Anastasia Forever

by Joy Preble

  Like how the mermaids almost killed him. Like the look on his face when I agreed to Baba Yaga’s bargain so I could bring Ethan back to life.

  My chest tightens. My heart feels like it’s struggling to beat in too small of a space. He hadn’t told me. Of course he hadn’t told me. I keep making it clear that I don’t want the same thing he does. Why would he tell me something that makes him look even more needy?

  “Shit. Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I just did.”

  “I mean before now?”

  She hesitates, then blurts out, “Because what good would it do? It’s just going to make you feel worse. He’ll get over it. I really think he will. But you’ve got to stop sending him mixed messages. If you want to be with him, then be with him. But if you don’t, then—”

  “I get it, Tess. Ben good, me bad. I get it.”

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it.” Her brows furrow. “You’re just myopic about some things. You think you owe Ben. But did it occur to you that maybe he thinks he owes you? That now that he’s been through this whole life-and-death thing with you, maybe he feels like he has to protect you or something? You can’t just keep going for coffee with him and kissing him and…”

  “He told you that?” I gape at her.

  “Maybe. Well, not the whole psychoanalysis part. I figured that out on my own.”

  I wait for her to tell me something else because clearly there’s something on her mind, but she doesn’t.

  In the silence, it occurs to me that just possibly I haven’t been the most observant person lately. And that when it comes to boys, even less. Oh, I’ve had some legitimate reasons like, um, running for my life every five seconds. But she’s right.

  “It’s not like we’re talking behind your back,” Tess huffs. “It’s just that he’s so messed up. So what am I supposed to do? Tell him to bug off?”

  “No. God, no.”

  “My point exactly. And besides, against every law of nature that makes sense, you love Mr. Hey I Used to Be Immortal But Now I’m Just a Doofus from Russia Here to Make Everyone’s Life Miserable. If you’d just admit it, it would make things easier.”

  “I don’t know if I love Ethan.”

  Tess rolls her eyes. “I adore you, Annie. But you are seriously delusional.”

  Maybe I am. Do I love Ethan? If things would just calm down for five seconds, maybe I could figure it out. Like that’s going to happen. I have a destiny. Calm is off the agenda.

  On my bookshelf, the candles are still burning very bright. I point a finger at the Cinnamon Sugar one and concentrate. The flame leaps high and straight, almost to the ceiling. If I wanted to, I could make it touch.

  “Hello? Pyro? What are you doing?” Tess’s voice pitches high, waking Buster, who jumps from the bed and pads over to stare at me. It also startles me. Would I have really done that?

  “Don’t know. That’s the point, isn’t it? I don’t know what I’m doing.” This is not entirely true; we both know it. I do know—sort of. Or rather, the power that’s inside me now—it knows what it wants. It just seems to be waiting for me to understand what I’m supposed to do with it.

  I concentrate on the candle; the flame flickers out. A thin trail of dark smoke winds its way through the air. Dripping wax puddles at the base of the candle.

  Tess flicks her gaze from me to the candles and back again. “You can be really scary. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “Sorry. I’m just—you know what? I think we’re done here. You thirsty? ’Cause I’m parched. I need Diet Coke, and I need it now.” It’s a lame attempt at changing the subject, but it’s all I’ve got in me right now.

  Satisfied that the candles are done bursting into wild flame, I turn my attention to the laptop, close the pages still open on the toolbar. And pause on the last one. Alexander Palace. Huge columns. Pretty walkway. Acres of private park. Just like it used to be. Just like Ethan and I saw it earlier today. Anastasia’s house.

  I hate even looking at it. But I can’t pull my gaze away.

  “She lived there, Tess.” I tap the screen and my finger leaves a smudge. “Anastasia and her sisters and brother and mother and father. She walked in that park. I saw her do it. I felt her do it. Just like I felt her die. He betrayed her. Her whole life betrayed her. And what did I do? I brought her back and then let her die anyway. Big help. No one stopped Viktor from using her then, not even Ethan. So how am I suddenly supposed to know how to stop him from whatever it is he’s doing now?”

  Tess puts her hand on my shoulder. “Anne, please. I’m sorry I brought up the Ben thing. I thought you’d want to—I’m sorry.”

  I realize that if I look at her, I’m going to cry. I’m relieved when I hear the sound of a car pulling into our driveway. My dad’s home, probably with the Chinese takeout. Enough of my personal pity party. We’ll go downstairs and eat egg rolls and fried rice and whatever else he’s brought. There’s time still before this all comes apart. This morning I stopped Baba Yaga from sending me wherever it is she expects me to go. After all, part of this power inside me is hers. It makes sense that I could fight back.

  This is my big, bold plan—to eat pork with garlic sauce—when the world starts to bend and fold right here inside my room. Tess screams. The fur on Buster’s back stands on end. He hisses.

  “You are hesitating too long, girl,” Baba Yaga hollers, hovering in her mortar at my window, impossibly large and impossibly half in and half out of my room, the wall somehow bending with everything else to accommodate her. A red scarf—her babushka—covers her head. Her skin is brown and wrinkled, and her eyes glow like two huge black orbs, a skull where each pupil should be.

  Her mouth twists in a grimace as she bares her iron teeth. “You have all this inside you now, tucked away, and what do you do? Nothing. Are you still the girl who bargained with me in my forest? That girl was strong. That girl did not let go of what she wanted. But you? You sit and wait. You play with your magic. Tomatoes on a vine. Candle flames. Such a child you are. Such a silly little girl. You know you feel it stirring inside you. You called me to you with it, girl. Even if you do not understand how.”

  Buster launches himself at my witch. He swipes at one of her huge hands with his paw. Unfortunately, Buster is declawed. So he doesn’t really do much damage before the hand swats him across the room. He hits my carpet with a smacking sound and lies there looking dazed and angry.

  “You’ve got your own cat,” I scream at her. “Leave mine alone.”

  “Yeah,” Tess adds in a pause between my screams. “This isn’t your forest. You need to go away.”

  “The barriers are broken, girl. Did you not understand what you have promised? What you are? What you will become? But first, you have a job to do. And you must begin it now.”

  There’s a sound like rushing water, and Tess grabs my hand. The world contracts again. I think I’m screaming, but I’m not even sure of that. And then, Baba Yaga still looming in my window and the world swirling like a kaleidoscope, I hear the sound of Ethan’s voice in my head.

  “No,” he seems to be saying. “No. Anne. Wait. I’m coming. I need to be with you. You can’t—”

  If he’s really saying something and not just a figment of my terrified imagination, he doesn’t get the chance to finish. Because the world contracts even smaller, and then we’re gone, Tess and I, tumbling through blank empty space and rushing noise.

  Tuesday, 6:18 pm

  Ethan

  I feel her pull away from me. From everything. I’d thought the link between us severed as I passed my magic to her in the lake. But I was wrong. Somehow, it’s grown stronger. Strong enough that I can feel her fear. See her clearly for a brief second or two. In her room with Tess and the witch, the Alexander Palace on the computer screen behind her. In my mind, I call to her. Ridiculously, I
tell her to wait. To hold on. Only what can I do? She’s there, and I’m here, just steps outside the café, with Dimitri.

  “What is it?” he asks. He stares at me like I’ve gone mad. “What do you see?” He looks around us as though something will be there.

  “It’s begun,” I tell him. “I’m not ready to help her.” And in my head: will I ever be ready?

  “Then I would think you should do something about that, Brother,” he tells me. “Or perhaps you already have. I am no fool, Ethan. You are not completely without power now, eh? There is something left?”

  I hesitate, but then I admit it. “Something new. Like what we had, but not exactly. I don’t understand it yet. But it’s there.”

  He watches me, eyes dark, then darker. “I do not like liars, Brother. If you want my help, then do not withhold the truth from me again.”

  I let him have the last word. I have no plans to apologize. No further promises. Our pact is what it is. Either we hold to it, or we don’t. I have no patience to argue with him.

  “Explain,” he says eventually.

  “Forward and backward. The past, the present, the future. The witch has sent her somewhere. Russia, I think. But I don’t know how to reach her. I thought I could help her control how she went into this. She—we—stopped it this morning. I thought…”

  Panic rises. How could I have let her out of my sight today after what happened earlier? After all we have been through, one thing has never changed. I am still quite the zalupa. Or perhaps our Russian word for dickhead gives me too much credit. Baba Yaga was tricked by us once. I doubt she will be so foolish ever again.

  “You’re telling me that Anne is somewhere in Russia at some time possibly past, present, or future, and you have no idea how to get her back?”

  I nod.

  “And she’s alone?”

  I sigh. “No,” I tell Dimitri. “She’s with Tess.”

  A Really Little Village Somewhere in Russia, Definitely Not This Century

  Anne

  “I think I’m going to puke.” Tess leans over and does just that. Wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Gross.”

  The world has stopped gyrating. But my room is gone. We’re half sitting, half lying in the middle of a dusty road. I have dirt in my mouth. When I spit, the blob of saliva looks dusty too.

  Done puking, Tess shoves her hair out of her eyes and looks around. So do I.

  Here’s what we see: Little wooden houses in the distance. A horse-drawn wagon bouncing up the crappy dirt road just beyond where we’ve landed. Trees. Possibly a small farm, if I squint.

  We are in big trouble.

  Tess catches on quickly. “We’re not in Baba Yaga’s forest, are we?” she asks in a voice that mirrors the panic growing inside me. “Oh, my God, Anne. What the hell just happened? And explain to me why I continue being your friend.”

  My heart is pounding so rapidly that I figure I won’t have to come up with an answer. I’ll just die right here of some kind of coronary incident, and Tess will have to figure it out on her own. Which possibly would be the better scenario.

  “Russia.” I stand, brush dirt off my clothes. “It’s Russia. I mean, we’re in Russia. I think. Or maybe it’s called the Soviet Union. Or one of the places that ends in ’stan. You’re the history person. The Ukraine, maybe. Belarus? Do you see a primeval forest? It could be Poland. Shit. I guess it depends on what year it is.”

  “Year? Did you say year?” Tess’s voice hits a range somewhere between screech and glass breakage. Over on the dirt road, the horse and wagon plod slowly by. Luckily the guy in the peasant outfit is too busy shooing away a cow to pay attention to us. Or maybe he does see us and figures we’re just a figment of his imagination. Maybe Tess’s screaming has rendered him spontaneously deaf. Anything is possible at this point.

  “I’m pretty sure,” I say. I try to sound calm. And like I know what I’m talking about. I think we’re in Russia. But I’ve only seen it in books and on the Internet. For all I know we could be in northern Wisconsin. Maybe people still ride in wagons as you get closer to Canada.

  “Well,” I continue, trying to stumble my way to something that sounds plausible. “None of this looks anything close to where Ethan and I were for those few seconds this morning. But it does look like Russia. At least I think it does. Plus, what Baba Yaga told me, remember? The past, the present, the future all mingling? So I guess this is the past? Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the Alexander Palace is behind that clump of trees?” My explanation comes out like a question. Not good.

  “There is no palace here, Anne. Do you see a palace? There’s grass and trees and dirt and that guy and his wagon. And oh yeah, I threw up a little on my new white shirt. Fabulous. You and Blue Eyes go to the palace. You and I are stuck in the middle of Russian nowhere. And I so hope you have a plan for how to get us out of here.”

  I think this over while Tess brushes some more nineteenth-century or possibly twentieth-century—since didn’t they still ride around in wagons in the early nineteen hundreds, especially in rural wherever we are?—dirt off her jeans. They’re her favorite pair, a sort of skinny but not too skinny dark gray that make her butt look phenomenal. Now they’re here with her, and neither of them is looking happy about it. If jeans could talk, hers would say, “Get me back to the mall.”

  “I don’t know why we’re not at the Alexander Palace,” I say as Tess finally gives up on the dirt brushing. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Oh, but the time-travel part—that’s just fine?”

  “You’re not helping, you know. What I mean is if Baba Yaga sent us here, then why? If she’s decided to get this journey thing going, why show me one place a few hours ago but then have us end up somewhere else?”

  “Because she’s, oh, I don’t know, a crazy witch?”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “It’s good enough for me. And speaking of crazy witches, Glinda, you’re the one who’s all powered up these days. Can’t you, like, just zap us back home? I mean isn’t that the point? She gave you extra mojo and now you owe her?”

  Tess has a way of boiling the complex down to the basics. Except it still doesn’t answer my question: why here? What is it about here, wherever here is?

  I blow out a breath and try to calm down again. “Think, Tess. We need to think.”

  “We need to get out of here.”

  “And that’s not going to happen if you keep bitching.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have to if you’d only—”

  “Ethan.” Maybe it’s my annoyance at Tess’s refusal to shut up that makes the fog of paralyzing fear lift just the tiniest bit. I’d heard him, hadn’t I? Just as everything began to go all wonky, and we swirled around and ended up here.

  “Ethan what?” Tess looks to her left and then her right. “Is he here too? Because that would be—”

  I place my hand over her mouth. “Just shut up for two seconds. Please.” I close my eyes. Tess stays silent. And then I remember.

  “I heard him! Just as we were starting to get sucked away. His voice was in my head or something. He was telling me to hold on. He said he needed to be here with me. Only then the connection or whatever it was just broke.”

  “Well, that explains everything, Anne.”

  We stand there glaring at each other. Tess digs her cell phone out of her pocket and looks at the screen hopefully. She presses every button. Her forehead wrinkles.

  “No service, no bars.”

  “No kidding. I—do you feel that?” The ground has begun to vibrate beneath us. I feel it in my feet, then my legs, then inside me like the too-loud bass of a passing car. We look toward the road as they appear. Horses and riders. At least a dozen.

  They careen around the bend of the dirt road where that wagon had been, riding fast, then faster.
The riders are men, all of them. All with big fur hats and wearing pants and a tunic top that looks military. And every single one of them is holding a sword. Make that a terrifyingly huge, curved sword.

  Cossacks. I know it as I see them. Know it because they’re part of the story that Ethan had told me when I first met him. That day we ran to his loft and he told me the story of how he ended up in the Brotherhood. Cossacks. The men who killed his family.

  My heart begins to pump wildly in my chest. Actually, wildly doesn’t even begin to cover it. Some vague, tiny piece of me says, “Hey, Anne, don’t you have some sort of magic witchy powers that can stop the crazy Cossacks with their Huge, Pointy, Scary Swords?”

  Except I’m not a witch. I’m just Anne who doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing and is probably going to die here before she figures it out. I resort to the only answer that makes sense right now.

  “Run,” I tell Tess. “Run. Now.”

  There’s a grove of trees in the distance—not quite a forest, but maybe good enough. It’s far, but maybe we can make it. We run as fast as we can, but the ground is rocky and uneven, and clouds of dust fly as our shoes slap the dirt. My whole body vibrates with the sound of the horses coming up behind us.

  “Oh my God.” Tess glances behind her. “We’re not going to make it.”

  She stumbles. I try to grab her, but it’s too late. She slams into the ground, right knee first, and skids. Her face smacks the dirt. When she rolls over and tries to sit up, I can see that her hand is cut and bleeding, and there’s a long gash over her left eyebrow. Blood streams down her face and into her eyes.