Anastasia Forever

by Joy Preble

  “I’m okay,” she says, even though clearly she is not okay at all. She tries to stand. The horses are gaining on us. One of them shouts something in Russian. My heart pounds with each horse hoof.

  “Do something,” Tess whispers.

  “I’m trying. Crap. I can’t think. I don’t—”

  “Anne! We’re going to die!”

  Since this does not seem the best option for either of us, I make an attempt.

  “Ya dolzhen,” I say, slipping into the Russian that Ethan taught me to begin a spell. Ya dolzhen. I must. Then I freeze. I must what? What do I need to do? Stop them? Put a block around us somehow? What? Damn it. It’s all happening so fast. I can’t think. I need to think. I need to—

  “Oh my God,” Tess says over and over. “We’re going to die. They’re going to kill us. I’m going to die—again.”

  “No, we won’t!” I scream. I try again. Start to imagine a wall around us. I’m panting, breathless. Fear prickles every molecule of my body. Like how I felt at the lake when Tess and Ben almost died. Like how I felt when Ethan actually did. My body shakes. My hands glow white, then blue, then—

  When they ride right through us and around us, it’s like we’re not there at all. I can feel the heavy weight of the horses, smell wool and body odor and dirt. Their swords swish through the air. They’re all shouting in Russian. One guy laughs. The harsh sound of it crinkles the hairs on the back of my neck.

  Only we’re not dead. I haven’t done anything. This much is clear to me—at least not anything that would have worked. But we’re not dead. We’re there and the Cossacks are there, but somehow we’re not together. It makes no sense. But it’s like we each exist in the same space but not at the same time. We can see them and hear them and even feel the ground shake because of them, but somehow they don’t know we’re here.

  I sink to the ground and wrap my arms around Tess. I’m not sure if I’m crying or laughing. Probably both. Tess is still bleeding. But we’re not dead. Okay, we’re still in Russia and clearly not in our own century and I have no idea how to get us home, but we’re not dead.

  “What just happened?”

  “Don’t know,” I tell her. “But I’m good with it.” I watch the Cossacks ride toward the trees. One of them shouts what sounds like a command, and the horses all turn toward the right. But they’re still headed away from us. I figure I need to stop Tess from bleeding before we continue our analysis of the time-space continuum.

  “What do you mean you don’t—”

  “Hold still,” I order her. “Seriously. You’re bleeding pretty bad.”

  This time I’m calm enough to actually accomplish something. Methodically, I set to work. I place my hand over the cut on her eyebrow. It’s deep, probably requiring stitches.

  “Gross,” Tess mutters. “Are you touching my bleeding head?”

  “Shh. Just let me do it. Don’t be a baby.”

  The familiar humming buzz fills me. I’m less panicked now so my body seems to be more willing to understand what to do.

  “Feels hot,” Tess says.

  “Don’t talk.” I press my hand more firmly to her forehead. Feel the wound shift and move. And heal. When I take my hand away, her forehead is just sweaty, not cut. I do the same with her hand. Make her roll up her jeans and use both hands to heal the abrasion on her leg and knee while I’m at it. The thing inside me pulses. Even the blood that’s dripped down her face disappears.

  Tess studies her healed hand. She brings it to her forehead, her fingertips feeling for the wound that’s no longer there.

  “Holy crap,” she says. “You actually did it.” She grins at me and shakes her head. Then: “You don’t look so good.”

  I’m halfway between witty comeback and wanting to vomit when I glance toward the woods.

  The Cossacks are in motion again, heading past the trees. And then from behind us, cutting across the grass from the same direction the Cossacks had come, a man comes running. He’s headed toward them, shouting something, shaking his fist. For the first time I notice a curl of smoke in the air, growing thicker by the second.

  They can’t possibly hear him, I think. But one of the Cossacks turns his head. Gestures to the others and points to the running man.

  In that instant, something seems horribly familiar.

  “They didn’t see us, did they?” Tess is saying. “How is that possible? This is crazy, Anne. We need to—”

  “Get up.” I haul her by the armpit. “C’mon.”

  “What? No. Where are we going?”

  I pull her toward the farm. And the Cossacks. The running man continues to run.

  “No. Are you freakin’ insane? Give them another chance to realize we’re here? No way.”

  “Then stay here. I’ll be back.” I don’t tell her the rest of what I’m thinking. I just start running. She’s right, I think. I’m crazy. But I have to know. I have to see. I know she’s going to chase after me, and I know this isn’t a good thing, but I can’t stop myself.

  When it happens, it’s just as horrible as Ethan had described it to me. Worse, because I’m here to see it.

  The Cossacks wheel to a stop, point their swords in the air. Their horses paw at the ground like they want to get going again. The running man reaches them. As one, the Cossacks point their swords at him.

  Someone shouts something I can’t make out and probably couldn’t understand even if I did. I smell smoke. I flick my gaze behind me. That curl of smoke drifting toward the clouds is growing thicker and blacker. Something is on fire. I’m close enough now that I can hear the running man choke out a sob.

  Tess catches up to me. She grabs my arm and yanks me back. “Jesus, Anne. Stop. What are you doing? They’re going to kill that guy. He needs to get out of there.”

  She’s right, of course. They are. Even as I think it, another person runs from where the lone man had come. He’s smaller and thinner, and as he gets closer, I see that he’s a boy, maybe nine or ten years old.

  I’m sure then what’s about to happen. Fear and bile rise in my throat.

  “Otets!” the boy calls out. Then, “Papa!”

  “Papa? It’s his dad.” Tess is still clutching at me.

  One of the Cossacks raises his sword. “No!” I scream along with the boy. “No. Nyet! Don’t!” Does he hear me? Does it matter?

  The Cossack shouts something, and the riders make a circle around the man so that he can’t escape. I’m screaming at them again and so is Tess, but when they break the circle to ride off, the man is lying facedown on the ground. One of the Cossacks waves his now blood-smeared sword in the air. Even from where I am, I can see that the man on the ground is dead. A red stain begins to spread across the back of his shirt.

  The boy—I can see for sure now that he’s a boy—reaches the dead man and throws himself in the dirt next to his father.

  The Cossacks don’t stop, just ride away laughing. All except one. He wheels his horse around. Trots back to the boy and his dead father.

  “No,” I scream again, even though I’m sure that none of them can hear me. “Leave him alone.”

  Except one of them does hear me. The boy. He stands and turns to the sound of my voice. Looks directly at me. Then shakes his head and looks back at the Cossack.

  The Cossack leans down and yanks him by the shirt. Pulls him into the air so his feet are dangling, then spits in his face. He leans in closer and says something to the boy. He points a finger at the dead man on the ground and shakes his head. Then he lets go. The boy drops to the dirt. The Cossack rides off.

  I stand there watching. My body shakes like the world is made of ice. The boy looks at me again. His eyes are an amazing blue. A blue you couldn’t forget once you saw it, and I think I’ve seen those eyes enough to remember.

  “Holy crap,” Tess
says. “That’s Ethan, isn’t it? Oh my God, Anne, is that why we’re here? So we can watch his dad get slaughtered?”

  I nod. It’s impossible. Except it feels real. It is real. Little Ethan with his blue eyes. Ethan, whose story I already know. He’d found his mother and sister dead, slaughtered by the Cossacks. He’d tried to stop his father from going to avenge their murder. And then—now—he watched his father die.

  Should I say something to him? What’s the protocol here?

  “So, um, why can he see us—or at least you—and the crazy Russian horse guys can’t?”

  I’d have attempted an answer, but I don’t have to. Because suddenly the world shifts and folds, and the last thing I see are those blue eyes staring at me, clearly seeing me and wondering who the hell I am.

  •••

  My room materializes around us. Outside on the driveway below my window, I hear the slam of a car door and then inside, downstairs, I hear my father walk in, close the front door, and say, “Chinese takeout is here. Who’s ready for egg rolls?”

  “Egg rolls?” Tess mumbles from where she’s flopped on my floor. “Does he not know we almost just got skewered by some back-in-the-day Russian crazies?”

  Outside, I hear another car screech to a stop in the driveway, and then the front doorbell starts ringing over and over like someone’s desperate to get inside.

  “Anne!” Ethan is shouting when either my father lets him in or he just walks in without waiting, neither of which I can see. I hear him bolting up the stairs and the sound of my father saying something—possibly that he should have called first because there aren’t enough egg rolls.

  He races into my room and hugs me to him. Presses his face into my sweaty hair. I wrap my arms around him and hold tight. My heart doesn’t want to slow down. I breathe in Ethan—all solid and real. His hands rest on the small of my back. Somehow this makes me feel safe and edgy at the same time.

  “Hey!” Tess says. “What about me? I almost got shish-kebabbed too. And by the way, you were one skinny little boy, did you know that?”

  I ease out his grip and study his face. The eyes are the same as the boy we just saw. No way could I ever mistake them.

  “I felt it,” he says. “I don’t understand. But I knew it was happening. I—” He turns to Tess. “What do you mean, little boy?”

  “We saw you,” Tess tells him. “You were a little boy. Your father—” She stops. Claps her hand over her mouth.

  “Are you guys okay up there?” I hear my father on the stairs. We’ve got like three-and-a-half seconds before he gets up here. My father, who unlike my mother, has no clue about the magic wackiness I’ve been up to.

  I cut to the chase. “We ended up in old-time Russia. We saw the Cossacks kill your father. We saw you.” My heart pounds again as I say it. Suddenly I’m aware of how horribly intimate that moment was. Something that was Ethan’s own private memory. Now it’s my memory too.

  Ethan goes very still. His face pales, and those blue eyes look grim and dark.

  “The one Cossack,” I say quickly. “He said something to you, Ethan. Before he dropped you to the ground and rode off. You never mentioned that to me before. Did that happen? Did he really tell you something?”

  Ethan looks startled. “He said he would kill me,” he whispers. “But that he’d been told not to. I thought he was lying. I thought he was afraid of me. Later, I always imagined he just didn’t want my blood on his hands. He’d killed my entire family. What did I matter at that point? But what if that wasn’t it at all? What if he really had been instructed to leave me alone? That would mean—”

  “It would mean that maybe your father was murdered on purpose, not just someone’s whim. It would mean—”

  My own father now stands in my door, watching us all like we’re escaped criminals or something. Buster wanders back in and starts rubbing on my leg and purring. I notice for the first time that there are still a few drops of blood on Tess’s forehead. It’s the first proof since we’ve been back that this whole thing really happened. That I haven’t just been hallucinating or something.

  “Later,” I say quickly.

  “Hey, Mr. Michaelson,” Tess says cheerily.

  “Are you bleeding?” My father points to her forehead.

  “Am I?” She touches her hand to her forehead, then wipes the smear of blood on her jeans sort of casually, like it’s a speck of dust or something. “You know your daughter. She’s a wild one. We got hungry waiting for those egg rolls. She fought me over the last tortilla chip. But I ate it. Good for me, right?”

  My father narrows his eyes.

  “Food’s on the table,” my mother calls from downstairs.

  “How did you get back?” Ethan asks quietly as we head for the door.

  “Wish I knew,” I tell him. “Maybe it’ll be written in the fortune cookie.”

  Wednesday, 12:42 am

  Anne

  Dinner lasts an eternity. Eventually, Tess and Ethan and I convene in my room and talk. We lounge on the floor, Ethan’s back against my bed, his legs stretched out, while Tess and I share the beanbag. My stomach is full from an overload of shrimp fried rice.

  “I’m sorry, Ethan,” Tess says. “What they did to your dad, to your family? I don’t know how you live with that.”

  And this is how I know that Tess is ripped apart by what we’ve seen in our trip to the past: she pries herself out of the squishy beanbag, knee-walks to Ethan, and pulls him into a hug. He looks shocked—it’s not just me who knows she’s no Ethan fan—and gently wrestles himself free when she doesn’t let go soon enough.

  In the end, we realize that we don’t know anything. Did Viktor have something to do with the death of Ethan’s family? Maybe. Maybe not. Was it my power that brought us home? A little, I think. I’m tired of not being sure.

  “You need to stay with her,” Tess decides for Ethan. She’s squashed back against me in the beanbag, and I can smell garlic pork on her breath. “I’ll stay too, if you want. But you need to be here. If she starts to disappear again, maybe you can stop it this time.”

  “I don’t need a baby-sitter,” I grumble. I’ve eaten too much Chinese food, and my fortune cookie read, “You live in interesting times.” My mother picked at the food with her chopsticks and watched Ethan and me with a worried look on her face. My father insisted that Tess eat the last egg roll. Now Ethan looks conflicted about the prospect of spending the night in my room. Not exactly the reaction a girl hopes for.

  “Really,” I go on. “I’ll be fine.” In the end, we all decide that this is probably not the case.

  So after my mother’s fifth pointed “It’s getting late” visit to my room, Ethan and Tess say a noisy good-bye and I walk downstairs with them. We make a point of shutting the front door loudly, and then Ethan and I sneak into the kitchen and he waits in the darkened mudroom off the back door in case Mom or Dad decides they need a late-night snack.

  From the bottom of the stairs, I yell, “Going to make some hot tea. Either of you guys want any?”

  They both yell back, “No,” and eventually I hear them close their bedroom door.

  We sneak up the stairs.

  “You really don’t have to do this,” I whisper, except I know that I don’t really mean it. “We both know we’re not safe until this is over. It’s part of the deal.”

  “I’m staying,” Ethan says.

  At which point it occurs to me that there are two of us and one bed.

  It occurs to him too. “I’ll sleep on the floor,” he says.

  “There’s the beanbag.” I point to it like he won’t be able to figure out where it is unless I do. “Sorry about the pink. It’s pretty girlie, I know. You can take the bed. I’m good with the beanbag. When I was little, I used to—”

  “Floor’s fine. Trust me, I’ve slep
t on worse.”

  I’m sure he has. All right then, mister, it’s the beanbag for you.

  In my bathroom, I change into shorts and a tank top. When I come out, Ethan—still fully dressed—is stretched out on the floor, his head on the pink beanbag, his bare feet brushing against my bed’s white eyelet dust ruffle. In no way does this diminish his hotness factor. Not that I plan on telling him.

  “You know,” I say quietly, because my parents’ room is just down the hall. “This isn’t exactly practical. I mean it’s not like you can spend every night here until this is over.”

  “This isn’t every night, Anne. It’s tonight. I’ll stand outside, if that’s better for you, but I’m not leaving. Not tonight.”

  “Pretty firm on that, aren’t you?” I huff.

  “Yes.” He crosses his hands behind his head, elbows sinking into the beanbag. The edge of his polo rides up, and I catch a glimpse of flat, tan stomach and a thin line of hair that disappears into his jeans. A herd of butterflies flutter in my stomach.

  I switch off my lamp and climb into bed.

  The darkness somehow makes him feel closer.

  I close my eyes.

  In the dark, I hear Ethan’s slow and even breathing. Has he fallen asleep? Is he just pretending? Why have I agreed to this? I mean, it’s not like his presence has stopped me from a whole series of near-death experiences. In fact, he’s brought most of them my way by just existing.

  No way am I going to sleep while he’s breathing down there.

  So here’s what I’m thinking. If I wanted to, I could lie down next to him. If I wanted to, I could tell him to lie down next to me.

  If I wanted to.

  Do I want to?

  Does he want to?

  We spent the night at his apartment only a few weeks ago, but that felt different. Possibly because I was in a panic about my magic getting stronger. Also because technically I was still with Ben and that made things awkward. And definitely because a rusalka who turned out to be Lily, my birth grandmother, appeared in Ethan’s shower.