I moved to steady Alexei, to help lead him away from the truck, but he held up his hands. “I can walk. I have no pain. Nothing holding me back.” The awe in his voice buoyed me further. Whatever this state of existence was, it was freedom and healing and hope.
I took his hand. “Let’s find our family.”
The guards went about their work, hauling bodies from the cellar room to the truck. I couldn’t look at the bodies—I searched only for the ghost forms. With each step I knew my physical family was dead. We had all been shot. Executed brutally.
Zash had taken part.
But I couldn’t dwell on that now. Not yet.
Had my family’s souls gathered somewhere? Were they waiting for us?
I quickened my step and ran past the guards—and sometimes through the guards—to the basement. All I had to do was follow the trickle of blood from the bodies they were carrying out. The trail led down. Down. Down to the basement that smelled of smoke and defeat. Plaster fell from the ceiling and walls in chunks from the bullet holes. Blood coated the floor like fresh paint.
I managed only one glance before I scrambled back up the steps, dry heaving into the darkness. I was dead—or something—but the raw emotions and horror still boiled in my chest.
They killed us. They slaughtered my family. “Papa!” I screamed, abandoning any caution. “Mamma! Olga! Tatiana! Maria!” I ran in the dark, Alexei keeping up behind me. “Dr. Botkin! Anna! Trupp! Kharitonov!” But I could not find their ethereal forms. Only their bodies. Their dead bodies, which the soldiers searched and manhandled and treated like sacks of garbage.
“Jewels.” One soldier tapped Maria’s body with the butt of his gun. “She had jewels in her clothing. That’s why the bullets ricocheted. That’s why it took so many tries to kill her.”
My eyes burned, but my current incorporeal form would not allow tears. Only the burn. Only the emotions.
“Maybe they are in our rooms,” I said in a last desperate attempt, leading Alexei in a sprint around the house, through the door, and up the stairs. We didn’t need to touch the doors. They opened on their own, as though just for us, and then returned to their previous state, releasing no creaks or groans or slams. Did they open at all in the physical world, or was this merely the ghost world reacting?
Up in our rooms we found nothing but packed bags and our rooms as we left them. The only difference was Tatiana’s dogs. Both of them lay dead near her bed.
“No!” Alexei cried, running into the room. He searched for his spaniel. “Joy! Joy! Come here, girl!” He ran from room to room. I had never seen him run like this before—not even on his healthiest days. “Joy! Where are you?”
No answer. No bark. No response from his beloved spaniel. I didn’t help him search because I didn’t want to find her body. We both knew that had she been in the room alive, she would not have ignored his calls.
“Perhaps she escaped,” I suggested. “Or maybe she can’t hear your ghost voice.”
He bit his lip but didn’t cry. Always the soldier. I would cry for him if I could. He slunk to me and wrapped his arms around my waist. I gripped him hard, clinging to the comfort. The safety of family.
“What are we, Nastya?” He sounded so small. “Why is it just us?”
And finally I acknowledged the answer that I’d pushed aside until this moment. “I used a spell, Alexei. A spell from Papa. He gave me the family Matryoshka doll and there was a spell in it he told me not to use until we were desperate. When I reached for your hand in the truck, the spell came out. And here we are.”
“What does the spell do?”
I shook my head, a lump in my throat. “I thought it had healed me. But now . . . I don’t know what it did to us. Papa said each spell was for the good of the Romanov family. He said it could be our salvation.” It didn’t seem right to have salvation without Papa. It was supposed to extend to him. To everyone. I’d waited like he told me. I didn’t use the spell until the very end.
And it was too late.
Papa had been wrong.
“Maybe it is letting us escape.” Alexei leaned away and stared up into my face.
I glanced out our open window at the truck below. It was filled with bodies now—ours included. Yurovsky hissed orders at the guards, threatening them at gunpoint to turn out their pockets and surrender the jewels they’d torn from Maria’s clothing. Then he took a bayonet from one of the soldiers and speared a moving body in the back of the truck. I flinched. Had that been mine? Or Alexei’s? Or someone else?
Would I feel it if they destroyed my physical form?
I couldn’t handle the moment—the truth of our executions and the betrayal that came from our country, from the soldiers . . . from Zash. So my mind turned blank—a defense against the emotions. It knew they were too much, so it allowed only a drop here and there. A drop that carried the weight of a broken and torn country.
“I think you’re right,” I said in a dead voice. “The spell is letting us escape.” But I didn’t know if I had the will to escape. To survive without my family. To run with the knowledge and memories of tonight.
Then I looked at Alexei, standing tall with his chin lifted. Emulating Papa’s calm and ferocious strength. For him. For Alexei I would escape. I would not give up. We would survive . . . for our family.
* * *
Yurovsky was quick. He had the bodies in the truck and the soldiers in their vehicles within a half hour of having executed us. When he was the only one left to climb into a truck, he pulled out his pocket watch.
Alexei and I huddled near the truck but hadn’t gotten in. We couldn’t bear to sit among the dead bodies that no longer felt like family. They felt like tragedy and grief.
Yurovsky consulted the watch face. Then he walked toward the truck until he stood over my body. He stared down at me as though I were sleeping. In that moment I wished him dead. I wished to see him shot from behind, crumpled on the ground, devoid of all dreams and pursuits and hopes and honor.
Papa would be ashamed of my thoughts. Even Alexei would likely parrot Papa and say I ought to forgive this terrible man. But my will to forgive had died with the first bullet sent into Papa’s chest.
Yurovsky patted down my physical body none too kindly. First, he found the Matryoshka doll husk in my sleeve—the one I’d already used. Only a moment later, he found the rest of the doll tucked into my corset. He pulled it free, then snapped his pocket watch closed. I could do nothing but watch him steal from me.
He held the Matryoshka doll in front of him as though it were a priceless jewel. His eyes glowed with greed, his hands trembled with victory. “Clever little Nastya. You may have protected Dochkin for a little while, but now that you and your family are snuffed, you’ve been bested at your game.” He examined the shell of the ajnin spell, then shoved it into his satchel.
My fingers lifted to my ghost clothing. I still felt the doll there, tucked into my camisole. But I also saw the doll—the physical version of it—in Yurovsky’s hand. Reflected in his shining eyes. I couldn’t pull mine from my camisole. I couldn’t remove it from its spot. Who truly had it? Yurovsky or me?
He tucked the doll away. This item alone he did not place in his office or write a report on. He kept it for himself. He said something about finding Dochkin. That must be why he needed the doll. Somehow it led to the spell master. And Yurovsky would surely kill him.
Yurovsky climbed into the truck. Soldiers held the door open to the palisade and it rumbled through. Another truck with a bed of shovels and canvases and cartons of acid followed. Alexei and I climbed into the back just in time to ride after our family.
To ride after our enemy.
To ride away from our prison and into the deadly unknown.
As we passed through the gates, I caught one soldier muttering to the other, “So this is the end of the Romanov dynasty.”
Alexei and I sat like two defiant ghosts, determined to live and prove them wrong.
24
I
wish we hadn’t followed.
Where did I think we would be taken? Yurovsky and the men transported our bodies not only to bury us but to destroy all evidence that we even existed. Now I knew where he went on horseback so often—to scout out a burial ground.
His choice of grave left me ill.
It was a mine shaft. Set in the muddy center of the dense Koptyaki forest. It had taken us over two hours to reach it because the trucks continued to get stuck in the mud. Yurovsky was furious. They took the bodies of my beloved family and stripped them of their clothes so as to burn them, then dumped them in the mine shaft.
Next came the acid, dumped down the shaft and sprayed all over them to destroy their names. Their legacy. There would be no royal burial. No mourning of the people still loyal to us. Perhaps the world would never even know we had died.
“I can’t watch this,” I croaked, only then realizing that we’d joined the entourage because I wasn’t yet ready to bid farewell. But what good were we doing? “We must go, Alexei.”
“What of our bodies?” Alexei stared at the men working over the mine. We heard Yurovsky shout that the mine wasn’t deep enough. That they’d need to haul the bodies back up and find a new site.
“The spell will likely wear off.” I squinted at the midnight sun now dipping back up over the horizon, even though it was not yet morning. The sickly light revealed Yurovsky’s twisted attempts to conceal evidence. “And when it does I expect we will probably return to our physical forms. Or perhaps we will die.” I shuddered at the idea of returning to my body at the bottom of that mine with the rest of my family’s corpses.
“We need to lead the White Army here. To the grave.” Alexei spun to face the forest. “Tell them what Yurovsky did, so the truth doesn’t die with us. Yurovsky is trying to keep our execution a secret—probably because it will ignite the Whites.”
“How can we do that when no one can hear or see us?”
He took my hand. “I have to try.”
I remembered when he and I sat talking about his purpose, and how helpless he felt as an ill soldier. He’d trained to be a leader but had no one to lead. Now he did. Me. He may not have a throne, but he was the rightful heir to one if it existed.
And it was my duty to support my tsarevich. To help him find the White Army. To help him survive. “Lead the way.”
We hurried into the forest back toward Ekaterinburg. Away from our family. No exhaustion came from our efforts. No resistance from the undergrowth of the forest. No splashes from the puddles of marshy floor. We ran and ran and ran, never tiring, hardly having to breathe. Despite our sobering and desperate situation, Alexei ran with a wild ferocity. This form was the healthiest he’d ever been.
“Look at my legs,” he said as he leaped over a log. “Watch this.” He attempted a terrible cartwheel. “And this!” He wove between trees like obstacles in a race.
“You are exquisite.” It was all I could offer before the terror of our impending end reclaimed my mind. I didn’t want to return to our physical bodies. I didn’t want to wake trapped in that mine or back in Yurovsky’s truck. I would rather we died. Please, Iisus, let it be death.
We had been running for well over an hour when the trees began to thin. This forest held none of the nostalgia of home. Instead of inviting me into a fresh, earthy embrace, the taiga felt more enemy than friend.
I slowed and my senses went into high alert. I threw out an arm to halt Alexei. “Listen.”
By the time we stopped and focused on the sounds of the forest, the noise I thought I’d heard had faded. I didn’t have to wait long until another sound came. A guttural groan. Human.
Ahead of us.
I ducked behind a tree but Alexei advanced. “Remember, we can’t be heard. No one sees us.”
We picked our way through the forest until, through the labyrinth of trees, I spotted a form. Though Alexei was right—we were unseen and unheard to the regular world—I still pressed against trees and peered around trunks.
Then I saw him.
Zash.
My executioner. He was on his knees at the base of a large tree, his head in his hands and his pistol in his lap. “Iisus,” he said, hardly louder than a whisper. “Forgive me.”
Iisus? Forgiveness? How dare Zash ask for forgiveness? He shot me! Nothing could undo what he’d done. His fingers clawed at his hair, as though trying to pull out the memories. As though the pain would drown out their screams.
Alexei gasped. “It’s Zash!” He sounded excited. Hopeful.
“He shot me,” I snapped. “We can’t trust him.”
Alexei went silent. I felt wrong watching Zash’s sorrow as though it were a play. I didn’t believe half of it. That was until he quieted and seemed to enter a new place of resignation. Of cold hopelessness as he reached into his lap and picked up his pistol. He looked at it as though he’d never seen one before.
Then he rotated the barrel until it pointed to his heart. Changed his mind and slid the tip up under his jaw.
“No!” Alexei shouted.
Even I was stunned. The old Nastya didn’t wish Zash to be gone from this world. But the new Nastya didn’t want Zash to exist anymore after what he’d done. It made me angry to see him taking such an escape. He didn’t deserve to be free of whatever pain he was feeling. His suffering was penance for his decision to execute my family.
“Stop!” Alexei hollered near Zash’s ear. Zash tensed. For a moment I thought he heard Alexei. But then he slid his finger over the trigger. “Nastya!” Alexei turned to me as though I could do something. The more panicked he grew, the harder my heart thumped.
This wasn’t right. This wasn’t fair.
“I don’t know how to stop him, Alexei.” My voice sounded dead.
Alexei tried to shove the gun out of Zash’s hand, but his own thin limb went straight through it. Zash’s hand trembled, but the gun barrel stayed fixed against his skin. He started muttering to himself in Russian. Swift and desperate. I caught Iisus again.
“What is the next spell from the doll?” Alexei screamed at me. “Use one of those!”
I snapped out of my numbness. Of course. Of course I had to stop Zash—for Alexei’s sake. For mine. I couldn’t watch him die. We had lived through a sea of blood. And though Zash shot us, Alexei still cared for him. I was tired of seeing Alexei in pain.
I grappled for the doll against my sternum, but I couldn’t pull it out. It was trapped in the in-between land of physical and ethereal. In the ethereal world I had it. In the physical world Yurovsky had it. “The doll is stuck. I can’t use it because Yurovsky has it!”
“Well, what was the first spell? Maybe it will turn Zash into a ghost like us.” He placed his fingers around Zash’s wrist, angling it as though he were touching him. Then he held out his free hand for me. I grabbed it and searched for the spell word, but already I knew it wouldn’t work. The spell had been used. It was gone from my lips. I felt the emptiness.
I said it anyway. “Ajnin.”
The change came like a rushing wind. My body grew heavy. Pain blossomed in my chest. My knees gave out and I dropped, catching myself on a log. The scene darkened and I blinked rapidly, trying to take it in as my eyes blurred and readjusted.
I was physical again.
Alexei kept his feet a moment longer, but he stiffened as though an electric shock had gone through him. His eyes slid to mine and a feeble plea escaped his lips. “Nas . . . tya . . .”
He fell headlong across Zash, his hand tearing the gun away from Zash’s head. It went off, sending a bullet into the leaves above us. Zash cried out and fumbled for his dropped pistol. He scrambled out from beneath Alexei’s body and then held the pistol like a shield between him and us.
“No!” I lurched to my feet. The underbrush grabbed at my skirt as I fought to reach my brother, finally flinging myself in front of him. Sharp pain stabbed me at all angles. I glared up at Zash and his trembling pistol. “He just saved your life, Zash. Don’t you dare murder him.”
Zash stood pale as the body of my dead papa. The gun tumbled from his hand and he crossed himself. “How . . . ? What are you?”
“Not four hours ago, you shot me in the chest. And now you don’t recognize me?” I wasn’t interested in explaining how I was alive or why the bullet ricocheted. And now that he no longer pointed a firearm at me, I twisted to my brother.
He lay with his eyes squeezed shut. Trembling. “Alexei?” I called softly.
“Ah,” he groaned, reaching out with his hand. “I . . . h-h-hurt.”
And I could see why. Beneath the now-risen sun I could finally take in his injuries—they’d not shown on his ethereal body. A bullet had gone clean through the palm of his left hand and half his face had swollen purple from the butt of a gun clubbing him down. Someone had speared his hip with a bayonet when Yurovsky commanded everyone to finish the job without bullets.
Of all people to survive an execution, I never would have guessed Alexei to be one of them. But at the rate he was bleeding and his head was swelling, he would not hold that title long. “Oh no.” I grabbed his hand. “No, no, no. What have I done? Alexei, what did I do?”
Blood slipped from the wound at his hip, gurgling and bubbling lazily as though tired of leaking. How long had this been going on? How was his body here? How was my body here? If the spell reunited us with our bodies and moved our physical forms to this spot, that meant Yurovsky would know we were alive.
I pulled the Matryoshka doll from my shirt. It was as solid as the pain in my ribs.
Yurovsky would be coming for the doll.
No seam showed on the new layer of doll. No glowing spell. I shook the doll. “Open!” Nothing changed, so I shoved it back into my shirt.
It turned out I was wrong. Alexei and I didn’t return to our physical state. Our physical forms returned to us—returned to our forms from the moment I used the spell. Whatever had happened to us in the back of the truck or when Yurovsky tossed our bodies down a mine shaft . . . had been undone.
Romanov Page 17
