mean it,” I yell. “I’ll go. Just not now.”

  The green grass and ivy-covered walls of Wrigley Field disappear. Ethan and I stand in the middle of a park. Grass, lots of grass. Some lilac trees. Huge U-shaped building at the far end. Big white columns. Lots of windows. An iron gate on one side.

  In a horrifying rush, we’re moved closer. We don’t walk; we’re just there. My stomach pitches. It’s like being in one of those movies with the jerky camerawork. Zoom—we’re standing near a tree. Zoom. We’re so close to one of those white columns that I can see a trail of ants marching up its surface. Hear birds tweeting in the trees. Smell flowers and heat. Zoom. Back to the park. A pile of dirty snow sits in the shade under a clump of trees.

  Zoom. We’re at the door—tall, brown wood. Some kind of carvings. Zoom. The park again. My pulse feels erratic. Something pulls me from Ethan. I fumble for his hand. Find it. He grips my fingers so tightly that they lose feeling. Zoom. The world bends. For a happy second, I think we’re back in Wrigley again. Scattered peanuts on the ground, suddenly so close I feel like one of those ants.

  “Anne.” Ethan’s voice is faint, like he’s not with me at all. But I’m holding his hand, aren’t I?

  The magic part of me kicks in. I can make this stop. I know I can. I do not have to do what she wants me to. I don’t care what I’ve promised. I’m me. Not her. No. Oh crap. No.

  Zoom. Back in the park looking at the huge U-shaped building.

  I don’t know what I object to the most. That I’m being sucked somewhere against my will or that I know where we keep going. Not just a huge building. A palace. A Romanov palace, to be more exact.

  My stomach tightens. My breath feels frozen.

  “Focus,” Ethan says. “If you can focus, I think we can—” His words ride away in the wind. Everything’s a crazy blur.

  Zoom. Not the park. Not Wrigley. Inside now. Inside Alexander Palace.

  She stands there in an inner hallway. My Anastasia. She’s young—ten maybe? Eleven. Not quite a teenager. Not
yet the girl who Baba Yaga took. But I know her. I’ve dreamed her, been in her head. I know every part of her. Every molecule. She’s in my skin, my hair, my blood.

  The door next to her opens. Ethan and I jerk closer. I fight it. Try to bring us back. We pull away, there and not there at the same time.

  Okay, not quite what I want.

  Still in the hallway, young Anastasia stands very still. A curious look crosses her face. She turns to the door that’s opened. Smiles at the person who walks from the room.

  I hear myself gasp. Viktor. He’s younger too. Thin, his face lean and angular. His eyes dark but not quite scary dark. Not like I’ve seen them. If Anastasia’s ten or eleven, then there was time still. Six or seven years before the end. But Viktor’s wearing his Brotherhood outfit—coarse brown robe, a little cross on a leather string around his neck. So close I can feel the heat of his body. Smell something herbal and weird on his breath.

  “Baba Yaga. No. I can’t go here now. I won’t.” I say it. I think it. I will it to be.

  As suddenly as it all began, it ends. Wrigley Field reappears. If the peanuts weren’t scattered all around us, I’d think we’d just had some weird hallucination.

  “Did you—” Ethan begins. “Did we just—”

  “Yeah.” I suck in a breath. “But I’m trying to pretend we didn’t. Not working, by the way.”

  I look around. Beer-drinking guys are still drinking their beer. The hot-dog guy coming down the steps bangs on the metal container and yells, “Hot dogs! Get your hot dogs,” just like a whirlwind didn’t almost fly us to Russia. On the field, the starting lineup is still warming up. Other than Ethan and me and the peanuts, nothing has changed.

  “C’mon.” I’m out of my seat, dragging him with me. “I—we—need to leave. Now.” Suddenly, I’m not in the mood for baseball.

  Guess we should have stopped at date number three.

  Wrigley Field, Tuesday, 12:59 pm