by Joy Preble
I cannot tell whether what I say next comes from my need to tell it or from the shocking number of vodkas I have consumed.
Probably, it is a bit of both.
“Believe,” I tell Alex Olensky. “Believe. I am the truth.”
And with that, he gathers the papers—the culmination of his life’s work—and hands them across the table to me.
Chicago,
The Present
Wednesday, 6:00 pm
Ethan
What’s with you guys and the whole tea thing?” Anne whispers. “Is it the caffeine or something? ’Cause you know, at this point, a shot of Jack Daniels might be better.”
I shrug. Personally, I’d prefer some vodka, but now is not the time.
We’re sitting next to each other in two battered leather chairs across from Alex’s oversized oak desk. Bookshelves line the room, overflowing with texts of various shapes, sizes, and conditions. The room bears the distinct aromas of paper, tea, and tobacco. At least a dozen cigarette butts threaten to overflow a small, green, ceramic ashtray resting perilously close to the edge of the desk.
Alex is still rotating around Anne like a personal satellite, oblivious to her discomfort. He’s recounted the story of our meeting in Prague—with enough detail that for a moment, I was certain he was going to pull out paper and illustrate it with sketches—and offered her tea, two varieties of cookies, and a piece of hard candy he pulled out of his pocket.
“I’m afraid that’s all I have, my dear,” he says. “Unless you can think of anything else that you—”
“I’m good.” Anne holds up her teacup. “Really. It’s delicious, Professor.” She takes another sip as if to prove her point, then looks relieved when Alex finally returns to his desk, sweeps a swath of workspace out of the clutter, and settles himself in his ancient armchair.
“So.” He unearths a half-filled pack of Winstons from underneath a pile of student essays, then glances at Anne again, drops the pack back on the desk, leans back in his chair, and crosses his arms. “Tell me what has happened.” He looks at both of us intently. “Do not leave anything out.”
We tell him everything: Anne’s dreams; her vision of Baba Yaga on the street the other night; Baba Yaga’s hands; Viktor’s men; the whirlwind in my loft; Anne’s increasing power—all of it.
I hesitate only once, and that is with the telling of what happened in the basement—the moment I found that I was capable of taking a life.
Alex listens carefully, jotting down notes on a yellow legal pad as we speak. At that last part, a slight shadow crosses his face.
He’s still adding to his notes when, about thirty-five minutes later, I rise to stretch and peer out the window into the growing darkness. I yawn. It’s been a couple of nights since I’ve slept more than a few hours, and until we get this thing done, I don’t see much more sleep in my future.
I turn from the window at the sound of a match striking. At his desk, Olensky lights one of his Winstons.
“What do you think?” Anne says to him. She slips off the band holding her hair, shakes it out, then gathers it back up. It’s a small action, but her hands move gracefully, and without warning, tenderness tugs at me. I’ve searched for so long, I’d given up thinking about what I would feel once I actually found her.
I push the thought away.
Alex takes another drag, blows out the smoke. “I keep meaning to quit,” he says, and smiles, “but I like it too much.”
He sighs, then stubs out the rest of the cigarette in the green ashtray. “It’s clear that these worlds are colliding. The magical is rubbing up against the everyday. I would think that it’s a sign that the time is here. That if Anastasia can be rescued, it will be now. Soon.” He picks up the legal pad and thumbs through his pages of notes. “All these years, as far you know, Ethan—nothing has happened like this?”
I shake my head. “Never.”
“And you’re certain that those men were sent by Viktor?”
“Yes,” Anne and I speak in unison.
“When Dimitri grabbed me,” Anne says, “right before I kicked him, he said Viktor’s name—something about how Viktor had told him I’d be a fiery one. I guess he might have said more, only that’s when I kicked him.”
“Smart girl.” Olensky smiles, then casts a longing look at the cigarette he’s abandoned in the ashtray.
“But if Viktor knows I’m the one, why does he want to stop me?” She turns her full attention to me. “You said that you and he and those others pledged your lives to find the person who could get to Baba Yaga’s hut and rescue Anastasia. So if I’m the one who can do it, why try to kill me? Why give me all this power and then try to keep me from using it?”
I ease back down into my chair. “She’s right,” I say. “It makes no sense. Why try to prevent something we’ve worked to accomplish for almost a century? Why stop Anne from getting to Anastasia?”
“Obviously there’s some connection,” Alex replies. “If my years of research have taught me one thing, it’s that the answer is always there somewhere. We just need to know where to look and what to see when we get there.”
“It’s certainly not reflected in the documents you gave me,” I tell him. “At least not as far as I can tell. Those papers seem focused only on predictions of where and when the right girl might appear.”
Anne shifts her gaze to Olensky. “Predictions? About me? You mean like someone predicted that I’d be here to do this? Me, specifically?”
He grins. This is the kind of thing Alex absolutely adores. “It’s quite fascinating, Miss Michaelson, truly. What they did, you see, is use a series of predictive charts, not unlike what astrologers use, to conclude that if the Brotherhood’s prophecy was true—if Anastasia was truly alive and a girl who could rescue her and who was connected to this same Brotherhood did exist—there were definitive mathematical odds that she would live somewhere in this area during this period of time. Actually, they posited more than one set of circumstances, but since the time frame for almost all of those has already passed, it seemed clear that you might be here.” He flashes another broad smile at her. “You see?” he asks.
“I, uh—well, sure,” she says, but her voice indicates otherwise.
“And what is even better, my friend,” Alex says, and his voice is filled with excitement, “what is truly amazing is that if our Anne here really is the key, then you get a fresh start. Imagine, Ethan! Knowing what you know and starting over at eighteen. It’s, it’s—”
“It’s just weird,” Anne says.
“Weird?” Olensky raises his eyebrows.
“Yeah. I don’t know if I’d want that,” she tells him. She looks at me as well, since it’s my life they’re discussing. “To have lived it all and then live it again. I mean, it sounds great, but is it? You know too much to be really young, but you’ll actually be young, so you can’t be old, and…” She pauses and seems to consider something.
“That’s how it is for Anastasia too isn’t it?” Anne says then. “You’re both the same. If this is all like you say it is, then she’s exactly the same as she was, even though everyone else—well, not you and those other Brotherhood guys—but everyone else is way older or dead. If we—when we—bring her back, she’ll be just like she was, only not quite like she was.”
“Yes.” I nod. It seems I have underestimated this girl in any number of ways. “Yes, she will.”
“And—well, do you think that’s okay?”
“You’re young.” I scrub a hand over my face and get up from my chair, because suddenly, I can no longer sit still. Olensky stays quiet.
“Well, excuse me for not being a hundred or whatever it is you are. It’s not like you’ve figured everything out, Ethan. I mean, I know you’re old, even if you don’t look it. Even if, like the professor just said, you get to start over. But you are seriously stupid.”
“Oh?” Suddenly, I’m feeling a lot less empathetic. I work to keep my voice even, pluck my lips up in a smile that I�
��m sure doesn’t reach to my eyes.
“I mean, what if she doesn’t want that?” Anne asks me. She’s up from her chair now and standing in front of me.
“Why wouldn’t she?” I ask her back.
“Uh, I don’t know. Family—dead. Friends—dead. The year 1918? Almost a hundred years ago.”
“Dear girl,” Olensky begins, “why don’t we—”
If he finishes, I don’t hear him. The truth I’ve held on to for so long rises out of me before I can pull it back. “You think I don’t know that?” I ask her. “Is that what you think? Well, think again. You’re right. I was stupid. I trusted someone I shouldn’t have because I didn’t have anyone else to trust. So now imagine something else, Anne. Imagine that as soon as you made a choice like that, you knew—without hesitation, without doubt—that you had agreed to something that you never, ever should have agreed to. Only now it’s done. It’s over. And it’s too damn late to do anything but go along with it.”
“Ethan,” Olensky starts. “This is not—”
“Not what? Not the time? She’s into this with us over her head. But she has to be. So I want her to know. And it’s not your place to decide. Because, let’s face it, Alex, even you—some part of you—wonders what it would be like to look in the mirror every morning and see the exact same face you’ve been seeing. You may think you even want it. Well, trust me, friend. You don’t. I thought I was saving that girl. I wasn’t. I was dooming her to something worse than death. Only I was eighteen, and I had no idea what I was playing with.”
Anne watches me with those pretty, brown eyes. “I didn’t mean—”
“No,” I tell her. “You did mean it. And I mean what I’m saying too. And you know what else? I still can’t fix it. I can never fix it. That’s the bitch of it. I can only try to get her out of there, and I need you to do it for me. That’s the way it’s got to work. That’s the only way it can work, the only way that we—”
I look at her again and realize now that she’s right in what she said before. This morning, her life was hers to control. Now I’m calling the shots. Just like Viktor—
“Anne. I’ll just take you home or wherever you want to go. This isn’t your battle. It’s mine. Win or lose, I did it to her. I’m not going to do it to you too. I have no idea what this will cost you. Or even how to get you to Baba Yaga’s hut. And I’m not willing to find out.”
Anne stays silent for a long while. I stand with Olensky and watch the various emotions cross her face. She is so very young, I think again. This time I don’t say it aloud.
“You didn’t do it,” she says finally. “Viktor did. Or Baba Yaga. Or both of them. You just promised to try to get her back. That’s not the same thing at all. So stop telling me to leave. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I was in that basement,” I say. “I said the words Viktor taught me. I helped compel Baba Yaga to come.”
“Maybe you did.” She holds up her hands. They’re pulsing again—blue and white sparks of color as the power shifts and readies itself inside her. “But so what? Do you just expect me to go home and pretend none of this happened? I think it’s a little late for that, don’t you?”
“She’s right,” Olensky adds. “So enough of all this. You can stand there and yell at the girl and regret the past all you want, but it won’t change why you came here. It won’t stop what we know has been set into motion.” He walks to his desk and starts rifling through the piles of paper strewn there. “Although honestly, I’d feel better if we really did understand Viktor’s involvement.”
“So would I. And I wasn’t yelling,” I say and both of them stare at me like I’ve lost my mind. “I was just—all right. Maybe I was yelling.” I rub my hand over my face. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you—”
“That I what?” Anne angles her chin in a way that says my answer better not start this all up again.
“It’s this.” I roll up my sleeve. The mark that connects us flushes red on my arm. “And that.” I point to her hands, still flexing with what’s resting just under the skin. “This link that’s now between us. It’s not like me to tell people what I just told you. Those things are mine. I had no intention of burdening you with them. But obviously, I just did. So the professor is right. Everything is in motion. I don’t think we could stop it if we wanted to, though we still don’t know all the answers. And I suppose, even after all this time, that scares me. Because it’s no longer just me. It’s you too. And as long as Viktor seems determined to stop us, you’re in danger.”
The three of us stand there, silently digesting all that.
“So,” Anne says, breaking the quiet. “Where are those documents, anyway?” She walks over to Olensky’s desk.
“My copies are in the loft,” I say. It is entirely possible, I then realize with a jolt, that Viktor has gained access to our information.
“Luckily,” Olensky says with a small smile, “a good researcher never gives up his sources without a backup.” He shuffles through the tallest pile on his desk and extracts a manila folder.
“May I look at them?” Anne asks. “I know you’ve both read them, and I know they led you to me, but I’m the one who has the power. Anastasia’s been in my dreams. So has Baba Yaga. She’s even appeared to me on the street, remember? So if it’s all about me, then maybe I’m the only one who can see all the signs.” She reaches across the desk and places her hand on Olensky’s folder. “You said before that we just need to know where to look and what to see when we get there. Well, maybe if I really am related to someone in the Brotherhood bloodline, then I’m the only one who knows exactly what to see.”
I stare at her, startled. Of all the many things that have occurred to me, this has not been one of them. Perhaps that’s the real reason I’ve lived so long—to figure out how absurdly shortsighted I’ve been.
“Go ahead,” Alex says to Anne. “Let’s see what you can find.”
The small clock on Alex’s desk clicks on seven as Anne opens the folder, extracts the sheaf of papers, and settles back in her chair to read. And although it has been a very long time since I have prayed, I utter prayers now for this beautiful young woman who just might find some of the answers we need.
The Forest, Evening
Anastasia
Auntie’s cat curls up against me, his yellow eyes glowing with something I cannot even begin to name. My fingers search the pocket of my dress, feeling for the small bit of bread I have placed there. The tiny offering my matroyshka has said I might need.
“Here, koshka .” I hold out my hand as the doll has taught me, palm up, the coarse brown crumbs lying in the center.
The animal sniffs, considers. Then his small mouth opens, and he bends his head over my hand. My skin prickles as his wet, rough tongue runs across my palm.
In the fire, the images flicker. Baba Yaga and I watch and listen.
“Where is he, Dimitri?” Viktor rages at a man I do not know. His anger pours out of him. And I think of the day I found him pacing the stone chapel, the knuckles of his right hand dotted with his own blood, the skin shredded from pounding against one of those stone walls. That was the day he told me he had warned Papa of what was coming. The day Papa had dismissed him with a brief wave of the hand.
“He is dead,” the man called Dimitri says to Viktor. “Vladimir is gone. Ethan must have…he never came out of the building.”
“And Ethan and the girl?”
“They escaped. But it should not be too hard to find them. You’ve thrown Ethan off his game. I’m sure he thinks the whirlwind was Baba Yaga’s doing, not ours.”
“Of course he does,” Viktor says. “He thinks whatever I make him think. He always has. But the girl—we will need to be much more careful in how we go about this.”
“She is strong,” Dimitri says. “And her strength—it is growing. If we are to stop her, we must do it soon.”
“We will,” Viktor tells him. “Oh, we will.”
Next to me, Auntie laughs, a wild so
und that fills the room like a howl. “He thinks he knows,” she says, “because he was able to use us. Use the one they call Ethan too. But he has no idea about the girl’s power. He thinks he understands. But he does not.”
“Understands what?” I ask Auntie Yaga.
“Many things,” the witch tells me. “But the one he understands the least is destiny.”
Wednesday, 8:10 pm
Anne
I unfold myself from the chair, arch my back, and stretch, trying to ease the knots out of my muscles.
Professor Olensky and Ethan are still hunched side by side, elbows on the desk, studying something on the computer monitor. They’ve been pulling up website after website, document after document. None of them seems to be doing us any good. We still don’t know how to get to Baba Yaga’s or why Viktor seems determined to stop us. I may have all this power, but I still have no idea how I’m going to use it, which let me say, is not thrilling me.
“Any luck, my dear?” The professor looks up from whatever they’re reading.
“None,” I tell him. “Less than none. I thought—well, I thought it would help if I looked. But I guess I’m just as clueless as the two of you.”
A muscle in Ethan’s jaw clenches at the word clueless , but he doesn’t say anything.
“I know all this is supposed to be about me,” I say, “but you guys know it’s ridiculously boring, right? All the ‘When there shalt cometh’ kind of stuff over and over? How much of that can you read before you just feel like falling into a coma or something?”
I ignore Ethan’s glare. And Professor Olensky’s.
It’s getting late, my eyes hurt, and I’m going to need to forge a note to explain why I wasn’t in my classes this afternoon. Pretty soon, either I’ll need to call and talk to my mother or father or show up at home, or I can kiss ever being a licensed driver good-bye.
“I’m going to have to get home soon,” I say. “Even with my parents thinking I’m at Tess’s, they’ll expect me back by nine or so. Ever since—” I pause, realizing that I haven’t told Ethan about my brother. A part of me wonders if he somehow already knows. “My parents worry easily,” I say instead. It’s the truth, even if it’s not all of it. “There’s only so much Tess can say to cover for me if they call her house.”
