Anastasia Forever

by Joy Preble

  “Anne’s the one who can access Baba Yaga’s forest. Not me. It’s never been me.” Which, of course, is the problem.

  “Viktor, then. You could find him, right? He controlled that witch, didn’t he? Isn’t that what you said? So he must know how to get to her forest. We need to go now. God knows what’s going to happen there. Why the hell did Anne do that?”

  I force myself to breathe. “Because she’s Anne. Because she can. When Viktor used Anastasia the way he did, he created his own nemesis. Anne. It’s what I never want to admit, but she and I both know that this can only end one way—with someone dead. Viktor. Anne. Me. You or Tess. Someone she loves. Anne’s gone because she doesn’t want it to be one of us. And even if we could follow her, she’s right. Our presence will only add more danger. Not just for us. But for her.”

  Ben’s nostrils flare. The look in his eyes says that he hates me.

  “What then?”

  We go after them anyway. We drive to the lake. We track down Viktor. I use whatever darkness keeps building in my veins and rip a hole in the sky and pull them back. This is what my brain is screaming.

  But I tell Ben, “We wait. We stay together—safety in numbers. We swing by and check Anne’s house. And Tess’s. And yours—find out where your parents are. Make sure nothing weird is going on. Remember, Viktor’s linked to Anne too. He may actually know what just happened here. I hope he doesn’t. That would make things easier. But we can’t be certain. So we need to be vigilant. Other than that, we wait. She’ll make it back, Ben. They both will.”

  I say the words as though I know them to be the purest of truths.

  Ben looks away. He knows bullshit when he hears it.

  I set to work creating another spell. Cast my hands in the circle and work quickly to remove evidence of what just happened here. People’s memories are fluid things, but a little magical push will help assure that. Like that horrible day when Anne and I found my friend Alex Olensky dying on the floor of his office. I used this spell then too. My hands shake a little as I say the words that need to be said. My dark borrowed power pushes the spell more intensely than I’ve felt before. A fear forms: Will Viktor’s magic stop me? But I complete the spell without interruption. Some things inside me are still my own.

  Ben watches in silence.

  “They’ll protect each other,” I tell him. “Anne and Tess. We have to believe that.”

  We leave the rest unsaid. Is Ben in love with Anne? He won’t pursue her. He’s no fool. He’s a strangely good match for Tess—both loyal to a fault. I have no interest in knowing his mind. I know only this: I’ve done many foolish things over the years, but there is one thing I did right. I fell in love with Anne the first time I saw her. I need to stay strong enough to deserve that love.

  And then the thought: maybe I was never strong to begin with.

  “All right.” Ben studies the empty sky. The IHOP sign blinks back to life. “We wait.”

  “I would suggest a stronger plan of action.”

  Ben and I turn.

  “And I would also suggest that we move quickly.” It’s my old friend Dimitri. He’s leaning against a black Ford sedan, a wry look of amusement on his face, an unlit cigarette between his fingers. “That was quite the spectacle your girl and her witch just put on,” he continues. “I see her time travel hasn’t diminished her spirit. And don’t look so shocked, Ethan. Did you really think I’d have let you walk out of that restaurant if you were the only one who’d regained some power?”

  “Um,” Ben says quietly. “Who the hell is that? And did he just say you have power again? When exactly were you and Anne going to mention this?”

  I ignore Ben, keep my attention on Dimitri. His eyes are darker than they were when we met at the café. Not good.

  “He’s using us, you know?” Dimitri extracts a pack of matches from his pocket and cups his hand as he lights the cigarette. He drops the match, still burning, to the cement. “I’m assuming that if I’ve figured it out, so have you. You’re many things, Ethan, but you’re not stupid.”

  I shrug. “I don’t have time for this. If you want to tell me something I don’t know, then fine. I meant what I said to you—I’m willing to work together until we stop him. I did not say that I trusted you.”

  Dimitri walks closer, exhales smoke. Flicks ash into the still heavy air.

  “And I, Brother, did not say I trusted you. But I have done what I promised. Although perhaps you are right. Your Anne and her little friend are with the witch. I suppose this isn’t the time for small talk.”

  “And yet here we are,” I say blandly. “Like two grandmothers around a fire.”

  Above us, there’s the faint echo of thunder. More than anything, I want to look up. But in this game we’re playing, I refuse to be the first to blink.

  “You’ve left a trail of magic a mile wide, Ethan,” Dimitri says. “In the old days, you would never have been so careless. Then again, in the old days, we had our own power, not Viktor’s scraps. This is what I keep turning over and over. Why would someone who wants the world at his fingertips gift the two of us with part of his power? That seems odd, doesn’t it?”

  He pulls cigarettes from his pocket, offers. “I’m glad to see you still have a few vices,” he says, when I slip one from the pack. “I make it a policy never to trust a man who has no vices.”

  I reach for matches. Ben extends his hand to Dimitri. “I’m Ben. And you are?”

  Dimitri cocks his head as if Ben has fallen from the sky. “Perhaps,” he says, “it is time for a little demonstration.”

  He flicks his remaining half-cigarette to the ground. Flicks a finger. The ashes ignite. The flame travels a swift path toward Ben.

  “Hey!” Ben dances back. The flames follow, lick at his feet.

  “Enough.” Cigarette still between my fingers, I spread my hands. Concentrate. The flames lower. Disappear. “Point taken.”

  Dimitri chuckles. Studies Ben. “This one must be Anne’s, yes? I suppose we wouldn’t want to damage him.”

  Inside me, power pushes against my will. The urge to let it free careens wildly. Images flash—none of them mine, yet rising full-grown: Ben, motionless on the ground. Dimitri, hands pressed to his slit belly, his intestines spilling out. The rusalka swirling in a whirlpool, her mouth open in a silent scream.

  Something urges me to let it rage. Instead, I push the power back below the surface. And decide to resort to the truth.

  “Viktor’s hidden his soul.” Has Dimitri understood this as well? “Like Koschei—the story we all heard as children. The Deathless wonder. Unkillable until his soul is set free to return to him. It’s why Anne’s gone to Baba Yaga’s. She thinks the answers are in the hut somehow. Some clue to explain how he did it or where it’s hidden.”

  Dimitri arches a brow. “And so it comes back to that every time, eh? Our eternal lives in the hands of a girl. I’m sure the irony is not lost on you. But my question still stands. Why give us part of what makes him strong? Here is what I think, Ethan. Because he has to. Because whatever it is he’s done, however he’s managed to divest himself of that which once again makes him human, he needs us still.”

  “But for what?”

  “I don’t know,” Dimitri says. “But I have a feeling we’d better find out before he decides to use us. And I know exactly how we can do that.”

  “Oh?”

  “Ask him face-to-face.”

  In Baba Yaga’s Forest, Wednesday

  Anne

  My stomach pitches as Baba Yaga’s detached hand hoists us through darkening clouds to the mortar, then above it.

  “Don’t drop me!” Tess screeches.

  “Hang on! Holy crap, Tess. You’re slipping. Hold my damn hand.”

  We’re right above the middle of the mortar, but the hand drags us higher.
Baba Yaga tips her red scarf-covered head back and smiles, her iron teeth glinting in the lightning.

  We fall. Not descend, just plummet. The hand is still holding me and I’m still gripping Tess—still screaming—but we fall fast. We slam facedown into the mortar—Tess first, then me. I smack down so hard that my breath seizes in my chest and I see tiny black dots.

  I groan and roll over and suck in painful, rasping breaths as my lungs refill with air. Baba Yaga drapes her arm with the flapping sleeve over the side of the mortar, and the hand shoots back up and reattaches.

  The storm disappears, but not the clouds.

  Tess. She’s saying something, but my ears are still ringing and my head throbs with each jackrabbit beat of my heart. We link fingers and stand. I touch my pulsing forehead. My fingers graze a bump the size of a small egg from where my head hit the mortar.

  Baba Yaga swivels to face us. Her mouth is huge, her chin solid and muscular, the bones jutting against her ancient skin in the spots where I’ve seen her jaw drop and unhinge. Both hands now back in her sleeves, she reaches for us and smooths a sandpapery palm across each of our foreheads. In unison, we recoil, but there’s no place to go. The mortar is sticky under my feet. I try not to think about what it’s sticky with.

  “What say you, Daughter Anne?” Baba Yaga glowers at me with her black eyes. Tess squeezes my hand—hard.

  “I’m not your daughter, Yaga. Never was. Never will be. But I am asking for your help again. And willing to return to your forest.”

  Baba Yaga smiles, and the wrinkles etched into her leathery brown skin deepen into canyons. I watch my reflection in her iron teeth—my hair all tangled, my eyes huge and darker than they’re supposed to be, my mouth fixed in a straight line. I look old—well, older.

  The air around us shimmers. I blink. We’re in the forest as though we’ve always been there. The hut breathes in and out in front of us. The chicken legs claw at the ground. The skulls on the fence glow, lighting up their empty eye sockets. I hear a hissing and then a meow and Baba Yaga’s koshka, which I know now is Russian for cat, slithers out of a shadowy corner and flicks its pink tongue at us.

  “I don’t want to be here,” Tess says under her breath. It is a little late for her to come to this particular conclusion.

  Baba Yaga smiles again. “I can arrange for you to be gone.”

  We move the party inside the hut, the huge wooden door closing behind us with a thud that makes my pulse jump.

  The room is as it was the last time I saw it, as it always is in my dreams: wooden floor, narrow bed, table, chairs, and a deep fireplace in the corner. Floating in the center of the fire, a bleached white skull grins at us. Flames lick the centers of what used to be eyes.

  I shiver, gooseflesh prickling my skin. Tess rubs her hands over her arms. The room feels icy even though a fire roars in the fireplace only a few steps away.

  Baba Yaga flicks one enormous, leather-skinned wrist. The sleeve of her brown dress ripples as her hand detaches and scuttles across the wooden floor. Tess blinks. Suddenly, I can’t breathe, can’t swallow. The hand is wrapped around my throat, the fingers squeezing like giant snakes.

  “If I killed you right here—just because I can—would it still be worth it for you to have come? Imagine, girl. You dead. Your Tess keeping me company. Is this what you want? Think, Anne. So much that you should be doing. So much that you have promised me. You are not the girl you were. You will not be her again. Desire does not make things so. Look at me and know this.”

  I don’t want to look at her. I absolutely do not. The hand turns my head, and then the pressure is so great that I can’t even close my eyes. My vision starts to go spotty again—more little black dots flickering everywhere. I tell myself not to pass out. I need to keep Tess safe. I need to—

  She squeezes my neck tighter. I remember that horrible moment on the El train last fall when Viktor tried to kill me. It felt like this, didn’t it? Somewhere I think I hear Tess screaming.

  “You have questions, girl. I know this. What did I see? What did I know? Perhaps you think me the fool. Your Viktor managed to get the best of me, you think. Here I am, his captor, the mighty Baba Yaga, and yet he escapes. With your help, of course, but not the same as when he entered my forest. Perhaps I will answer you, daughter. Perhaps I will eat your friend. Grind her bones between my teeth while you watch.

  “Time will tell, as it always does in my hut. But first this: you know only what I am now and what I was before. Let me show you the in between, girl. The thing I am. The thing the Victor and his Brotherhood and even your silly Ethan diluted when they compelled me to protect Anastasia. Look. Listen. Learn. You will see me. You will be me.”

  I try to look away, but it’s hopeless. I sink into her gaze, deeper and deeper. Then it’s like when I used to dream I was Anastasia. The piece that’s me and the piece that’s the witch soften and meld until I can’t tell what’s me and what’s her. The story that unfolds is familiar. Then it creeps into places she has not let me see. Like my journeys to the past, I think before my thoughts are only hers. Returning again and again as long-hidden secrets rise. The dark parts that lie in all of us. The ones we never share.

  I sit in this same hut, staring into my fire. It warms me, but not enough. Never, ever enough. I used to love the sun on my face, I think. I used to run in the woods and pick bright yellow and pink flowers to make wreaths and necklaces. But one day it wasn’t enough. Maybe it never was. This is what I think now as I rock in my chair and my koshka winds himself around my ankles. As the fire crackles and burns, and the skull that was once the head of an enemy hovers in the flames.

  Beauty betrayed me. Or perhaps I betrayed myself. In my mind, I see the man that I loved, the one I gave myself to, completely and joyfully. He is tall and his brown hair is thick when I stroke it. His cheekbones are sharp and his face thin, his green eyes thoughtful. He has long fingers that set sparks in my skin when he touches me. I remember the feel of his lips as they press against my cheek, my neck, my mouth. Did I love him? I no longer know what this word means. What does it mean to love someone—to be loved in return?

  I only know the anger that burned in me when I saw his hands stroking another woman’s face. Had he ever really seen me? Loved me? His child was just barely planted in me at that moment. Not even a full month, but I knew. I pressed my hands against my still flat belly. When I told him, he shrugged. “That is your business, Yaga,” he said.

  This is how things were then, in the old days. The child was my concern, not his.

  I wept for a very long time. But nothing changed. Tears do not have power. Only actions do. I had always known I was different. Even then, when we lived close to nature, I was closer. The elements had always felt a part of me—my herbs grew more lushly, deer ate from my outstretched hand. My journey to the Old Ones did not take me long.

  “Be certain,” they told me. “We do not give this gift often. Its price is steep.”

  Inside me, I felt his child flutter. I was certain. I would give up my beauty for the power they offered. I would do it with a willing heart. I would teach this child my ways, not his.

  The pain was enormous. It ripped through me, over me, inside me. All change comes with pain, but I had never known something like this. In the end I lay alone in the forest. I crawled to the stream and stared at my reflection. A monster stared back. Eyes black as pitch. Nose long and hooked under as though it wanted to meet my lips. I pulled them back into a smile. My teeth glinted in the water. I reached up to run my finger over them. They were iron, now, dark gray. Inhuman. My skin, once the smooth color of almonds, was now dark and wrinkled. Age spots, huge as saucers, covered my body.

  I looked down at my hands. They were huge, each knotted knuckle the size of a walnut. When the first hand slipped from my wrist and dropped into the stream, then flicked its fingers and scuttled back onto the ground a
t my feet, I felt myself sway on the verge of unconsciousness.

  The hunger came next—huge as the new body that housed the woman who used to be me. I stumbled to my feet. My new hand marched on fingertips up my leg and angled itself back to my wrist. The reattachment burned, but I was too ravenous to feel it.

  I came to the apple tree first, studded in small blooms that would not be fruit for weeks. I slammed into it, wrapped my arms around the trunk. Apples. Apples. Full, lush, red. I ripped them off the branches, bit into their flesh, the juice running down my face, sweet and sticky. I ate until the tree was empty. And still I craved more.

  It was then that I remembered the child inside me. The image of the tiny baby mixed in my mind with the red, red of the apples. Perhaps if it was a girl, I would call her Rose. The apples were a sign. Her tiny cheeks would be red and plump. I pressed my hands to my stomach, those ugly, hideous monster hands that were now mine, the ones which had just climbed the apple tree to pluck the highest branches for the fruit I’d devoured, seeds and core and all.

  Was it my new self that told me? Or would I have known even as I used to be? The child was gone. Not miscarried, not born. Not ripped away. Just simply absent. It was then that I began to understand the price of what I had asked. To be more than human was to be less than human. I had stepped into a different forest. There would be no going back. I do not know how long I wept.

  The hunger returned, sharper than before. I stumbled through the forest, wound my way in the direction of my home. But I could not cross the stream. I could wade almost to the opposite shore, close enough that I could almost touch it. But not quite. I stood in the water, the bottom of my dress soaked and heavy. The sun beat down on my head. Somehow the heat made the hunger worse.

  In my pocket was an old red scarf. I wrapped it around my head, tied it under my chin with clumsy fingers, pulled it forward to hide my face in its shadows. It was then that I saw him—a boy of about six or seven, walking along the opposite shore.

  “Babushka!” he called to me, and I knew how I looked to him—a grandmother, an old woman. The hunger grew even more.