Anastasia Forever

by Joy Preble

  “It’s a ballet, Anne,” Ethan says softly. “Maybe it’s just a ballet.”

  “This whole thing is so twisted,” I say because it is and neither of us seems able to untwist it, no matter what we do. “My family is so far from normal it’s not even funny. I’m never going to be a regular person again, am I?”

  “You never were,” Ethan says, his voice husky enough that I shiver pleasantly in spite of my crankiness and confusion. “That’s a good thing, you know.”

  Is it? I can trace myself back through a sea of crazies to Tsar Nicholas himself…and my power to a witch named Baba Yaga. I count off my ancestors, the ones we’ve discovered since the day Ethan and I collided and life as I knew it changed forever: Viktor, Tsar Nicholas’s love child. Their daughter, Natasha. And her daughter, a woman named Lily—my birth grandmother who Viktor tried to kill because she posed a threat to his plan to stay immortal by keeping Anastasia with Baba Yaga. Lily, my tragic birth grandmother who jumped into the Chicago River and, instead of dying, became a rusalka.

  Is she like Giselle? Could she be?

  In the auditorium, the music swells. I know the dancers are onstage now. The story has begun to spin itself out. We should be spying on the other Ethan and Tasha and Viktor. Doing what we’ve been brought here to do—or at least that’s what it seems. But now this new thing. My brain hurts trying to make sense of it all.

  Ridiculously, I wait for Ethan to tell me not to worry. Sure, Anne, no problem, I want him to say. If Lily does a 360 and forgives him, Viktor will just go away. No harm, no foul. And your nutty Russian mermaid grandmother? She’ll sort things out. It’ll be fine. But don’t worry. No way did mystical forces we don’t understand send us back here to connect all this to a ballet.

  Instead, he takes my hand again, his long fingers curling around mine, and we start to the box where the other Ethan is sitting with Tasha and Viktor. His grip is warm and familiar. Soothing. It will all be okay, I think. Stop worrying. Then with a suddenness that swoops my breath away, I read his thoughts again. My hand, still in his, goes cold.

  “You went to see Dimitri?” I’m shocked at what I’m pulling from his head. How could he do that? Maybe I’m wrong. I have to be wrong.

  Ethan purses his lips together. And when he stays silent for one beat too long, I know I’m not wrong at all.

  He tries to blow it off. “This isn’t the time, Anne.”

  “Oh? I think it’s the perfect time.”

  “He’s on our side. I’m as sure of that as I can be. We need him. He was Viktor’s protégé. He’s an asset, not a liability.” Ethan says this like he believes it, but something in his eye—a brief flash of wariness—tells me he’s not as sure as he sounds.

  “Like when he tried to kill us? That kind of asset?” Don’t we have enough problems right now without him adding Viktor’s best bud to the mix?

  I struggle to stay calm. Think happy thoughts, Anne. Puppies and clouds and Lou Malnati cheese pizza. We’re in no position to argue. We need to be a solid unit until we get back to our own time. Back to where we have a little more control. But Dimitri? Seriously?

  “Things changed when we all became mortal again,” Ethan says.

  “Maybe.” I contemplate whether this is really true. “Maybe not. Look at Viktor. He wanted us to think he was a hero when he gave himself to Baba Yaga. But he was only looking out for himself, same as always. Maybe Dimitri just wants you to think he’s changed. But really, nothing’s different.”

  I can tell that he’s got more to say about the subject, but then some man in a fancy black tux hurries by us down the hall, and both Ethan and I are reminded of where we are and what we’re supposed to be doing—which is definitely not standing here arguing.

  “When we get back,” Ethan says, “we’ll deal with it. I should have told you. I was going to tell you. I would have told you. I promise.”

  Would he? I hope so. And because I don’t read anything else in his mind to contradict, I say, “Things have been a bit crazy. I get it.” Then I add: “You and me, Ethan. Whatever’s linking us is getting stronger, isn’t it? Even here in the past. Maybe especially here.”

  As I say it, I know it’s true. Fear prickles my skin. The momentary calm when Ethan took my hand is gone. A single thought reverberates in my head: something bad is about to break loose.

  “We’ll deal with that too,” Ethan says. “It’s what we do.”

  “This whole mind-reading thing sucks,” I tell him.

  Ethan grins, a calm-before-the-storm smile. We open the door to the box seats and step inside.

  If we’d thought things were crazy up until then, we were wrong. The crazy was just getting warmed up.

  Theater Box, Beginning of Giselle Maybe Wednesday, Maybe Not

  Ethan

  Two steps into the small room on the second level of the theater, I know that something is off. The ballet continues to play out onstage. We are still in the past. Only then, things change. Time rips. The past wavers, then flickers into something more immediate—as though it is happening for the first time, not the second. I feel myself falter, try to step back into the hall. But my body moves forward and I take Anne with me.

  Do we cause this to happen? Does Viktor? Is it somehow Baba Yaga or our combined powers or some other force that doesn’t come immediately to mind? I just know that when we enter, there are two of me—my current self and my past. Anne stands at my side, my hand wrapped around hers, a solid connection, her thoughts flowing into mine as mine ripple into hers.

  Viktor is about to sit in one of the plush chairs. Tasha—the girl I loved but not enough to tell the truth—leans slightly toward him, as though when he seats himself, she plans on telling him something.

  And the man I once was—who because of magic and circumstance I still fully resemble—sits alert, part of his attention on the stage, part on Viktor and Tasha. He is pulled between two stories, both of which will have tragic endings. Does he—did I—know that then? I try to remember.

  What comes to me is this: I sat there looking eighteen because I’d committed myself to a cause that by then I had begun to question. I loved a woman who I knew I was going to abandon. And I had become suspicious of the man whose cause I’d followed blindly, without question. But never suspicious enough. I will regret that forever. I know I am paying for my blindness.

  But now, a rush of heat spreads up my arms. Something is suddenly terribly wrong. In one dizzying moment, everything inside me shifts, hard and jagged, like shoving a round peg in a square hole. Not like our journey through time. That was external. What happens now is inside me. I double over with the force of it. Something is attempting to wrench me from my own body. I struggle against it. Try to remain conscious of who I am.

  “Ethan!” Dimly I hear Anne shout my name. My vision fogs. She shimmers in and out, or maybe I’m the one shimmering. For one brief moment, I see her panicked face. She says something else. Her lips move, her hands gesture. But it’s too late.

  I am me. My past self is me. And then in a sickening rush, we become one. I feel the essence of what I am slip away to combine with what I was. Everything I know, everything I’ve been, starts to ebb.

  I fight against it. The dark power whose source I still don’t understand rises inside me—angry and harsh. I focus, latch on to its wild, furious, swirling depths. Wrench myself away to hover in and out of both bodies, both versions of me. For that moment, there’s nothingness, like plummeting from an airplane through piles of clouds.

  Then—something dark and empty. Like a vessel that wants to be filled. That needs to be filled. It slithers through me like oil, pulling any power I can use with it, and everything begins to slip. I struggle to hold on to my thoughts. I am Ethan who is now mortal. I am Ethan who was betrayed by Viktor. I am Ethan who loves Anne. I am…

  “No!” I say it aloud. Use the
word to try to hold back the inevitable. “No.” I say again. But I hear my voice fading. Somewhere a thought: my past self will know. Or my current self will. If past and present merge, I’ll still know what’s happened in between. Those years won’t be—

  What? Was I thinking something?

  I shake my head. Clear my vision.

  “Ethan,” says a deep voice next to me. “I had no idea your young woman was so lovely. She’s quite the treasure, yes? But it seems she is quite in her own world right now. That, my friend, is the power of the ballet.”

  I look to my left. Tasha stares at the stage. Her brown eyes seem somewhat vacant.

  “Tasha,” I say softly. My voice sounds unfamiliar to my ears. Odd.

  She startles, then turns to me and, after a beat or two, smiles. My lovely Tasha. The strange feeling that has washed over me begins to pass.

  “Where was I?” she whispers. “Caught in the story, I suppose.” She brushes a strand of brown hair off her forehead, then looks at her hand as though it’s something unfamiliar.

  My mouth curves into a smile, and again I have the briefest sense that my movements are not quite my own. Strange.

  Tasha turns to Viktor. “My apologies. I’m not usually this impolite. I just don’t feel like myself today. Or perhaps it is Giselle. Such a tragic story, no? It took me quite away. You and Ethan will have to forgive me.”

  “It is quite easy to forgive such beauty,” Viktor says. “There.” He snaps his fingers. “The moment never happened. We won’t even remember it five minutes from now.”

  For a moment, the fogginess in my head returns, like the feeling one gets upon awakening and trying to remember a dream. I shake my head, trying to clear it. What an odd thing for Viktor to say—Viktor who never forgets anything.

  We are not quite human, Ethan, he once observed. The life of an immortal requires a special level of care. We must look. Learn. Listen. We never know when something will be of use.

  I look up and realize that he’s watching us—Tasha and me. His dark eyes glitter in the light from the stage. I know he disapproves of this relationship. Believes that it is foolhardy of me to allow anyone too close. But I do not agree with him. And I think in this regard that he has his own secrets. We all do—the Brotherhood members who are now immortal. Time has had a way of making this occur. Viktor is entitled to his privacy. But so am I.

  “Are you all right, Ethan?” Tasha rests one cool palm on my hand and tilts her head to look at me.

  “Fine,” I tell her. “Never better.” And in that moment, this becomes true. The fog that’s clouding my thinking lifts. Something seems off still, but I push the thought away. This is Tasha—so beautiful, so talented—Tasha whose long graceful fingers I love to watch as they move, quick as birds, across the piano keys. I will tell her later, I think. I will tell her that I love her. And someday, I will tell her what I am. Maybe soon. Yes. Soon.

  Onstage, Giselle starts to go mad. Her lover loves someone else.

  “Tragic tale,” Viktor whispers. “To love someone who will leave you.”

  Tasha leans across me toward Viktor. “But she forgives him,” she says with a small, tight smile.

  My vision hazes. For half a beat in time, I get the distinct sense that I don’t belong here. Images of another place, another girl—pale face, hair auburn, with brown eyes like Tasha’s, only deeper—flash through my head. But nothing stays. The mental pictures flicker away like smoke from a lit match.

  I struggle to regain myself. Why are my thoughts drifting like this? I am not some idle old man playing chess and drinking tea and dreaming of days gone by. Possibly, I never will be.

  I am not just Ethan, after all. I am of the Brotherhood. To me there are no coincidences. The magic—the power—that allowed us to save Anastasia by compelling a witch who most of the world think is just part of a child’s fairy tale—is real. And the prophecy that teaches of a girl who will release our Grand Duchess—that is real too. I have pledged my life to it. I am what I am because of it. Immortal until I find the girl who will complete our mission. She could appear at any time. In any place. Even here at the ballet.

  How wonderful that would be, I think now. To end this. If I found her now, this mysterious girl for whom we’ve been searching, then it would be over. She would help us free Anastasia. Bring her back from the dead. Release her from that witch with the iron teeth and enormous hands. Baba Yaga, the mighty Bone Mother who I never believed existed. What has life been like for Anastasia? It is something I cannot contemplate. I chanted the spell. I saw the witch take her. There is no purpose in looking back. I have no regrets.

  But what if the girl of the prophecy really is close? The world would gasp in shock. The foolish and short-sighted who believed it was necessary to murder the Romanovs for what Russia has now become, they would see that we have saved them from even more misery—from Stalin and his cronies. Having one of Nicholas and Alexandra’s children alive would be a miracle. It would change everything.

  It would free me.

  The thought startles me. Never have I put my current existence in those terms. Why now? What has changed?

  Perhaps Viktor is right. I am allowing myself to be distracted from our cause.

  Tasha pats my hand. She smiles. And I let all those thoughts pass.

  Theater Box, During Giselle Maybe Wednesday, Maybe Not

  Anne

  The pain is crazy. Like someone turning me inside out. This is what it feels like when something begins to yank me forcibly from my own body. Memories rush through me as my brain tries to make sense of what’s happening. I remember times I dreamed as Anastasia—felt like her, moved like her, cried like her. That horrible moment I morphed into her when I was in Baba Yaga’s hut. I know what it’s like to be someone I’m not. But nothing has prepared me for what happens next. There’s noise and dizziness, and I think it’s happening to Ethan too.

  I scream his name. And then I’m just screaming. Does anyone hear me?

  There’s noise and dizziness, and the endless stabbing sensation of being ripped apart and shoved somewhere I don’t want to go. And inside me—flashes of questions. Am I making this happen? Is it something in the past? Viktor? Baba Yaga? The questions tumble in my head adding to the dizziness and nausea. And a weird thought—I need to throw up, but I don’t know where my mouth is.

  It stops in stages. The world settles. The pain eases.

  I’m not dead. I’m not gone. Slowly—it takes a lot of effort—I open my eyes.

  And see someone else’s outfit, someone else’s hands, someone else’s, well, everything.

  Seriously?

  I blink. Look again. The other body hasn’t gone away. And unless I’m totally hallucinating—which might be the better option here—I’m inside it.

  This can’t be happening. Time travel—okay. Reading Ethan’s thoughts—creepy, but I can deal. But body shifting? Hello. If anyone is listening, this is where I draw the line. Especially because unless I’m mistaken—and I don’t think I am because let’s face it, what girl doesn’t play a little compare and contrast with her boyfriend’s ex—the body I’m trapped in is Tasha’s. Yes, that Tasha.

  And Ethan is standing next to me—well, her—looking dazed and clueless. But which Ethan is he? My Ethan? Or Ethan in the past?

  Calm down, I tell myself. It should be easy enough to figure out. I’ll just tell him who I am. If he freaks out, then he’s the wrong one. Simple enough.

  “Ethan!” I scream at him, not calm at all. “It’s me, Anne. I’m stuck in your ex-girlfriend’s body. You’ve got to do something.”

  Except what comes out is Tasha’s voice. And unless I’m totally mistaken, she’s not saying what I’m saying. She’s chatting about the freaking ballet.

  And I still don’t know which Ethan I’m looking at.

  “Oh
my God,” I yell at Ethan—present, past, at this point I’d just love one of him to hear me—while below us on the stage Giselle is going crazy because she’s been betrayed by the guy she fell in love with. “You’re not talking to Tasha. Ethan! It’s me. Anne! Something’s happened. Something bad.”

  Only here’s what happens: I look at Viktor and say, “But she forgives him.” It comes out in Tasha’s voice.

  This absolutely can’t be happening. Shit.

  “Ethan,” I try again. “We’ve got a huge problem.”

  The words echo only in my head. My mouth doesn’t say them. Instead it quirks into a small smile.

  Ethan smiles back. So what does this mean? Where is my Ethan? If I’m stuck in Tasha’s body, then maybe he’s stuck in his old body? Does he know? It sure doesn’t seem like it.

  This is bad. Really bad. My heart should be racing a zillion miles an hour. But the heart in Tasha’s body—the one I’ve invaded like an unwilling body snatcher—beats slowly and evenly. Only my brain seems aware of the switch. The same brain that suddenly seems to have lost its fast-track connection to Ethan’s thoughts.

  Plus, where the hell is the rest of me? If I’m here in the past in Tasha’s body, where’s the physical me? My personal body that I had no intention of leaving any time soon. I scan the small room. No real Anne standing at the ballet in her shorts and tank top. Not good. Not at all.

  Tasha’s hand is resting on Ethan’s. In my head, I tell myself to move my hand away. That maybe then he’ll notice that his girlfriend is acting standoffish. He’ll think, Hey, why did she do that? And then he’ll investigate. He’ll look into Tasha’s eyes and think, Hey, that’s not my girlfriend. That’s someone else in there. And then maybe—

  Maybe what? What good would that do? And besides, it’s not working. My Tasha hand is still on top of Ethan’s.

  All right. I need to try this another way. Onstage, Giselle is dying. In our box in the balcony, I’m racking my brains for a solution to my out-of-body problem.